Alder Tull, the Second Sea-Chest

Level 1 Human Fighter (— (Fighter fighting style chosen at 1st level: Dueling))

Available with DM subscription

STR

16 (+3)

DEX

15 (+2)

CON

14 (+2)

INT

WIS

12 (+1)

CHA

8 (-1)

Defense

Armor Class 18 (Chain Mail + Shield)

Hit Points 12 (1d10 + 2 +2)

Speed 30 ft.

Proficiencies & Skills

Saving Throws Strength, Constitution

Skills Insight +3, Athletics +5, Perception +3, Intimidation +1

Features

Boarding Pike (treated as Spear)

Custom equipment — a boat hook length pike used for boarding actions on the High Quay Level 1

Boarding Pike (Spear). Melee or Ranged Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft. (melee) or range 20/60 ft. (thrown), one target. Hit: 1d6 + 3 piercing, plus 1d4 from Dueling when used in melee. Quicken: when you hit with a thrown spear, you can draw another spear as part of the attack. Thrown: the weapon can be thrown.

Weapon Mastery

Fighter class feature Level 1

You have studied and practiced with certain weapons and can use their mastery properties: Spear (Quicken/Thrown), Longsword (Sap), Dagger (Nick), Light Crossbow (—). You can use the mastery property of one weapon per attack.

Tavern Brawler

Sailor background feat Level 1

Origin Feat (Sailor background). You have Advantage on Strength and Dexterity saving throws and ability checks to escape a Grapple, and you can grapple a creature as a Bonus Action.

Fighting Style: Dueling

Fighter class feature Level 1

Fighting Style Feat. While you are holding a melee weapon with which you are proficient, the weapon deals an extra 1d4 damage when you hit with it (included below).

Second Wind

Fighter class feature Level 1

2 / Long Rest

You gain a Second Wind ability: Bonus Action, regain 1d10 + Fighter level (currently 1) HP; twice per Long Rest.

Resourceful (Human)

Human species trait Level 1

1 / Long Rest

You gain Heroic Inspiration (reroll any die) whenever you finish a Long Rest.

Water Vehicles

Sailor background Level 1

You are proficient with Navigator's tools and Water Vehicles.

Behind the character

Character Information

Alder Tull is nineteen, broad through the shoulders from a year of hauling crates on the High Quay, with a square, blunt face, wind-reddened cheeks, and a small scar over his left eyebrow from a cargo hook. He wears a salt-stiffened stevedore's coat over boiled leather, heavy sea boots, and a woollen watch cap pulled low, and he carries a boarding pike taller than he is, planted upright beside him whenever he stands still.

He is quiet in crowds and watchful at the edges of rooms, counting exits and counting names — he has developed a habit of counting every crew list he is shown, and he always finds the missing two.

He is blunt, loyal, and slow to anger in a way that makes the anger worse when it finally arrives. He has a stevedore's patience and a guard's reflexes, and he speaks in short sentences that are either statements or questions with obvious answers. He does not drink, because his father did not drink, because his father's father drank; the abstinence is a chain of three generations and he holds it like a rail. He is lawful in the way of a man who believes in ledgers: every debt recorded, every name remembered, every account settled in person.

Since his father sailed north with Peg Leg Carl and did not come back, Alder has been waiting — working the quay, learning the pike, and watching the Saltspray at anchor with a patience that is really a held breath. His uncle Brannoc has already packed a second sea-chest for a man who is not coming home. Alder has decided that the chest is his: he will fill it with his father's body or his father's story, whichever the north allows, and he will get the two missing names out of Brannoc and Carl before the fog closes over the deck.

Before the adventure

Character Background

Alder Tull was born on the High Quay of Lordinium, the son of a stevedore father and a mother who died of harbour fever when he was nine. His father, Garin Tull, raised him on the timetable of the tides: up before the fish market, work by lamplight, and never a drop of drink, because Garin had watched his own father drink himself off the Quay into the grey water and had made Alder swear the same oath at eleven.

The oath is the only scripture Alder has ever needed. When Peg Leg Carl came back from the north eleven months ago with a hold of impossible fruit and a crew that would not meet anyone's eyes, Garin Tull signed on for the return voyage because the pay was triple stevedore wages and because he wanted to leave Alder something better than a hook and a coil of rope. He did not come home. Carl's crew list has eleven names and Carl will speak nine of them, and Alder has learned to count.

His uncle Brannoc Tull, Carl's first mate of twenty years, has been the only family Alder has left. Brannoc took him in, taught him the boarding pike on the Saltspray's deck in winter, and never once lied to him — until now. Brannoc has already packed a second sea-chest, oiled and corded, for a man who is not coming back, and Alder has decided the chest is his: not as a grave-gift but as a debt to be collected in person, on whatever beach his father is owed.

He has spent the year as a quay guard, breaking up press-gangs and Choir collectors with a boat-hook, learning that he is good at violence and uneasy about how little it costs him.

Alder does not trust Peg Leg Carl, does not trust the Cathedral, and does not trust the fog. He trusts rope, high ground, and the four people on the expedition who have told him the truth so far. He signed the charter because the Saltspray is the only ship going north, and because if his father is alive he is on that island, and if he is dead, the island owes the Tull family a body and a story, and Alder intends to collect both.

Threads to follow

Unresolved Plots

The two pages cut from the ship's log: who cut them, and what the missing entries recorded about the beach at Borealis. The pages exist somewhere — Carl keeps them, or Brannoc does, and finding them is a quest line that runs from Saltspray House to the Tide-Heart.
The second letter in the sea-chest is addressed to Alder's mother, who has been dead for ten years. Someone wrote to a dead woman, which means someone on that crew believed Garin Tull would never come home before he ever sailed — and wanted the family warned.
A Hollow Choir collector on the High Quay owes Alder a beating and Alder owes the Choir a secret about what he saw in their ledgers while he was on their payroll's fringe. The debt runs both directions, and the Choir collects in paperwork.
Old Hask will not look at Alder when they speak, and once called him 'the young Tull' with a weight that suggested he knew exactly which Tull. Hask sailed with the Ashvane and came back alone; whether he saw Garin Tull on that beach is a thread that leads into the Weeping Firth.
King Soleiman's map of the northern sea has three pins and no labels, and one of them sits where the Saltspray is anchored. The King is watching this voyage for reasons that have nothing to do with fog, and Alder's report — or Wren's, or the party's — may decide whether the Crown lets the expedition come home.

Beneath the surface

Secrets

Alder keeps a private tally scratched into the pike's shaft: every name he has heard of the tithed and the lost, in order, with dates. He has not shown it to anyone, because the tally is the only power he has over the fog.
He has already read the two letters in the second sea-chest — one is addressed to him, in his father's hand, and he has not told Brannoc that he knows what it says, or that it asks him not to come north.
Alder has taken money for guard work from a Hollow Choir collector twice without knowing whose coin it was, and the third time he recognised the coral bell and took the pay anyway, because the rent was due. He has never confessed it and it sits in him like bilge.

What haunts them

Fears

That his father went to the island willingly — that the pay was worth more to Garin Tull than the promise to come home, and that the abstinence oath was easier to keep on land than the promise to return.
That the anger he keeps on a long leash is his grandfather's inheritance after all, and that one day it will arrive all at once and cost him the uncle, the crew, or the account itself.
That the second sea-chest is not a debt but a mirror: that he is the second Tull who will not come back, and that somewhere on the High Quay someone is already measuring his shoulders for a chest of his own.

What drives them

Aspirations

To bring his father home — or, if the north will not allow that, to bring his father's story home, complete and unedited, and to read it aloud at the harbour where the letters stopped.
To close the account with Peg Leg Carl face to face: not a knife in the dark, but a debt named aloud on the black sand where it was incurred, with witnesses.
To earn the second sea-chest honestly — to be the man who comes back, so that the Tull family's tally of the lost ends with him instead of beginning again with him.

Personal quest · 1

The Two Names Carl Will Not Speak

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.

Current Stage

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.

Mechanical Rewards

Brannoc's boatswain's pipe (grants advantage on shipboard and crew-morale checks) if forgiven
The second sea-chest itself: a weatherproof strongbox worth 50 gp that counts as a portable chest for loot and evidence
Advantage on Insight checks against Peg Leg Carl and anyone else concealing a debt

Narrative Rewards

The two cut pages of the ship's log, which name the beach and the price
Brannoc's unconditional loyalty, or his permanent estrangement

Personal quest · 2

The Tally on the Pike

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.

Current Stage

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.

Mechanical Rewards

The Quartermaster's Roll: a ledger that grants advantage on any check to identify a tithed creature, a Choir agent, or a name scraped from a record
Alders' pike gains the tally-honed edge: +1 to damage against any creature whose name appears on the roll
Tessaly Quill's binding services: once per adventure, she can preserve a document against water, fire, and erasure

Narrative Rewards

The full tithe-roll of the Crown Coast, including entries that name Mother Sable's hand
Tessaly Quill's respect, and with it safe lodging and document care in the Salt Quarter

Personal quest · 3

The Letter to a Dead Woman

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.

Current Stage

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.

Mechanical Rewards

The penitent's mark: Alder learns the Choir's recognition signs and passwords, granting advantage on Stealth and Deception checks inside any Choir safehouse or against Choir agents
A Coral Bell Watcher's silence-charm: once per day, Alder can silence all singing within 30 feet for one minute
Mother Ulva's blessing: advantage on one saving throw, declared before the roll

Narrative Rewards

The identity of the letter's writer, and with it a witness to what happened on the beach at Borealis
A key to the Choir safehouse beneath the Salt Quarter, and everything the Choir has been hiding there

Major Decision

Context

The chart room of Saltspray House, when the chest is finally opened.

Choice Made

Hear Brannoc out without violence, or take the second sea-chest and walk away from his uncle forever. Hearing the truth — that Carl gave two men to the island and Brannoc held one of them down — either mends the family or ends it. If Alder forgives Brannoc, the uncle fights at his side through the whole campaign; if Alder takes the chest and leaves, he loses his greatest ally and gains a permanent +1 to Wisdom saves against being frightened, purchased with loneliness.

Impact

Determines whether Brannoc Tull joins the party as a companion, and permanently alters Alder's Wisdom save proficiency and his access to the expedition's crew loyalty. Forgiving grants Brannoc's boatswain pipe (advantage on shipboard checks); refusing grants the stevedore's stoicism bonus but the crew's trust drops a step forever.

Major Decision

Context

The black shallows before the fog, with Brother Cassian watching.

Choice Made

At the Gate of the Twelve, when the price of passage is a life, Alder can offer his own blood freely, take a Concord prisoner's life by force, or substitute the coral bell or the astrolabe's thirteenth ring. Offering himself freely marks him as the Thirteenth's kin in spirit: he gains the Tide-Marked trait (once per long rest, when reduced to 0 hit points, he may refuse the blow and remain at 1 hp). Taking a life marks the whole party instead, raising the Ossuary's DCs by 2.

Impact

Grants or withholds the Tide-Marked trait, permanently alters the Ossuary's difficulty, and determines whether the party enters Borealis clean or blood-marked. The choice also seeds Alder's final confrontation with Carl, whose arithmetic at the altar was the same sum.

Major Decision

Context

The Verdant Strand or the Ossuary stair, wherever the truth surfaces.

Choice Made

On the black sand of Borealis, Alder learns his father's fate: Garin Tull was the second man given to the island, and he may be blooming in the dark like Bram Hollow's father. Alder can end his father mercifully with the pike, lay him to rest by speaking his name from a painted skull, or refuse to accept the truth and leave the beach without looking. Ending him grants Alder the vow of the settled account (+2 damage with the boarding pike forever, and immunity to the island's sweetness); refusing leaves the account open and the pike's edge dull with doubt (-1 to hit on Borealis until the account is closed).

Impact

Permanently enhances or hampers Alder's signature weapon, resolves or poisons his core motivation, and determines whether the second sea-chest goes home full or empty. It also decides whether Carl faces Alder's pike or Alder's mercy at the Tide-Heart.

Transformative Moment

Trigger

The personal quest 'The Two Names Carl Will Not Speak'.

Transformation

The night Brannoc opens the second sea-chest, Alder stops being a boy waiting for his father and becomes a man carrying his father's account. The chest's contents — two sets of oilskins, two letters, a log with two pages cut out — become the ledger he keeps for the rest of the campaign.

Mechanical Changes

Transformative Moment

Trigger

The Gate of the Twelve, Act II.

Transformation

Crossing the Gate of the Twelve, Alder passes from the world of paperwork into the world of the ledger written in blood. Whatever he pays with, the island takes his measure, and he begins to hear the singing the way the fog-touched do — not as a threat, but as an invoice.

Mechanical Changes

Transformative Moment

Trigger

The finale at the Tide-Heart, Act III.

Transformation

At the Tide-Heart, facing Carl and Vane and the same arithmetic, Alder must choose what a debt is worth when the debtor is a famous man and the creditor is a beach of black sand. He stops being the Second Sea-Chest — a title for a grave — and becomes either the man who closed the account or the man who forgave it.

Mechanical Changes

Ally

Brannoc Tull, the First Mate

Relationship ally

Influence 0/10

Loyalty 0/10

Shared History

Brannoc Tull is Alder's father's brother and has been the boy's second father since Garin Tull first signed with Peg Leg Carl. He taught Alder to stand a boarding pike on the Saltspray's frozen deck, taught him the knots, the watches, and the superstitions — never whistle on deck, never say the island's name after dark — and he never drank, in solidarity with his brother's oath, though Brannoc liked his ale.

When Garin did not come home, Brannoc took Alder onto the quay, got him guard work, and paid his rent twice without being asked. He also packed a second sea-chest, oiled and corded, with two sets of oilskins and two letters inside, and then said nothing for eleven months. Alder knows the chest exists. Brannoc knows Alder knows. Neither has opened the door on what is inside it, and the whole relationship now stands in that chart-room doorway, waiting.

Enemy

Aurel Vane, the Ashvane Admiral

Threat Level 0/10

Conflict Type

Personal Stakes

Alder has never met Aurel Vane and already owes him the worst thing in his life. Vane's Concord supplied the arithmetic that Peg Leg Carl used on the beach at Borealis: the tithe schedule, the eleven a month, the price of return. Whether Carl learned the island's price from Vane's earlier voyages or taught it to him, the ledger is the same, and Garin Tull is one of its entries.

Vane, for his part, does not know Alder exists — which makes it worse, because to the admiral, Alder's father is a number in a sealed order, and numbers do not have sons waiting on the High Quay. When they finally meet, Vane will be courteous, tired, and completely certain, and he will offer Alder a place in the new order with genuine regret when he refuses. Alder intends to answer the arithmetic with the pike.

Faction

The Borealis Expedition

Standing 0/10

Influence

The Borealis Expedition is Alder's employer, his ship, and his only road north. He grew up on its fringes: Brannoc's mess-table stories, the Saltspray at anchor, the figurehead over Saltspray House that he has walked past since childhood. When Garin Tull vanished, the expedition became something more complicated — a family that has lost someone and will not say how, led by a famous man whose hands shake over a cup.

Alder signed the charter because the Saltspray is the only ship sailing into the fog, and because if his father is alive, he is on that island, and if he is dead, the island owes the Tulls a body and a story. The crew know him as Brannoc's boy and mostly like him; a few of them — the ones who were on the beach — go quiet when he counts the crew list aloud.

Alder's standing in the expedition will decide whether the crew can be told the truth about the two missing names, and whether they will stand with the party or with Carl when the arithmetic comes out.

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