The adventure ahead
Carl of the Seven Seas has come home. The famous adventurer, sailor and treasure hunter — and younger brother of King Soleiman — has returned to the City of Lordinium after nine years away, and he is hiring.
Far in the north, where the air grows thick as water, Carl found the Island of Borealis: the legendary homeland of the Seven Nations, hidden behind a magical fog and ringed by a sea that burns and smokes. Beyond the fog he glimpsed a lush paradise — and creatures that were once something else, twisted into demonic shapes.
The old scriptures say the Seven Nations lived on Borealis in harmony with the Twelve Gods, until a Thirteenth god tried to take all power for itself. The scriptures also carry a warning: any return will incur a price of blood on those who return. Most of that warning has been scraped away. Only a few heretic copies still carry the words.
You have signed on with Carl's expedition. You will sail north, pass the burning sea, cross the fog, and walk a paradise that eats its own. And the further you go, the clearer it becomes that the warning was not a metaphor.
Tone: wonder, salt, and slow dread. A treasure voyage that turns into an excavation of a crime.
Themes: what a nation will pay to be saved, who does the paying, and whether a god's hunger is a curse or an invitation.
Share with your players
A letter, sealed with the crown-and-wave of Lordinium, delivered to you by a boy who would not wait for a tip:
> *To whom it may concern — Carl of the Seven Seas requires hands for a voyage north. Pay: forty gold on signing, a full share on return. Risk: considerable. Bring a warm coat and a weapon you trust. Present yourself at the Salt Crown on the harbour front at dusk. Ask for Halda.*
Carl of the Seven Seas is the King's younger brother and the most famous sailor alive. Nine years ago he sailed north past the last charted water and came back with a torn map, a burnt ship and a story nobody believed. He says he found Borealis — the island homeland of the Seven Nations, where the Twelve Gods walked with mortals. He says it is still there, behind a fog that will not part, ringed by a sea that burns.
He also says the old scriptures warn that any return will incur a price of blood.
He says that part is probably a copying error.
Tone: a treasure voyage with a cold hand on your shoulder. Salt, fog, wonder, and the growing certainty that the paradise ahead was paid for by someone.
Starting hook: you are at the Salt Crown at dusk, and Carl is buying.
Behind the screen
Structure. Three regions, three acts, twelve key locations, twelve scenes. Act I (levels 1–4) is Lordinium and the northern salt road: hiring, sabotage, a heretic codex, the last port. Act II (levels 5–8) is the Ashen Reach: the burning strait, the wreck of the Penitent Star, the fog wall. Act III (levels 9–12) is Borealis itself: the strand, the Sevenfold Ruins, the Temple of the Twelve, the Ninth Terrace, the Heart.
The truth. The Seven Nations did not live in harmony with the Twelve. They lived in harmony because they fed the Thirteenth. When the Thirteenth demanded a place among the Twelve, the Twelve could not destroy it — so the Seven Nations bound it beneath the island with a blood price: a continuous, hereditary sacrifice, one life every turning of the moon, drawn from the families of the Seven. The paradise was built on that altar. The Twelve accepted the bargain and let the scriptures be rewritten. The warning about the blood price was scraped from every official copy; only heretic codices kept it.
The present. The bloodline has thinned. The last offerings are gone, the altar is dry, and the Thirteenth is waking. Maelis Vane, sole survivor of the first expedition, was saved by the god and now leads the Ash Chorus to complete the price — with the party's crew as the offering. Captain Orrin Grieve wants the god's power for himself and will happily sell anyone to get it.
Clue flow. Act I plants: a scraped scripture, an ash-grey token, a heretic codex naming the Thirteenth, a priest's memory of the first expedition. Act II confirms: the Penitent Star's logbook records a crew member left behind at the fog wall, and the Warden states plainly that the fog drinks blood. Act III reveals: the strand shrine's carvings show offerings, the Sevenfold Ruins hold the sacrifice ledgers, the High Priestess confesses the binding, the Ninth Terrace shows the altar in use, and the Heart shows what it was all for.
Failure states. If the party never recovers the heretic codex, they arrive on Borealis blind and the Ash Chorus ambushes them at the strand. If they fail the Warden's trial, the fog takes a crew member as its price and the expedition arrives weakened. If Maelis completes the blood price at the Ninth Terrace, the Thirteenth rises in avatar-form at the Heart and the finale becomes a fighting retreat to the ship. If Orrin Grieve steals the chart and reaches the Heart first, he becomes the vessel instead and the final battle is against a mortal wearing a god.
Pacing. Sessions 1–3 Lordinium and docks. 4–6 Gullclaw Cay and Harrowgate. 7–10 the strait and the wreck. 11–13 the fog wall and the strand. 14–18 the ruins and the temple. 19–24 the terrace and the Heart. Use the sea voyages for downtime, crew scenes and side quests.
Villain plan. Maelis works through the Ash Chorus: she sabotaged the Sea-Devil's Due in Lordinium, she has a Chorus cell at Gullclaw Cay, and she has been at the Heart for a year preparing the altar. Orrin Grieve shadows the expedition, hoping the party clears the way. The Thirteenth does nothing directly until the altar is fed; it whispers, it bargains, and it waits.
Hook 01
A sealed letter with the crown-and-wave of Lordinium arrives for each of you: Carl of the Seven Seas needs hands for a voyage north, forty gold on signing, a full share on return. Present yourself at the Salt Crown on the harbour front at dusk and ask for Halda. This is the default hook and puts the party at the first scene with coin already promised.
Hook 02
A dockmate, a creditor, or a shrine priest tells the party that Carl's last three crews did not come home and that the Crown has quietly stopped licensing his hulls. Signing on is the only way to find out what happened to a missing relative — a sibling, a parent, a friend — whose name is on the lost list in Harrowgate shrine.
Hook 03
A scholar, copyist, or acolyte contact shows the party a page of official scripture with a line cut out of it and a heretic copy that still carries the words. Carl's expedition is the only way north to prove what was erased. This hook ties the party to Archivist Venn and to the codex hunt in Act I.
Hook 04
A grey-robed charity collector has been asking after the party by name in the taverns along the harbour front, offering good coin for them to leave Lordinium and forget the north. Taking Carl's offer is the fastest way to find out why the Ash Chorus does not want them aboard.
Hook 05
One of the party owes the Tidewrights' Guild money, and the Guild has offered to wipe the debt for a season's work aboard a licensed hull. The hull is the Sea-Devil's Due, and the Guild's factor wants a quiet report on what Carl finds in the north.
Carl of the Seven Seas hires the party in Lordinium. Before the ship can sail, the party must survive sabotage, buy a heretic codex that still carries the erased warning, and win the last northern port's permission to leave. The act ends when the Sea-Devil's Due clears Harrowgate and turns into the smoking sea.
Read aloud
The Salt Crown smells of tar, onions and wet wool. At the long table by the fire a big man in a salt-stained coat is standing on a bench, telling forty strangers about a sea that burns. He sees you and grins like a man who has already spent your share. Carl of the Seven Seas waves you over. Sit down. He is buying.
Carl presents the torn chart, the fog, the burning sea and the promise of a full share. He is honest about the danger and evasive about the scripture. A grey-robed collector watches from the door and leaves if challenged. Halda Storm is at the bar and will size the party up. This scene sets the tone: a treasure voyage with a cold hand on its shoulder.
Read aloud
Halda Storm holds a lantern against the ship's flank and shows you four clean cuts in the new copper, each one an arm's length, each one angled so the hull will open the moment she takes a heavy sea. Six hours to the tide, she says. Find me the bastard who did this, or we sail with a sieve.
The cuts are fresh, made with a caulker's knife from inside the dock. Sedge the caulker is the Chorus agent and will try to blame a dockhand. Jory Tallow is the actual saboteur and is hiding in the sail loft. If confronted kindly, Jory breaks and confesses everything, including the safe channel through the smoking strait. If threatened, he bolts for the harbour and must be caught.
Read aloud
Tamsin Quill unlocks the third lock and lifts an oilcloth parcel from a crate of brandy. This is what you want, she says. A codex of the Twelve, copied before the Crown got careful. She unwraps it and there, in the margin of the creation account, is a line scraped out of every official scripture you have ever seen: and the price of return shall be blood. Then the gulls outside go silent.
The codex is genuine and carries the full blood-price warning plus the first mention of the Thirteenth. Tamsin wants two hundred gold or a favour. A Chorus cell of four cultists and a priest arrives by the low-tide entrance to burn the cave and take the book. Tamsin fights poorly and hides well. If the party loses the codex, Archivist Venn can reconstruct part of it later, but they lose the strongest early clue.
Read aloud
The shrine is colder inside than out. A hundred candles burn in front of a hundred names, and Priest Aldous adds another while you watch. He does not turn around. You have read the codex, he says. I can tell by your faces. My predecessor read it too, and he came back from the north alone, and he screamed about a price for three days before he died.
Aldous has his predecessor's journal, which describes the fog wall and the words that open it. He will give it up if the party agrees to bring the northern dead home. Captain Kane is at the Grey Gull and will grant the licence only if the party clears the Chorus cell in the burned warehouse. The cell is four cultists and a priest, and it has a hostage: Greta's brother, the Guild courier.
Milestone: The party reaches level 5 when the Sea-Devil's Due leaves Harrowgate harbour and the burning sea comes into sight.
The Sea-Devil's Due crosses the burning strait, finds the wreck of the first expedition, and reaches the fog wall. The party learns that the fog demands a life and that Maelis Vane has been here before them. The act ends when the gate opens and the island of Borealis appears out of the fog.
Read aloud
The smoke closes over the sun and the sea begins to glow. Jory Tallow is at the bow with his astrolabe, shouting bearings that do not match the chart, and Halda Storm is at the wheel with a wet cloth over her face. A shoal of burning water opens ahead of the ship, and the water around it is full of shapes that are not fish.
This is a three-stage skill challenge: find the channel, hold the channel, survive the night. Each stage needs two successful checks from the party. Failure costs 1d6 crew, 2d10 hull damage, or a delay that lets Orrin Grieve's Widow's Due close in. The shapes in the water are drowned members of the first expedition, now twisted; they do not attack unless the ship stops.
Read aloud
The wreck leans out of the water like a broken tooth. Carl goes very quiet when he sees the name on her stern. There is a sailcloth awning rigged over the quarterdeck, and under it a woman is standing with a boat hook, thin as rope, watching you come. She does not wave. She has stopped expecting anyone to come.
Elspeth is alive, wary and entirely sane. She has the logbook and will trade it for passage off the reef. The flooded hold holds the strongbox and two drowned crew who have been twisted by the water and will attack anyone who enters. If the party tells Elspeth her sister is alive, she goes very still and then asks to come with them.
Read aloud
The fog does not move. The arch does. The figure on it turns its coral mask down toward your deck and speaks in a voice like a rope through a block. One life, it says. That is the price. It has always been the price. The fog will take it from your crew, or you will give it a name, and the name must be true.
Cassian is not hostile unless attacked. He explains the price plainly: the fog takes one life from every ship, chosen by the fog, unless someone gives it a true name freely. A true name means a name the giver has never spoken falsely — their own, or a dead crew member's, or a name they have carried in secret. If the party gives a false name, the fog takes two. If they fight Cassian, he is a dangerous opponent and the fog takes a life anyway.
Milestone: The party reaches level 9 when the fog parts and the green shore of Borealis comes into view.
The party lands on Borealis, crosses the forest to the Sevenfold Ruins, learns the truth of the blood price from the last scribe and the last high priestess, descends to the Ninth Terrace to break the altar, and faces Maelis Vane and the Thirteenth at the Heart of the island. The act ends when the party decides the god's fate.
Read aloud
The beach is white and the bones are white and it takes you a moment to understand that the beach is made of bones. At the north end a small shrine stands half in the forest, its carvings chiselled blank, and something is moving inside it. A young woman with a splinted arm comes out of the rocks with a boat hook and says, very fast, do not go in there, that is what made the crabs into that.
Miri Salt has been on the strand for three months and knows the creatures' patterns. The shrine is a Chorus altar with a priest and two cultists maintaining it; they have been feeding the forest for a year. Destroying the altar stops new creatures from being made but does not cure the ones already twisted. The altar holds a Chorus ledger naming Maelis Vane and the Ninth Terrace.
Read aloud
The archive is a round room of empty shelves, and at the centre an old man in temple robes is bent over a stone lectern, writing on nothing. He is translucent and he does not stop writing when you come in. He says, without looking up, you are the first people to come here in a thousand years who are not grey. Please tell me you have come to burn the ledgers.
Ulric is a record that refuses to stop being kept. He wrote the sacrifice ledgers and has been trying to erase them ever since. He will tell the party the truth about the blood price if asked plainly, and he will lie about it if asked as a priest of the Twelve. The ledgers are in a locked stone cabinet; the Chorus wants them destroyed and will attack the archive to do it.
Read aloud
The woman on the throne opens her eyes and they are entirely black. She says, in a voice like a dry leaf, you have read the ledgers. Good. I will not waste your time with the version we told the children. The Twelve could not kill it. So we bought it. Every moon, one life, from seven families, forever. And the Twelve called it harmony, and we called it paradise, and I have had a thousand years to think about the word we should have used.
Senna confesses everything without being pressed. She knows the ritual to re-bind the Thirteenth and the price it demands. She will not pretend the price is small. She also knows that the altar at the Ninth Terrace is dry and that Maelis Vane is trying to feed it. The undercroft behind the throne leads down to the terraces.
Read aloud
The stairs end in a pit of black stone. Nine pillars stand around an altar that has been polished by a thousand years of use, and chains are set into the floor around it. A young woman in a white shift is chained to the tallest pillar, and she looks at you with the patience of someone who has been waiting a very long time. Behind her, grey-robed figures are unrolling a long canvas shroud.
The Chorus is preparing the altar for the expedition's crew. A priest and four cultists guard it; Maelis is at the Heart. Nesa can tell the party when the Thirteenth is lying and knows the altar's weak point. Breaking the altar requires three successful actions while the Chorus fights to stop them. If the party fails, the Chorus completes the offering and the Thirteenth begins to rise.
Read aloud
The crater floor is warm and the chains of white stone are loose around a shape that is mostly fog and hands. Maelis Vane stands at the edge with her grey priests, and she smiles when she sees you, and she says, you came. Good. I did not want to do this without witnesses. The Thirteenth has been waiting a thousand years for someone to finish the price, and I have brought it a crew.
Maelis offers the party a place in the Chorus, sincerely, and will let them walk away if they agree to leave the crew. If refused, she and the inner circle fight while the Thirteenth bargains with individual characters. The Thirteenth offers each character the one thing they want most for a single drop of blood freely given. If the party has broken the altar, the Thirteenth is weakened and can be destroyed. If not, it rises in avatar-form. Nesa can re-bind it at the cost of her life, or the party can find another way.
Milestone: The party reaches level 12 when the altar at the Ninth Terrace is broken and the way to the Heart opens.
The Thirteenth, the God Beneath the Fog
The Thirteenth is not a creature one meets; it is a presence one is introduced to, politely, by the fog itself. In avatar-form it stands tw…
Maelis Vane, the Crowned Vessel
Maelis Vane is a tall, tired woman in layered grey sea-burial robes, and the first thing anyone notices about her is that she is kind. She …
Captain Orrin Grieve, the Drowned Compass
Captain Orrin Grieve, the Drowned Compass, is a broad, sun-cooked privateer in his late thirties with a black beard braided in tarred cord,…
Bilge Hull-Ghoul
Completed
· CR 1/2
· Undead
Bloated pale undead dockworker crusted with copper filings and black tar, hollow eyes, bony fingertips, crouched in dark bilge water beneat…
Shriek Gull
Completed
· CR 1/4
· Beast
A grey-and-white gull with a hooked beak and one clouded eye, perched on jagged coastal rocks.
Ash-Wrapped Penitent
Completed
· CR 2
· Humanoid
A gaunt humanoid wrapped head to toe in grey, dripping bandages, ember-orange cracks glowing through the seams, standing on a foggy dock at…
Emberfin Drowned
Completed
· CR 3
· Undead
Iron-grey drowned sailor with glowing orange seams, cinder hair, and black glass hooked fingers, lurking in burning water or a flooded ship…
Smoke-Shoal Serpent
Completed
· CR 5
· Monstrosity
A huge eel-headed serpent with black basalt scales veined in glowing orange heat, coiling through scalding smoke and burning shoal water, f…
Brine-Swollen Deckhand
Completed
· CR 2
· Undead
A bloated drowned sailor in rotted uniform, skin grey and waterlogged, seawater spilling from its mouth, standing knee-deep in a flooded, d…
Fog-Bleeding Shade
Completed
· CR 4
· Undead
A tall, thin silhouette of grey mist with a red seam across its throat, dripping a single drop of blood, drifting over a foggy strand of bo…
Coral-Antlered Strand Crab
Completed
· CR 2
· Beast
A pony-sized bone-white crab on a beach of skeletons, crowned with branching white coral antlers, one oversized claw raised, stalked eyes t…
Orchid-Maw Stalker
Completed
· CR 6
· Plant
A large predatory plant-cat of tangled green vines and orchid blooms, six thorned legs, and a flower head opening into a ring of teeth, cro…
Ink-Wisp of the Archive
Completed
· CR 3
· Construct
A floating knot of glossy black ink and grey stone dust, trailing written script, half-formed into letters and grasping hands, drifting amo…
Chain-Choked Offering
Completed
· CR 6
· Undead
A gaunt, grey undead wrapped in rusted chains, eyes like black coins, standing on a stone altar in a dim temple terrace.
Ash-Handed Chorister
Completed
· CR 8
· Humanoid
A gaunt human in grey robes, hands burned black, wearing a cracked mask of ash paste. It stands amid incense in a shadowed stone terrace.
It was denied a seat among the Twelve and bound beneath the island by the blood of the Seven Nations. It does not want to destroy the world; it wants to be worshipped, and it has learned that worship is bought with blood. Every offering at the Ninth Terrace loosens a chain. It wants the chains gone.
It never raises its voice. It speaks in a chorus of the voices of everyone it has ever been fed, and it is unfailingly polite. It does not lie — it offers true things at terrible prices and lets the offer do the work. Portray it as the most reasonable being in the room.
It does not fight until it must. It bargains first, offering each character the one thing they want most in exchange for a single drop of blood freely given. If refused, it lets Maelis and the Chorus do the fighting. If the altar is fed, it rises as an avatar of fog, ash and many hands: it opens with a chorus that frightens and charms, then grapples and drags characters toward the crater's edge, using the terrain and its Chorus as a screen. It retreats into the fog when reduced below a third of its hit points and returns only if the altar is fed again.
It can be destroyed only by breaking the altar and scattering the bound blood, which ends it permanently. It can be re-bound by a volunteer of the old bloodline — Nesa of the Ninth Terrace is willing, and the party may find another way. It can also be bargained with: a new compact, freely entered, that ends the sacrifices but leaves it awake and worshipped. All three endings are legitimate; the module's final scene asks the party to choose.
She was the only survivor of the first expedition. The fog took her crew one by one and then took her, and the Thirteenth gave her back. She believes, with the certainty of the saved, that the god will end death itself — and that any price paid now is a rounding error against eternity.
Warm, tired, and completely unshakeable. She remembers every name of every person she has ever fed to the altar and recites them like a prayer. She will share her food, mend a character's wound, and then explain calmly why the party's crew must die.
She opens with control magic — holding, blinding, silencing the party's healer — while her Chorus screens her. She never stands in the front rank. If reduced below half her hit points she uses the fog to escape and rejoins the fight at the Heart. If the party tries to talk, she listens, genuinely, and offers them a place in the Chorus.
She can be killed, and the Chorus fractures without her. She can be turned if the party proves the Thirteenth has been lying about ending death — her sister Elspeth Vane, alive on the wreck, is the strongest lever. Redeemed, she breaks the altar herself and dies doing it.
He wants the god's power for himself. He lost his first crew to the fog and came back with nothing but a reputation, and he has decided that a man who cannot be a king of the sea will settle for being a god of an island. He blames Carl for the loss and intends to take the expedition's glory and its ship.
Loud, funny, generous with other people's money, and vicious the moment he is cornered. He calls everyone 'friend' and means it right up until he does not. He keeps a stolen Chorus priest chained in his hold and asks it for advice.
He shadows the expedition, lets it clear the fog, and strikes when the party is ashore and tired. He boards the Sea-Devil's Due, takes hostages, and offers to trade them for the chart and the codex. If forced into a fight he uses his crew as a screen, cuts the rigging to drop it on characters, and flees into the fog the moment the odds turn.
He can be killed, and his crew scatters. He can be bought — he will take a share of the island's treasure and sail away, though he will betray the party if the Thirteenth offers him more. He can be humiliated and left alive, which makes him a recurring nuisance in the epilogue.
Recommended party: Four characters of levels 1 to 12: a front-line warrior, a divine or primal healer, an arcane caster, and a rogue or ranger for scouting, locks and traps. Training in navigator's tools, Survival, History or Religion is a strong asset; a character who can breathe water or speak with the dead pays off in Act III.
This is a treasure-voyage campaign that turns into an excavation of a crime. Before play, tell the table plainly: the module is about human sacrifice, hereditary debt, and gods who accept a bargain. There is body horror on the island (twisted animals, drowned sailors, a god of fog and hands), and there is a scene in which a young woman has been chained above an altar for a year. None of it is graphic, but all of it is present. Use the lines-and-veils tool: ask each player for one subject they want off-screen and one they want handled with care. Establish that the party are crew, not conscripts — they can refuse an order, argue with Carl, and leave the ship, though leaving has consequences. Agree on how much player-versus-player conflict is acceptable around the mutiny subplot. Confirm the party has a healer and someone who can swim. Set the expectation that the finale is a choice, not a boss rush, and that all three endings are legitimate.
The module is written for four characters of levels 1 to 12. For three characters, remove one non-boss combatant from each encounter roster and reduce boss hit points by a quarter. For five or six characters, add one or two combatants of the same kind already in the roster and give bosses one extra action per round. If the party is a level above the suggested range, add a second wave of the cheapest combatant in the roster at the start of round three. If they are a level below, remove the highest-CR combatant and let the encounter's hazard do the work instead. Never scale by raising a single monster's hit points alone; add bodies, terrain, or a hazard. The finale at the Heart should always be a High encounter: if the party broke the altar, remove the Thirteenth's regeneration and cut Maelis's hit points by a quarter rather than removing combatants.
Pace the campaign in three movements: sessions 1–3 in Lordinium and the docks, 4–6 at Gullclaw Cay and Harrowgate, 7–10 in the strait and the wreck, 11–13 at the fog wall and the strand, 14–18 in the ruins and the temple, 19–24 on the terrace and at the Heart. Plant one clue per act and never repeat it: the scraped margin in Act I, the logbook's price in Act II, the ledgers and Senna's confession in Act III. Let the players assemble the truth themselves; do not have an NPC explain the blood price before the ledgers are read. Keep three pressures running at all times: the Chorus is one step ahead, Orrin Grieve is one step behind, and the crew is watching. Carl should be likeable and present, so his private decision lands hard. Maelis should be warm and reasonable, never gloating. The Thirteenth should never raise its voice and should never lie — it offers true things at terrible prices. Use the sea voyages for downtime, crew scenes and side quests, and let the ship's morale be a visible resource. If the table is moving fast, cut a Chorus patrol; if they are moving slow, add a crew scene.
The character spends days in a library or a ship's cabin making a careful copy of a heretic text, comparing it line by line against an official scripture. Each full day of work allows one Intelligence (Investigation) or Intelligence (History) check to spot another erased passage.
Requirements: Access to a heretic codex and an official scripture, plus calligrapher's supplies or a scribe's kit. A character trained in History, Religion or Arcana adds their proficiency bonus twice on the final check.
Rewards: A written comparison that names every scraped line. Three successful checks produce a document worth 500 gp to the right patron and enough proof to confront Archivist Venn or the Crown's clerks.
Time: Three full days of work, which can be split across sea voyages.
Location: Best done in the castle library at Lordinium with Archivist Venn, or in a cabin aboard the Sea-Devil's Due during the voyage north.
The Crown's clerks will notice a copyist working on a heretic text. On a failed check, a clerk asks questions and the character must talk their way out or lose access to the library. If the party is at sea, a failed check means ink spilled on a page and one day lost.
The character performs the rites of the Twelve over the dead and commits them to the water with weights. Each rite takes an hour and requires the proper words, a weight, and a body.
Requirements: Training in Religion or Medicine, or the Acolyte background. A holy symbol or a prayer book is required; a character without one takes disadvantage on the check.
Rewards: A successful Wisdom (Religion) check DC 13 lays the dead to rest and prevents them rising as undead. Three successful rites aboard ship restore 1d4 crew morale and grant the party advantage on the next crew-based check.
Time: One hour per body, usually done at dusk.
Location: The deck of the Sea-Devil's Due, the reef around the Penitent Star, or the bone beach of the Strand of Bones.
This is the mechanical spine of Ottilie's Last Rite and of Anselm Tye's personal quest. If a rite is botched, the body rises as a *brine-swollen deckhand* at the next watch. The Chorus considers sea burial its own property and will object violently.
The character works off a Tidewrights' Guild indenture by running crates, standing watch in a sea cave, or carrying sealed parcels between ports. Each job is a short skill challenge with a Guild factor watching.
Requirements: A Guild indenture or a factor's favour. A character with the Criminal background or proficiency in thieves' tools adds their proficiency bonus twice.
Rewards: Each completed job reduces the character's debt by 50 gp. Three jobs earn a Guild tally-stick and a favour that can be called in for a chart, a pilot, or a blind eye.
Time: One day per job, done in port.
Location: Gullclaw Cay and Harrowgate, where the Guild's caches and factors are.
Tamsin Quill is the factor who assigns the work and she will always add a condition. A failed job means the debt grows instead of shrinking, and the Guild sends very polite men. This activity drives Kip Marlow's personal quest.
The character trains the Sea-Devil's Due's crew in boarding, fire-fighting, or damage control. Each drill is a Charisma (Intimidation or Persuasion) check against the crew's mood.
Requirements: A day aboard ship and the cooperation of Halda Storm or another officer. A character with the Sailor background or proficiency in vehicles (water) adds their proficiency bonus twice.
Rewards: A successful DC 14 check grants the ship 1d4 temporary hull points and gives the party advantage on one ship-based check during the next voyage. Three successful drills make the crew immune to the Chorus's attempts to bribe them.
Time: One day per drill, best done at sea.
Location: The deck of the Sea-Devil's Due during the voyage north, or the dry dock at Lordinium before departure.
Halda Storm watches every drill and judges the character by it. A failed drill costs morale and gives the Chorus an opening to recruit a disgruntled sailor. If the party has not told the crew about the blood price, a successful drill makes the eventual revelation hurt more.
## The Smoking Strait
A hundred miles of iron-dark water, burning shoals and basalt reefs, choked with a black smoke that never clears. The shoals glow orange from below and hiss when the spray touches them. The reefs are black glass and cut a hull like a knife.
The safe channels shift with the tide and the smoke. Carl's chart shows one; Jory Tallow, if he confessed, knows another; Odran's chart shows a third. None of them agree, and all of them are partly right.
There is no land here, no anchorage, and no shelter from the smoke. The crew works in shifts with wet cloths over their faces. At night the glow from below turns the whole strait the colour of a forge, and the things that live in the burning water come up to look at the ship.
Run the strait as a skill challenge with real consequences. Each failed check costs the ship hull points, crew, or time. The burning water is difficult terrain for anyone who falls in. The wreck of the Penitent Star is visible from the third day.
## The Wreck of the Penitent Star
A three-masted ship broken across a black basalt reef, her back snapped, her masts down, her hull open to the sky. She has been here a year. The sea has taken most of her, but the stern is above water and someone has rigged a sailcloth awning over it.
The reef around her is a graveyard of crates, bones and copper sheathing. The ship's boat is gone. The logbook is not. Neither is the woman who has been living on the stern, eating shellfish and gulls, waiting for a rescue that stopped coming a year ago.
The Penitent Star was the first expedition. Her crew is listed as lost in Harrowgate shrine. Most of them are still here, in the water, in the hold, and in the fog.
The wreck is a rescue and a mystery. Elspeth Vane is alive on the stern. The logbook records the fog wall's price and the name of the person left behind. The hold is flooded and holds the crew's effects and a locked strongbox.
## The Fogwall Gate
A wall of grey fog stands from the sea to the sky and does not move in any wind. It has no edge and no top. Ships that sail into it come out the other side with one fewer crew member and no memory of the crossing.
Before it stands a black basalt arch, thirty feet high, rising out of water too deep to anchor in. On the arch stands a figure in a rotted naval coat and a mask of grey coral, perfectly still, who has been standing there since before the first expedition.
The water around the arch is flat and grey and full of things that do not surface. The fog does not reach the arch. Nothing does.
The Warden tests every ship. The gate opens for a true name freely given, or for a life. The party can pay either. Cassian knows the words that open the gate and will trade them for a true name — his own, which he has forgotten.
## The Sevenfold Ruins
A city of seven concentric plazas, each ring smaller and higher than the last, built of white stone and green with a thousand years of vines. The Seven Nations built it, and every carving on it has been chiselled blank at the face.
The plazas are empty. The houses are empty. The fountains are dry. In the outer ring the market stalls still stand with their awnings rotted to threads, and in the inner rings the temples stand open to the sky.
At the centre, on the highest terrace, stands the Temple of the Twelve. Its doors are open. Something inside is still keeping records.
The ruins are a exploration and lore location. Ulric the scribe is in the archive in the fourth ring. The sacrifice ledgers are there, and so is the truth about the Seven Nations. The Ash Chorus patrols the outer ring.
## The Strand of Bones
A white beach of ground coral and black sand, backed by cliffs and a wall of green forest. The water is warm and clear. The beach is covered in bones: fish, birds, sailors, and things that were never any of those.
At the north end of the strand stands a small shrine of the Twelve, half swallowed by the forest, its carvings chiselled blank. The creatures of the island come to it. They do not worship; they bring things and leave them, and the things they bring are always alive when they arrive.
The forest begins where the bones end. It is very quiet in there.
The strand is the party's landing and first taste of the island. The shrine is the source of the twisting: it is a Chorus altar, not a shrine of the Twelve, and it has been feeding the forest for a year. Miri Salt is hiding in the rocks.
## The Temple of the Twelve
A stepped temple of white stone at the centre of the ruins, with twelve shrines around its inner sanctum and a thirteenth niche that has been chiselled empty. The roof is gone. The floor is a mosaic of the Twelve Gods walking with mortals in a garden.
In the sanctum a woman sits on a throne of stone and gold leaf. She has been sitting there for a thousand years. She is not dead and she is not alive; she is preserved by the same binding that holds the Thirteenth, and she has been awake for every year of it.
The temple is the holiest place on the island and the quietest. Nothing has been here in a thousand years except the dust and the priestess and the thing beneath the floor.
Senna tells the party the truth of the binding and the ritual to re-bind the Thirteenth. She does not soften it. The temple's undercroft leads down to the terraces. The Ash Chorus has not dared enter the sanctum.
## The Ninth Terrace
Nine terraces descend beneath the temple, each one a ring of stone cells around a central shaft. The upper terraces are empty and dry. The lower ones are not.
The ninth terrace is the altar: a black stone table in a circular pit, ringed by nine pillars, with chains set into the floor and a drain that goes down into the dark. It is dry. It has been dry for a year.
Above the altar, chained to a pillar, a young woman in a white shift is watching you come down. She has been there a long time and she is not surprised to see you. She is the last of the seven families, and the altar still knows her name.
The terrace is the Chorus's stronghold on the island. Maelis Vane is not here; she is at the Heart. A Chorus priest and four cultists guard the altar. Nesa is chained above it. Breaking the altar frees her and opens the way to the Heart.
## The Heart of Borealis
A vast black crater at the centre of the island, ringed by the roots of a stone tree that is not a tree. The air is thick and warm and smells of iron. The fog that rings the island comes from here.
At the bottom of the crater the Thirteenth is bound: a shape of fog and ash and many hands, wrapped in chains of white stone, with a thousand years of offerings soaked into the ground around it. The chains are loose. One of them is broken.
Maelis Vane stands at the crater's edge with the Chorus's inner circle, and the shroud from the Ninth Terrace is spread on the ground before her. She is waiting for you. She has been waiting for a year.
The finale. Maelis offers the party a place in the Chorus before she fights. The Thirteenth bargains. The party can fight, re-bind, bargain, or find another way. Nesa is the key to the re-binding.
The Thirteenth, the God Beneath the Fog
The Thirteenth is not a creature one meets; it is a presence one is introduced to, politely, by the fog itself. In avatar-form it stands tw…
Maelis Vane, the Crowned Vessel
Maelis Vane is a tall, tired woman in layered grey sea-burial robes, and the first thing anyone notices about her is that she is kind. She …
Captain Orrin Grieve, the Drowned Compass
Captain Orrin Grieve, the Drowned Compass, is a broad, sun-cooked privateer in his late thirties with a black beard braided in tarred cord,…
Bilge Hull-Ghoul
Completed
· CR 1/2
· Undead
Bloated pale undead dockworker crusted with copper filings and black tar, hollow eyes, bony fingertips, crouched in dark bilge water beneat…
Shriek Gull
Completed
· CR 1/4
· Beast
A grey-and-white gull with a hooked beak and one clouded eye, perched on jagged coastal rocks.
Ash-Wrapped Penitent
Completed
· CR 2
· Humanoid
A gaunt humanoid wrapped head to toe in grey, dripping bandages, ember-orange cracks glowing through the seams, standing on a foggy dock at…
Emberfin Drowned
Completed
· CR 3
· Undead
Iron-grey drowned sailor with glowing orange seams, cinder hair, and black glass hooked fingers, lurking in burning water or a flooded ship…
Smoke-Shoal Serpent
Completed
· CR 5
· Monstrosity
A huge eel-headed serpent with black basalt scales veined in glowing orange heat, coiling through scalding smoke and burning shoal water, f…
Brine-Swollen Deckhand
Completed
· CR 2
· Undead
A bloated drowned sailor in rotted uniform, skin grey and waterlogged, seawater spilling from its mouth, standing knee-deep in a flooded, d…
Fog-Bleeding Shade
Completed
· CR 4
· Undead
A tall, thin silhouette of grey mist with a red seam across its throat, dripping a single drop of blood, drifting over a foggy strand of bo…
Coral-Antlered Strand Crab
Completed
· CR 2
· Beast
A pony-sized bone-white crab on a beach of skeletons, crowned with branching white coral antlers, one oversized claw raised, stalked eyes t…
Orchid-Maw Stalker
Completed
· CR 6
· Plant
A large predatory plant-cat of tangled green vines and orchid blooms, six thorned legs, and a flower head opening into a ring of teeth, cro…
Ink-Wisp of the Archive
Completed
· CR 3
· Construct
A floating knot of glossy black ink and grey stone dust, trailing written script, half-formed into letters and grasping hands, drifting amo…
Chain-Choked Offering
Completed
· CR 6
· Undead
A gaunt, grey undead wrapped in rusted chains, eyes like black coins, standing on a stone altar in a dim temple terrace.
Ash-Handed Chorister
Completed
· CR 8
· Humanoid
A gaunt human in grey robes, hands burned black, wearing a cracked mask of ash paste. It stands amid incense in a shadowed stone terrace.
It was denied a seat among the Twelve and bound beneath the island by the blood of the Seven Nations. It does not want to destroy the world; it wants to be worshipped, and it has learned that worship is bought with blood. Every offering at the Ninth Terrace loosens a chain. It wants the chains gone.
It never raises its voice. It speaks in a chorus of the voices of everyone it has ever been fed, and it is unfailingly polite. It does not lie — it offers true things at terrible prices and lets the offer do the work. Portray it as the most reasonable being in the room.
It does not fight until it must. It bargains first, offering each character the one thing they want most in exchange for a single drop of blood freely given. If refused, it lets Maelis and the Chorus do the fighting. If the altar is fed, it rises as an avatar of fog, ash and many hands: it opens with a chorus that frightens and charms, then grapples and drags characters toward the crater's edge, using the terrain and its Chorus as a screen. It retreats into the fog when reduced below a third of its hit points and returns only if the altar is fed again.
It can be destroyed only by breaking the altar and scattering the bound blood, which ends it permanently. It can be re-bound by a volunteer of the old bloodline — Nesa of the Ninth Terrace is willing, and the party may find another way. It can also be bargained with: a new compact, freely entered, that ends the sacrifices but leaves it awake and worshipped. All three endings are legitimate; the module's final scene asks the party to choose.
She was the only survivor of the first expedition. The fog took her crew one by one and then took her, and the Thirteenth gave her back. She believes, with the certainty of the saved, that the god will end death itself — and that any price paid now is a rounding error against eternity.
Warm, tired, and completely unshakeable. She remembers every name of every person she has ever fed to the altar and recites them like a prayer. She will share her food, mend a character's wound, and then explain calmly why the party's crew must die.
She opens with control magic — holding, blinding, silencing the party's healer — while her Chorus screens her. She never stands in the front rank. If reduced below half her hit points she uses the fog to escape and rejoins the fight at the Heart. If the party tries to talk, she listens, genuinely, and offers them a place in the Chorus.
She can be killed, and the Chorus fractures without her. She can be turned if the party proves the Thirteenth has been lying about ending death — her sister Elspeth Vane, alive on the wreck, is the strongest lever. Redeemed, she breaks the altar herself and dies doing it.
He wants the god's power for himself. He lost his first crew to the fog and came back with nothing but a reputation, and he has decided that a man who cannot be a king of the sea will settle for being a god of an island. He blames Carl for the loss and intends to take the expedition's glory and its ship.
Loud, funny, generous with other people's money, and vicious the moment he is cornered. He calls everyone 'friend' and means it right up until he does not. He keeps a stolen Chorus priest chained in his hold and asks it for advice.
He shadows the expedition, lets it clear the fog, and strikes when the party is ashore and tired. He boards the Sea-Devil's Due, takes hostages, and offers to trade them for the chart and the codex. If forced into a fight he uses his crew as a screen, cuts the rigging to drop it on characters, and flees into the fog the moment the odds turn.
He can be killed, and his crew scatters. He can be bought — he will take a share of the island's treasure and sail away, though he will betray the party if the Thirteenth offers him more. He can be humiliated and left alive, which makes him a recurring nuisance in the epilogue.
A small, dry woman with ink-stained cuffs and spectacles she never removes. She has spent forty years cataloguing the official scriptures of the Twelve and knows every place where a line has been scraped out. She is not supposed to know that.
A round, cheerful man with a abacus callus on one thumb and a warehouse full of goods of uncertain provenance. He sells the party rope, oil, warm coats and one very illegal heretic codex, and he will deny all of it to the harbour guard.
Barely twenty, with a navigator's astrolabe he treats like a holy relic and a habit of talking to the sea. He is the best natural navigator Carl has ever hired and the worst liar. He has been paid to lose the ship.
Sharp-faced and quick-handed, dressed in a man's coat and three scarves. She keeps her stock in a sea cave under the lighthouse and her prices in her head. She is the only person on the northern coast who will sell a heretic codex to strangers.
A stooped, salt-bleached man who has kept the Gullclaw light for thirty years and speaks to it as a person. He lost his daughter to the sea and has never quite accepted it. He keeps a small shrine to the Twelve in the lamp room.
A heavy, slow-moving old priest with a voice built for a cathedral and a shrine too small for it. He has buried more sailors than he has married. He keeps the parish register, and in it the names of everyone who ever sailed north and did not come back.
A wide, warm woman with flour on her sleeves and a ledger of every debt in Harrowgate. Her inn is the last hot meal before the ice and she charges accordingly. She hears everything and repeats about a third of it.
Cropped grey hair, a naval coat cut for weather, and a hand that rests on her sword hilt when she is thinking. She runs the last port before the ice and does not like strangers, cults, or Carl of the Seven Seas, in that order.
Broad, sun-cooked and loud, with a beard like rope and a coat that has been repaired in eleven ports. He wears his fame easily and his family name badly. He is generous, reckless, and hiding one thing: he has read the warning about the blood price and decided it was a copying error.
Tall, grey-eyed and permanently unimpressed, with a boatswain's voice that carries over a gale. She has sailed with Carl for six years and has buried four of his crews. She keeps the ship's books, the ship's discipline, and a knife in her boot.
Gaunt, sunburnt and very calm, wrapped in sailcloth on the wreck's stern. She has been alone on the reef for a year, eating what the sea gives, and she has stopped expecting rescue. She looks remarkably like her sister.
A tall figure in rotted naval coat and a mask of grey coral, standing on a basalt arch where no ship can anchor. He was the first expedition's boatswain and the fog kept him. He speaks in short, careful sentences, as if words cost him something.
A wiry young sailor with a broken arm splinted with driftwood and a spear she made from a boat hook. She has been on the strand for three months and has learned exactly how the twisted creatures hunt. She talks fast, as if she has been saving it up.
A translucent old man in the robes of a temple scribe, bent over a stone lectern that has not held a book in a thousand years. He is not a ghost and not alive; he is a record that refuses to stop being kept. He is delighted to have someone to talk to.
A woman of stone and gold leaf, seated on a throne in the inner sanctum, preserved by the same binding that holds the Thirteenth. She has been awake for every year of it. Her voice is a dry rustle and her eyes are entirely black.
A young woman in a white shift, chained to a pillar above the altar, who has been kept alive and unaged by the god she is meant to feed. She is thin, furious, and entirely without self-pity. She has been listening to the Thirteenth for a very long time.
Kip's indenture is carved on a Guild tally-stick that Tamsin Quill keeps in the deepest cave under the Gullclaw light, and the only way to end the debt is to put that stick in her hand and pay what it says. Tamsin will not simply sell it back; she wants a favour first, and the favour is carrying a sealed oilcloth parcel to a grey-robed buyer in Harrowgate without opening it. Kip has to decide whether to run the parcel blind, open it and risk the Guild's anger, or find another way to clear the tally before the Chorus arrives at the cave and the whole bargain goes up in smoke.
Reach Gullclaw Cay and negotiate with Tamsin Quill over the tally-stick and the parcel.
Run the parcel blind, open it, or refuse the favour entirely.
Kip has spent years learning the low-tide entrances of every sea cave from Lordinium to the ice, knowledge the Guild never paid him to record. Now Odran the light-keeper needs a route through the caves of Gullclaw Cay that the Chorus does not know, and Kip is the only one who has it. Mapping the entrances means diving at slack water, dodging the Lantern-Jawed Lurker, and deciding whether to sell the map to the Guild — who will own him with it — or give it to the party and Odran for nothing.
Survey the low-tide entrances of Gullclaw Cay's caves.
Work alone at night or take the party into the caves.
Wren Ashby, Kip's Criminal Contact and the only friend the Guild never managed to make him regret, has gone missing between Harrowgate and Gullclaw Cay — the same stretch of coast where the Chorus has been murdering Guild couriers after buying their charts. Greta Hearthstone, Wren's sister in everything but blood, will pay in information and free lodging for the truth. Finding Wren means reading the Chorus's grey wax seals, walking into the burned warehouse cellar, and facing the possibility that the friend who once pulled Kip out of the surf is already counting in the dark with the others in unison.
Trace Wren's last route from the Grey Gull to the cay.
Question the Chorus watchers openly or shadow them in Thieves' Cant.
Orla's ledger lists eleven places in the official scriptures where a line was cut away. Archivist Venn will only open the castle's locked comparison room for someone who brings a heretic codex and a written statement of its provenance. Orla must get the codex out of Obb's warehouse or Tamsin Quill's cave, smuggle it back to Lordinium past the Crown's clerks, and sit with Venn while the two texts are read side by side.
Acquire a heretic codex from Obb or Tamsin Quill and document where it came from.
Buy the codex outright, trade a favor, or steal it from the Chorus cell that comes to burn the cave.
One of the eleven scraped lines in Orla's ledger was not scraped by the Crown's clerks — the ink beneath it is two hundred years older than the others, and the hand that wrote it matches no scripture in the castle library. Tracing that hand leads Orla to a dead copyist, a hidden workshop in the Lordinium docks, and the first heretic who tried to keep the warning alive. Her workshop still holds a half-finished codex and a letter naming who gave the order.
Match the anonymous hand against records, guild marks, and grave registries to identify the original copyist.
Work openly through the library, or quietly through Obb and the docks.
Orla's ledger has a twelfth entry she has never shown anyone: a discrepancy she found in her own handwriting, in a copy she made herself, five years before she began keeping the ledger. Either someone used her hands while she slept, or she scraped the line herself and does not remember. The line that is missing from her own work is the same line that is missing from every scripture: the blood-price warning. She must find out what happened on that night, and it takes her through her own Trance memories, the library's night records, and finally to Archivist Venn, who was in the building.
Reconstruct the night of the discrepancy from the library's duty rosters, her own ink purchases, and the state of her copy.
Use divination and Trance-memory to relive the night, or reconstruct it purely from evidence and never know for certain.
While counting the sabotage cuts in the Sea-Devil's Due's dry dock cradle, Sella finds a fifth mark nobody else has seen: a chalk cross on the inner rib, identical to the mark found on the ship that sank under her nine years ago. She must convince Halda Storm to walk the cradle with her, match the chalk to a caulker's kit, and hear her out before the tide floats the ship. Success means Halda clears her name before the whole crew and awards her the mate's berth; failure means Halda assumes she is covering for the saboteur and puts her ashore at Gullclaw Cay.
Find the fifth chalk mark and identify the caulker's knife that made it.
Bring the mark to Halda immediately or investigate Sedge the caulker first.
Confront Sedge alone or with witnesses.
Sella keeps a private tally of who stood where when the old ship went down, and one name on it never made sense: the bosun who ordered her below decks minutes before the hull opened. Rumour places him alive in Harrowgate, grey-robed, among the sea-burial priests of the Ash Chorus. Sella must find him in the burned warehouse cell, get his account of the third voyage, and decide whether he was a coward, a traitor, or the only other person who knew the hull was cut before they ever sailed.
Track the bosun's name through Harrowgate's shrine register and the Grey Gull's gossip.
Tell Halda the bosun may be Chorus, or keep the hunt private.
When the party breaks the blood-price altar at the Ninth Terrace, the chain that held Nesa falls open, and Sella picks it up without knowing why. The chain remembers. Wrapped around her fist, it shows her fragments of every offering ever made, including the face of the caulker who cut the old hull, kneeling at this same altar as a young man of one of the seven families. Sella must trace his bloodline to its last living descendant in Lordinium and decide what the harbour owes a family that fed a god for a thousand years.
Read the chain's visions and identify the caulker's family name.
Wear the chain openly or hide it from the crew.
Anselm carries three torn pages hidden in the back of his prayer book: a firsthand transcript of Aldous's predecessor dying raving about the price — the fog wall, the words that open it, and the phrase 'one life, freely given, every moon.' He must one day read them aloud in the shrine at Harrowgate, before the memorial candles, and let Priest Aldous decide whether he is a coward or a witness. Aldous holds the predecessor's journal and will only surrender it to someone who can match it against a firsthand account, so Anselm's confession is the key to the expedition's best map of the fog wall.
Return to Harrowgate and ask Aldous for the predecessor's journal; be refused until a firsthand account is offered.
Admit to Aldous that he was in the room when the old man died.
In nine years of burying sailors for coin, Anselm has kept a private ledger of every body he has committed to the sea, with the port, the date, and the ship's name. Reading the heretic codex recovered from Gullclaw Cay, he notices that the lost list in Harrowgate shrine and his own ledger do not agree: four men he personally buried in Lordinium are listed in the shrine as lost at the fog wall, years after he laid them in the ground. Someone is adding names to the lost list who never sailed north — and Anselm must find out who is falsifying the register of the dead, and why the Ash Chorus wants the list of the drowned to look longer than it is.
Compare his burial ledger against the shrine's register and the heretic codex's margin, cross-referencing the four impossible names.
Show his private ledger to the party, admitting he has profited from death for nine years.
There is one body Anselm has never been able to bury: his own brother, Tomas Tye, a fisherman lost off Gullclaw Cay eleven years ago, before Anselm ever left Harrowgate. The body was never found, no rite was ever said, and Anselm's departure from the shrine the following winter was as much flight from that unfinished grave as from the dying man's screams. When the Sea-Devil's Due anchors at Gullclaw Cay, Anselm has a chance he has never had: to search the caves and shingle where the sea gives back what it takes, say the rite at last, and find out — from Odran the light-keeper, who has watched that water for thirty years — what the tide brought ashore the week Tomas vanished.
Ask Odran what the sea returned in the week Tomas Tye was lost, and search the shingle and sea caves of Gullclaw Cay for any trace.
Tell Odran the lost man was his brother, or search quietly without explaining himself.
Step into your campaign
Play a 3D adventure with your party: explore settlements, wilderness and dungeons, and fight in real time with pause. Best on a desktop or laptop with a mouse and keyboard.
Suggested Level: 1–2
Knee-deep water counts as difficult terrain. The bilge is cramped: the ceiling is 4 feet high in places, so Medium characters are squeezed and have disadvantage on attack rolls with heavy weapons. A single cresset hangs at the ladder; if it is knocked into the water the area goes dark. The ribs of the hull give half cover to anyone pressed against them.
A caulker's kit wedged in the ribs, a purse of 12 gp in old coin, and a chalk cross on the inner rib — the same mark found on the ship that sank under Sella Rooke nine years ago.
For a party of three, use one hull-ghoul. For five or six characters, add a third hull-ghoul and give the bilge a slick of oil that ignites if a torch is dropped. For a level 1 party, have the ghouls start prone in the water so the first round is spent standing up.
Suggested Level: 3
The cave is 30 feet wide and 60 feet long, with a low shelf of rock down the middle that gives half cover. Crates of brandy and oilcloth parcels give cover but are flammable: a dropped torch sets a 10-foot square alight for 1d6 fire damage per round. The low-tide entrance is a 5-foot-wide gap that floods in two hours. The main entrance is a shingle slope up to the light.
The heretic codex (see the *codex of the erased verse* magic item), 80 gp in Chorus coin stamped with thirteen dots, a sealed oilcloth parcel addressed to a grey-robed buyer in Harrowgate, and Tamsin's price of 200 gp or a favour.
For a level 2 party, drop the priest and use three cultists. For a level 4 party, add a second priest and an *ash-wrapped penitent*. For six characters, add two more cultists and let the priest cast hold person once.
Suggested Level: 4
The cellar is 40 by 30 feet with a low beam ceiling and a floor of wet ash that counts as difficult terrain. Two support pillars give half cover. The burned upper floor is unstable: a creature that takes 10 or more fire damage in a round brings down a section of charred beam (DC 13 Dexterity saving throw, 2d6 bludgeoning). The courier is chained to a ring in the far wall.
A crate of Guild charts including a partial chart of the smoking strait, 120 gp in Chorus coin, a ledger of offerings, and the courier himself — freed, he gives the party Greta's information and the Guild's goodwill.
For a level 3 party, use one penitent and three cultists. For a level 5 party, add a priest and a third penitent. For six characters, add two cultists and give the cellar a barrel of alchemist's fire that can be knocked over.
Suggested Level: 6
The deck is 20 feet wide and 60 feet long, with the mast, the capstan and two hatch covers as cover. The rail is a 3-foot wall; going over it means falling into burning water (2d6 fire damage at the start of each turn and difficult terrain). Smoke gives heavily obscured conditions beyond 30 feet. The rigging can be climbed (DC 12 Athletics) for a height advantage.
The serpent's gullet holds a brass ship's bell from a Chorus vessel and a watertight case with 300 gp in old coin. The emberfins carry the rotted effects of the first expedition: a signet ring worth 50 gp and a letter naming Ottilie as a cabin hand.
For a level 5 party, use the serpent alone and remove its Scalding Breath recharge on the first round. For a level 7 party, add a third emberfin and let the serpent grapple with its tail. For six characters, add two more emberfins and a burning shoal that drifts across the deck.
Suggested Level: 7
The hold is 50 by 30 feet, waist-deep in water (difficult terrain, and swimming for shorter characters). Floating crates give half cover and can be pushed. The water is cold: a character who starts their turn fully submerged takes 1d4 cold damage. Two gaps in the hull let in burning water — a 5-foot square of scalding sea that deals 1d6 fire damage to anyone entering it.
The first expedition's strongbox: a Chorus reliquary worth 250 gp, a map of the island's nine terraces, and a *potion of water breathing*. Also the logbook, if Elspeth has not already handed it over, and 200 gp in rotted sea chests.
For a level 6 party, use three deckhands and one emberfin. For a level 8 party, add two more deckhands and a *fog-bleeding shade* that has seeped in through the hull. For six characters, add a third emberfin and make the cold water deal 1d6.
Suggested Level: 8
The water is flat and grey and gives no footing; characters fight on the deck, the boarding plank, or the basalt arch's base. The fog wall is 20 feet away and anyone pushed into it is grappled by the fog (escape DC 15) and takes 2d6 necrotic damage per round. The arch itself is 30 feet high with a ledge at 15 feet. The Chorus ship is 30 feet off the port bow.
The Chorus ship's strongbox holds 400 gp, a sealed letter from Maelis Vane naming the Ninth Terrace, and a *Warden's coral mask* if Cassian is freed. Cassian himself, if freed, gives the words that open the gate.
For a level 7 party, use two shades and one penitent. For a level 9 party, add a third penitent and a *smoke-shoal serpent* surfacing beside the Chorus ship. For six characters, add two more shades and let the fog grapple anyone who ends their turn within 10 feet of the wall.
Suggested Level: 9
The bone beach is difficult terrain in patches and gives no cover. The shrine is a 20-foot-square stone building with a low doorway and a stone bowl altar in the centre. The forest wall begins 30 feet behind the shrine and is dense cover. The altar radiates a 10-foot aura of necrotic energy: a creature that ends its turn there takes 1d6 necrotic damage.
The Chorus ledger naming Maelis Vane as Crowned Vessel and the Ninth Terrace as the true altar, a gold-and-obsidian censer worth 500 gp, 150 gp in Chorus coin, and the shrine's bowl (a *censer of the thirteenth*).
For a level 8 party, drop the orchid-maw stalker and use one crab. For a level 10 party, add a second orchid-maw stalker and an *ash-wrapped penitent*. For six characters, add two cultists and let the priest cast banishment once.
Suggested Level: 10
The plaza is 80 feet across, paved and cracked, with market stalls giving half cover and rotted awnings that collapse if struck (DC 12 Dexterity saving throw or restrained until the character uses an action to tear free). A dry fountain in the centre gives full cover. Vines on the inner wall can be climbed (DC 13 Athletics).
A Chorus patrol satchel with 200 gp, a written order from Maelis Vane to hold the outer ring, and a map marking the archive in the fourth ring. One cultist carries a *potion of greater healing*.
For a level 9 party, use one stalker and three cultists. For a level 11 party, add a second patrol of four cultists arriving in round three. For six characters, add an *ash-wrapped penitent* and let the stalkers use False Bloom to start hidden.
Suggested Level: 10
The archive is 40 feet across with shelves giving half cover and a stone lectern in the centre giving full cover. The floor is covered in loose script that counts as difficult terrain for anyone who is not Ulric. The cabinet is stone and requires two successful DC 15 Strength checks to open. Fire in the archive spreads along the script: a 10-foot square burns for 1d6 fire damage per round.
The sacrifice ledgers (see the *ledger of the sevenfold* magic item), 300 gp in ancient coin from the archive strongbox, a ceremonial headdress worth 250 gp, and Ulric's blessing.
For a level 9 party, use three ink-wisps and one penitent. For a level 11 party, add two more ink-wisps and a priest who arrives in round two. For six characters, add a third penitent and let the fire spread one square per round.
Suggested Level: 11
The pit is 60 feet across with nine pillars giving half cover. The altar is a 10-foot black stone table; a creature that ends its turn within 10 feet of it takes 1d6 necrotic damage and cannot regain hit points. The drain is a 5-foot shaft in the floor — a creature dragged into it takes 2d6 bludgeoning and is restrained. The stairs up are the only exit until the altar breaks.
The Chorus's reliquary censer (500 gp), 250 gp in Chorus coin, the shroud itself (a *shroud of the last offering*), and Nesa's freedom. Breaking the altar opens a shaft down to the Heart.
For a level 10 party, use one chain-choked offering and three cultists. For a level 12 party, add a second priest and a third offering. For six characters, add two cultists and let the altar's aura extend to 15 feet.
Suggested Level: 12
The crater floor is 120 feet across, ringed by loose white chains that count as difficult terrain. The crater's edge is a 60-foot drop into fog. The Thirteenth's chains give half cover to anyone standing behind them. The air is thick: ranged attacks beyond 60 feet have disadvantage. If the altar was broken, the Thirteenth's regeneration is gone and the island's creatures stop fighting.
Maelis's reliquary crown (see the *crown of the vessel* magic item), 1,000 gp in Chorus treasure, the Chorus's inner-circle regalia worth 750 gp, and the fate of the Thirteenth.
For a level 11 party, drop the chain-choked offering and use two cultists. For a party of six, add a second chorister and two more cultists. If the party broke the altar, remove the Thirteenth's regeneration and reduce Maelis's hit points by a quarter.
Keelbreaker's Mallet
Completed
Act I — the Lordinium Dry Docks, in the caulker's kit wedged in the bilge ribs of the Sea-Devil's Due
False
Salt-Stained Compass
Completed
Act I — the Salt Crown tavern in Lordinium, left as a stake by a sailor who did not come back for it
False
Codex of the Erased Verse
Completed
Act I — the sea cave under the Gullclaw light, in Tamsin Quill's oilcloth parcel
True — by a spellcaster or a character trained in Religion
Ottilie's Fathom Ring
Completed
Act II — the flooded hold of the Penitent Star, in a rotted sea chest beside the strongbox
True — by any creature
Emberfin Lantern
Completed
Act II — the smoking strait, salvaged from the wreckage of a Chorus vessel the serpent sank
False
Warden's Coral Mask
Completed
Act II — the Fogwall Gate, given by Cassian if he is freed or taken from the arch if he is destroyed
True — by any creature
Censer of the Thirteenth
Completed
Act III — the Chorus shrine on the Strand of Bones, on the stone bowl altar
True — by a cleric or paladin
Ledger of the Sevenfold
Completed
Act III — the archive of the Sevenfold Ruins, in the locked stone cabinet
True — by a character trained in History or Religion
Nesa's Chain
Completed
Act III — the Ninth Terrace, on the pillar above the blood-price altar
True — by a martial character
Shroud of the Last Offering
Completed
Act III — the Ninth Terrace, in the hands of the Chorus priest during the Altar Made Ready encounter
True — by any creature
Crown of the Vessel
Completed
Act III — the Heart of Borealis, worn by Maelis Vane
True — by a spellcaster
