Sieged Saltmarsh Map

Map Key

The area outlined in red above and the red-texted buildings below are secured and guarded by various entities. Many have been repurposed, and these spaces are also inside the wards. All spaces outside the red outlines and in non-red text should be presumed dangerous.

I will update the entries below as you learn more.

1) City Gate - Saltmarsh was built on the ruins of a much older settlement. One sign of this is that the town has a small stretch of wall and a single town gate. One road that leads through the swamps is that way. The other road is high on the cliffside by the temple and is not secured.

2) Barracks and Jail - Built on a low hill, the jail is all barracks now, housing the refugee Swamp Orcs who survived and refugee'd here.

3) The Wicker Goat - Bearing the dubious honor of being the oldest tavern in town, the Wicker Goat is owned by Lankus Kurrid and his wife. It is blue collar and frequented by the town guard and the tiefling warehouse workers. The two-story building has sleeping quarters for rent on the upper floor, one of which is an apartment rented long terms by Felice, Lady Primewater's maid.

4) Primewater Second home. Now a burned ruin.

6) The Mage Tower of Keledek the Unspoken -- Sacked.

7) Faithful Quartermasters of Luz A Large warehouse dedicated to the preservation and shipping of fish to the Kingdom of Luz

8) The Empty Net - A rickety tavern partially supported by stilts driven into the harbor waters. Owned by ~~Kreb Shenker~~ YOU!!!! The lizards now live in the old Yuan-Ti quarters and the tunnels that lead to the swamp and other places, but not to One-Eyed Jacks, because it was sacked, and this tunnel has been collapsed.

9) The Green Market - A dozen stalls down to the bridge, this was the local market, now it is housing for farmers and fishermen who serve all communal meals here.

10) Sharkfin Bridge - Those with fey origins or ties feel dizzy and sick on it as this was the thin place where Liltha and her allies crafted the wards.

11) Marshland Mounts. Stables run by an older woman by the name of Gitty Killbert. Now it is also barracks for the remaining Templetome Paladins and their griffons.

12) Kester’s Leather Goods - The tannery is now a makeshift temple where Welgar, Gand, one surviving acolyte and some of the homeless devout live. The Fae are also houses here, near the edge of the wards. Aubreck Drallion comes to pull them through daily.

13) The Snapping Line. This popular inn and tavern is built from the planks and hulls of half a dozen decommissioned fishing ships. Its decor is predictably nautical in theme, and its sleeping rooms are plain but comfortable renditions of a ship’s cabins. Owned by the orphaned Saltwinds: Rist (25) Briony (22) Feeona (20) Raya (18) Chani (16) Nell (9-) All Saltwinds and Jasker. Most families with young children live here and also in:

14) Council Hall -- Now housing for families and many of the town Hin, including Winston.

15) Saintsday Market Stalls Built around a well dug in the town’s early days, this is the large market square with booths that hosted the Sunday market. Temporary housing for variosu displaced peoples.

16) Primewater Estate - One of the nicest houses in town. Certainly the most ostentatious.

17) The Dwarven Anvil - Jasker's smithy.

18) King-Owned property - Large estate-style monied home with water views, outbuildings, and gardens

19) Oweland Estate -- Eda and her daughter Thalia and the CHangeling are gone.

20) The Solmar estate - Anders and Shella are kidnapped.

21) King-Owned property. Large estate-style monied home with water views, outbuildings, and gardens

22) The Drallion Estate. A tall, lovely home falling into disrepair with outbuildings and private docks.

23) A large monied home, currently shut up, but immaculately maintained.

24) Small buildings in various stages of decay and ruin, you now know dwarves and gnomes lived here and fished. SOme were Bingle;s ancestors. A Vapmire was trapped here -- Xo -- you let him out to go adventuring with a winter fairy named who is part of the Ten Fang Fury.

25) The Leap - an outcropping of rock nearly a hundred feet above the churning water below. Several stone benches stand near this precipitous edge, and a few stone markers sit in the tall grass nearby. Traditionally, the people of Saltmarsh leap from the cliffs into the water below when a loved one drowns at sea. The jump is rarely fatal; the water below the Leap is free of rocks.

26) Temple of Luminar - Services at this long-standing moon goddess's temple are well attended, and the town reveres her mostly in her aspect as the Tide Puller. The congregation is led by a one-legged, one-eyed, quarter-orc Cleric of Luminar: Wellgar Brinehanded

27) Saltmarsh Cemetery The town’s cemetery is well-kept, but many of its graves are little more than memorial stones laid for those who died at sea. An Orc named Krag, brother of Wellgar, who claims to be a half-orc, lives there and manages it.

28) Winston's --- A general store run by a friendly true neutral Hin who is willing to do shady (but not evil) deals for Falco.

At the Tower of the Undine Mouth

Falco. Fela. Tempest. Bingle.

You all touch each other. Some cling more than others (looking at you, Fred) and some really want to be on the end, not hemmed by people (hey there, Banx) but the Paladin is smart to insist that you all are in contact. The thick page is difficult to tear, even with Bingle steadying the book. Under, as it peels, you all see a picture of the gate up the road from the tower.

As you tear, the page grows and billows and warps out, larger and larger, thin and billowing like the silk bowl of a parachute. As it comes free, the book cannot, will not, be held. It is slippery. It slips away. The Brineweave slips with it, al that bright air sucked out of the —room? The dome? You are inside the billowing folds of the picture of the tower, hampered and caught and blinded. You only know that you are not alone because you all keep desperate hold of one another.

A thousand days pass in a bare second, flashes of sunrise to sunset. Some of you see the tower fall to ruin and be eaten by weeds. Some of you see it unbuild itself, and a mass of chopped back swampy wilderness un-razes itself in the place where it once (or once will have?) stood.

Some rooty pull recenters you, a green-stinking yank that gathers you and tumbles you into a clinging pile between these changes, and then the silk balloon widens and flares and expands so fast from around you that you cannot trace its wild fast blur, and the widening sky part of it grows so wide it is the sky, and the green verdant part of the drawing grows so vast it is the green earth under your feet, and the marsh smell that it billows up around you is real marsh, and the tower is the tower — is the — is the—-here you stand. Prime side. Smelling salt sea and marsh flower, and under it, a dank fish-rot that is too faint to fully sicken you—-but it is trying.

Banx cries out then, a raw wrecked sound, pointing to the tower. The door is ripped off. Inside you see fallen beams and rubble. All the windows are smashed out. Ann’s gardens are burned flat to stone and packed earth.

At its cry, the rot smell intensifies, and a flat fishy-headed fellow with one eye melty-dribbling down its cheek pokes its gob out and begins to burp out sounds some of you recognize as the Sahuagin language. Wow. It is so loud. It is going off like an undead siren.

Where are we, Fred shrieks, horrified. This isn’t the Prime?

But it is. Behind you, the gate that leads into town is a few minutes walk away, but you cannot see that place from here. Trees and hills and distance will not allow it.

OOC

This is the only Sahuagin zombie at the tower, thanks to cheerio’s crit fail. This was the moment when you wanted to roll a 1—the Bingle dice curse worked in your favor for once!

It is raising an alarm however.

I will roll its initiative in the OOC channel, if you beat it you can go ahead and take your turn. —He rolled a 17

ALSO! You have leveled up. Except Falco hasn’t. Everyone can go ahead and do that on their sheet before attacking, if you like. Fela may now take her level of Fey Patron warlock. Cheerio you can decide if Banx is going to level as a wizard or a druid, and do the honors please.

Goonie, Falco will feel this BLOCKEDness I talked about in an earlier post. I do want to assure you OOC that this CAN be resolved very quickly. I don’t want to hold your character back for weeks, as this doesn’t feel good; it will only be a few posts at most if you actively work to fix it and try things.

If falco tells the party they can also try things to understand why he is blocked, and there may be NPCs nearby who can help, too. Please use skills and rolls to help him solve this, guys. Arcana might help for example, but there are many paths to resolving this fast.

Regular DM posts resume Tuesday. Forgive these truncated group posts as we wrapped up a chapter while I was traveling.