Ebb&Ori's Codex of the Undersea - A 5e Tome

Take the Plunge

Ebb & Ori's Codex of the Undersea is a 200+ page 5E underwater codex packed with a mix of shallow fun and the deepest of seriousness. Enrich your world beneath the waves with freakish, randomized monsters and fantastic aquatic settlement and culture generation. Let your creativity flow as you dive into infinite character combinations of Aquatic Mutations, Racial Feats, and Magical Spells and Items.

This book is the result of a four-year-long expedition into the ocean by the intrepid adventurers Ebb and Ori, who recorded their extraordinary findings to now share them with you.

How far into the depths will your party go for the lure of treasure?

Designing Depth

With this book, we didn’t just want to give you a bunch of cool fish—we wanted to teach you how to be the fish.

Ori: Uhm, you're supposed to say how to fish ... 
Ebb: NO! If I am a fish, which the people down here are, I want to know how my settlement looks, how I look, and how to act. Which is right here in our book!
Ori: Well I'll be damned, you DO learn how to be a fish! 

Throughout the book, you'll find that pretty much every race, subclass, monster, and item is designed to maximize the storytelling potential. Whether it's the nigh-infinite mutation combinations of the Thalassians, the 50+ randomized Strange Features to customize your aquatic weirdos, portable shell-homes called Spiral Abodes, or spells that change based on the material components used—everything is made to give you options and tools. And let's not forget the items that can combine or be tweaked, those are no joke either!

What's In the Book?

The Chapters of the book are: Character Options, All Things Magical, Game Master’s Tools, Bestiary, Rules Expansion, and Character Portraits. Below, we both describe and show you what you can expect to see inside the pages!

Aquatic Playtest

Provided here is ~30 pages of playtest material showing off one aspect of the codex: The Darahesh, or in Common, Aquatic Dragonborn. A dragonkin race that hail from the leviathans of the sea. Was your ancestor a Dragon Turtle? A Sea Serpent? Perhaps a dragon from the river of heaven ... or hell?

Get the Draconic PDF here!

Character Options

There are 4 unique aquatic Races with Subraces and racial Feats that allow you to customize them to no end:

• Aquatic Dragonborn – Mighty people whose bloodlines trace back to one of four gargantuan leviathans. Will you bring back the lore, glory, and power of your ancient clan?
• Nixie – Veiled in false beauty, their alluring songs fool the minds of others. Some see it as a great sorrow to express through art, while others use it as a powerful tool to manipulate. The Good, the Bad, and the.. ..Ugly? Yes, some Nixie even go so far as to tear their veil apart, and live as grotesque monsters in solitude.
• Selkies – A people known for their mastery of diplomacy and mediation. However, each of their six subraces approaches this with widely different philosophies. Do you distract their sadness through Leonine acrobatics, or Elephantine yelling? Perhaps you mediate through little trinkets like the Ringed selkies! 
• Thalassians – With near-unlimited combinations of mutations, these are the shape-shifters of the deep. Mermaid? Lobstermaid? Translucent mermaid with lobster claws? You bet! 

Playtest the Ringed & Walrusian Selkies here!

New Subclasses

• The Circle of Mirage – An illusion- and stealth-based Druid subclass that creates increasingly real illusions while lurking in hazy light.
• The Streamstrider Archetype – A highly mobile Ranger subclass focused on using currents to leap over enemies and curve shots around cover.

Playtest the Circle of Mirage here! 

Spells That Bait, Flow & Illuminate

The book introduces a dozen new spells with infinite potential for shenanigans: Trap someone in an illusory cage? Cause someone to float away? 

Playtest the spells Bladelure, Flickering Strikes & Slippery Strike here!

Magic Items

There are two dozen magic items in the codex, some fun or freaky, and others epic and powerful. See for example the legendary twin swords Ebb & Flow, that can be combined to craft Tyde, a mythic artifact with lore and intricate mechanics.

Playtest Tyde here!

Tables Beget Tables

If a page isn't illustrated, it's instead filled with fun tables to roll on, such as:

• Lore tables for players to research the monsters they face; 
• 50+ Strange Mutations to customize and randomize your fishy weirdos that migrate from the abyss; 
• An entire chapter dedicated to creating your own underwater settlements with tables for population, diversity, geology, depth-level and more!

Master the World Below

The GM Tools chapter includes guides on underwater combat, map-making, visualizing and describing the depths and customizing plot hooks and encounters. You even have a table to roll for the starting hook to drag your players into the depths, whether it be a devious sea pixie, promise of treasure, or a curse of the sea ...

• 40+ Settlement Plot hooks for the Selkies, Aq. Dragonborn, Nixie and Thalassians
• 3 Plug & Play encounters ready to be inserted into any adventure

Monsters From the Depths

Legends tell a tale of sunken stars that fell from the heavens in ages past. Some say they were literal stars—others speak of heavenly creatures cast out and imprisoned in the deep for irredeemable wrongdoings. 

Playtest the Drowned Star here!

The Drowned Star is only one of our 50+ stat blocks that span the CR spectrum from 0 to 20. All monsters presented in the codex comes with Lore tables for adventurers that want to try researching their foe, unique treasures for sweet loot, unique plot hooks to draw in your players, and even a tactics section so you know how to play the monster! 

Character Portraits

As the cherry on top, you'll also receive 100+ Character Portraits, available in the back of the book and as optional downloadable files for backers.

View the entire Playtest Drive folder, including 6 free portraits here!

Help us improve the finalized versions of our playtest material here!

Give us valuable feedback on our Discord here!

Timeline

Timeline. Ebb & Ori's Codex of the Undersea is already 90% illustrated and written. Shortly after the Kickstarter campaign closes in early September, we will send out a Playtest version of the book as a PDF to all backers, hopefully no later than October. Any feedback we receive throughout October and November will be taken into account as we put the finishing touches to the content, with the goal to send out the final version of the PDF to all backers in late December. As soon as the PDF is ready, we will send it over to DriveThru for printing and begin fulfillment of the physical books.

Our stretch goals are mostly content that we already have the framework and concept worked out for and shouldn’t affect the timeline too much, but some of the larger stretch goals may take a few additional weeks to complete. If we, once we know how many stretch goals have been unlocked, feel that this threatens to push the delivery of the final PDF and printed books to a much later date than expected, we’ll make sure to keep you updated on our progress. In that case, we will do our best to at least provide the “basic” version of the PDF—without added stretch goals—in December as promised, while continuing to work on the final, updated version including the stretch goals to send out as PDF and print in early 2026.  

2014 vs 2024 Core Rules

We started this project in 2021, and as a result, naturally used the System Reference Document for the 2014 Core Rules (SRD 5.1) as our base for anything inspired by official 5e content. However, even from the beginning, we experimented with additional rules that eventually were included in the book as Appendix A: Rules Expansion. Some of these, such as Bloodied creatures and what we call a 'D20 Roll', became official rules in the 2024 version of the game. Since the 2024 System Reference Document (SRD 5.2) didn't become available until late April 2025, we have not converted our content to completely match the 2024 way of writing things (yet). However, we feel confident that you can use the Codex of the Undersea with the 2024 rules without any problem!

Meet the Team

Well, Ebb & Ori are the two plane-hopping, dimension defying little Nephilim that are both fiend and celestial in nature. Behind them, however, are Leo and Henny, and we are the duo behind Planar Express! All content in the book was made by us two, and we do not use AI in our work.

We met in a small city in Sweden called Kristinehamn, where we attended the same worldbuilding-course Skapa Världar ("Create Worlds"). There, we joined the same 5e campaign and not a second had passed before we started debating and experimenting around plotlines, mechanics, and game design. 

A year and a half later, we decided to work on something together, one artist and one writer, which was supposed to be a small endeavour as we were both new... and... well... we kept getting inspired and added MORE and MORE! What started as a bunch of magic items soon grew to include a subclass and some spells, and we thought, "wouldn't it be great to publish these things together in a small compendium of underwater stuff, instead of one by one?" 

Fast forward 3 years and 200 pages written and edited, nearly all of them illustrated, all by our hands. Somewhere along the way, we realized we could actually expand our growing compendium to a real book. We ended up spending way more time and effort that the one year we initially planned for, and seeing that it would actually be possible to make this into a printed book, we decided to turn it into a Kickstarter to help keep the lights on as we work on the final stages of development. In addition to that, the Undersea still has SO MUCH we'd like to explore! Through funding, we can afford to spend a little more time on this project and add those subclasses, monsters and artwork that would've gotten cut otherwise! Angler-fish dragon anyone? 

We hope you'll want to keep following us on our journey that we'll take through the TTRPG space from here through Discord, Patreon, Youtube, Instagram, Reddit and Bluesky!  

Stretch Goals

We didn't want to set our initial goal too high: 90% of the book is both written and illustrated already. Our aim and goal with this funding is just to get our Codex into the hands of everyone who wants to dive right into that underwater campaign they've been curious about. 

That said, we’re not necessarily done with the underwater theme yet, and we have a few things we would love to add to the book as long as we can afford to spend the time to do it! We might even jump back in again with an expansion in the future if we don't reach all the stretch goals here. 

All unlocked stretch goals will be included in both the digital and physical reward tiers (well, except premium color printing, since it's only a relevant option for printed books).

Optional Add-Ons

All rewards that include a printed copy of the book ('Physical Copy + PDF' and 'Collab Tier') will have the option to add an additional printed copy for €30 as an add-on, available from the start. If we reach our first stretch goal, unlocking the premium color printing, the option to upgrade your book to a premium color print for an additional €15 will be available as an add-on through the Pledge Manager once the Kickstarter campaign is over. You'll also be able to add additional printed copies through the Pledge Manager if you want to but didn't do it earlier. If you have added additional printed copies to your pledge, you will be able to choose how many, if any, of those books you want printed with premium color.

How Does This Work?

It's super easy! Contribute any amount you want, taking heed to the levels of contribution and their commensurate rewards over there on the right. If we hit our €200 goal, you'll get the reward that goes with your level of contribution. 

Ebb & Ori's Codex of the Undersea will be fulfilled, printed and shipped through DriveThruRPG. Printing is completed in both the USA and the UK, which allows the book to be shipped while keeping freight costs and delivery times to a minimum. When the book is ready, every backer who pledged to one of the tiers will receive a digital copy of the book via DriveThruRPG.

PLEASE NOTE: The shipping cost is NOT included in the Tier pricing. After the Kickstarter campaign has finished, backer surveys will be sent out to provide the digital reward, and begin arranging shipping addresses and costs. Shipping addresses will be collected through the backer surveys for those who pledged for a physical hardcover print. After which, pledgers will receive appropriate shipping costs to be paid via PayPal. 

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE ESTIMATED SHIPPING COSTS FOR EACH COUNTRY