A world to explore
The Saltmere Reach
A tidal coast of reed-fens, boardwalks and stilt-houses — where the sea walks in twice a day and everyone plans their life around it.
The Saltmere Reach is a low, wide country that cannot quite decide whether it is land. Twice a day the sea walks in over the mudflats, and twice a day it walks back out again — and everything here is built around that going and coming: the boardwalks, the stilt-houses of Quillhaven, the flat-bottomed boats tied high on the bank.
Nothing in the Reach is far from water. Reed channels wind through the Whistling Fen, which really does whistle when the wind combs the reeds. Ferry-folk pole their boats along routes marked with painted stakes, herons stand in the shallows like grumpy old wizards, and the chalk downs in the north are the only place you can stand and see the whole Reach at once.
It is a friendly country, if you know the tides. The tide-bell rings from the Saltlight when the water turns; the mudflat treasure-hunters of the Wracks come home muddy to the elbow with something strange in a bucket; every child in Quillhaven can read a tide-table before they can read anything else; once, in the Whistling Fen, the painted route-stakes walked at night until somebody admitted that a chart can lie; and up at Reedwatch the watchtower has learned to look both ways at once.
Quests in The Saltmere Reach
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Adventure The Stakes That Wandered
The stakes that mark the only safe channels have started walking — follow the two lines and find out which map is telling the truth.
Play this quest -
Adventure The Ship That Tied Up Empty
A ship tied up empty at the Long Quay — walk the outgoing tide and find out where its crew went.
Play this quest -
Adventure The Light on Hare Down
A light on the downs has been counting at Reedwatch for ten nights — and the code is a rhyme every child in town already knows.
Play this quest - Campaign
The Tide-Bell of the Reach
A three-chapter campaign along the Saltmere coast, to make a lost tide-bell ring true.
Play this quest
Places on the map
Every place marked on the map, with a line about what is going on there right now. Pick one, ask your players why they are going, and you have tonight’s session.
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Quillhaven
The harbour capital, half of it standing on posts over the water so the tide can come in underneath. Ships from everywhere tie up at the Long Quay — and last week one of them tied up with nobody aboard.
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Reedwatch
A fen-town behind a woven reed wall, up where the marsh meets the downs. Its watchtower is meant to be watching the sea for storms. Lately the watch keeps looking the other way — inland.
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The Whistling Fen
Miles of reed, water and painted route-stakes, whistling whenever the wind combs through it. Someone has been moving the stakes at night, and the ferry-folk are all blaming each other.
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The Saltlight
The old light out on the point, and the tide-bell that rings from it when the water turns. The keeper is nine years old this year, and she keeps it perfectly.
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The Drowned Chapel
A little chapel the sea came and sat down in. At low tide you can walk in through the front door; at high tide, from a boat, you can still hear its bell.
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Alder Holt
The only real wood in the Reach, on the last dry ground before the fen. Charcoal-burners live in it, and something has started leaving very neat piles of stones along the paths.
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The Wracks
A mudflat full of old ships, walkable for two hours either side of low tide and not one minute longer. Almost every treasure in the Reach was found here first.
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Cormorant Isle
A rock full of seabirds, an hour of rowing offshore. The birds are used to people. They are not at all used to whatever has started nesting on the far side.
A closer look: The Whistling Fen
The map above is the whole realm. This one zooms into one corner of it, at the scale a party actually walks in a day.
The city of Quillhaven
Quillhaven is the harbour capital of the Reach, half of it standing on posts over the water. A game master can start play in any ward — the Long Quay, the Fishmarket, the boatyards, the salt pans, or up in the Tidehall where the tide-bells are rung.
The city of Reedwatch
Reedwatch is the small town at the head of the fen, inside a woven reed wall. It makes an easy first stop for players: a market, a landing for flat-bottomed boats, and a watchtower with a view over the whole marsh.