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Adventure Keeper · Long Island Dungeon Master
The ship is going to lay over when she takes the water, and the only people who can be moved out from under her are the two hundred who paid for the best seats.
At a glance: 4 players · 3rd level (scales 1-10, parties of 3-6) · one 2.5 hour sitting · one location, the Sixpenny Yard at Yarhythe on the morning of a launch · a crowd-work spine with two fights, neither required to win · Class: Free One-Shot, Adventure Keeper weight. Minute budget: Scene 1 (The Hire) 30 · Scene 2 (What Denys Hooper Left) 35 · Scene 3 (The East Staging) 45 · Scene 4 (High Water) 40 = 150 minutes. Mini toolkit: a d12 of what the crowd does, a d6 of how she takes the water. Two clocks: the tide, four boxes; heard from the staging, three boxes.
A shipyard launches at the top of the tide, in front of the whole town. The hull is heavy on one side, the man who packed her cradle to hold that side up is dead, and the cradle has been rebuilt level by men who never knew why the packing was there. The stand where the town is sitting is on the side she will go over onto.
The pitch: the ship is going to lay over when she takes the water, and the only people who can be moved out from under her are the two hundred who paid for the best seats.
1. This is not a mystery and there is nothing to unmask. Anybody who gets under the ship and looks can see what is wrong with her inside a minute. Three people already know. The problem was never finding out. The problem is what four people can do about it in three hours in front of four hundred witnesses.
2. The stop is free and stays free. One character shouting one true sentence, at any moment of this adventure, ends the launch. Do not gate that, do not hide it, do not make them roll for it. It costs the Sixpenny Yard and sixty families' trade and the party will be named for it in that town forever, and it is still available on the last page. Everything else they might do instead is a bet against it.
3. Aveline Naylor is doing arithmetic, not lying. She has been told about the cradle. She will tell the party she has been told, in the first ten minutes, without being cornered. If you catch yourself playing her as a woman with a secret, put a number back in her mouth.
4. Run the crowd as a person. The east staging is two hundred people who got up early, dressed their children, and paid for the view. They are pleasant, they are cheerful, and they will not move for a stranger with no reason. That is the whole obstacle, and it is not solved by rolling well at one of them.
5. Walraven Kennet is allowed to die. Naylor is a moral-gray villain and the win over her is a choice. Kennet is not. If your table wants him face down in the launch pit at noon, give them that.
Open DM Tools. Both clocks are already built, the tide at four boxes and the noise at three, both fights are pre-loaded in the initiative tracker, and both tables roll from the table roller so you never have to find your place on a page.
Yarhythe is a tidal town of eleven hundred on the lower river Yare, and the Sixpenny Yard is why there is a town. It has built hulls here for four generations and it has never had a good year and a bad one in a row until now.
Learn these five things and nothing here can contradict you.
What is wrong with the Fair Return. She was laid down fourteen years ago, burned along her starboard bilge in her third year on the stocks, and rebuilt in green oak, which is heavier than seasoned oak and always will be. Denys Hooper packed her cradle to hold the heavy side up, with oak shims two inches thick under the starboard poppets, and she stood like that for eleven years. Denys Hooper died in June. In August the cradle was opened up to get at her keel for the coppering, and it was closed again by men who saw eight shims that were not part of any drawing and left them out.
She is now standing level, in a cradle built to hold her out of level, waiting for noon.
Aveline Naylor, mistress of the Sixpenny Yard (Mode A, the one you can almost agree with). Fifties, grey, a carpenter's forearms and a merchant's handwriting. She is not a shipwright and has never pretended to be. Wants: the Fair Return afloat and receipted before the tide turns. Her logic, better than you want it to be: the ship is sold delivery-at-water. If she is not in the river and signed for today, the note falls in, and the yard is broken up and sold for its timber and its copper. Sixty families in this town have no other trade, and there is no second yard within forty miles. She has been told there is a doubt about the cradle. Re-setting a cradle properly takes four days. She has three hours. How she loses: not by being caught, because she has done nothing illegal and will say so, but the moment somebody hands her a way to keep both the yard and the staging.
Do not play her as a woman being talked into her conscience. She has one and she has already spent a fortnight arguing with it. She will show you the arithmetic if you ask, and she will not enjoy it.
Walraven Kennet, surveyor and agent for the buyer (Mode B, the one you are allowed to want dead). Forty, a clean coat on a yard full of mud, standing on the west side where the ground is dry. He surveyed the Fair Return in the spring, wrote down exactly what was wrong with her, showed his principal a cheap hull, and filed the survey where nobody would ask for it. Wants: the ship afloat and receipted, or the ship wrecked at the yard's own slip. Delivery-at-water means that until she swims she is the yard's loss and not his principal's, and a broken hull on the ways is bought back for the copper at a price a yard with a note falling in cannot argue with. His logic: there is not one worth respecting. How he loses: when the survey leaves that case, in front of the alderman, on a morning the whole town is standing there.
The party will arrive expecting to be muscle. The yard hires strangers for launch day the way any yard does: to keep drunks off the ways and children off the greased timbers.
The turn is that the dangerous thing on this site is not the ship. It is the east staging, sixty feet of scaffold and plank holding two hundred sitting people thirty feet off the ship's starboard side, and those two hundred are the only part of the problem that can be moved in three hours. They will not move. It is the good view, they paid a penny each for it, the children are on the front bench because that is what you do, and the only sentence that would shift them is the one sentence that also ends the yard.
So this is not an investigation and it is not a heist. It is crowd work against a tide, and every honest option costs somebody something.
A plan in feet, because the whole climax is about who is standing where.
head of the ways (the shed, the daggers, the man with the maul)
...........................................................
. |=========================| .
. WEST | the FAIR RETURN | EAST .
. APRON | 96 ft on deck | STAGING .
. open | 26 ft in the beam | 60 ft long .
. ground | in her cradle, the | 16 ft deep .
. about 200 | launch pit under her | 8 ft high .
. standing |=========================| about 200 .
...........................................................
the river Yare, high water at noon
west apron to the ship's side ........ 40 ft
ship's side to the east staging ...... 30 ft
length of the ways ................... 180 ft, dropping 1 ft in 12
headroom in the launch pit ........... 9 ft at the head, 4 ft at the water
the bottom 40 ft of the pit floods on the last of the flood tideThirty feet is the number that matters. A ninety-six foot hull laying over to starboard puts her rail into the third bench of that staging.
30 min · no combat
GM setup, and the whole map. Nine in the morning. The yard is a fairground: pie sellers, a fiddle, the alderman's bunting on the shed, dogs. The tide is at half flood and coming. Aveline Naylor hires the party herself, at the gate, because every man she has is working the ways and she needs four bodies who can say no to a drunk.
The gate is propped with a barrel and there is a queue at it, which is not something a shipyard usually has. Inside, past the ropewalk, the ship stands up out of the mud on two greased tracks with her name new-painted on her counter and her whole starboard side in shadow. Children are being lifted onto a plank stand along the east fence. A woman in a good coat and bad boots is counting the queue with her lips moving, and when she gets to you she stops counting and looks at your hands instead of your faces.
The hire. Two gold each, paid at noon, for the morning. Keep the crowd behind the fence line, keep everyone off the ways, and keep the children off the greased track, which is the one that actually kills people every few years. She says the last part twice.
Crispin Sawyer, the yard's foreman, gets to them inside ten minutes. He has been trying to say this to Aveline for eight days and has run out of ways to say it to somebody who owns the place.
"You're the hired ones. Good." He does not shake hands, because his are tarred. "There's a thing I need looked at by somebody who doesn't work for her, and I've got about a minute before I'm missed. Under her starboard poppets there's eight clean patches of oak where eight shims sat for eleven years, and there's no shims in them now. Denys Hooper put them there and Denys is in the ground since June. I've told her. She's heard me. She's still launching at noon."
The check that sets the tone. Reading Aveline is Wisdom (Insight) DC 13. On a success, say the unsettling part plainly: she is not gambling and she is not in denial. She has priced a risk she does not fully understand against a ruin she understands completely, and she has chosen. On a failure the party read her as evasive and waste a quarter hour hunting for a lie that is not there.
One standing failure rule, declared out loud now: a failure never closes a door. It costs a quarter of the tide, or it costs the room (somebody with a good coat and a long memory hears what was said).
Walraven Kennet is already here, on the west apron, dry, with a leather case under his arm and a clerk beside him. He is pleasant to anybody who speaks to him and he does not go near the ship.
Put it where the table can see it. It is a clock of time and nothing else: one box per quarter hour from eleven o'clock, and anything that costs the party time fills it early. When the fourth box fills it is noon, the alderman has finished, and the man at the head of the ways swings the maul. The clock is pre-loaded in DM Tools.
35 min · no combat · the pit
The party can walk under a two hundred ton ship. Nobody will stop them before eleven, because until eleven the pit is just where the yard keeps its mauls.
The one hard gate in this adventure, and it is physical. Until eleven the Fair Return is held upright by her shore timbers, and while the shores are in she is not bearing down on the poppets hard enough for a wedge to go under anything. Before eleven the party can look and cannot fix. After eleven they can fix, and after eleven the pit is full of riggers. Tell them this the first time they go under her, in those words, so the hour is a plan and not an ambush.
GM setup, before the read-aloud. They will find it. That is the design. Do not make this a wall. The shim scars are eight rectangles of pale unweathered oak on the starboard poppets, each about two inches deep, in wood that is grey everywhere else. What the checks buy is speed and proof, not access.
Under her it is cold and it smells of tar and low tide. Her keel is nine feet over your head at this end and comes down to a crawl at the water end, where the mud is already wet and moving. Shore timbers go up into the dark on both sides like a bad forest. Somewhere above you, through ninety feet of oak, two hundred people are stamping on a plank floor in time to a fiddle, and every third beat you can feel the whole cradle take it and give it back.
Finding it. Intelligence (Investigation) DC 13 on the starboard poppets, or Wisdom (Perception) DC 13 with a lantern, or for free and in half the time if Crispin Sawyer walks them to it. On a failure they know something has been taken out of the cradle and cannot say what, which is enough to argue with and not enough to convince anybody.
The fix, and it is real work. Eight oak wedges, driven with a maul, under a ship standing on them. Three successes before the tide clock fills, each attempt a Strength (Athletics) DC 13 or a Dexterity DC 13 with carpenter's or mason's tools. Every attempt costs five minutes whether it lands or not; every second failure fills a box of the tide clock. A character with the enhance ability spell on them or with a friend on the other maul has advantage, and you should tell them so.
The one thing that does not work, and say it kindly: mending repairs a break. It does not put back two inches of oak that was never part of the poppet. A player who tries it has read the situation correctly and picked the wrong tool, so give them the information as a consolation: the spell tells them the poppet itself is sound, which means the cradle is not broken, which means nobody up top will believe a word of this.
What Kennet does if they go under her. He watches them go under and he does not follow. When they come out he is at the bottom of the pit steps with his clerk, cheerful, and he asks them what they found, and he writes their answer down. He is establishing that the yard knew. A character who makes the Insight check in Scene 1 can read that motive here without another roll.
And he will buy them, plainly, without pretending it is anything else. Two hundred gold, counted out of the case, to spend the rest of the morning at the cook tent on the west apron. He makes the offer once, he does not raise it, and he is not offended when it is refused. Taking it is an ending and it is written up with the others below.
The survey. Kennet's spring survey of the Fair Return is four pages in his own hand, in the leather case that does not leave his arm, and it says the starboard bilge is heavy and the cradle is packed for it. The case also holds his contract and his money. Three ways to get it.
45 min · the crowd · one likely fight
The heart of the piece. Run the crowd properly and the fight is optional.
GM setup: why they will not move. The staging holds about two hundred and it is the only seating on the site. It is a penny a head, paid a fortnight ago to the alderman's fund, and the money is already spent on the bunting. The front bench is children, because that is what you do with a front bench. The people on it are not stupid and they are not hostile. They are cheerful, and they have been told by a stranger in a mud-covered coat to please move to the west apron where they will see nothing, and they want a reason.
The stand is new pine and it flexes. You can watch it: two hundred people leaning forward when the fiddle stops and the whole front edge dipping an inch and coming back. A woman by the rail has brought a hamper and set it out like a table. A boy is walking the top rail with his arms out and his mother is not stopping him because everyone is watching him do it. From here you can see the ship's side, close enough to read her name, which is exactly what a penny buys.
Moving the crowd. Nobody moves two hundred people with one check. Break it into four blocks and let the party work them. A failed block is not closed: it can be tried again once something has changed, and each try costs a quarter hour off the tide.
Every block that comes off the staging is a block that is standing on the west apron watching, which is the whole point. Track it plainly. Tell the table how many are still on the stand. Nobody needs a number bigger than "the back is clear, the children are clear, the alderman is not."
Four hundred people are standing within a hundred feet of the pit steps and there is nothing between them and the party but a hull. Fill a box for every round of open violence anywhere on the site, and for anything that carries: a scream, a drawn blade seen from the stand, a body against a shore timber. When the third box fills, Aveline Naylor stops the launch herself, because a brawl at her own gate on delivery morning is the one thing that lets Grange walk away from the contract. The ship does not go, the yard is finished, and the party never got to decide. It is not a punishment. It is the door in rule 2 opening by accident, with nobody's hand on it.
GM setup, before the read-aloud. This fires when the party is seen driving wedges under a ship that is sold. Godith Salter runs the rigging gang and she has been told, correctly, that the hull belongs to somebody else as of this morning. She is not wrong, she is not bought, and she is not going to listen to four strangers with a maul. Know this cold: the fight is winnable without killing anybody, and killing them is a straight loss. You need those three at the ways in twenty minutes, and every round of it fills the noise clock.
Three of them come down the pit steps together, which is how you go into a fight you would rather not have. The one in front has a marlinspike in her fist and she is holding it down along her leg where the stand cannot see it. "Put it down," she says, and she is not shouting, because shouting brings the whole yard. "Those papers were signed at eight o'clock this morning. Whatever you think you are doing to that cradle, you are doing it to a man in Grange who has never met you."
Tactics. The riggers fight quietly and they fight to put people on the ground, not to kill. They grapple, they shove into shore timbers, and they will stop the moment somebody they trust tells them to. They will not stop for the party.
Talking them down. Charisma (Persuasion) DC 15, with advantage if the party can point at the shim scars, and automatic if Crispin Sawyer is standing with them, because he taught that gang its trade. On a success Godith looks at the poppets for four seconds and then picks up a maul, which is the turn this scene exists for. On a failure the fight happens, and every round of it is a box on the noise clock.
Encounter budget, tool-verified. Three yard riggers against four 3rd-level characters is raw 300 XP, three monsters, multiplier 2.0, adjusted 600 against 300 / 600 / 900 / 1,600. Medium, checked with encounter_xp.py --party 4x3 --cr 1/2,1/2,1/2 rather than by hand. All three arrive together and nobody joins later, so that figure is the whole fight.
Roll it when a scene needs a heartbeat, or once on each box of the tide clock. Most of these cost a decision instead of hit points. Nothing on this table is a monster.
| d12 | What the crowd does while you work |
|---|---|
| 1 | The fiddle stops for the speech. Alderman Warrener climbs onto the rail end of the staging with a paper. The stand goes quiet, which means every word said under the ship for the next four minutes carries beautifully. |
| 2 | A child gets onto the ways. Six years old, on the greased track, delighted. Somebody has to go and get him and everybody is going to watch whoever does. |
| 3 | The hamper woman offers you something. She has a pie and she wants to know if it is true the ship cost eleven hundred gold. Answer her honestly and the two benches around her are listening to you for the rest of the morning. |
| 4 | The stand takes a wave. Two hundred people lean forward at once and the whole front edge dips and comes back with a noise like a door. Nothing breaks. Everyone laughs. Somebody at the back stops laughing first. |
| 5 | Kennet's clerk is behind you. He has been for a while. He is writing, and he does not pretend he is not, and he will show you the page if you ask, and it is a fair record of everything you just said. |
| 6 | A dog gets under the ship. It goes for the rats in the pit mud and will not come out for its owner, who is now at the top of the pit steps shouting into the dark where the party is working. |
| 7 | Somebody starts a song. The whole staging takes it up and starts stamping to it. The stamping is in time. Everything wooden on this site is now doing the same thing at the same moment. |
| 8 | The tide comes into the bottom of the pit. Cold water over the boots at the water end, sooner than anybody said. Work down there is now in six inches of moving river and the mud has opinions about mauls. |
| 9 | A man from Grange asks after the buyer. He is a carter, he has been paid to be here, and he says the man who bought her has never seen her and is not coming. He thinks this is a funny thing about rich men. It is the first hard confirmation of what Kennet is. |
| 10 | Aveline comes down to the pit. Not to argue. She stands where she can see the poppets, looks at them for a while, says nothing at all, and goes back up. Let the table sit in that. |
| 11 | The bunting comes down in the wind. Forty feet of it, across the queue, and for about ninety seconds nobody on the site is looking at anything else. Anything a party wants to do unobserved, they can do now. |
| 12 | Nothing happens. The morning goes on being a good morning. A shipyard on launch day is one of the happiest places a person can stand, and your players should be allowed to notice that before noon. |
40 min · the fight · the launch
Noon. The fourth box of the tide clock fills, the alderman finishes, and the man at the head of the ways picks up the maul.
Warrener gets to the end of his paper, folds it, and says the ship's name, and four hundred people say it back at him. The fiddler is standing on a barrel. Every face on this site turns the same way at the same moment, and the whole yard goes quiet in a way it has not been quiet all morning, and into that quiet comes the sound of a man walking up a plank ramp behind you with his hands empty.
Then Kennet moves, and this is the beat the whole adventure is built for. The only unwatched second in Yarhythe today is the second the ship goes. He has waited for it. If the party has his survey, he is coming for it. If it has already reached Warrener, he is coming for the party anyway, because four dead strangers in a launch-day accident is a smaller problem for him than four live ones. If they never found it, he is coming for whoever has been telling the alderman things. He brings Pierse Lugg, who carries the case when Kennet does not want to be seen carrying it.
Encounter budget, tool-verified. Walraven Kennet (CR 3) with Pierse Lugg (CR 1/2) is raw 800 XP, two monsters, multiplier 1.5, adjusted 1,200 against 300 / 600 / 900 / 1,600. Hard, checked with encounter_xp.py --party 4x3 --cr 3,1/2. Both are present from the first round and nothing arrives later, so that figure is the whole fight and not a back half. No prepared-terrain step is claimed: Kennet chose the moment, not the ground.
Where it happens matters. The ramp, the pit steps and the greased ways are all in play, and Kennet's whole method is putting people on a slope they cannot stand up on.
And the ship goes while they are fighting. Do not stop the launch for the fight. Roll the d6 below in the middle of the third round, out loud, and let the table hear it land.
Roll this once, when the daggers come out.
Do not roll it at all if the party re-wedged the cradle. Three successes on the poppets means she goes clean, every time, with no roll and no dice-luck stealing the thing they earned. That is the reward for the hard road, and it is the only way to be certain she swims.
If the east staging was cleared, rows 1 and 2 cost the town its timber instead of its people. Read the bracketed line.
| d6 | How she takes the water |
|---|---|
| 1 | She lays over on the ways and does not stop. Ninety feet of hull comes down across the thirty feet between her and the stand, and the stand is not there afterwards. [Cleared: she takes the empty stand, the noise is the worst thing anyone in Yarhythe has ever heard, and not one person is hurt.] |
| 2 | She lays over at the water end and hangs. Half in, half out, her starboard rail into the front bench, her back broken over the last of the ways. [Cleared: she hangs there with her rail in an empty front bench and the yard has a week to argue about how to get her off.] |
| 3 | She goes crooked and takes the outer legs. The stand's east legs go and the whole thing sits down sideways into the mud, eight feet, slowly, with everyone on it. Bones, not bodies. |
| 4 | She heels hard and rights herself. She goes over far enough that the water comes up over her rail and the front bench is wet to the waist, and then she comes back, and four hundred people find out at the same instant how close that was. |
| 5 | She goes clean and nobody ever knows. The yard cheers. The fiddle starts. Aveline Naylor sits down on a barrel and does not get up for some time. |
| 6 | She goes clean and she goes fast. She takes the river with a noise you feel through the ground, throws a wave over the west apron, and comes up level and swimming. It is the best sound anybody in this town has heard in a year, and they will talk about it for thirty. |
Resolution branches. She swims and Kennet is taken: the survey goes to the alderman, the sale stands, the yard has a year. She swims and Kennet gets away with the case: the sale stands and there is a man downriver who knows four faces. She lays over with the stand full: the yard is finished either way, and the party is the reason the town knows why. The party stopped the launch: nobody is hurt, the note falls in on Friday, and Aveline Naylor thanks them at the gate without warmth and means it. They took Kennet's money and said nothing: they leave Yarhythe two hundred gold heavier before the tide turns, and this is a real ending and you should let them have it.
They shout it in Scene 1. Good. The stand empties in about ninety seconds, three or four people are hurt in the crush, and nobody dies unless your table wants somebody to. The launch is off, the note falls in, and the adventure is over in forty minutes with everyone alive. Do not punish this. Ask them at the end whether they would do it again.
They go straight at Kennet in the open. He has a clerk, an alderman and four hundred witnesses, and he uses all three. He will not fight where he can be seen. Attacking him on the west apron gets the party arrested by the alderman's men and the ship launches anyway, which is the worst of both roads.
They sabotage the ways so she cannot go. Entirely doable, and it is rule 2 wearing gloves: the launch is off, the yard is finished, and now it looks like arson. Aveline will work out who inside the hour.
They try to buy the yard's debt. Excellent, and it does not work today, because the note is held in Grange and Grange is eleven miles away. Give them the idea for the campaign afterwards.
They kill the riggers. They can. Then there are three men short at the ways at noon, the packing is left as it is, and the party has to run the last hour with a body in the pit and the noise clock at two at the very least.
Zone of truth. It works perfectly and it changes nothing, which is the beat this adventure is built to earn. Aveline answers honestly inside it and her honest answer is her arithmetic. Kennet simply declines to step into it, in front of the alderman, which is not evidence, and which every person standing on the west apron will remember.
Detect thoughts, charm person and suggestion. All three work and all three are rewards rather than blocks. Detect thoughts on Kennet hands them the survey's existence for free. Suggestion moves one block off the staging without a check. Charm person on Godith Salter ends the rigger fight before it starts, and costs the party the one ally who could have swung a maul for them.
They ask the ship. Speak with plants, or a druid asking the green oak what happened to it: let it work and let it be useless in the same way everything else here is useless. The oak is heavy. It has always been heavy. That was never the question.
Nothing in the crowd spine changes. Swap the two stat blocks. Every row below was checked with encounter_xp.py against a four-character party.
| Party level | The riggers | Result | Kennet and his man | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | three CR 1/8 | 150 adj. Easy | CR 1 + CR 1/4 | 375 adj. Hard |
| 2 | three CR 1/4 | 300 adj. Easy | CR 2 + CR 1/4 | 750 adj. Hard |
| 3 (as written) | three CR 1/2 | 600 adj. Medium | CR 3 + CR 1/2 | 1,200 adj. Hard |
| 4 | three CR 1 | 1,200 adj. Medium | CR 4 + CR 1/2 | 1,800 adj. Hard |
| 5 | three CR 2 | 2,700 adj. Medium | CR 5 + CR 2 | 3,375 adj. Hard |
| 6 | three CR 2 | 2,700 adj. Medium | CR 6 + CR 2 | 4,125 adj. Hard |
| 7 | three CR 3 | 4,200 adj. Medium | CR 7 + CR 2 | 5,025 adj. Hard |
| 8 | three CR 3 | 4,200 adj. Medium | CR 8 + CR 2 | 6,525 adj. Hard |
| 9 | one CR 4 and two CR 3 | 5,000 adj. Medium | CR 9 + CR 2 | 8,175 adj. Hard |
| 10 | three CR 4 | 6,600 adj. Medium | CR 10 + CR 2 | 9,525 adj. Hard |
At 1st and 2nd level the rigger fight is Easy and the tool says so plainly. Do not inflate it. At those levels the danger in that scene is the noise clock, not the men.
Party size at 3rd level. Three: the riggers are unchanged at 600 adjusted, Medium (thresholds 225 / 450 / 675 / 1,200), but Kennet with Pierse is 1,200 adjusted, which is Deadly for three characters. Give Kennet a boy with a knife instead (CR 1/8) for 1,088 adjusted, Hard. Five: add a fourth rigger for 800 adjusted, Medium (375 / 750 / 1,125 / 2,000); Kennet and Pierse are 1,200, still Hard. Six: run the riggers at CR 1 for 900 adjusted, Medium (450 / 900 / 1,350 / 2,400), and give Kennet a second man for 1,350 adjusted, Hard.
Two crowd dials that matter more than the stat blocks. Harder: the alderman's speech runs long, so the tide clock's fourth box fills a quarter hour early and the party loses their last attempt at the poppets. Gentler: let Crispin Sawyer be with the party from the start, which turns the rigger fight into a conversation and halves the search in the pit.
The spine is a crowd against a clock, so any game with a social conflict track, a countdown pool or an escalating threat die runs it natively. Replace the persuasion ladder (10 for the children, 13 for the families, 15 for the men and the alderman) with three rungs of your own, far enough apart that the table feels the gap. The two clocks need no mechanics at all, only somewhere everyone can see them. Both fights are optional and the d6 is the only die this adventure genuinely requires.
Two gold each, from Aveline Naylor, paid at noon. She pays it whatever happens, including to the people who stopped her launch, and she counts it out in front of them.
Kennet's survey. Four pages in his own hand, worth nothing in Yarhythe and a great deal to the underwriters in Grange, who have wanted a reason to look at his last six surveys for two years.
Crispin Sawyer's word. Not a favour and not a debt. He is known in every yard on this coast, and he will say the party's names to any shipmaster who asks him. If they saved the Fair Return, that is worth more over a campaign than the survey is.
Passage. If she swims and the yard survives, the Fair Return carries the party once, anywhere the Yare runs to, which is further than they think.
All original, built to the LIDM threat rails.
Walraven Kennet, Surveyor
Armour Class 15 (studded leather) · Hit Points 65 (10d8 + 20) · Speed 30 ft.Medium humanoid, lawful evil in the way a contract is lawful.
| STR | DEX | CON | INT | WIS | CHA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 14 (+2) | 16 (+3) | 14 (+2) | 15 (+2) | 13 (+1) | 14 (+2) |
Skills Deception +4, Insight +3, Investigation +4 · Senses passive Perception 11 · Languages Common · Challenge 3 (700 XP) · Proficiency Bonus +2
Never Where He Can Be Seen. Kennet has advantage on Dexterity (Stealth) checks made while any crowd of twenty or more creatures is watching something other than him.
Multiattack. Kennet makes two attacks with his sounding rod.
Sounding Rod. Melee weapon attack: +5 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 8 (1d8 + 3) bludgeoning damage.
Take the Legs (1/turn). Once on each of his turns, when Kennet hits a creature standing on the greased ways, the pit mud, the ramp or the wet planking, that attack deals an extra 7 (2d6) bludgeoning damage and the target must succeed on a DC 13 Dexterity saving throw or fall prone and slide 5 feet down the slope.
Not My Hull (1/round). When a creature Kennet can see moves to within 5 feet of him, he moves up to half his speed away from it without provoking opportunity attacks.
Tactical profile. Wants the case in his hand and himself off this site, in that order, and will trade the second for the first. Contour: Dexterity offence over Constitution defence, a fast man with reach. Tactical intelligence: high, so he picks his ground and his moment, and the moment is the launch. Opens on whoever is carrying the case or standing closest to the alderman, and works to keep the greased track between himself and anyone who wants to grapple him. Morale: he runs at half hit points, downriver, on foot, and he does not come back.
Action economy, stated. He is not a solo. He brings Pierse Lugg, the ground is against the party, and the fight is short because the launch ends it. Against four optimized characters, give him Legendary Resistance (1/Day) and tell your table you did.
Challenge rating, derived. AC 15 and 65 hit points sit where the SRD's own CR 3 humanoids sit; the veteran is AC 17 with 58. Two rod hits is 16 damage at the printed averages, and Take the Legs once per turn brings it to 23, inside the CR 3 offensive band of 21 to 26. Attack +5 and DC 13 are the CR 3 rails. Take the Legs is inside that damage figure, so no extra step is claimed for it. CR 3, 700 XP.
Yard rigger
Armour Class 13 (leather and a lot of canvas) · Hit Points 26 (4d8 + 8) · Speed 30 ft.Medium humanoid, neutral. Holding a ship up.
| STR | DEX | CON | INT | WIS | CHA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 15 (+2) | 12 (+1) | 14 (+2) | 10 (+0) | 11 (+0) | 10 (+0) |
Skills Athletics +4 · Senses passive Perception 10 · Languages Common · Challenge 1/2 (100 XP) · Proficiency Bonus +2
Not Trying To Kill You. A rigger attacks to put a creature on the ground. Against a prone creature it shoves and grapples instead of striking, and it never attacks a creature that has stopped fighting.
Hands Full. When a rigger drops to 0 hit points under the hull, the shore timber it was steadying moves. Each creature within 5 feet of it makes a DC 13 Dexterity saving throw, taking 7 (2d6) bludgeoning damage on a failed save, or half as much on a successful one.
Marlinspike. Melee weapon attack: +4 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 6 (1d6 + 2) piercing damage, and the rigger may shove the target 5 feet.
Take Him Down. Melee weapon attack: +4 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: the target is grappled (escape DC 13) and takes 5 (1d4 + 2) bludgeoning damage.
Tactical profile. Wants four strangers away from a hull that was signed for at eight o'clock. Contour: Strength offence, ordinary defence, a working man. Tactical intelligence: average, and they fight quietly on purpose, because a fight heard from the stand is a fight everybody loses. Opens on whoever is holding a maul. Morale: they stop the instant Godith Salter or Crispin Sawyer tells them to, and they will not chase anybody out of the pit.
Challenge rating, derived. AC 13 with 26 hit points sits between the SRD's scout (AC 13, HP 16) and thug (AC 11, HP 32), both CR 1/2. Best sustained round is one marlinspike plus a shove, 6 damage, or a grapple at 5, inside the CR 1/2 offensive band of 6 to 8. Attack +4 and DC 13 are on the CR 1/2 rails. Hands Full is a death trigger and not a per-round output, so it takes no step. CR 1/2, 100 XP.
Pierse Lugg, Kennet's man
Armour Class 13 (leather) · Hit Points 27 (5d8 + 5) · Speed 30 ft.Medium humanoid, neutral evil. Carries the case.
| STR | DEX | CON | INT | WIS | CHA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12 (+1) | 16 (+3) | 12 (+1) | 10 (+0) | 11 (+0) | 9 (-1) |
Skills Sleight of Hand +5, Stealth +5 · Senses passive Perception 10 · Languages Common · Challenge 1/2 (100 XP) · Proficiency Bonus +2
Paid To Carry It. While Pierse has the leather case, his speed increases by 10 feet and he uses the Disengage action as a bonus action on each of his turns.
Multiattack. Pierse makes two knife attacks.
Knife. Melee weapon attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 5 (1d4 + 3) piercing damage.
Tactical profile. Wants to be paid on Friday and to be somewhere else by then. Contour: Dexterity offence, thin defence, a runner with a knife. Tactical intelligence: average. Opens by getting the case away from the fight, and only stands and fights when he cannot. Morale: he drops the case and runs the moment Kennet runs, and if Kennet falls first he runs immediately.
Challenge rating, derived. AC 13 with 27 hit points is the same band as the yard rigger. Two knives is 11 damage at the printed averages, which is the thug's own output at CR 1/2. Attack +5 is one step over the CR 1/2 rail of +3 and his hit points are under the band, which cancel. CR 1/2, 100 XP.
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