Floaty Birb
free #spelljammer idea:
a dragonship crewed by hengeyokai (shapeshifters with human, animal and hybrid forms), and all but a skeleton crew is shapeshifted into their animal forms to save air during long voyages. the ship could be a flying cat cafe.
they get boarded by pirates. the pirates wander through the ship and see mostly cats lounging around and hissing at them. then the cats transform and the pirates are outnumbered by 100 angry crew, some in human and some in furry form.
Floaty Birb
there could be invasion ships full of evil rat hengeyokai; most of whom are transformed into their rat form and wriggle in the hold (which is full of grain).
when they encounter a worldlet they wish to subjugate, they disembark and transform into a battalion. if they start losing, they all transform into rats and scurry off to hide, possibly doing guerilla raids while waiting for reinforcements.
Floaty Birb
considering how much damage invasive species can do to an ecosystem, and since a lot of settlements in #spelljammer are probably little garden asteroids with fragile air envelopes, maybe carrying *normal* rats (plague optional) would be an effective weapon system.
A space galleon rolls up to a farming asteroid and unloads a lot of rats. The rats eat the crops and everyone starves. Turns out that the galleon was in the employ of a necromancer who wanted more bodies for her skeleton army.
Floaty Birb
maybe in one wildspace system, the local lizardfolk had a fleet of incubation ships that orbit the sun closely to warm their eggs (because in #spelljammer a warmer egg makes a smarter lizard-guy).
but their incubation ships keep getting attacked by neogi slavers who want to steal their eggs and/or make lizard omelets.
so they hire some carp hengeyokai samurai as bonus guards, who chill in their water tank and spring into action if a neogi spider-ship approaches.
Floaty Birb
I'm literally imagining a carp jump out of a pool and into a nearby set of samurai armor, then transforming into its human form and running off to go fight some spider people and their umber-hulk slaves.
the carp samurai probably make a game of this; its considered the acme of skill to leap into your armor at the right angle so you can instantly transform and run off to fight. its more embarrassing when you miss your mark and have to flop around until you can get into your armored coat.
Floaty Birb
the hengeyokai crew doesn't have to be cats, since there are lots of hengeyokai flavors.
you could have a ship crewed by several hundred sparrow hengeyokai monks who spend most of their time in bird form just sitting on the rigging and chirping at each other.
in a boarding action this force is very powerful, since they can fly over the other ship, transform into humanoid form midair and start dive-kicking the crew on the other ship's deck.
Floaty Birb
the sparrow crew has its problem after the battle, because the downside of being in bird form is that you can't control where and when you poop. So, their ship's deck is constantly refilling with bird poop.
the crew has to rotate cleaning duties, where one of them goes humanoid and swabs the deck, grumbling at all their crewmates who can't stop pooping everywhere, even while they clean the bird poop. tensions are high.
Floaty Birb
another #spelljammer has a crew of fox hengeyokai. while they save provisions by being in their tiny fox forms during flight, part of their cargo hold is full of dirt, just because they got bored during flight and, in their fox forms, they want to dig holes.
the merchant ship crewed by dog hengeyokai had the same arrangement, until they met some tinker gnomes who invented squeak toys for them, which are also distracting but take less cargo space. they have a budget item for squeak toys now.
Floaty Birb
there also needs to be a water-filled spelljammer full of carp hengeyokai that's like a flying aquarium / koi-pond. maybe they can team up with the cat hengeyokai and some planet that produces coffee and have a flying cat cafe with aesthetic ornamental fish (that are also crew people).
Floaty Birb
if you use D&D 3e rules, the hengeyokai's equipment transforms with them, but if you use 2e rules they are naked when they transform. Obviously, if you did the later, the crew would have to be nudist berserkers.
The pirates would see a cat hiss and then zoomie over to a conveniently placed Gigantic Anime Sword, then transform into an angry naked person trying to slice them in two.
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