Session Prep Bundletown-block

Grimy seaside port at midnight, smugglers and fog

Recipe: Town Block

Contextual Narrative

Where the Fog Keeps Its Secrets

At midnight, the Tideworn Wharf is less a neighborhood than a damp knot of leaning buildings, slick cobbles, and ropes that creak somewhere out in the fog. The Lantern Below glows through greenish windows across from the tide stairs, its black-rum drinkers speaking in murmurs whenever the harbor bell sounds. Saltglass Salvage presses against it shoulder-to-shoulder, its cracked sign knocking softly in the wind and its windows crowded with wreckage pulled from ships that never reached shore. Their shared wall sweats brine, and beneath it lies a crawlspace older than either business. Tonight, something valuable has come ashore without a ship. A dockside informant saw a lantern signal blink three times through the fog, then watched a figure climb from the water carrying a sealed chest. Now a charming stranger waits in the tavern's private booth, the shopkeeper keeps checking the lane, and every resident of the block pretends not to notice the smell of smoke beneath the floorboards. Before dawn, the tide will rise high enough to drown the secret—or carry it into the hands of someone much worse.

Sella Moor, dockside informant

“The fog hides ships, faces, and sins. It never hides the tide.”

Tavern

The Lantern Below, commonly called the Drowned Gull

The floor is always wet, even during dry weather, and nobody agrees whether the water comes from the harbor, the cellar, or the walls. Salt-stained beams groan whenever the tide turns. Three sputtering lanterns hang over the bar, each burning a different shade of yellow, and Mara refuses to replace them. She taps a pewter cup against her teeth whenever she is nervous, then hides the cup beneath the counter. She also counts every doorway whenever someone enters. At midnight, the ships beyond the fog groan and creak so loudly that conversations pause without anyone acknowledging it. Customers leave coins in damp rings, and every chair facing the tide stairs is considered unlucky.

TavernView →

Shop

Saltglass Salvage

Saltglass Salvage is a narrow waterfront shop wedged immediately beside the Lantern Below, facing the same fog-choked lane. Its sign is a cracked blue bottle mounted above a door swollen from seawater. The interior smells of tar, mildew, wet rope, lamp oil, and brine. Nets hang from the ceiling, coils of rope fill the corners, and broken lanterns, hooks, ship fittings, driftwood, cracked bottles, and waterlogged crates create cramped lanes through the shop. The clutter provides places to hide, overhear conversations, or improvise tools, but careless movement can send a tower of salvage crashing down. Pellis Quay is a lean, sharp-faced shopkeeper with a silver-streaked beard, immaculate cuffs, and a voice that never seems to run out of gossip. He is outwardly respectable, calling every customer 'friend' and keeping careful receipts, but his eyes constantly flick toward the back room. Pellis maintains a tense business alliance with the keeper of the Lantern Below, supplying rope, lamps, and false-bottomed crates in exchange for protection and access to the shared crawlspace beneath the tavern. He also quietly supplies an unnamed dockside courier with specialized hooks, charts, and dry boxes. Pellis suspects a second local NPC is responsible for recent thefts, though he lacks proof and is afraid that accusing the wrong person will expose his own smuggling contacts. The shop's most dangerous secret is a barnacle-covered brass lockbox recovered from a wreck that Pellis refuses to discuss. He has hidden it beneath broken compass housings in the back room and becomes unusually talkative whenever anyone asks about the salvage. The lockbox may contain coded instructions, stolen correspondence, or a key to a larger cache, but Pellis himself may not know the full truth. Transactions at Saltglass Salvage always come with gossip. Sailors trade rumors for discounts, dockworkers ask about missing cargo, and smugglers use ordinary purchases to signal that a shipment is ready. A loose floorboard near the counter conceals a narrow listening gap toward the alley. The back room connects to the tavern's crawlspace through a warped trapdoor hidden under sailcloth. Saltwater drips through the ceiling during high tide, and every few hours something bumps against the outside wall below the waterline. Pellis insists it is floating wreckage. The tavern keeper knows better.

Shop

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Key Personas

Kesh Tegba

Kesh is observant, suspicious, and startlingly compassionate toward people who work with their hands. They are generous with directions to strangers but stingy with personal truth, especially around anyone who reminds them of the Sable Keel. In a calm mood, they are dryly funny and almost charming. When cornered, they become evasive, petty, and cruelly precise about other people's mistakes. They want to be brave, but mistake preparation for courage and often delay action until the danger has passed.

Veyra Sorn

Charming, patient, and unfailingly polite, Veyra treats every conversation as a negotiation whose terms have already been written. They are generous with strangers who have no power and exacting with people who depend on them. In public they are composed and faintly amused. With frightened refugees they become direct, practical, and unexpectedly tender. When alone, they count coins, reread old ship manifests, and speak to Tomas as if he were still listening.

Bundle Contents

04Items

Generated entities

Regional Effect

The Whispering Floodfog

A cold supernatural fog rolls in from the harbor at midnight, muffling footsteps and making familiar alleys seem subtly rearranged. Damp voices sometimes carry from the water, repeating secrets spoken on shore.

Mechanic

Visibility is limited to 30 feet; creatures have disadvantage on Perception checks relying on sight, and sound-based navigation requires a successful DC 12 Wisdom (Survival) check.

Connections

The Lantern Below, commonly called the Drowned Gull

SHARES_WALL_WITH • Saltglass Salvage

The Lantern Below, commonly called the Drowned Gull

EMPLOYS_OR_PROTECTS • Kesh Tegba

The Lantern Below, commonly called the Drowned Gull

HOSTS • Veyra Sorn

Saltglass Salvage

SUPPLIES • Veyra Sorn

Saltglass Salvage

SUSPECTS • Kesh Tegba

Kesh Tegba

FEARS • Veyra Sorn

Quest Objectives

Find the missing sealed cargo before the tide turns, using rumors in the Lantern Below and clues hidden in Saltglass Salvage.

The party recovers the cargo and can choose whether to expose the corrupt harbor official, ransom the evidence, or quietly return the goods.

The block erupts into a midnight panic: the smuggler's agent starts a fire, the fog thickens, and the harbor watch arrests the tavern keeper and shopkeeper as scapegoats.

Protect the dockside informant long enough to learn what they saw at the tide stairs and identify the lantern signal's recipient.

The informant reveals the smuggler's route and provides the name of the drowned ship needed to safely open the hidden cache.

The dockside informant is taken into the fog and later found drowned, while the smuggler's agent gains control of the evidence.

Decode the scratches on the hidden lockbox and open it without triggering its tidebound curse.

The party obtains the ledger, relic, and blackmail letters, gaining powerful leverage over the port's criminal and official factions.

The cache is opened incorrectly, releasing a spectral deckhand that drags evidence into the harbor and curses everyone who touched the box.

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