Setting Challenge, Day 2

So Sunken Realms was pretty much the most vanilla of my ideas - it was pretty much plain-Jane Dungeons and Dragons with boats.  Now's the time to flesh it out some what.

So the elevator pitch was basically: Water world ruled by a mighty Spanish halfling empire.

Why a water world?  The exact idea is lost to the mists of time; as far as I can remember it just seemed like a cool idea at the time.  If I had to guess, it's from the monoclimate school of design (Black Sun, etc).  So I'm going to pull inspiration from Water-world, the Pirates of the Caribbean series, Pirates of Black Water, Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, etc.  I'm imagining a world dotted with islands, with weird magic and swashbuckling action.

Well what's with the mighty Spanish halfling empire?  I like Halflings.  Especially D&D 3rd Edition's rendition of them.  Not exactly sure why that is and why that appeal doesn't move over to the other small race in the game, gnomes.  At the present I'm planning with sticking with the default races so gnomes are still in, but that may change by the end.  But the other thing is just the unlikeliness of the small guys being out on top.

I suspect the Spanish thing is because I was taking Spanish courses at the time.  I'm not sure how blatant this will be.  I think it adds a nice exoticism but avoids the "tonnes of z's and apostrophes" syndrome that can happen in a lot of fantasy.  Of course if it goes too far the other way, it pulls you out of the world and reminds you of the artifice.  So I think this will have to be on a case by case basis.

So the next question that comes to mind: how did the halflings become dominant in a world where pretty much every race is bigger than they are?  What I've come up with is that they have access to potent magics, which give them an edge in the nautical environment.  Currently I'm thinking that it's an elemental magic system, and the halflings are masters of Water magic.  The world is currently in a Water Age - hence the reason the world is covered in water.  So the magic system will need a lot of re-thinking - I need to decide if I'm going to add a new magic system beside the existing one, replace it completely.