The adventure ahead
*An expedition north, a fog with a memory, and an island that keeps accounts.*
Peg Leg Carl — sailor, treasure-hunter, and younger brother of King Soleiman of Lordinium — has come home from the far north with a hold full of impossible fruit and a crew that will not sleep. He has found Borealis, the legendary homeland of the Seven Nations, hidden behind a fog that is thick as water. He is hiring. He pays well. He does not talk about the two men he left behind.
The old scriptures say the Seven Nations lived on Borealis in harmony with the Twelve Gods, until a Thirteenth tried to take all power for himself. They also carry a warning, in a hand that looks scraped and rewritten:
> *Any return shall incur a price of blood upon those who return.*
Most scholars call that line a metaphor. The Cathedral calls it a mistranslation. There is one copy in the city that has not been corrected, and it is underwater.
Salt, fog, and old paper turning into blood. The horror is quiet and administrative: names in a ledger, a schedule of tithes, a fruit that grows too well. There is wonder here too — Borealis is genuinely beautiful, and that is the problem.
Hired hands on a famous man's last voyage. Nobody starts as a chosen one. By the end, the party will be the only people standing between an island that eats people and a man who wants to be its next god.
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To: whoever is reading this in the Saltspray House antechamber From: the household of Peg Leg Carl, Admiral of Nothing At All, brother to the King
---
Eleven months ago my ship came out of the northern fog with a hold full of fruit that should not grow and a crew that will not sleep in the dark. I have been to Borealis. I have stood on its black sand. I am going back, and I am not going back with the same crew.
I need people who can keep their heads in fog.
The terms: an equal share of everything found, a berth on the *Saltspray*, and my word that you will be paid whether or not we find anything worth the trip. I will ask you to sign a charter. I will not ask you to sign anything else.
What I will not tell you yet: how many of my crew came home, and what the fog said to them on the last night.
Come to the chart room at the third bell. Bring a coat you can ruin.
— *Carl*
---
Lordinium is the greatest city of the Crown Coast: red brick, steep roofs, a castle on the hill, and a harbour that smells of tar and money. Its Salt Quarter is where the ships come in and where the things ships bring in get sold quietly.
Greyharbor is the last town before the northern crossing. Three ships have gone north this year. None have come back.
Borealis is a legend. The Seven Nations lived there with the Twelve Gods, in a paradise the scriptures describe in loving and slightly nervous detail. Every copy of the scripture carries the same warning, and every copy has been corrected by a careful hand:
> *Any return shall incur a price of blood upon those who return.*
Salt and fog and old paper. A famous man's last voyage. A beautiful island that is very glad you came. Expect investigation, hard travel, a few sieges, and a slow realisation that the warning in the scripture was never a metaphor.
You are in Lordinium. You have heard that Peg Leg Carl is hiring. You have also heard that the last eleven people who sailed with him will not talk about it, and that one of them has been seen standing at the harbour wall at night, listening to the water.
The third bell is in an hour.
Behind the screen
Borealis was home to the Seven Nations, who worshipped thirteen powers. Twelve of those powers were not gods but the first of the Seven Nations themselves, made unaging by a tithe of blood given at every turning of the tide. The island's unnatural lushness — fruit out of season, water that never freezes, a wind that never stops — is the bloom of that tithe. The Thirteenth was one of the twelve who refused, broke the altars, and taught the nations to stop. The other twelve bound it beneath the island, chiselled its name from every stone, and rewrote themselves as gods.
The scripture's warning — *any return shall incur a price of blood* — is not a curse. It is a receipt. The island takes a life for every landing, and a hundred and one for every turning of the age.
Three centuries ago the priesthood of the Twelve began erasing the rites from every copy of the scripture. That work continues. The Hollow Choir, led by Mother Sable, keeps the Expurgated text in every temple and supplies the names that are tithed. Eleven months ago Aurel Vane of the Ashvane Concord reached Borealis, learned the truth, and decided to take the Thirteenth's vacant place by completing the great tithe: one hundred and one lives, given at once, at the Tide-Heart.
Act I is investigation and travel (8–10 sessions). Act II is survival, siege and a heist (8–10). Act III is revelation and choice (8–10). Level the party at each act's milestone, and again after the Gate of the Twelve, the Ossuary, and the Tide-Heart.
The Crown of Lordinium grants the writ and watches. The Borealis Expedition is the party's own company. The Ashvane Concord garrisons Frostmarch and holds the north. The Hollow Choir holds no ground and knows everything.
Hook 01
Peg Leg Carl is hiring in Lordinium and pays whether or not the voyage finds anything. Anyone who needs coin, passage north, or a famous man's name on a charter can be in the chart room at the third bell. This is the default hook and puts the party in the first scene with the patron who drives the whole campaign.
Hook 02
A character's father, brother, or old shipmate sailed north with Carl eleven months ago and is not on the crew list Carl will read aloud. Carl will not say the missing names. Signing on is the only way to find out what happened to them, and the answer is waiting on a black beach on Borealis.
Hook 03
A character has noticed that every copy of the Borealis scripture in the Cathedral says 'prayer' where an older hand wrote 'tithe'. The last scholar who pointed it out drowned in the harbour. Tessaly Quill in the Salt Quarter keeps an uncorrected copy, and Carl's expedition is the only way to test what the old text claims.
Hook 04
King Soleiman will seal the sailing writ only if someone aboard keeps a private record of his brother's behaviour. A character with a Crown background, a debt to the court, or a clerk's ambition is asked to be that someone. It puts the party inside the expedition with a second loyalty from the first hour.
Hook 05
A character has lost someone to the Hollow Choir — a name scraped out of a parish roll, a sibling taken for 'instruction', a friend who stopped being mentioned. The Choir is feeding names north, and Carl's ship is going north. This hook ties a personal quest directly to the campaign's central crime.
Peg Leg Carl hires the party in Lordinium and sends them to assemble the three things his expedition lacks: the Crown's sailing writ, a scholar who can read the Borealis scripture, and a pilot who has seen the fog and come back. Getting the pilot means going into the Salt Quarter, where a binder named Tessaly Quill keeps the last pre-Expurgation copy of the scripture in a flooded undercroft — and where the Hollow Choir is already watching.
The party sails north to Greyharbor, learns that three ships have gone into the fog this year and none have come back, and follows a wrecker's rumour to the Weeping Firth, where the logbook of the lost Sable Queen names the Ashvane Concord and gives them the heading that carries a ship through the fog.
Read aloud
The chart room smells of tar, salt and old paper. Peg Leg Carl stands with his wooden leg planted on a chair, one hand flat on a map of a sea with no land in it. 'Eleven months ago I stood on a beach of black sand and green vines,' he says. 'I came home with a hold full of fruit and a crew that won't sleep. I'm going back. I need people who can keep their heads in fog.'
Carl is charming, generous and evasive. He will answer any question about the voyage except how many of his crew came home, and he will change the subject with a joke. Maren Voss is in the room and will show the party the scripture if asked; the erasures are visible to anyone who looks. King Soleiman's clerk is waiting downstairs with the writ and a private instruction. Brannoc can name Old Hask as a pilot. The scene ends when the charter is signed and the writ sealed.
Read aloud
The bindery's cellar stair goes down into black water. Tessaly Quill holds the lamp high. 'The tide comes in at the third bell,' she says. 'The chest is iron, the room is flooded to the ceiling, and the book is in a wax satchel. If you hear singing down there, do not answer it.'
The undercroft floods in stages: ankle-deep, then waist-deep, then full. Give the party six rounds of exploration before the water reaches the ceiling, and let them retreat and try again at low tide if they fail. A Hollow Choir watcher prays in the street above; if the party is loud, she rings her coral bell and two cultists arrive. The codex is in an iron chest behind the third shelf.
Read aloud
Greyharbor is a town of wet slate and rope, and the harbourmaster's office smells of coal. Halvard Crane does not look up from his ledger. 'Another ship north,' he says. 'That'll be four this year. Three went out. None came back. Sign here, and here, and here.'
Crane is corrupt and ashamed, which makes him easy to push and hard to break. He will clear the ship for a bribe or a threat, but he will not name the Choir unless the party has proof. Ysolt Fenn at the Grey Gull has the guest book and will trade it. Deacon Orwin can be shaken with the codex. The scene ends when the ship is cleared and the party knows about the Sable Queen.
Read aloud
The Weeping Firth is a mile of shingle and broken ribs — ships' ribs, mostly. Fog lies on the water like a lid. A thin man in a coat of otter fur watches you from a hut built of mast timber, and behind him, half-buried in the shingle, is a ship's boat with a name still legible on the bow: Sable Queen.
Ket Varn will sell the logbook for a hundred gold, or trade it for the party's spare boat, or fight for it if pushed. The boat is buried under four feet of shingle and the tide comes in over it. Sister Ivane is praying in the hut and will identify the chant. If the party lingers at dusk, the fog sings and anyone who answers it must make a DC 13 Wisdom save or walk toward the water.
Milestone: The party reaches level 5 when the Sable Queen's logbook is in their hands and the *Saltspray* turns north into the fog.
The expedition crosses into the fog and finds the Ashvane Concord already there. The Harrow Light has gone dark because the Concord bought its lens, and the party must relight it to bring their ship through the reef. In the ice they find the Sable Queen, frozen on her back, and the boy who survived her — and the blood-grooves in her hold. At the Frostmarch Camp they break a Concord garrison and take Vane's sealed orders: eleven names a month, and a final tithe of one hundred and one at the turn of the year.
At the Gate of the Twelve they learn that the fog is a lid, that the gate was built to keep something in, and that it will not open without a price.
Read aloud
The Harrow Light stands on a black rock a mile out, and its lamp room is dark. Below, the reef shows its teeth in the swell. An old man meets you at the stair with a lantern and a boat-hook. 'You'll be wanting the light lit,' Keeper Morvath says. 'So do the things in the fog. They've been singing to it for three nights.'
The lens is at the Frostmarch Camp, so the party must improvise: the Saltglass Lens shard, a continual flame, a hundred lanterns, or a very brave character on the roof with a burning brand. Lighting the lamp takes three rounds of work while the drowned climb. Ilsa can guide a boat through the reef by ear and will offer to. Morvath does not know she sold the lens; if the party tells him, he is quiet for a long moment and then says thank you.
Read aloud
The Sable Queen lies on her back in the ice like a dead animal, masts snapped, hull split from stern to keel. A boy sits on the ice beside her with a fish-spear and eyes too old for his face. 'You're not the admiral,' he says. 'Good. If you go inside, mind the thirteenth step. That's where they kept the ones who didn't stop screaming.'
The wreck is dark, tilted and cold. The chart locker is in the captain's cabin, aft and up; the astrolabe is in the hold, down and forward, past the grooves. Something is still moving in the hold — a drowned sailor Vane tithed and did not finish. Pell will not go inside. He will tell the party everything if they are kind to him, and nothing if they are not.
Read aloud
The Frostmarch Camp is a ring of tents and try-works around a stone rendering house, and the Ashvane's banner hangs over the door. Whalers work the blubber benches under the eyes of men with crossbows. A big man in a leather apron steps out of the smoke and says, low: 'You've come to kill them, then. Say it quick, before the one on the roof hears you.'
The garrison is a veteran sergeant, four scouts and a handful of bandits, plus a roof watch. Sten Harrow can put twenty whalers behind the party if they give him a signal and a promise. The sealed orders are in a strongbox in the rendering house. If the fight goes badly the garrison will set the try-works alight and try to burn the evidence. Doctor Vesna will not fight but will patch the party up afterwards.
Read aloud
The Gate of the Twelve stands in the shallows off a black skerry: an arch of stone tall as a mast, twelve figures carved around its span, every face worn to a smear. A thirteenth plinth stands beside it, empty, its figure chiselled away so violently that the stone still looks raw. An old man in a ruined cassock sits on the plinth. 'It wants blood,' he says pleasantly. 'It always has. The question is whose.'
The gate opens for a life given freely, or a life taken. A freely given life leaves no mark on the giver's companions; a life taken marks them, and the Thirteenth will know. Brother Cassian will not volunteer and will not stop them. If the party tries to force the gate with Concord prisoners, it opens — and the fog thickens behind them. The Saltglass Lens, the coral bell, or the astrolabe's thirteenth ring can each substitute for a life, but only one of them, and only if the party has it.
Milestone: The party reaches level 9 when the Gate of the Twelve closes behind them and the green hills of Borealis rise out of the white sea.
The expedition lands on Borealis and finds the Ashvane already digging. The black sand holds a blood-channel and an altar; the jungle holds a deserter who knows where Vane's people are working. In Sevenfold Hollow the party reads the Hall of Nations' true record and learns what the Twelve were and what the Thirteenth refused. In the Ossuary they speak with the thing the Twelve bound, and learn the breaking rite: spill the blood, then refuse it.
And at the Tide-Heart, in a bowl of black coral, Aurel Vane is completing the great tithe with one hundred and one kneeling throats — and the party must decide whether to break the tithe, take it, or let the island have what it is owed.
Read aloud
Borealis is a green wall out of the fog: black sand, then vines, then trees heavy with fruit that no one planted. The air is thick as water and sweet as a bruise. On the beach, a landing boat lies on its side, and beyond it, in the sand, someone has cut a long straight groove that runs up to the treeline and ends at a stone with a bowl in it.
The groove is a blood-channel and the bowl is an altar; the island takes a life for every landing, and the Concord has been paying it. The eleven flowered bodies are the shore party's first tithe. Oren Sallow is watching and will come out if the party buries the bodies or speaks the old tongue badly. The expedition's crew should be kept on the beach and away from the treeline; if they wander, one of them is taken.
Read aloud
Sevenfold Hollow was a city once: seven terraces of stone climbing a green hill, each with its own gate, each gate broken. Old women and children watch from doorways. In the heart of it stands the Hall of Nations, its roof fallen in, its walls carved floor to ceiling with a procession of figures — twelve of them, and a gap where a thirteenth should be.
The diggers are six Concord bandits, a scout and an overseer, and they will try to burn the Hall's floor-plans when they lose. The true record is under a stone panel in the centre of the floor, and it takes three characters two rounds to lift. Ithra will translate the carvings but only for someone who has already read the wall. Bram Hollow is hunting in the jungle and arrives in round three.
Read aloud
The Ossuary is a stair going down through bone. Shelves of skulls line the walls, each one painted with a name, and the names stop halfway down. At the bottom, in a vault of black coral, a figure sits chained to a stone chair. It is thin, and patient, and when it lifts its head it says: 'You are the ones who came back. Do you know what you owe?'
The Thirteenth tells the truth and nothing but the truth, and it is worse than any lie. It will give its name only to a party who has read the Hall of Nations' record. It teaches the breaking rite: at the Tide-Heart, the giver must be refused — the blood must be spilled and then denied. It cannot leave the vaults and does not ask to. Sister Venn will come if the party carries her, and she will not survive the walk.
Read aloud
The Tide-Heart is a bowl of black coral a hundred paces across, ringed by twelve standing stones and one fallen one. At its centre, Aurel Vane stands in a white coat with a coral crown in his hands, and around the rim a hundred and one of his people kneel with their throats bared. He looks up and smiles like a man who has been waiting for witnesses. 'You're just in time,' he says. 'Hold them. The tide turns in a minute.'
Carl brings the Saltspray around the island's cove and gives the party their opening: he will not land, but he will hold the beach. The tithe-circle is active for six rounds; each round it is active, Vane gains a layer of coral armour and the party takes 2d6 necrotic damage from the grooves. Toppling the fallen thirteenth stone (Athletics DC 16, two characters, one round) breaks the geometry. The breaking rite (Religion DC 18) requires blood spilled and then refused. Vane will offer the party a place in the new order and will mean it.
Milestone: The party reaches level 12 when the Tide-Heart's circle is broken or completed, and the campaign ends with the epilogue.
Aurel Vane, the Ashvane Admiral
Aurel Vane is a tall, grey-haired man in an immaculate white admiral's coat over grey Concord wool, standing at the rim of a bowl of black …
Mother Sable, the Hollow Choir
Mother Sable is a tall, unhurried woman of about sixty, in a grey scriptorium robe with ink-stained cuffs and a chain of office bearing twe…
Kestrel Rook, the Red Tide
Kestrel Rook is a weathered human woman in her late thirties, built like the rigging she grew up in: wiry, rope-scarred, and deceptively st…
Fog Singer
Completed
· CR 2
· Undead
Grey, waterlogged humanoid corpse in tattered sailor's clothes, mouth open in a low hum, seaweed and barnacles clinging to its skin, wading…
Salt-Pearl Drowned
Completed
· CR 3
· Undead
Bloated undead sailor in a green-stained white coat, salt crystals filling its eye sockets, a cluster of grey pearls bulging at its throat,…
Coral Bell Watcher
Completed
· CR 3
· Humanoid
A quiet woman in a grey hood, holding a black coral hand-bell on a chain and a narrow-bladed knife, standing in a rainy city street.
Tidewater Husk
Completed
· CR 1
· Undead
A gaunt, waterlogged corpse with skin like wet sacking, wearing a rotted coin-purse and clutching a broken lantern. It waits submerged in b…
Red-Ice Hookman
Completed
· CR 4
· Undead
Frozen undead sailor, one arm a black iron boat-hook, shoulders sheathed in red ice, standing in a shipwreck hold.
Blubber Hound
Completed
· CR 3
· Monstrosity
A hairless, slick-skinned hound with a lantern glow in its throat, dripping grease as it moves, jaws unhinged to reveal burning oil within.
Blooming Tithed
Completed
· CR 4
· Plant
A humanoid plant with vines bursting through ribs, fruit hanging from collarbones, and a face still recognizably human, standing among verd…
Vine-Shroud Stalker
Completed
· CR 6
· Plant
A large feline form covered in flowering vines, eyes like pale blossoms, thorned whip tail, lurking in dense jungle foliage.
Name Thief
Completed
· CR 7
· Undead
Stooped undead of lashed bones in a scribe's apron, painted skull head with a chisel through the jaw, wet ink-brush in hand, standing among…
Record-Stone Sentinel
Completed
· CR 8
· Construct
A large block of carved stone on four stubby legs, its face a chiselled-over panel, arms two heavy stone tablets on bronze hinges, standing…
Coral-Rib Stalker
Completed
· CR 9
· Aberration
A low, many-legged horror of black coral and pale vein, its rib cage caging a warm red glow, legs clicking over wet stone at the rim of a c…
Gate Effigy Warden
Completed
· CR 6
· Construct
A towering figure of black coral-studded stone rising from sea shallows, its face a worn smear, hands two flat stone slabs, barnacles and s…
Vane reached Borealis eleven months ago, read the Hall of Nations' record, and understood: the Twelve were not gods, they were people who ate what the tithe grew and stopped aging. He has spent a year feeding the island eleven lives a month to keep the bloom and the wind, and he is short of the great tithe — one hundred and one given at once at the Tide-Heart. He does not want to free the Thirteenth. He wants the empty chair.
Courteous, tired, and completely certain. He speaks of sacrifice as bookkeeping and of his own crew as a budget. He will offer the party a place in the new order, sincerely, and he will be genuinely sorry when they refuse. He never raises his voice and never lies about anything that matters.
Vane does not duel. He opens by offering terms, and if refused he lets his veterans and his drowned choir take the front while he works the tithe-circle. Each round the circle is active he gains a layer of coral armour and the party takes necrotic damage from the blood-grooves. If reduced below half his hit points he retreats to the fallen thirteenth stone and tries to complete the tithe himself, spending his own blood as the hundred-and-first. If the circle is broken he fights personally, with the crown, and he is very good at it.
He can be killed, and the island's bloom dies with the tithe. He can be broken and spared: shown the Thirteenth's own record, he will sit down in the coral bowl and let the party take him home to answer to the Crown of Lordinium. He cannot be redeemed into an ally — he has done the arithmetic too many times — but he can be made to stop.
Sable has spent thirty years removing the blood tithe from every copy of the Borealis scripture, because she believes that if the rites are never written, no one will ever perform them. She is also bound to the Twelve, and the Twelve require eleven names a month. She has never resolved this contradiction and has stopped trying.
Warm, unhurried, and utterly without malice. She offers tea. She remembers the names of the party's families. She will explain, reasonably, why the codex must go back into the water, and she will be right about most of it.
Sable never fights in the open. She uses the law first — a harbour writ, a watch sergeant, a locked door. If forced, she rings the Cathedral bells and lets the Choir come, then uses her position to keep the party at range while she works a ritual to silence the codex itself. Cornered and alone, she is calm, and she is dangerous, and she will try to take the codex with her into the crypt.
She can be exposed, arrested, or killed. She can also be turned: shown that the erasure has failed and that Vane is performing the rites anyway, she will give the party the Cathedral's originals and the names of every Choir agent on the coast. She will not repent, but she will change sides against Vane, whom she considers a vandal.
Rook is paid in salt-pearls, which grow in the bodies of the tithed and are worth more than gold in three ports. She wants a captaincy over the Concord's northern fleet and she wants the *Saltspray* at the bottom of the Weeping Firth. She also, quietly, wants to stop hearing the singing, and has convinced herself that finishing the tithe will do it.
Loud, funny, and fast. She boards ships personally and remembers everyone she has ever beaten. She respects a good trick and will let a clever enemy live long enough to be useful. She is the only villain who will laugh at the party's jokes.
Rook fights in three stages. First she runs: false lights, reefs, and a chase through fog. Then she boards, leading from the front with a hooked axe, aiming to take the pilot and the charts rather than the ship. If she is losing, she fires the magazine and swims for it, and she will remember the party's faces. She never fights to the death over cargo.
She can be killed, driven off, or bought — she will sell Vane's schedule and the Firth's chain-lines for a share of the Concord's salt-pearls and a clean pardon from the Crown. A pardoned Rook makes an unpleasant but genuinely useful ally in Act III, and she will not betray a crew that kept its word.
Recommended party: Four to five characters. A balanced party is best: at least one healer (cleric or druid), one arcane caster, one character built for social scenes (bard, rogue or paladin), and one with Survival and water-travel proficiency. A rogue or bard is extremely useful in Acts I and II; a cleric or paladin is close to mandatory in Act III, where Religion checks and the breaking rite decide the ending.
Tell the table up front that this is a campaign about human sacrifice, erasure of records, and complicity — the horror is quiet and administrative rather than gory, but it is present from the first scene. Establish lines and veils for child harm, drowning, and religious coercion, and use a consent checklist. Agree that the party are hired hands, not chosen ones, and that they will be expected to make a decision at the end that has no clean answer. Set expectations for investigation-heavy play in Act I, survival and siege play in Act II, and moral choice in Act III. Confirm that the villains will be polite, that the Choir will use law and paperwork rather than knives, and that the party can lose. Ask each player for one person their character has lost to the north or to the Choir; those names become the campaign's emotional stakes.
The module is written for four to five characters from 1st to 12th level, levelling at each act's milestone and again after the Gate of the Twelve, the Sealed Floor, the Ossuary, and the Tide-Heart. For three characters, cut one enemy from every roster and lower the Tide-Heart's timer to five rounds; for six, add one enemy of the lowest CR in each roster and give bosses maximum hit points. If the party is a level behind, treat every High encounter as Moderate and let allied NPCs (Brannoc's crew, Sten Harrow's whalers, Bram Hollow, a pardoned Kestrel Rook) absorb one enemy each. If they are a level ahead, add a second wave rather than raising individual statistics, so the tactics in each packet stay true. Never scale the Tide-Heart's six-round tide timer — it is the clock the finale is built on.
Pace the campaign in three gears. Act I is slow and social: let the party like Carl before they learn what he did, and plant the eleven-name crew list early so it can detonate in Act III. Act II is pressure: the fog should feel like a schedule, not a weather event, and every loss the Ashvane takes should be answered with a polite escalation rather than a revenge attack. Act III is revelation: hand out the truth in the order the clue flow gives it, and never let a single failed check stop the plot — move the clue to the next location instead. Villain pressure works best as paperwork: a harbour writ, a locked door, a name struck from a roll. Aurel Vane should be seen before he is fought, ideally at the Gate of the Twelve or through Pell Ardan's testimony, so the finale is a confrontation rather than a surprise. Mother Sable should never be the one holding the knife. Keep the island beautiful right up until the party understands what feeds it.
The character sits in Tessaly Quill's bindery with two copies of the scripture side by side and a scraping knife, comparing line by line. Each day of work reveals one more erasure and one more thing the Cathedral did not want read.
Requirements: Access to two copies of the Borealis scripture, one of them pre-Expurgation, and proficiency in Investigation, History, or calligrapher's supplies.
Rewards: One confirmed erasure per day of work. Three days of work grants advantage on the next Religion or History check about the tithe, and five days reveals the marginal note about the stolen name.
Time: One day per check; a full week for the complete comparison.
Location: Quill's Bindery in the Salt Quarter is the only place on the coast with two copies and a lock good enough to keep the Choir out.
Run this as a quiet scene with a rising sense of dread. Complication: a Hollow Choir watcher books the room above the shop and starts asking after the shop's stock.
The character spends an evening buying drink in Greyharbor's only inn and letting the north come up in conversation. Ysolt Fenn pours without being asked and prices by how much she likes you.
Requirements: 10 gp and a willingness to be talked at by whalers.
Rewards: One true rumour and two false ones per evening. On a DC 13 Charisma (Persuasion or Carousing) check, the character also learns a name from Ysolt's guest book.
Time: One evening.
Location: The Grey Gull in Greyharbor is where every northern crew drinks before it sails and after it comes back, if it comes back.
Give the true rumour first and the false ones second so the party learns to weigh them. Complication: Halvard Crane drinks here and will report anything interesting to the Choir.
The character works the ship: scraping the hull, tarring the seams, splicing cable, and drilling the crew on the reef channel. Hard, dull, honest work that keeps a ship afloat when the fog comes down.
Requirements: Proficiency in water vehicles, carpenter's tools, or Athletics, and a ship to work on.
Rewards: The ship gains a +1 bonus to any check made to navigate the northern reef, and the crew's morale improves: they will enter one ruin without the party going first.
Time: Three days in port.
Location: Greyharbor's stone quay is the last place north with a crane and a careening grid.
Use this to give the party a stake in the ship before Act II tries to sink it. Complication: Kestrel Rook's agents sabotage the rudder if they are in port.
The character keeps a vigil at the Drowned Shrine of the Twelve, which floods at every high tide. Mother Ulva sells blessings, silence, and small carved fish, and talks more freely to someone who will sit through a whole tide with her.
Requirements: A night at the shrine and a willingness to get wet.
Rewards: One blessing granting advantage on a single saving throw, declared before the roll. On a DC 14 Wisdom (Insight) check, Mother Ulva admits she was a Hollow Choir initiate for eleven years.
Time: One night, from high tide to high tide.
Location: The Drowned Shrine in the Salt Quarter is the only temple on the coast that floods on purpose.
Ulva is genuinely devout and genuinely compromised. She will help as long as she does not have to say the Choir's name aloud. Complication: a Choir watcher comes to the shrine at midnight to collect her tithe.
The character studies the carvings of the Hall of Nations with Ithra of the Hollow, learning the old tongue one figure at a time. The wall is a procession of twelve, and the gap where the thirteenth should be is a door.
Requirements: Access to Sevenfold Hollow, a translator (Ithra or Maren Voss), and proficiency in History or Religion.
Rewards: Advantage on the breaking rite at the Tide-Heart, and the ability to read any Seven Nations inscription on the island without a check.
Time: Two days of study.
Location: The Hall of Nations at Sevenfold Hollow is the only intact record of the Seven Nations left in the world.
This is the campaign's exposition engine, so make it physical: dust, ladders, and a wall that is also a door. Complication: Vane's diggers return with reinforcements on the second day.
## The Harrow Light
The Harrow Light stands on a black rock a mile offshore, a white tower with a green copper cap and an outside stair that is lethal in a swell. It is the last beacon before the fog, and for forty years it has burned every night. Three weeks ago it went dark.
The tower's foundation is older than the tower. The rock it stands on is the same black coral-studded stone as the Gate of the Twelve, and the lowest course of masonry is cut with figures that the keepers have whitewashed over every spring for a century without ever asking why.
Keeper Morvath lives in the tower with his granddaughter Ilsa and a lamp he cannot light. The silvered lens was taken — bought, really — and without it the light will not burn through the fog. Below the rock, in the reef, the drowned have started climbing. They wear Ashvane colours. At low tide they sing, and Ilsa Morvath sings back.
The tower is a siege location: one stair, one lamp room, and a reef full of things that climb. Give the party the high ground and make them defend it.
## The Wreck of the Sable Queen
The Sable Queen lies on her back in the ice shelf like a dead animal, masts snapped at the caps, hull split from stern to keel. She was a Concord supply ship, and she is still full: crates of salt-pork, barrels of lamp oil, and a hold whose floor has been cut with long straight grooves that run to a drain at the keel.
The ice has kept her. The cold has kept everything else too — the buckets, the ropes, the ledger in the captain's cabin with the last three pages torn out. What it has not kept is the crew. There are no bodies in the Sable Queen. There is a great deal of red ice under the grooves.
A boy sits on the ice beside the wreck with a fish-spear, waiting. He has been waiting three weeks. He is the only person who came out of that hold, and he remembers exactly what the admiral said while it was happening.
The wreck is a dungeon-lite: a tilted, frozen, dark interior with one witness outside. Play the cold and the silence. The blood-grooves should be discovered, not described.
## The Frostmarch Camp
Frostmarch is a whaling camp on a black beach: a ring of tents and try-works around a stone rendering house, with a slipway, a cooper's shed and a drying ground where the smell of oil is strong enough to taste. It has been here for sixty years. For the last eleven months it has flown a white banner over the rendering house.
The Ashvane Concord garrisons it with a dozen men, a sergeant and a veteran who does not sleep. The whalers work the blubber benches under crossbows and are fed just well enough to keep working. The rendering fire has not been allowed to go out in a year, because the garrison burns something in it that is not whale.
Sten Harrow runs the camp and has been selling the Concord eleven whalers a month to keep the rest alive. Doctor Vesna Orl patches up the ones who come back and has stopped asking what the buckets are for. The whalers are not broken. They are waiting, and they are counting, and they will rise the moment someone gives them a reason.
This is the act's big set-piece: a camp revolt with a garrison to break. Let the party recruit the whalers; a camp that rises together is worth more than a camp that is rescued.
## The Gate of the Twelve
The Gate of the Twelve stands in the shallows off a black skerry at the edge of the deep water: an arch of stone tall as a mast, its span carved with twelve figures whose faces have been worn to smears by three hundred years of weather. Beside it stands a thirteenth plinth, empty, its figure chiselled away so violently that the stone still looks raw.
The gate is not a ruin. It is a working. The water inside the arch is always still, even in a gale, and it is always black, and it does not reflect the sky. Ships that pass through it come out somewhere else. Ships that try to force it come out wrong.
An old man in a ruined cassock sits on the thirteenth plinth and has sat there for forty years. He talks to the gate. He knows what it costs and he will not say it plainly, because he is afraid of what the party will do with the answer.
The gate is the act's moral hinge: it wants a life, freely given or taken. Make the party choose, and make Brother Cassian's evasions feel like mercy rather than obstruction.
## The Verdant Strand
The Verdant Strand is Borealis's front door: a curve of black sand between the water and a wall of green, with a landing boat on its side and a flag planted above the tide-line. The air is warm and thick and smells of fruit and iron. Nothing here is dead. Everything here is very alive.
A long straight groove is cut into the sand, running from the water's edge up to the treeline, where it ends at a stone with a bowl in it. The groove is stained dark for its whole length. Beyond the treeline, the jungle is loud with birds and heavy with fruit, and there are paths through it that were not made by animals.
Eleven months ago the Ashvane Concord landed here with ninety souls. Three weeks ago they landed again. The bedrolls are still laid out in rows. Eleven of them are still occupied, by bodies that have not rotted but flowered, and the vines have grown up through them in a way that looks almost tender.
The Strand is the party's introduction to the island's arithmetic. Show the beauty first, then the groove. Oren Sallow watches from the treeline and will approach only if the party is unarmed or losing.
## Sevenfold Hollow
Sevenfold Hollow was a city once. Seven terraces of dark brick on rough stone footings climb a green hill, each with its own gate, each gate broken. Squat towers stand at the corners with narrow windows and timber galleries, and hipped roofs have fallen in on most of them. Vines have taken the rest. Perhaps forty people live here now — old women, children, a handful of hunters — in the lower terraces, in houses patched with sailcloth and grown over with flowers.
In the heart of the city stands the **Hall of Nations**, its roof fallen in, its walls carved floor to ceiling with a procession of figures. Twelve of them are whole. The thirteenth panel has been chiselled away so thoroughly that the wall behind it is exposed, and the exposed stone is carved too.
The Ashvane's diggers are here, prying up the floor of the Hall with crowbars and Concord patience. They are looking for a name. The islanders are not stopping them, because the islanders are forty people with spears and the diggers have crossbows.
The Hollow is the campaign's exposition centre, but keep it physical: a fight in a ruined hall, a floor to pry up, and an old woman who will only speak the truth to someone who has read the wall.
## The Ossuary of the Thirteenth
The Ossuary is a stair going down through bone. It begins at a broken door in the lowest terrace of Sevenfold Hollow and descends in a spiral, and the walls of the stair are shelves, and the shelves are full of skulls. Each skull is painted with a name in the old tongue. The names stop about halfway down.
At the bottom is a vault of black coral, ribbed and pale-veined, with a stone chair at its centre and a figure chained to the chair. The figure is thin and patient and has been awake for three hundred years. It does not rage. It asks questions, politely, and it remembers every name that was ever given to it.
The Concord has been here. The outer door is broken, the chains have been re-forged with Concord iron, and there are crowbar marks on the coral where someone tried to cut the Thirteenth's name out of the wall. They did not finish. They were called away.
This is a conversation, not a fight. The Thirteenth is not a monster and must never be run as one. Play it as an old, tired, entirely sane person who has been proved right and finds no pleasure in it.
## The Tide-Heart
The Tide-Heart is a bowl of black coral a hundred paces across, set in a clearing at the island's centre. Twelve standing stones ring it, each one carved with a figure, each one whole. A thirteenth stone lies fallen across the rim, its carving face-down in the moss.
The bowl is full of something that is not water. It moves when nothing touches it, and it is warm, and it reflects a sky that is not the sky above it. Grooves run from the rim to the centre, and the grooves are stained, and the stain is old and layered like tree rings.
This is where the tithe is given. This is where the Seven Nations gave it for three hundred years, and where the Twelve ate what it grew, and where the Thirteenth broke the altars. Aurel Vane has been standing at the centre for three weeks, and he has a hundred and one people kneeling around the rim, and he has been waiting for witnesses.
The finale. Run the tithe-circle as a timed encounter: the tide turns in six rounds, and every round the circle is active costs the party. Vane talks the whole way through. Give the party the chance to turn the kneeling crew.
Aurel Vane, the Ashvane Admiral
Aurel Vane is a tall, grey-haired man in an immaculate white admiral's coat over grey Concord wool, standing at the rim of a bowl of black …
Mother Sable, the Hollow Choir
Mother Sable is a tall, unhurried woman of about sixty, in a grey scriptorium robe with ink-stained cuffs and a chain of office bearing twe…
Kestrel Rook, the Red Tide
Kestrel Rook is a weathered human woman in her late thirties, built like the rigging she grew up in: wiry, rope-scarred, and deceptively st…
Fog Singer
Completed
· CR 2
· Undead
Grey, waterlogged humanoid corpse in tattered sailor's clothes, mouth open in a low hum, seaweed and barnacles clinging to its skin, wading…
Salt-Pearl Drowned
Completed
· CR 3
· Undead
Bloated undead sailor in a green-stained white coat, salt crystals filling its eye sockets, a cluster of grey pearls bulging at its throat,…
Coral Bell Watcher
Completed
· CR 3
· Humanoid
A quiet woman in a grey hood, holding a black coral hand-bell on a chain and a narrow-bladed knife, standing in a rainy city street.
Tidewater Husk
Completed
· CR 1
· Undead
A gaunt, waterlogged corpse with skin like wet sacking, wearing a rotted coin-purse and clutching a broken lantern. It waits submerged in b…
Red-Ice Hookman
Completed
· CR 4
· Undead
Frozen undead sailor, one arm a black iron boat-hook, shoulders sheathed in red ice, standing in a shipwreck hold.
Blubber Hound
Completed
· CR 3
· Monstrosity
A hairless, slick-skinned hound with a lantern glow in its throat, dripping grease as it moves, jaws unhinged to reveal burning oil within.
Blooming Tithed
Completed
· CR 4
· Plant
A humanoid plant with vines bursting through ribs, fruit hanging from collarbones, and a face still recognizably human, standing among verd…
Vine-Shroud Stalker
Completed
· CR 6
· Plant
A large feline form covered in flowering vines, eyes like pale blossoms, thorned whip tail, lurking in dense jungle foliage.
Name Thief
Completed
· CR 7
· Undead
Stooped undead of lashed bones in a scribe's apron, painted skull head with a chisel through the jaw, wet ink-brush in hand, standing among…
Record-Stone Sentinel
Completed
· CR 8
· Construct
A large block of carved stone on four stubby legs, its face a chiselled-over panel, arms two heavy stone tablets on bronze hinges, standing…
Coral-Rib Stalker
Completed
· CR 9
· Aberration
A low, many-legged horror of black coral and pale vein, its rib cage caging a warm red glow, legs clicking over wet stone at the rim of a c…
Gate Effigy Warden
Completed
· CR 6
· Construct
A towering figure of black coral-studded stone rising from sea shallows, its face a worn smear, hands two flat stone slabs, barnacles and s…
Vane reached Borealis eleven months ago, read the Hall of Nations' record, and understood: the Twelve were not gods, they were people who ate what the tithe grew and stopped aging. He has spent a year feeding the island eleven lives a month to keep the bloom and the wind, and he is short of the great tithe — one hundred and one given at once at the Tide-Heart. He does not want to free the Thirteenth. He wants the empty chair.
Courteous, tired, and completely certain. He speaks of sacrifice as bookkeeping and of his own crew as a budget. He will offer the party a place in the new order, sincerely, and he will be genuinely sorry when they refuse. He never raises his voice and never lies about anything that matters.
Vane does not duel. He opens by offering terms, and if refused he lets his veterans and his drowned choir take the front while he works the tithe-circle. Each round the circle is active he gains a layer of coral armour and the party takes necrotic damage from the blood-grooves. If reduced below half his hit points he retreats to the fallen thirteenth stone and tries to complete the tithe himself, spending his own blood as the hundred-and-first. If the circle is broken he fights personally, with the crown, and he is very good at it.
He can be killed, and the island's bloom dies with the tithe. He can be broken and spared: shown the Thirteenth's own record, he will sit down in the coral bowl and let the party take him home to answer to the Crown of Lordinium. He cannot be redeemed into an ally — he has done the arithmetic too many times — but he can be made to stop.
Sable has spent thirty years removing the blood tithe from every copy of the Borealis scripture, because she believes that if the rites are never written, no one will ever perform them. She is also bound to the Twelve, and the Twelve require eleven names a month. She has never resolved this contradiction and has stopped trying.
Warm, unhurried, and utterly without malice. She offers tea. She remembers the names of the party's families. She will explain, reasonably, why the codex must go back into the water, and she will be right about most of it.
Sable never fights in the open. She uses the law first — a harbour writ, a watch sergeant, a locked door. If forced, she rings the Cathedral bells and lets the Choir come, then uses her position to keep the party at range while she works a ritual to silence the codex itself. Cornered and alone, she is calm, and she is dangerous, and she will try to take the codex with her into the crypt.
She can be exposed, arrested, or killed. She can also be turned: shown that the erasure has failed and that Vane is performing the rites anyway, she will give the party the Cathedral's originals and the names of every Choir agent on the coast. She will not repent, but she will change sides against Vane, whom she considers a vandal.
Rook is paid in salt-pearls, which grow in the bodies of the tithed and are worth more than gold in three ports. She wants a captaincy over the Concord's northern fleet and she wants the *Saltspray* at the bottom of the Weeping Firth. She also, quietly, wants to stop hearing the singing, and has convinced herself that finishing the tithe will do it.
Loud, funny, and fast. She boards ships personally and remembers everyone she has ever beaten. She respects a good trick and will let a clever enemy live long enough to be useful. She is the only villain who will laugh at the party's jokes.
Rook fights in three stages. First she runs: false lights, reefs, and a chase through fog. Then she boards, leading from the front with a hooked axe, aiming to take the pilot and the charts rather than the ship. If she is losing, she fires the magazine and swims for it, and she will remember the party's faces. She never fights to the death over cargo.
She can be killed, driven off, or bought — she will sell Vane's schedule and the Firth's chain-lines for a share of the Concord's salt-pearls and a clean pardon from the Crown. A pardoned Rook makes an unpleasant but genuinely useful ally in Act III, and she will not betray a crew that kept its word.
A broad, grey-bearded man in a plain blue coat, seated behind a desk that is too small for him. He speaks slowly and listens faster than he looks. There is a map of the northern sea on his wall with three pins in it and no labels.
A thin woman in ink-stained cuffs with spectacles mended at the hinge. She carries the Borealis scripture everywhere in a satchel lined with oilcloth and has annotated every page in three colours. She is quietly, permanently terrified.
A round, brisk woman with glue under her nails and a shop that smells of leather and rot. She binds prayer books by day and keeps things the Cathedral would burn by night. She has a laugh that startles customers.
A small, bent woman in a salt-stiff robe who keeps a shrine that floods at every high tide. She sells blessings, silence and small carved fish. Her hands are always wet.
A gaunt old sailor with a tarred queue and eyes that never settle. He drinks steadily and without pleasure. When he talks about the north he stops in the middle of sentences and starts them again somewhere else.
A narrow man in a good coat that is too warm for the office, with ink on his fingers and a ledger he keeps closer than his dinner. He does not look up when people come in. He has a cough he uses to end conversations.
A tall woman with grey-streaked hair pinned up with a fork, a barmaid's arms and a landlord's memory. She pours without being asked and prices by how much she likes you. She has heard every rumour in the north twice.
A soft, anxious man in a clean cassock who preaches to nine people on a good week. He is kind, he is honest, and he has never read his own scripture closely enough to notice what is missing from it.
A young woman in a ruined travelling habit, with salt-cracked lips and a satchel of waterlogged hymnals. She is earnest, exhausted, and beginning to be angry. She has been on the Firth for five weeks.
A wide, quiet man with a broken nose and a boatswain's pipe on a cord. He has sailed with Carl for twenty years and can rig a ship in the dark. He does not drink, and he does not like the fog.
A thin man in a coat of otter fur, with a face like a closed knife and a hut built from mast timber. He moves quietly on shingle and has a pit trap for every hundred yards of beach. He is not unfriendly; he is simply pricing you.
Sun-blackened and wind-cured, with a wooden leg from the knee and a coat of oiled sealskin that has never fully dried. He laughs like a breaking wave and stops laughing very suddenly. His hands are steady on a chart and shake over a cup.
A wiry old man with a boat-hook and a lantern he never puts down, dressed in a keeper's coat with the brass buttons replaced by bone. He has kept the light for forty years and speaks to it as though it were a difficult relative.
A girl of sixteen with lamp-black on her cheekbones and a habit of tilting her head as though listening to something behind the wind. She is quick, stubborn, and not at all afraid of the dark.
A boy of seventeen in a coat three sizes too big, with a fish-spear and eyes much older than the rest of him. He sits on the ice beside the wreck as though he has been told to wait and is very good at waiting.
A compact woman with her sleeves pinned back and a leather roll of saws and needles. She has a surgeon's flat calm and a whaler's vocabulary. She smells faintly of vinegar and always has.
An old man in a ruined cassock, barefoot on black rock, with a face full of cheerful ruin. He talks to the gate as though it were a neighbour. He has been waiting a very long time and has made his peace with it.
A big man in a leather apron, burned and scarred across both forearms, with a rendering hook on his belt. He speaks low and slowly and has not slept properly in a year. He is the only reason the camp still has people in it.
A small, straight-backed old woman with white braids and a shawl of woven vine, who speaks the common tongue carefully, as though it were a second language she learned late. Her eyes are the colour of shallow water.
A woman in a grey robe with her head shaved and her hands ink-stained, sitting on the third step of a stair that goes down through bone. She is calm in the way of someone who has been alone for a very long time and has made friends with it.
A broad young man with a boar-spear and a necklace of carved teeth, who moves through the jungle without sound and grins at everything. He is Ithra's grandson and the only person in the Hollow who is not afraid of the dark.
A hollow-eyed man in a Concord white coat gone green with mould, with a sailor's knife and a week's beard. He watches the treeline while he talks. He has stopped flinching at things, which is worse.
Brannoc Tull has sailed with Peg Leg Carl for twenty years and has never once lied to Alder, which is why his silence about the two missing crewmen is unbearable. In the chart room of Saltspray House, Brannoc finally opens the second sea-chest: inside are two sets of oilskins, two letters, and a ship's log with two pages cut out. He will tell Alder what he saw on the beach at Borealis only if Alder will hear it without hitting him — that Carl gave two men to the island to buy the rest of the crew's return, and that Brannoc held one of them down. Alder must then carry that knowledge through the voyage, decide whether to tell the crew, and face Carl himself at the Tide-Heart, where the admiral's arithmetic and his patron's arithmetic turn out to be the same sum.
Earn the right to the truth: help Brannoc rig the Saltspray for the northern crossing and prove, over three days of hard work, that Alder can hear hard things without breaking. Brannoc watches how Alder handles the crew, the Choir's collectors, and the first rumours of the eleven-name list.
Alder has scratched every name he has ever heard of the lost into the shaft of his boarding pike — his father at the top, then the eleven of Carl's list, then the names that accumulate as the campaign goes on. Brannoc, seeing the tally, tells him that the Saltspray's old quartermaster kept exactly such a ledger before the Choir made such lists dangerous, and that the old man's book is buried in the flooded undercroft of Quill's Bindery, wrapped in oilcloth beside the codex. The book is a full tithe-roll of the Crown Coast going back thirty years, and somewhere in it — if the Choir has not already scraped it — is the record of what happened to the men of the northern ships. Recovering it means going back into the black water with the drowned, past the Hollow Choir's watchers, and deciding whether a book full of names is evidence to be published or a list to be finished.
Learn from Brannoc where the quartermaster's ledger went and why the Choir would want it drowned; make contact with Tessaly Quill and earn her trust enough to be told about the undercroft's second chest.
The second letter in the sea-chest is addressed to Alder's dead mother, and it is not in his father's hand. Someone on the crew wrote to a woman who had been in the ground for ten years, warning her — in careful, frightened words — that the north was not a voyage but a payment, and that the men of the Saltspray should not go back. The letter is signed with a mark rather than a name: a small chiselled square, the same mark that appears scraped into the margin of the pre-Expurgation codex and chalked above Mother Ulva's shrine door. Finding the writer means working the mark through the Salt Quarter — through Ulva's evasions, through the Choir's safehouse, through the drowned archive — and discovering that at least one member of Carl's crew has been a Choir initiate all along, and wrote the letter as a penance the family was never meant to receive. The writer may be alive, and may be on the ship.
Show the letter's mark to Mother Ulva and read her reaction; trace the mark through the Salt Quarter's shrines, binderies, and cellar doors without alerting the Choir that the letter exists.
Corvin's last letter from Oren was three lines long and ended mid-sentence: 'They have asked me to hold a woman at the altar and I have said—'. On the black sand of the Verdant Strand, Corvin finds the Concord's shore camp, ninety bedrolls, eleven flowered bodies, and a hollow-eyed deserter in a green coat who will not come out of the treeline until he hears his own name spoken. Oren Sallow deserted rather than hold the woman down, and he has been living on fruit and guilt ever since, and he will not go back to the Tide-Heart for anyone. Corvin must get his brother to talk — about the dig sites, about Vane's arithmetic, about the woman at the altar — and then decide whether to send him south to safety or drag him to the coral bowl to testify against the admiral who made him a coward.
Corvin must earn his brother's trust: bury the eleven flowered bodies, or speak the old tongue badly enough that Oren recognizes the family accent. Oren will not approach an armed party or a Concord uniform, and he flinches at the word 'altar'. Corvin must decide whether to lead with the letter or with the burial — and whether to tell his brother, in the first minute, that the letter was never finished or that Corvin read it a hundred times before he understood it was a question Oren was asking permission to answer.
Corvin's grandfather kept a rubbing of a Seven Nations inscription in a drawer at the back of the family study — the document that taught Corvin the old tongue. The stone it was taken from no longer exists; the Concord's survey office catalogued it as 'recovered, fragmentary, valueless' and the fragment was sold to a Lordinium bindery for pulping eleven years ago. Corvin has traced the sale. The bindery was Quill's. Tessaly Quill bought the lot at auction, could not read it, and bound the fragments into the covers of a prayer book she sold to the Cathedral of the Twelve — where it has sat on a lectern in the Salt Quarter's Drowned Shrine ever since, read aloud every tide by Mother Ulva, who cannot read what she is saying. Corvin must recover the prayer book from the flooded shrine, unbind it without destroying the fragments, and reassemble the inscription — which turns out to be a partial list of the Twelve's names, in the old tongue, with the Thirteenth's name half-visible where the rubbing was cut off at the edge.
Corvin must get into the Drowned Shrine at high tide, when it floods and the congregation leaves, and take a prayer book off a lectern in front of a shrinekeeper who was a Hollow Choir initiate for eleven years. He can steal it, buy it, or tell Ulva the truth — and telling the truth is the only path that does not end with Ulva ringing a bell Corvin does not want rung.
Corvin took the Concord's coin for three years and translated its inscriptions, and he has never once written down what he found — because writing it down makes him a witness, and witnesses to the Concord do not drown in harbours, they drown in the Weeping Firth. But the Concord's manifests record what was recovered, and Corvin has spent eight months copying them from memory into a private ledger he keeps sewn into the spine of his spellbook. The ledger is a map of the erasure: forty-six inscriptions catalogued, thirty-one destroyed, fifteen unaccounted for. Corvin intends to find the fifteen. The trail leads through Greyharbor's harbourmaster — who is paid to keep the losses quiet — to a warehouse on the Greyharbor coal quay where the Concord stores what it has not yet destroyed: fifteen crates of recovered inscriptions, catalogued and crated and waiting for a ship that has not come. Corvin must get into the warehouse, read what is in the crates, and decide what to do with fifteen stone fragments that the Concord will burn rather than lose — and one of them, he discovers, is not an inscription at all. It is a letter, in the old tongue, written by a Seven Nations hand and addressed to whoever came next.
Corvin must decide whether to tell the party what he has been copying for eight months — the cipher, the manifests, the tithe schedule he read in a notary's mail and said nothing about. The confession costs him the party's trust or buys him the party's help, and he cannot open the warehouse alone.
Deacon Orwin preaches from a scripture he has never read closely, and his own margin notes mark every omission in a hand he does not recognise. Corrin brings him the pre-Expurgation codex from the Salt Quarter and watches a kind, honest man sit down on the temple step and be quiet for a long time. What Orwin then admits is worse than erasure: the Greyharbor temple's crypt holds the parish's old tithe-rolls, and they list eleven names a year going north, in the same hand that corrected the scripture. Corrin must open the crypt, read the rolls, and decide whether to break the news to a congregation that has been paying the Choir's price for three generations — and whether a faith built on an edited book can be mended or must be torn down and rebuilt.
Corrin opens the Greyharbor crypt with Deacon Orwin and reads three generations of tithe-rolls in the hand that corrected the scripture.
Read the tithe-rolls aloud to the congregation, or seal them and protect a faith that is already bleeding.
Sister Ivane, shipwrecked on the Weeping Firth, recognises the chant written phonetically in the Sable Queen's logbook margin: it is a hymn of the Twelve that was struck from the liturgy — the hymn that carries a ship through the fog. Corrin has been collecting struck hymns for years without knowing what they were for. She must transcribe the chant from Ivane's failing memory and the waterlogged page, decide whether it is a rite too dangerous to perform or a key the Church threw away, and then choose who sings it first: the party's pilot, herself, or no one.
Corrin transcribes the chant from Ivane's failing memory and the waterlogged page, and decides what a struck hymn is for.
Teach the struck hymn to the party and use it against the fog, or treat it as a rite too dangerous to perform without understanding.
Corrin's mother died of salt-sickness in Greyharbor when Corrin was nine, the same year the tithe-rolls in the crypt begin. Corrin has never checked whether her mother's name is among them, because she is more frightened of being wrong than of being hurt — and because if the name is there, then her whole life has been paid for. She must search the rolls, the parish death register, and the memories of the Grey Gull's oldest drinkers, and find out what happened to a rope-maker's wife in the year the eleven names started going north.
Corrin searches the rolls, the death register, and the Grey Gull's memory for a rope-maker's wife in the year the names began going north.
Search for her mother's name in the tithe-rolls, or leave the question closed and keep the faith she has left.
Tessaly Quill has spent six years collecting the Hollow Choir's discarded scraps, and she will only hand them to Wren if Wren proves she is finished with the order. In the flooded undercroft beneath Quill's Bindery the sisters find a waxed packet of Choir receipts, and one of them is a tithe-schedule in Mother Sable's own hand naming eleven souls a month and a destination in the north. Following it means going back into the Salt Quarter's Choir safehouse, past the woman with the coral bell, and finding the ledger that proves the Choir has been selling people to the Ashvane Concord for eleven months.
Tessaly gives Wren the scraps she has collected, and the sisters descend into the flooded undercroft beneath the bindery at low tide to retrieve a waxed packet of Choir receipts. Among them is the tithe-schedule in Mother Sable's hand. The tide is coming in, the Choir is watching the street above, and the packet is the only proof that the Choir has been selling people north for eleven months.
Whether to publish the tithe-schedule, hide it, or use it as leverage against Mother Sable.
Wren took something out of the scriptorium the day she walked: not just the knife, but a folded page from a Choir draft with a name on it that she has never been able to bring herself to read closely. The page is water-stained and the hand is not Mother Sable's. Tracing the hand leads through the Cathedral's outer offices, a disgraced notary named Tamsin Vey with Choir debts, and finally to the scriptorium's night-shift roster — where Wren discovers that the page is not a receipt at all, but a copyist's practice sheet, and the name on it was written by someone learning to scrape.
Wren traces the hand on her stolen page to Tamsin Vey, a notary drowning in Choir debts, who can identify the writer if Wren makes her problem go away. The problem is a hundred and forty gold of Choir loans, and the solution is either coin, forgery, or betrayal.
Whether to pay Tamsin Vey's debt honestly, forge it away, or turn her in to the Choir as a distraction.
Mother Ulva of the Drowned Shrine was a Hollow Choir initiate for eleven years, and she still keeps their sign chalked above her door. She knows Wren is ex-Choir and knows Wren knows it. When the shrine's black coral bell is stolen by the Choir — stolen, Ulva suspects, to stop it ringing — she asks Wren to get it back before the spring tide, when something answers it over the water. The trail leads through the smugglers' cellars to the Choir safehouse, and the bell turns out to be a piece of the Tide-Heart itself, cut away and carried south three hundred years ago.
Wren recovers the black coral bell from the Choir safehouse before the spring tide, navigating the smugglers' cellars with a Choir password she gave them herself. The bell is warm, slightly wet, and rings once when she touches it — and she does not flinch, which surprises her more than the ringing.
Whether to return the bell to Ulva, keep it for the voyage north, or give it back to the Choir as a false peace offering.
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Suggested Level: 3–4
Water is waist-deep in the front half of the vault and chest-deep at the back; swimming is difficult terrain. Drowned shelves give half cover and can be pushed over (Athletics DC 13) to block a lane. The tide rises one step every two rounds; after six rounds the room is full and everyone inside is swimming. The lamp is the only light and can be doused by a splash.
The iron chest behind the third shelf holds the **Expurgated Codex** in a wax satchel, 60 gp in smuggler's coin, and a sealed packet of Hollow Choir receipts. A husk's purse holds 12 sp and a coral bell-clapper.
For three characters, use two husks. For six, add a fourth husk and start the tide one step higher. To make it harder without more bodies, shorten the tide to four rounds.
Suggested Level: 3–4
Shingle is difficult terrain for anyone running. The tide comes in behind the party, cutting off the path back to the hut after four rounds. The buried boat is a 5-foot pit of loose stones. Fog limits sight to 30 feet and gives the singers advantage on Stealth. Ket Varn's trip-lines cross the shingle — a character who runs must make a DC 13 Dexterity save or fall prone.
The logbook of the Sable Queen in its chest, a chant written phonetically in the margin, and 40 gp of salvage coin in Ket Varn's hut. One singer wears a Concord belt-buckle worth 15 gp.
For a strong level-4 party, add a fourth singer. For a level-3 party of four, use two singers and let the light trick work reliably. If the party has no light source, reduce to two singers and have Ket Varn arrive with a lantern in round two.
Suggested Level: 4
A cobbled yard 40 feet across, a coal shed (half cover, flammable), a handcart (half cover, can be tipped as an action), and a cellar door that leads into the old smugglers' tunnel. The inn's windows give light; the yard's corners are dim. A bell rope by the door summons the harbour watch in three rounds — the Choir would rather be arrested than exposed.
The sea-chest holds 120 gp of Choir funds, a tithe-schedule in Mother Sable's hand naming eleven souls a month, and **The Hollow Choir's Bell** wrapped in oilcloth. The watcher carries a narrow-bladed knife and a written password: 'the tide is patient'.
For a level-3 party, drop the cult fanatic and one cultist. For a level-5 party, add two cultists and let the watcher start with the bell already rung. If the party is loud, the harbour watch arrives and arrests everyone — including them.
Suggested Level: 5
The lamp room is 20 feet across with one door and a glass wall; the outside stair is 5 feet wide with no rail and a 60-foot drop. The reef below is difficult terrain and the swell knocks characters prone (DC 12 Strength save) at the start of their turn. The lamp mechanism takes three rounds of work (Arcana DC 15) and one character must stay on it.
Each drowned carries 2d6 salt-pearls worth 10 gp each and a Concord identity tag. The lamp room holds Keeper Morvath's log, a spare wick, and a locked cupboard with **The Saltglass Lens** shard (if the party has not yet taken the lens from Frostmarch, this is a splinter of it, enough to light the lamp once).
For a level-4 party, use three drowned and give the lamp work a DC of 13. For a level-6 party, use six drowned and have two climb the inside of the tower instead. If the party fails to light the lamp, the ship strikes the reef — see the failure states.
Suggested Level: 5
The deck is tilted 20 degrees; moving up it costs double. The red ice is slick (DC 13 Acrobatics to run) and a character restrained on it takes 1d4 cold damage a round. The grooves are 6 inches deep and trip anyone who Dashing across them. The hold is dark beyond the party's light, and the cold gives one level of exhaustion to anyone who fails a DC 13 Constitution save after an hour inside.
The brass astrolabe with thirteen rings in a chart locker, the tide-chart of the Sable Queen, 200 gp of Concord silver in a strongbox, and a captain's ledger with the last three pages torn out.
For a level-4 party, use the hookman alone and let the drowned be frozen until round three. For a level-6 party, add two more drowned and have the hookman start the fight already grappling a crewman's corpse as a shield (half cover).
Suggested Level: 8
The ice shelf is flat and slippery (DC 12 Acrobatics when Dashing) and cracks under heavy weight — a 10-foot square that takes 30 damage or more collapses into black water. The wreck's hull gives total cover. The sloops' bows are 10 feet up and give archers high ground. Fog limits sight to 60 feet and the cold is bitter.
Rook's sloop holds 300 gp of salt-pearls, a stolen Crown navy cutter's pennant, and a written schedule of Vane's tithe shipments. Rook herself carries a hooked axe, a ring of sloop keys, and a pardon she has already forged.
For a level-7 party, use three bandits and one scout. For a level-9 party, add a second wave of four bandits arriving in round three. Rook's hit points can be halved for a shorter, sharper fight without changing her tactics.
Suggested Level: 6
The blubber-yard is open and slick with fat (DC 12 Acrobatics when Dashing). The try-works fire is a 10-foot hazard dealing 2d6 fire damage to anyone who enters. The rendering house has one door and a roof walk 15 feet up. Tents give half cover and burn. The slipway drops into black water.
Vane's sealed orders in the garrison strongbox, the camp's medicine chest, the tithe ledger, 400 gp of Concord pay, and the silvered lens wrapped in oilcloth. The sergeant wears a shard of the lens on a cord.
For a level-5 party, use four bandits, one scout, one veteran and one hound, and let the whalers join in round three. For a level-7 party, add a second veteran and two more bandits, and have the garrison set the try-works alight in round two.
Suggested Level: 8
Knee-deep water over black rock; movement costs double and the rock is slick (DC 12 Acrobatics when Dashing). The arch itself is 40 feet tall and gives total cover. The thirteenth plinth is a 5-foot-high block of raw stone. At high tide the water is waist-deep and the drowned gain advantage on Stealth.
The warden's chest cavity holds three salt-pearls worth 50 gp each and a coral token carved with the Thirteenth's chiselled name. Brother Cassian's satchel holds a forty-year-old letter naming a king's brother.
For a level-7 party, use the warden alone. For a level-9 party, add two more drowned and have the warden start in the arch itself, gaining cover. If the party has the coral bell or the astrolabe's thirteenth ring, they can substitute it for a life and the warden stands down.
Suggested Level: 9
Black sand is loose and slows movement by 5 feet. The blood-channel is a 5-foot-wide groove running from the water to the treeline altar; anyone standing in it has disadvantage on saves against Sweet Rot. The treeline gives cover and the jungle beyond is difficult terrain. The island's sweet air poisons on a failed DC 13 Constitution save for one hour.
Eleven flowered bodies, each with a Concord identity tag and a personal effect worth 10–30 gp. The altar stone's bowl holds a salt-pearl the size of a fist (100 gp) and a carved warning in the old tongue. Oren Sallow's abandoned pack holds a Concord map of the dig sites.
For a level-8 party, use two tithed. For a level-10 party, use four and have one of them be a person the party met in Greyharbor. The tithed can also be avoided entirely with a DC 15 Religion check and a spoken name — reward that.
Suggested Level: 9
The Hall floor is broken flagstone with a 10-foot hole where the panel is being lifted. Fallen roof beams give cover. The upper gallery is 15 feet up and reachable by a broken stair. Fires started on the floor-plans spread 5 feet a round and fill the Hall with smoke (lightly obscured, DC 12 Constitution save to act in it).
The true record under the floor panel, three Concord crowbars, 150 gp of dig pay, and a chart marking the Ossuary and the Tide-Heart. The stalker's lair in the treeline holds a hunter's cache of 80 gp and a carved bone whistle.
For a level-8 party, use four bandits, one scout and the veteran, and drop the stalker. For a level-10 party, add a second veteran and a second stalker, and start the fire in round one.
Suggested Level: 10
A 10-foot-wide spiral stair with record-stone walls; only two characters can fight abreast. The stair is steep (difficult terrain going up). The archive chamber at the bottom is 30 feet across with a sealed stone door and a shaft of daylight from the Hall above.
The sealed archive holds the true record's master copy, a bronze case of Seven Nations coin worth 500 gp, and a chiselled stone bearing the Thirteenth's name — the physical object Vane's diggers were sent to find.
For a level-9 party, use the sentinel alone and let the diggers be already dead. For a level-11 party, add a second sentinel at the archive door and give the first one maximum hit points.
Suggested Level: 10
Shelves of skulls form narrow aisles 5 feet wide with half cover. The far end of the vault is flooded to the knee. Coral ribs cross the ceiling at head height. The air is cold and dry and every sound carries; a shouted spell can be heard three chambers away.
Sister Venn's skull (painted with her own name), two more Concord-taken skulls, a length of cold iron chain (**The Penitent's Chain**), and a coral reliquary worth 250 gp.
For a level-9 party, use the name thief alone. For a level-11 party, add two more husks and have the thief start with a name already erased from one character's memory (one proficiency lost until a long rest).
Suggested Level: 12
The coral bowl is 100 feet across, its rim 5 feet above the surrounding moss. The grooves are slick and stained. The twelve standing stones give cover; the fallen thirteenth stone is a 10-foot block that takes two characters one round to topple (Athletics DC 16). The kneeling crew are prone, drugged, and occupy the rim — area effects that hit them cost the party the chance to save them.
**Vane's Coral Crown**, the admiral's signet, 1,200 gp of Concord salt-pearls, and the relic chest at the outer ring holding Sister Venn's skull and three stolen Seven Nations relics.
For a level-11 party, use one veteran and one stalker. For a level-13 party, add two more veterans and a third stalker, and shorten the tide to four rounds. Allied NPCs (Sten Harrow, Bram Hollow, a pardoned Kestrel Rook, Sister Venn for one hour) can absorb one enemy each without changing the roster.
Carl's Compass of the Long Way
Completed
Act I — the chart room of Saltspray House, given by Peg Leg Carl when the charter is signed
False
The Expurgated Codex
Completed
Act I — the iron chest in the Drowned Archive beneath Quill's Bindery
False
Potion of Fog Walking
Completed
Act I — the Drowned Shrine of the Twelve in the Salt Quarter, given by Mother Ulva
False
The Hollow Choir's Bell
Completed
Act I — the sea-chest in the yard behind the Grey Gull, or the Choir safehouse beneath the Salt Quarter
False
The Saltglass Lens
Completed
Act II — the Frostmarch garrison strongbox, or the lamp room of the Harrow Light
False
The Tide-Chart of the Sable Queen
Completed
Act II — the chart locker in the wreck of the Sable Queen
False
The Brass Astrolabe of Harrow Light
Completed
Act II — the hold of the Sable Queen, past the blood-grooves
True — by a character proficient in navigator's tools or Survival
Long Patience
Completed
Act II — the try-works strongbox at the Frostmarch Camp, or given by Doctor Vesna Orl
False
Vane's Coral Crown
Completed
Act III — taken from Aurel Vane at the Tide-Heart
True — by any character willing to accept the dawn damage
The Thirteenth's Nail
Completed
Act III — the coral reliquary on the third shelf of the Ossuary bone-vaults
False
The Driftwood Buckler
Completed
Act III — the reward for Bram Hollow's hunt in Sevenfold Hollow
False
The Penitent's Chain
Completed
Act III — the third shelf of the Ossuary bone-vaults, or Vane's relic chest at the Tide-Heart
False
