Printable guide sheet: The Keeper of the Saltlight

Read this to your players to start

Something has carried the tide-bell off to Cormorant Isle, an hour of rowing offshore. Tilly is going after it with or without the party, and the clapper is in the bottom of her boat.

Scenes (all session lengths — scene’s tag shows the shortest length it appears in)

1. Scene 1: The Empty Frame from Quick Quest on

   Morning at the Saltlight, and the space under the roof where the bell should be is just sky. Seaweed drips from the beam. Down on the rocks, footprints as big as dinner plates, webbed like a duck's, lead into the sea. Tilly is already untying her little rowing boat, the clapper rolled in a blanket on the bottom boards. "It's my bell," she says, a bit too loudly. "I'm going to get it back."

   Goal: Get ready to cross to Cormorant Isle, together and at the right time. — Read the tide chart for the calmest hour to row (Clever, Difficulty Number 12): the slack water is in half an hour. / Talk Tilly into waiting for that hour and promise to go with her (Kind, Difficulty Number 12). / Follow the footprints down to the water to learn what made them (Brave, Difficulty Number 12): something big, but the prints wobble, like a creature that is young and tired.

   Tilly is scared and pretending not to be. Whatever the party chooses, they row out together. A hero who notices the wobbly prints has the key idea for the ending: whatever took the bell is young.

2. Scene 2: An Hour of Rowing from Short Session on

   The Saltlight shrinks behind you and Cormorant Isle grows ahead: a black rock wearing a white coat of seabirds. Halfway across, the water beside the boat goes dark and smooth as something long swims underneath you, slowly, and then is gone. Tilly stops rowing. In a very small voice she says, "It was crying. Did you hear it? It sounded like the bell."

   Goal: Keep the boat steady and reach the island. — Row hard and steady, everyone together (Brave, Difficulty Number 12). / Use the tide chart to ride the current toward the island (Clever, Difficulty Number 12). / Hum a slow song to keep Tilly calm and the rowing in time (Kind, Difficulty Number 11): the shape under the water follows the song a little way.

   Nothing attacks the boat. The shape under the water is Brine, the young tide-drake, and its call really does sound like a bell. Plant that sound now; it is the answer in the climax.

3. Scene 3: The Cormorant Cliffs from One-Sitting Session on

   The near side of the island is a cliff of birds: cormorants drying their wings like little black umbrellas, terns squabbling, puffins peering out of holes. The birds are used to people and hardly move. But they are all looking the same way, around the island, toward the far side.

   Goal: Find the way to the far side of the island. — Follow where the birds are looking, along the ledge (Clever, Difficulty Number 11). / Climb up and over the top of the cliff (Brave, Difficulty Number 13). / Move slowly and quietly so as not to frighten the nesting birds (Kind, Difficulty Number 12): an old cormorant waddles ahead as if showing the way.

   A short, beautiful beat. Let the table describe the birds. No harm comes here.

4. Scene 4: What Was Nesting on the Far Side from Full Session on

   In a hollow on the far side of the island, ringed with seaweed and driftwood, lies the tide-bell, and curled around it is a sea creature the size of a rowing boat: blue-green, with a frilled head, flippers like wet leaves and big, wet, frightened eyes. It is a young tide-drake. When it sees you it rears up and bellows, and the bellow sounds exactly like a bell that cannot ring.

   Goal: Calm the young tide-drake without hurting it. — Speak softly, crouch low and do not reach for the bell (Kind, Difficulty Number 12). / Work out why it wants the bell (Clever, Difficulty Number 13): it has been nudging the silent bell with its nose, trying to make it ring like its mother's call. / Stand firm between the drake and Tilly without hitting back (Brave, Difficulty Number 13): it splashes, then stops when nobody fights it.

   Brine, the young tide-drake, is lost and lonely. The bell rang at night all week because the tide-wheel had slipped, and Brine swam to the sound thinking it was its mother. When the bell went silent, Brine took it to try to make it sing. It cannot be fought to a happy ending: if a scuffle starts, it splashes (1d4) and backs away until someone speaks gently.

5. Scene 5: The Bell Rings True from Quick Quest on

   Tilly unrolls the blanket, lifts out the clapper and looks at you. "If it wants the bell to sing," she says, "let's make it sing." Together you hang the clapper back inside the bell, and Tilly swings it once. BONG. The note rolls out over the sea, round and true. The young tide-drake goes very still. And then, from far out in the deep water, something much bigger answers with a call exactly like it.

   Goal: Ring the bell, reunite Brine with its mother, and bring the bell home to the Saltlight. — Ring the bell in slow, steady strokes so the mother can follow the sound (Clever, Difficulty Number 12). / Encourage Brine to swim out toward the answering call (Kind, Difficulty Number 12): it nudges Tilly goodbye first. / Carry the bell down to the boat and row it home through the swell (Brave, Difficulty Number 12): two great green backs rise beside you and push the boat all the way to the Saltlight.

   There is no losing this beat: every approach ends with mother and young tide-drake together, the bell back in its frame and Tilly resetting the wheel by the tide chart. Close with the bell ringing at the right time for the first time in a week, and the whole Reach hearing it. From now on, when the tide turns, two tide-drakes surface off the point to listen.

Player handout — show this to your table

Tilly's Logbook

In big careful letters, in the Saltlight logbook: "Bell rang true at the turn of the tide. Wheel set by Odran Pell's chart. Clapper back where it belongs. Two tide-drakes off the point, listening. Everybody home safe. Signed, T. Brack, Keeper (and my friends)."

Monster stat blocks

Rewards

• The Saltlight's bell ringing true again, and every boat in the Reach safe on the tide.
• Tilly Brack's friendship, and a standing invitation to ring the bell on the first turn of any tide.
• A sight nobody else in the Reach has seen: two tide-drakes surfacing to listen when the bell rings.

Tips for running this one

• This chapter is about kindness. Brine is the frightened one, not the dangerous one; let the heroes and Tilly be the grown-ups for once.
• Give Tilly the last line. It is her bell, and she has earned it.
• If a younger table is worried about the creature, let the cormorant from the cliffs waddle in beside it, unbothered. Children read that as safe.