🌊 Fluid

The Maw's Due

Session iii · the repossession · and the sail home

At a Glance

Where: The Surety, dying under their feet — then the Petrel, then Onda
When: Dusk, immediately — session iii opens in the same breath session ii closed
Who: The Wracktide Maw, come to collect; Krell, renegotiating; the party, carrying what they chose to carry
Purpose: A stand-or-run climax on a six-segment clock, then the real climax: Dohr, the box, and what the party has decided to be
Ends when: The party stands on the quay, paid or not, with the campaign's first true choice behind them

The Collection

Read aloud — it comes back The flat water breaks. Something the size of a longboat rises against the Surety's quarter without hurry and without splash — plated, weed-hung, older than the ship and surer of itself, tentacles finding the rail like a stevedore finding a handhold. It does not roar. It takes hold of the ship the way you take hold of a thing that is yours, and the first timber gives with a sound like a knuckle cracking. Somewhere behind you, Vasso Krell says, quite calmly: “Ah. She was never salvage. She's owed.”

Play it exactly as the read-aloud frames it: this is not an attack, it is a repossession. The Wracktide Maw dragged the Surety once, lost her to a squall, and has come to finish the collection. It wants the ship, not the crew — but it does not distinguish cargo from passengers, and the party is standing on the invoice.

The Ship's Death — a six-segment clock

Run the sinking as a visible clock. Advance one segment at the end of each round (or whenever the fiction obviously lurches). The clock is half the encounter — it is the arena dying, the Maw's regeneration coming online, and the price of every round the party spends deciding.

Reading the clock

1 — the list steepens; loose gear slides. 2 — the bilge patch blows; water climbs the hold ladder; anything below decks is now a swim. 3 — the mainmast comes down in its webs (everyone on deck: DC 12 Dexterity save or 7 (2d6) bludgeoning and knocked prone). 4 — the deck is awash amidships; every move on it is difficult terrain. 5 — she goes down by the stern; anything not in hand is gone. 6 — the Surety is under, and the sea above her closes flat and satisfied. Anyone still aboard is in open water with the Maw and the drowning dark.

Running the Maw

It fights the ship first. Each round it tears at hull, not heroes — unless someone hurts it, blocks its work, or (worst) tries to take things off the ship in its sight. Then a tentacle comes for them: latch, squeeze, and back to work with the prize held.
It can be ended here — if they're fast and smart. Its Tidal Vigor heals it every round it fights from the water, and the clock is steadily handing it the whole arena; but for the first three segments the high deck is still dry planking, and a Maw hauled, lured, or baited up onto it (its prizes are up there, after all) regenerates nothing. Telegraph this — Krell can say it outright: “It heals in its own element. Get it out.” Standing and killing it is a real choice with a real payoff: the drownings stop, and Onda knows who stopped them.
Running is still on the table. The Maw wants the ship more than the crew, and a party that grabs what matters and goes will not be chased past the rail. If it lives, it sounds and dives with the wreck, back to the reef-field it keeps — wounded, patient, and still out there. Neither choice is wrong; they are different campaigns. Write down which one the table made.
The deckhands surface. If any Drowned Deckhands survived session ii, segment 3 shakes them loose on deck — not a planned wave, just the ship's dead riding her down. Sunlight is gone; they fight clean now.
Krell's move. If he's alive, he renegotiates with the sea in real time. Hostile Krell offers it richer cargo — a slow PC, a grappled one — and the table gets a villain worth hating for exactly one round. Friendly Krell does the opposite: he and his Wrack-Pickers work the boats, take losses, and earn whatever mercy the party showed him in the hold. Either way he ends the module owing or owed — write it down.

The Wracktide Maw

Reskin of the Chuul (MM) · Large aberration, chaotic evil · one house tweak

Armor Class16 (natural armor) Hit Points93 (11d10 + 33) Speed30 ft, swim 30 ft CR4 (1,100 XP)

Str19 (+4)

Dex10 (+0)

Con16 (+3)

Int5 (−3)

Wis11 (+0)

Cha5 (−3)

Skills Perception +4 · Damage Immunities poison · Condition Immunities poisoned · Senses darkvision 60 ft, passive Perception 14.

Amphibious. The Maw can breathe air and water.

Sense Magic. The Maw senses magic within 120 ft at will (as the detect magic spell). (Reflavor: it feels the living and the drowned in the water around it.)

House tweak — Tidal Vigor. At the start of its turn, if at least half the Maw's body is in water, it regains 8 hit points. It gains no benefit while more than half its body is on dry planking — through clock segment 3 the high deck still qualifies, and luring or hauling it up there shuts the healing off. From segment 4 the deck is awash and the dry ground is gone.

Actions

Multiattack. The Maw makes two Pincer attacks. If it is grappling a creature, it can also use its Tentacles once.

Pincer. Melee attack: +6 to hit, reach 10 ft, one target. Hit: 11 (2d6 + 4) bludgeoning damage. The target is grappled (escape DC 14) if it is a Large or smaller creature and the Maw doesn't have two other creatures grappled.

Tentacles. One creature grappled by the Maw must succeed on a DC 13 Constitution saving throw or be poisoned for 1 minute. Until this poison ends, the target is paralyzed. The target repeats the save at the end of each of its turns, ending the effect on a success. (Reflavor: the drowned crew drag it under — a paralyzed body on a sinking ship is a drowning one.)

Award. The full 1,100 XP is for resolving the Maw — killed, laid to rest, or escaped with what mattered. Surviving its collection was the encounter.

Ending It — three ways off this ship

Kill it. Drop the Maw to 0 and it comes apart — rigging, coral, and drowned men collapsing back into the sea as the water claims them. The swell goes flat. The drownings stop, and Onda will learn who stopped them. But the crew never passed the Gate. Note it quietly; don't announce it.
Lay it to rest. A character who realizes the Maw is the drowned crews — via the captain's log, the untaken åsan, a DC 13 Intelligence (Religion), or Krell saying so outright — can try the passage rite mid-fight: reach it, offer the åsan hand-to-hand (the Open Hand), and make the case that the debt was never theirs to pay. Adjudicate as an action + a DC 15 Charisma (Persuasion or Religion), at advantage if something of real worth is given back to the water as weregild — and yes, the strongbox counts, and the table should feel that. On success the Maw unclenches — the drowned let go, the water stills, and the sea is truly done here. This is the “good” ending; reward the table that finds it.
Run. Over the rail with what they chose to carry, per the Scramble. The Maw takes the ship and dives. Nobody at the table should be told this was wrong — only that the water out past the Teeth is still owed, and still keeping accounts.

The Scramble

The way out is the way in: over the rail, down the battens or straight into the water, and across to where Brame is holding the Petrel as close as a sane man dares — which is not very. Tools for the run, deal as needed:

Checks menu. Athletics to swim or haul; Acrobatics to cross the awash deck; Animal Handling, oddly, to calm the Gleaners' panicking skiff-mule; a rope thrown from the Petrel gives advantage. Fail forward — a failed check costs position or cargo, never the whole PC, until segment 5.
The cargo question. This is the scene's soul. Two stone of strongbox, a crated hold-share, a wounded Wrack-Picker, the åsan tin, each other — hands are finite and the clock is running. Make them choose out loud. What they carry off the Surety is the module's verdict on who they are.
Brame's line. When the last of them comes over the Petrel's rail, he looks past them at the swallowed ship and says: “Now we don't speak of her heading, and we don't look back. She's paid. Looking back is how you get added on.”

The Homecoming

The sail home is quiet and should be played quiet — one beat per PC at the rail if the table wants it (see Epilogues). Then Onda, the counting-house, and the real climax of the weekend: Iselle Dohr, the box on her table, and everything the party now knows.

Seal unbroken. Full fee, real warmth, and — if they mention the manifest drawer stayed shut or went down with the ship — visible, carefully-mastered relief. She owes them, knows it, and hates owing. A well-placed ally, honestly bought.
Seal broken, or the manifest in hand. She doesn't bluster. She pours the arak, sits, and asks what they want — the purest House Sai scene in the arc. Blackmail, alliance, mercy, or the salvage court: any road is good campaign fuel, and her page (the lever cuts both ways) tells you how she pays each one back.
The crew. Whatever else happens, someone should say the names. If a PC gave the deckhand its åsan, or brought the tin home to the families, Onda notices — quietly, the way ports notice — and the party's name on the wharf changes weight. Cheaper than gold and worth more.

Epilogues — one beat each

Before or after the counting-house, deal each PC a short solo close, mirror to their Watch Bill scene from session i:

The letter, finished — or burned. What do they tell the person from session i's letter now?
The professional eye, revised — what the practical PC now believes about the five weeks that they didn't believe on the way out.
The faith beat, answered — the water is no longer attentive. It's satisfied. Which is worse, and the spiritual PC knows it.
Haxami's close. The letter-writer's table on the dock is empty — packed up, gone, no forwarding. Whoever was asking about the clerk has their answers. Say nothing else. (See Haxami's half of Act I — this cost him nothing yet. Yet.)

The Hook, Armed

Give the weekend its last scene — and mark the party for 5th level on the quay; the milestone lands here. Then: Dohr, at the door or by letter, with the next number already written. She has watched the party handle one impossible errand discreetly, and she has one more.

Read aloud — the next contract “You brought my box home off a dead ship, so I'll speak plainly: it was not my only box in that water. The Ledgerwake went down in the spring, in the wreck-field east of my harbour, with a strongbox of mine aboard her — and whatever kept that water is done keeping it now. The wreck sits shallow at low tide. Walk out. Bring me what's mine, quietly. Name your fee.”

That salvage is the next module — unwritten, on purpose (the acts stay thin until the weekend is played). What the party will find beside her slip in the Ledgerwake's strongbox is a book — an account of what has been given and what is still owed — and Krell's broken arithmetic already points straight at it. If the Maw lived, the same contract simply still has teeth in it.

Pacing — the three-hour shape

Roughly: the collection + escape ~60–75 min · the sail home ~15 min · the homecoming ~45 min · epilogues + the hook ~30 min.
Running long? Compress epilogues into a single montage round the Petrel's rail; hold Dohr's next contract for a letter delivered as the weekend's final read-aloud.
Running short? Full scene per epilogue, and let the counting-house negotiation sprawl — it can carry forty-five minutes at a good table.
The one thing: protect the homecoming. The escape is the spectacle, but Dohr's table is where the weekend becomes a campaign.