Greyharbor's light is dark, and the tide is bringing the wrong things back.
The coastal town of Greyharbor has doused its lighthouse "until the sea calms." Fishing boats go out and come back empty — or not at all. The harbormaster wants the light restored before the spring fleet. Something in the tide caves under the lighthouse has made a bargain with the keeper, and the sahuagin are already collecting on it.
GM only
Track the three nights. If the table dawdles in town, let a boat fail to return. Wynn is not a villain; Coral-Split is.
Beat 1 · Greyharbor
Greyharbor is tense. Brine wants the light back. Locals blame wreckers, ghosts, or the keeper. The brother's ring can surface here.
Greyharbor looks like it is holding its breath. Boats sit too high in the water, nets dry unused, and the lighthouse on the fang of rock is a pale unlit bone. People speak softly, as if the tide might hear.
Beat 2 · Greyharbor Light
Wynn will not relight the lamp. She talks around a promise. Evidence in her apartment: a sahuagin scale, a tide chart with three nights marked, a letter she never sent.
The keeper is on the gallery, hair stiff with salt, watching a sea that does not watch her back. The lantern room behind her is swept, oiled, and dark on purpose.
Beat 3 · Tide Caves
Tide caves, sahuagin sentries, the shrine, Coral-Split. The brother cannot be saved. Destroying the shrine breaks the "contract" in Wynn's mind even if the priest lives.
The cave breathes. Each wave shoves cold air up the basalt throat. Something clicks like wet beads. On a slab ahead, a man in a keeper's coat is arranged as if sleeping, except the tide has already taken the lie out of that.
Beat 4 · The Docks
If the lamp is lit before dawn of night four, sahuagin test the docks and withdraw. If not, a proper raid. Either way, Greyharbor remembers who climbed the tower.
From the gallery the whole harbor is a black dish. One lamp here turns it back into a town.
Harbormaster · Greyharbor
A broad woman with a brass whistle and no patience left.
Personality: Blunt, fair, pays on time. Hates mysteries that cost coin.
Voice: Cuts people off. Calls the lighthouse "the bone."
She already hired one adventuring pair who never came back. She will not mention them unless asked why the pay is high.
Lighthouse keeper · Greyharbor Light
Young, salt-burned, moving like someone who has already decided how this ends.
Personality: Grief wearing duty's coat. Will lie badly and then stop talking.
Voice: Flat. Long pauses. Says "he promised" without naming who.
She has the hatch key on a chain under her shirt. She visits the shrine at low tide to "check he is still there."
Sahuagin priest · Tide Caves
A sahuagin with a split jaw bound in copper wire. Carries a staff of shark bone.
Personality: Patient, theatrical, almost priestly. Treats the bargain as already complete.
Voice: Clicks between words. Speaks Common like a learned insult.
The "return the brother" promise was never magic. The raid is the point. If reduced to 20 hit points, Coral-Split flees to the sea tunnel.
Fisher · Greyharbor
A teenager who found the ring and has not slept well since.
Personality: Wants to help and wants to be nowhere near the tower.
Voice: Rushes. Apologizes for the sea.
Saw fins in the channel two nights ago and told nobody because "people already think I drink."
settlement
Salt-stained timber, rope everywhere, a chapel that faces inland because nobody prays at the water. The docks smell like fear more than fish.
Leads to: Switchback path to the lighthouse. Beach trail to the tide caves at low tide.
site
A whitewashed tower on a fang of rock. The lantern room is cold. Steps spiral past a keeper's apartment that has not been slept in.
Leads to: Path to town. Hatch down to the tide caves (key on Wynn, or DC 15 thieves' tools).
GM: Relighting the lamp takes oil from the apartment and a DC 12 Intelligence (Tinker's tools) or a simple success if they have the keeper's help.
dungeon · in Greyharbor Light
Wet basalt rooms that breathe with the tide. Phosphorescent algae. A shrine of stacked fish skulls around a drowned man on a slab.
Leads to: Up-hatch to the lighthouse. Sea tunnel usable only by swimmers.
GM: Every 10 minutes, the tide rises. Mark three ticks; on the third, the beach mouth is gone until morning.
site · in Greyharbor
Long piers, a crane, nets drying like shrouds. If the raid happens, this is the battlefield.
Leads to: Town square. Open water.
letter
GM: In the apartment, under a tide chart.
clue
GM: Makes the clock visible. Show it early if the party is drifting.
item
GM: Jaske has it, or it is in a fish-gut bucket at the docks. Showing it to Wynn breaks her certainty.
rumor
GM: Points at sahuagin without naming them.
Tide Caves · Salt in the Mouth
Sahuagin in the first chamber. They try to knock someone into a tide pool rather than fight fairly.
Treasure: A net of silver fishhooks (25 gp) and a waterproof pouch with 18 gp.
Tide Caves · Salt in the Mouth
Coral-Split plus a sahuagin. The slab is difficult terrain. Destroying the skull pyramid (AC 13, 15 hp) makes Wynn willing to relight the lamp immediately.
Treasure: Shark-bone staff (arcane focus), 40 gp in coral beads, the brother's oilskin coat.
The Docks · Light or Blood
Only if the light is still dark at dawn of night four. Sahuagin come over the piers. Townsfolk can be rallied as three commoner allies.
Treasure: Brine doubles the pay. A grateful boatwright offers free passage next time.