🌊 Fluid

The Ship That Didn't Sink

A three-session retreat arc · Onda, the Darktide Isles · 4 characters, level 4 · the campaign opener

At a Glance

For: Four player characters at 4th level · three sessions of ~3 hours (a weekend retreat)
Where: Onda, a House Sai port; the open water past the Wracktide Reef, where a dead ship is drifting
Tone: Slow-burn maritime dread — a talky first session, a derelict crawl, and a reckoning aboard a sinking ship with the thing that owns her
The job: The Surety was written off as lost at the reef with all hands. She has just been sighted afloat. Factor Iselle Dohr pays the party to board her and bring back one sealed strongbox — quietly.
The truth: The thing at the reef took her crew and marked her hull. The sea considers the Surety paid for — and it will come to collect what's owed
Ends when: The Surety goes down for the second and final time — with the Maw dead, laid to rest, or fed — and the party stands on the quay with whatever they chose to carry
Bones: A retrofit of Salvage Operation (Ghosts of Saltmarsh), stretched from one session to three to make room for solo play and lore

Premise

Ships out of Onda have been going down at the Wracktide Reef — calm water, in sight of the harbour lights, three in five weeks. The third was the Surety, a House Sai trader lost nine nights ago with all twenty-two hands, mourned, and duly written off. Then, two days ago, a pearl-diver working the shoals past the Teeth came back to the wharf white to the lips: the Surety is still afloat — hull whole, sails hanging in rags, no lights, no crew, riding the current like something that has forgotten what it's for. Factor Iselle Dohr, who booked her tonnage, will pay handsomely for a small crew to sail out, board her, and bring back the sealed strongbox from the master's cabin. Before the harbourmaster hears. Before the underwriters hear. Before anyone official asks why the factor's own box comes off first.

Read aloud — the pitch “Nine nights ago I lit a lamp for that crew, and I meant it. But grief is grief and paper is paper, and there is a box in her master's cabin with my seal on it that I would very much like back before the salvage court learns my dead ship is out there sailing herself. I'll charter your passage, I'll pay in Saian weight, and I'll ask only this: whatever you find aboard her — the box comes home unopened.”

Behind the screen — the truth of the Surety

The Surety was the third taking. The thing that nests at the Wracktide Reef latched her keel in the dark, in sight of the harbour, and took her crew the way it took the others — but a squall pushed her hull off the shelf before it could drag her under, and the current carried her out past the Teeth. She is not a survivor. She is an unpaid invoice. Her keel carries the thing's claw-scars, and beneath them, older and deliberate, someone has cut Jatu's marks into the wood. The sea considers this ship collected. It has simply not finished collecting her.

Who's aboard. A crew of wrack-pickers — self-styled Gleaners — found her first and have been stripping the hold for two days, led by Vasso Krell, a tidepriest who believes the reef's takings are holy and the gleaning is a rite. Nesting in her rigging: shroudweavers, come up from the water for the quiet and the dark. And below decks, some of her crew are still aboard — the ones the thing did not finish. They did not leave. They are not going to.

Dohr's secret. The strongbox holds the Surety's papers — and the cargo manifest Dohr filed with her underwriters, which declares roughly a third more tonnage than the hold ever carried. The loss claim is already lodged. If the hull surfaces officially with her true papers intact, the arithmetic surfaces with it, and House Sai does not forgive stealing from the House. She is not asking the party to salvage a box; she is asking them to sink a discrepancy. She will not say so, and it is knowable — see the master's cabin.

The climax is a repossession — and the party decides whether it becomes a boss fight. When the party disturbs the ship — and Krell's rites have already rung the dinner bell — the Wracktide Maw comes back for what it was owed. It wants the ship, not them, and running with what matters is always a live option. But it can be ended here: its regeneration only works in the water, and for the first half of the sinking the high deck is still dry planking — lure or haul it up where the sea can't feed it, and the drownings stop for good. There is also a third way, for the table that reads the clues: the Maw is the drowned crews, and the passage rite they were never given can lay it to rest (see Ending It).

Hooks — getting them aboard the Petrel

Coin. Dohr's fee: 250 gp on delivery of the box, seal unbroken, plus the charter of the lugger Petrel and salvage rights to anything aboard that isn't logged Sai cargo. Generous on purpose — she is buying silence as much as labour.
The crew. Twenty-two hands went into the water and no bodies came ashore. A PC with a sailor in the family, a debt in Onda, or a spiritual bent has a reason to want to see — and the wharf talk says the passage rites were never done.
The wrongness. A dead ship sailing itself is the kind of story that reaches the wrong ears fast. Whoever gets aboard first owns whatever she's carrying — coin, answers, or blame.

Session Flow

Three sessions, one per page — each ends on a natural curtain. The pace is deliberately loose: session i is mostly roleplay, session ii is the crawl, session iii is the escape and the reckoning.

The Quay & the Crossing

The hire, the wharf, and the sail out — Dohr's terms, the town's rumors, and the Watch Bill: night-watch pairings built to give every PC a solo beat. Curtain: the Surety on the dawn swell.

The Derelict

The boarding and the crawl — webs in the shrouds, the crew that stayed, the Gleaners in the hold, and the master's cabin where the box and the log are waiting. Curtain: something bumps the hull.

iii

The Maw's Due

The sea comes to collect. A six-segment Ship's Death clock, a stand-or-run reckoning on a dying deck, and the homecoming — Dohr, the box, the choice, and the hook for everything after.

Key NPCs: Factor Iselle Dohr (quest-giver, and a lever for the whole campaign) and Vasso Krell, tidepriest of the Gleaners.

At the table: each session's prose page is the prep read; the table card is the play surface — run order, numbers, one-line NPCs, and read-alouds on one screen. Cards: session i · session ii · session iii.

The Weekend Shape

This arc is built for a retreat — three sittings of about three hours with a slow-playing table — so every session carries one required set-piece and a set of shock absorbers around it. Nothing else is load-bearing.

Session i must end with the Surety sighted. Everything before that is stretchable roleplay: if the table is savouring the wharf, cut the optional Night-Boarders fight and let them talk. If they're racing, deal the fight and add lore drops on the crossing.
Session ii must end with the box found and the hull bumped. The three fights are a menu, not a march — the Gleaners can be talked past entirely, and the shroudweavers can collapse into a hazard if time is short.
Session iii must end ashore. The escape runs on the Ship's Death clock, which you can start a segment early or late depending on the hour. The homecoming and the epilogue beats are the point of the whole weekend — protect the last forty-five minutes for them.
The Lore Locker is the throttle. Table's ahead of schedule? Deal another drop. Behind? Skip them; none is required. Each is keyed to where it lives.

The Lore Locker — optional drops

Eight discoverables, dealt as pacing demands. Each names its scene; none is required for the arc to land, and several arm things that pay off in the climax and beyond.

Drop	Where	What it is · where it points
The pearler's account	i · the wharf	Mirei, who sighted her: the Surety was “sitting wrong — low and steady, like something had her by the keel.” Points at the marks in the bilge.
The letter-writer's questions	i · the wharf	A dockside scribe has been paid to ask casual questions about the party — especially “the clerk.” Deniable, forgettable, and the first feeler aimed at Haxami (see Haxami's half of Act I).
Gull-sign	ii · the boarding	Gulls ride the wind over every wreck in the isles. Not one will land on the Surety. A nature-wise PC knows gulls fear nothing dead — only things that aren't finished.
The untaken åsan	ii · the berths	A tin of passage-buns in a crewman's sea chest, whole and unoffered — nobody gave the dead their rite. Arms the peaceful ending of the climax (see Ending It and Customs).
The captain's log	ii · the cabin	The night itself, in a steady hand that stops mid-word. Calm water, the harbour lights in view — and “a sound off the reef like a debt being called in.”
The keel-marks	ii · the bilge	Claw-scars raked the length of her keel — and under them, older and cut with care, the marks of Jatu. Someone marked this ship for the sea before the sea ever touched her.
Krell's arithmetic	ii · the hold (parley)	Gleaner talk: the reef has always tithed ships, “tidy as a clerk — a hull a season, storm-nights only. These five weeks it takes more than it's owed, faster than it's owed. Somebody's account is behind.” He doesn't know whose. He'd sell the thought for passage off.
The manifest discrepancy	ii–iii · the cabin, or ashore	The true manifest against Dohr's filed claim: a third more tonnage on paper than the hold ever held. The box she wants back unopened is the box that proves it. A lever on her for the rest of the campaign.

Encounter Budget

Built to the 2014 DMG per-character XP thresholds for 4 characters at level 4: Easy 500, Medium 1000, Hard 1500, Deadly 2000 (party totals; adjusted XP shown, using the DMG multipliers). Each fight is tagged in its scene.

Session	Encounter	Roster	Adj. XP	Band
i	Night-Boarders (optional)	3× Reef-Scuttler	`600`	Easy–Medium
ii	The Shroudweavers	2× Shroudweaver	`600`	Easy–Medium
ii	The Crew That Stayed	3× Drowned Deckhand	`1200`	Medium–Hard
ii	The Hold (only if parley fails)	Vasso Krell · 3× Wrack-Picker	`1500`	Hard
iii	The Maw's Due (stand or run)	The Wracktide Maw + the dying ship	`1100+`	Deadly-adjacent

The climax is deliberately unbudgetable — the Maw's 1,100 XP undersells a regenerating brute on a sinking arena, and oversells one dried out on the high deck with its healing shut off. The fight is winnable by a party that fights smart and punishing to one that just trades hits with the sea. Award the full 1,100 however it resolves — killed, laid to rest, or escaped; surviving the collection was the encounter.

Monster Roster

No custom monsters — every block is a reflavored 2014 Monster Manual creature, same statline, house tweaks labelled, and every block lives in this module's own pages.

In-world name	Reskin of (MM)	CR	XP	House tweak	Block in
Reef-Scuttler	Sahuagin	`1/2`	`100`	Claws grapple (latch)	Session i
Shroudweaver	Giant Spider	`1`	`200`	none — the rigging is the tweak	Session ii
Drowned Deckhand	Ghoul	`1`	`200`	+swim; sunlight sensitivity	Session ii
Wrack-Picker	Thug	`1/2`	`100`	sea legs (+swim; no penalty on listing decks)	Session ii
Vasso Krell, Tidepriest	Cult Fanatic	`2`	`450`	spells wear brine (cosmetic)	his page
The Wracktide Maw	Chuul	`4`	`1100`	Tidal Vigor (regen in water; dries out on deck)	Session iii

Rewards & Advancement

Coin. Dohr's 250 gp fee, seal unbroken. If the seal comes home broken she pays anyway — 150 gp, with a smile that costs extra later.
Salvage. The captain's locker holds a cap of water breathing — bone-dry, which aboard this ship reads as either a mercy or a joke. Plus unlogged sundries worth ~80 gp to a discreet buyer.
Levers. The manifest discrepancy (a hold on Dohr), Krell's arithmetic (the first breadcrumb toward the account-book), and the untaken åsan (the peaceful ending of the climax, armed early).
Advancement. None mid-arc — the party runs the weekend at 4th. The milestone to 5th level lands on the quay at the weekend's end, with the Surety down and the Maw answered for, one way or another.

Scaling Your Table

3 players, or a fragile party. Drop one Drowned Deckhand and one Wrack-Picker; Krell opens the parley himself rather than waiting to be found. Give the Maw a slow first segment — it tears at the far end of the ship before it notices them.
5 players, or a hardened party. A third Shroudweaver in the tops; four Wrack-Pickers; and in the climax the Maw uses its Tentacles on every creature it has grappled each turn, not just one.
Running long? Cut the Night-Boarders, collapse the Shroudweavers into a webbed-rigging hazard (DC 12 Dexterity to cross, restrained on a fail), and start the Ship's Death clock at segment 2.
Running short? Deal every Lore Locker drop, let the Gleaners parley and then double-cross at the boats, and give the homecoming a full scene per PC.

Canon Touchpoints

What this module leans on, so it stays consistent with the bible (referenced, never restated):

House Sai — underwriters, salvage courts, manifests, and a factor whose grief and bookkeeping are both real.
Jatu — the leviathan spirit who loathes the sailors it serves. The marks on the keel are its; the theology of the takings is Krell's whole life.
The åsan & the Open Hand — the passage rite nobody gave the Surety's crew, and the courtesy that can still be paid late.
U'Naim Ana & the Ino — touched lightly here: the crew that stayed are a symptom. The word itself, and the full truth, stay behind the screen for now.
The Acts — Haxami's half — the letter-writer's questions are Senna's first feeler. Deniable now; legible only in hindsight.