The adventure ahead
A world stitched from a hundred dying worlds.
There is no sun over Pangaea Dolorum. At the exact center of the sky hangs the Blinking Eye, a vast lidless orb that opens and closes without rhythm, washing the land in green light, in blinding black beams, in static-laden fog. Beneath it lies a continent that should not exist: a hundred demiplanes dragged out of the Ethereal Deep by a god called the Great Weaver and chained together, seam to seam, into one impossible land.
You can walk from a trench of mustard gas into a forest whose leaves scream in autumn colors, and from that forest down to a black oil sea with a drowned city beneath it. The seams between these places are visible if you know how to look: silver thread, thick as a ship's rope, running through stone and soil and sky.
The seams are failing. Something is cutting them, and where a seam is cut, the world bleeds — gas, screams, oil, worse. Towns are losing their water. People are being taken in the night. And somewhere at the center of everything, a woman with a needle is re-weaving the continent, one scream at a time.
You are travelers on the Stitchroad. You have a lantern, a debt, and no idea what you have walked into.
Tone: grim, strange, humane. Horror in the landscape, warmth in the people. Comedy is allowed; cruelty is not rewarded.
Themes: repair versus perfection, the cost of holding things together, what you owe the people who stitched you.
Content note: body horror, gas, drowning, child endangerment, cult violence.
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You are on the Stitchroad, the only road that runs the length of the continent, and you have just walked into Stitchmarket — a town of timber houses built around a well that has never once run dry.
Last night it ran dry. This morning it began to hiss.
There is no sun; a giant eye blinks overhead and the light changes color when it does. The land is a patchwork of a hundred stolen worlds sewn together with silver thread. Where the thread is cut, the world bleeds something that does not belong there.
Weird, grim, and warm in equal measure. The world is a nightmare; the people in it are not. You will meet innkeepers, mask-makers, ferrymen and archivists who are trying to live ordinary lives on top of an impossible thing. Help them or don't, but they will remember.
Marrow Tallow, who runs the Salt Loom inn, has a problem she cannot solve with a ladle: her well is bleeding mustard gas, and three of her regulars vanished from their beds two nights ago with no sign of a struggle except a smell of brass.
She will pay in room, board, and everything in her strongbox. She will also tell you the truth she has told no one else: she has seen a woman in a grey shawl standing at the well at night, and the woman was holding a needle the length of a spear.
Standard 5th Edition rules. Start at level 1. Bring a lantern.
Behind the screen
A complete 1–12 campaign in three acts across three regions: the Mustard Bleed (levels 1–4), the Screaming Autumn (5–8), and the Black Oil Reach (9–12). Eleven key locations, eleven scenes, one continuous main storyline. Each region is a self-contained phase with its own lieutenant, its own failing seam, and its own town that needs saving.
A hundred demiplanes were chained into one continent by the Great Weaver. The chains are seams — living silver thread that holds incompatible realities adjacent without dissolving each other. The Weaver finished the work and left. Ilva Suture, the Loom-Keeper, was the Weaver's last mortal apprentice, and she believes the work was abandoned half-done. Her doctrine: a seam only holds if it is stitched through pain. So she is cutting seams open across the continent, letting each region bleed agony into the thread, and re-stitching them tighter. She calls it the Fractured Bleed. She is not lying about the seams weakening — she is simply the one making them weak.
Her three lieutenants each run one bleed:
All three ship their harvest to the Loom Heart, a ruined temple at the continent's center where Ilva Suture works the great loom.
Hook 01
Marrow Tallow, who runs the Salt Loom inn in Stitchmarket, has posted a notice offering room, board and coin to anyone who can explain why her well has started hissing mustard gas and why three of her regulars vanished from their beds two nights ago. This is the module's default opening: it puts the party in the market square at dawn with a paying employer, a town on the edge of panic, and a trail of brass spool shavings leading south.
Hook 02
A character carrying a brass gas mask from Brinehollow — bought, stolen, or inherited from a relative who went south for work — is recognized by Odo the Maskwright when the party reaches the camp. Odo made that mask and remembers the face it was made for. This hook pulls a party that skipped Stitchmarket straight into the tithe-cage plot and gives them a personal reason to break Baronet Cawl's business.
Hook 03
Lace Annet, a seamstress in the Needleworks, has been hiding a runaway spool-runner named Cobb Wren under Stitchmarket's boardwalks for a month. She needs someone with no local ties to carry her private tally of stolen seam-thread to the Seam Wardens. This hook starts the party as couriers in a small heist and drops them directly into the spool-vault, Foreman Grist, and the first physical proof that the bleed is deliberate.
Hook 04
A scholar who studied seam-lore in Oilgate has been telling anyone who will listen that the black oil has been rising a foot a year for forty years, which means someone cut that seam on purpose. The only complete record of the drowned city sits in a flooded archive with a dying archivist named Telom. This hook gives a late-starting or returning party a reason to go down through the oil and a personal stake in the campaign's final act.
The party arrives in Stitchmarket as its well begins bleeding mustard gas and its people begin vanishing. Following brass spool shavings and a bought foreman, they trace the theft of seam-thread to the Brinehollow camp and from there down into the trench itself, where Grennick the Mustard Baron runs a bleed-pump for a woman in a grey shawl. Ending the pump closes the well and earns the party their first real enemy — and their first mention of Ilva Suture.
Read aloud
The well has been the color of good tea for two hundred years. This morning it is the color of a bruise, and it is hissing. A thin yellow curl of vapor rises from the bucket and drifts, slow and heavy, toward the boardwalk. Marrow Tallow stands with her arms folded and her jaw set, and behind her the Salt Loom's common room is full of people who have nowhere else to go.
This is the opening scene. Marrow Tallow hires the party to investigate: she offers free room and board plus 50 gp from her strongbox. She tells them about the three missing sleepers (a baker, a seamstress's sweetheart, and a boy of sixteen) and, if pressed or if the party earns her trust, about the woman in the grey shawl with the spear-length needle. The well is a seam-node; the gas is coming up the feed line from the Needleworks. Hobb Nine-Fingers is in the crowd and knows more than he says. Sister Quill can identify the vapor as trench-gas and will say so loudly, which starts a panic unless calmed.
Read aloud
The looms stop when you come in. Thirty faces turn, then turn away. Lace Annet sets down her needle and says, without looking up, that the foreman is in the back and that the vault door has a new seal on it that she did not sew.
Annet gives the party her tally and points them at the vault. Grist is in the back with two hired guards; he will bluster, then bargain, then run for the maintenance tunnel. The vault contains three cut spools, a shipping ledger naming Brinehollow, and a Loom-mark brand still warm. If Grist escapes, he flees to Brinehollow and warns Cawl, making the next scene harder.
Read aloud
Odo sets down a half-finished mask and looks at the door for a long moment before he speaks. He says he has made four hundred masks for this camp, and eleven of them he made for people who never came back to collect them. Then he asks, very quietly, whether you have come to do something about the quarantine huts.
Odo gives the party the layout and the names of the eleven captives. Cawl has four hired guards and will not fight unless cornered; he prefers to bargain, offering Grennick's schedule and the pump's location in exchange for his life. The cages hold eleven people, three of them from Stitchmarket. Freeing them turns the camp friendly. If the party kills Cawl without exposing him first, the camp turns wary and refuses to sell gas masks.
Read aloud
Pell stops at the last vent and will not go further. Below, through a haze of yellow, a brass screw the size of a house turns slowly on a scaffold of rusted iron, and masked figures move around it with hoses and hooks. One of them is not working. He is standing on the highest platform with his hands behind his back, watching the shaft come down, and he is wearing a mask made of gold.
Grennick has six harvesters and two hired guards. He fights from the high platform, throwing gas-flasks and using the vents for cover, and retreats toward the pump at half hit points. If he reaches the pump he opens it fully: the trench floods with gas (Constitution DC 15, 4d6 poison damage, half on a success) and he escapes through the maintenance shaft. Destroying the pump requires three actions at the mechanism or a single DC 16 Strength check to shear the screw. Pell knows the mechanism and can talk the party through it.
Milestone: The party reaches level 5 when the bleed-pump is destroyed and Grennick is defeated, captured or driven off.
The party follows the Stitchroad east into a forest that screams. Hollowcrown is losing a sleeper a night to the Hollow Choir, who sing to keep the leaf-seam open and harvest the screams for a woman in a grey shawl. Crossing the Leafway and descending into the Cantor Spire's undercroft, the party must break the scream-loom and silence Cantor Vex — and learn that the harvest is being shipped downriver to a saint made of oil.
Read aloud
Elder Sabine does not raise her voice, because nobody in Hollowcrown raises their voice. She says that eleven people have gone missing in eleven weeks, that the leaves are louder this morning than they were last night, and that she would like the strangers to do something about it before the twelfth. Behind her, the bell tower stands silent, and the whole square is listening without looking.
Sabine gives the party the count and the pattern. Warden Thrush wants to storm the Spire immediately and will go alone if the party hesitates. Choirmaster Lune can be approached privately and will confirm the hymn-cycle link if the party promises the children are safe. Sella the baker, Vex's mother, will not speak to strangers unless the party mentions her son. The burned houses at the eastern edge are where the last person who screamed lived.
Read aloud
Meg stops at the fork and puts her hand flat on the trunk of a tree, the way you would calm a horse. The leaves above you are screaming, softly, in a rhythm that is almost a tune. Ahead, three carts stand in the road with their wheels turned in, and the leaves are piled in the seats in the shape of people.
Meg guides the party through the safe path but will not go past the caravan until she knows what happened. The carts hold a Choir hymn-book, a silver tuning fork stamped with the Loom-mark, and a trail of dragged footprints leading east. A Choir patrol of four cultists arrives at dusk; they will try to take the party alive. If the party makes noise or shows fear, the leaves scream loud enough to summon a second patrol.
Read aloud
Fen leads you down a stair of packed leaves into a room that is not a room. A great silver seam is stretched across a frame of blackened timber, humming, and it is screaming — a thin, endless, human sound. Around it, robed figures sing in a slow circle, and on the gallery above, a tall man with a tuning fork in each hand is watching you come down.
Fen can get the party in as converts (Deception DC 14) or show them the undercroft stair. The scream-loom takes three actions to break or a single DC 16 Arcana check to unpick; each round it is intact, the Choir's hymn imposes a Charms save on the party. Vex fights from the gallery and widens the leaf-seam at half hit points, filling the undercroft with screaming leaves (Constitution DC 14, 3d6 psychic damage). If the loom breaks, Vex stops singing and fights badly with his tuning forks.
Read aloud
Vasque does not look up from her tally-board. She says that a berth on the oil costs twenty gold, that a berth down through the oil costs considerably more, and that the last three people who paid for one did not come back up. Then she looks up, and her eyes are flat as the sea.
Vasque sells passage to the oil surface for 20 gp and information about the tithe-barges for 50 gp or a favor. Nim the Diver will guide the party down for a share of the loot but is skimming for the Saint and will panic if pressed. The hidden dock under the harbor wall can be found by watching the harbor bell. If the party exposes Nim, the Guild turns wary; if they handle it quietly, Nim confesses and gives up the Saint's schedule.
Milestone: The party reaches level 9 when the scream-loom is destroyed and Cantor Vex is defeated, silenced or converted.
The party descends through the black oil to a drowned metropolis ruled by Marn Ossuary, the Oil Saint, who has been drowning the living to feed the Loom Heart for forty years. In the flooded archive they find the map to the Loom Heart and the truth about Ilva Suture's re-weaving. At the continent's center they face the Loom-Keeper herself, and decide whether the world should be held together by pain, by something gentler, or not at all.
Read aloud
Brass does not ask your names. He points at the barge tied up at the far pier, at the shapes under the tarpaulin on its deck, and says that one of them is his granddaughter and that he is too old to do anything about it. Behind him, Widow Sarn's bell rings once, though nobody has touched it.
The tithe-barge is guarded by four drowned divers and a Loombound overseer. The captives are under a tarpaulin: nine people, including Brass's granddaughter. If the party frees them, Brass ferries them down for free and Widow Sarn gives them her list. If they fail, the barge sails and the granddaughter is lost — Brass still ferries them, but he does not speak for the rest of the campaign.
Read aloud
Telom's archive is the only dry room in the city, and it is full of paper. He has been cataloguing the drowned for nine years, and he does not stop talking when you come in, because he has not had anyone to talk to in a very long time. Then he puts down his pen and says that the Saint knows you are here, and that he is going to flood the district at midnight.
Telom has the map and will trade it for a promise that his scrolls leave the city. Iss Bell-Diver can guide the party through the flooded streets and will fight beside them. At midnight the Oil Saint floods the district: the oil line rises and the air pockets shrink. The party must either reach the bell tower and confront Marn Ossuary, or escape with the map and the scrolls. Marn fights in the deep oil, dragging characters under with a thread from his chest.
Read aloud
The temple is open to the sky and the Eye is open above it, green and enormous, and in the middle of the floor a woman in a grey shawl is working a loom the size of a cathedral. She does not turn around. She says, in a pleasant, tired voice, that she has been expecting you since the trench, and that she would like to show you what she is making.
Ilva Suture opens with conversation, not violence. She explains her doctrine honestly and answers questions. The Loom is active terrain: each round it pulls a thread that grapples, blinds or restrains one character (DC 15 Dexterity or Strength to resist). Four Loombound veterans guard the frame. If the party has disrupted at least two of the three harvests, Ilva is at half her resources and fights with cold fury; if all three harvests are intact, she is at full strength and the fight is deadly.
Orrin can lead a character to the frame's carved message with a DC 14 Investigation check; showing it to Ilva forces a DC 18 Charisma (Persuasion) check to break her certainty.
Milestone: The party reaches level 12 when they enter the Loom Heart, and the campaign ends when Ilva Suture is defeated, redeemed or replaced.
Ilva Suture, the Loom-Keeper
Failed
Generating character sheet.
Grennick the Mustard Baron
Failed
Generating character sheet.
Cantor Vex of the Screaming Leaves
Failed
Generating character sheet.
Marn Ossuary, the Oil Saint
Failed
Generating character sheet.
Sump Larker
Completed
· CR 1/2
· Aberration
Gaunt, hairless quadruped with slick yellow skin, milky eyes, and lamprey mouth. Hiding in shallow mustard-green gas pools.
Spool Mite
Completed
· CR 1/8
· Monstrosity
A thumb-sized brass-shelled tick with spindle legs and a spinning proboscis, clustering on thread dust in a dark vault corner.
Tithe-Cage Shade
Completed
· CR 2
· Undead
A soot-dark humanoid silhouette wearing a tarnished brass mask, floating slightly above ground in a dim industrial work camp setting.
Scream Wisp
Completed
· CR 3
· Fey
A small knot of crimson and gold autumn leaves held by a silver thread, forming a faint human face. Glows with eerie light in a misty fores…
Hymn-Thrall
Completed
· CR 4
· Humanoid
Humanoid figure in tattered leaf-leather robes, jaw stitched with silver thread, holding a heavy metal tuning fork. Eyes hollow, mouth open…
Oil-Slick Drowned
Completed
· CR 5
· Undead
Bloated humanoid coated in glossy black oil, silver threads stitching mouth shut, glowing lamp-like eyes, dripping viscous substance, stand…
Bell-Jelly
Completed
· CR 6
· Aberration
Translucent, bell-shaped jellyfish the size of a rowboat with a visible clapper organ inside and trailing silver-thread tentacles, floating…
Thread Revenant
Completed
· CR 8
· Construct
Medium construct resembling a humanoid wrapped in miles of silver seam-thread. Brass spool visible in chest cavity. Needle-like fingers. Gl…
Static Fog Mote
Completed
· CR 10
· Elemental
A large, drifting clot of grey static fog with a single glowing green half-closed eye in the center. Arcs of black electricity crackle arou…
Ilva was the Great Weaver's last mortal apprentice, and she watched the Weaver finish the continent and walk away without a word. She believes the work was abandoned half-done: the seams are loosening, the demiplanes are drifting apart, and no one else has the skill to fix it. Her doctrine is that a seam only holds if it is stitched through pain, so she cuts seams open, lets a region bleed agony into the thread, and re-stitches it tighter. She is not lying about the seams weakening. She is simply the one making them weak.
Patient, precise, and unfailingly polite. She speaks in tailoring metaphors and never raises her voice. She genuinely believes she is saving the world and will explain her reasoning to anyone who asks, at length, while her needle works. She does not enjoy cruelty; she simply counts it as material.
Ilva never fights in the open. She begins by cutting the seam under the party's feet, splitting the battlefield into drifting fragments. She uses the Loom to pull threads that grapple, blind and restrain, and she retreats through a seam the moment she is bloodied, returning with Loombound reinforcements. If cornered at the Loom Heart with her harvest intact, she is confident and slow; if her harvest is ruined, she fights with cold, efficient fury and targets the party's healer first.
She can be killed, and the loom falls silent. She can be shown the Weaver's final message — carved inside the Loom Heart's frame — proving the work was finished and the seams were meant to loosen; shown this, she breaks and can be persuaded to unstitch her own work. Or she can be given what she actually wants: an apprentice. A party member who offers to take up the needle and stay can end the campaign with Ilva stepping down, and the continent held together by a new and gentler hand.
Grennick is a failed seam-warden who cut one thread to save his own skin and discovered that the Loom-Keeper paid extremely well for exactly that. He now runs the trench bleed for her: pumping mustard gas out of the torn seam and shipping it, along with anyone the harvesters can grab, down the Stitchroad. He is terrified of Ilva and more terrified of stopping.
Loud, sweating, over-familiar. He calls everyone 'friend' and means none of it. He laughs at his own jokes and stops laughing the instant he thinks he is losing. Under the bluster he is a coward who will bargain for his life with anything he has.
Grennick fights from behind his crew, using the trench's gas vents for cover and forcing Constitution saves. He opens with a thrown gas-flask, then sends two harvesters forward while he retreats toward the bleed-pump. At half hit points he offers to talk, and will genuinely sell out Ilva if the party lets him. If he reaches the pump he opens it fully, flooding the trench and fleeing through a maintenance shaft.
He can be killed, handed to the Seam Wardens for trial, or turned — he knows the trench routes, the pump's mechanism, and the name of the woman in the grey shawl. He cannot be redeemed, only used.
Vex was a Hollowcrown choirboy who heard the leaves scream and decided it was a god speaking. When Ilva Suture came through the forest and told him the screams were a harvest, he did not feel cheated; he felt chosen. He now leads the Hollow Choir, keeping the leaf-seam open and filling a quota of screams for the Loom-Keeper, whom he worships as a saint.
Serene, musical, and completely unshakable. Vex speaks in half-sung phrases and treats violence as a form of accompaniment. He is courteous to the party, genuinely sorry that they will have to be harvested, and will offer them a place in the Choir right up until the moment he attacks.
Vex opens with a hymn that imposes a Charms and Frightened effect on the party, then sends Choir cultists forward in pairs. He stays on the Spire's gallery, using the acoustics to amplify his voice, and widens the leaf-seam if he is losing, filling the undercroft with screaming leaves. At half hit points he stops singing and fights with a tuning fork and a knife, which he is not good at.
He can be killed, or silenced — destroying the scream-loom breaks his faith and leaves him catatonic and harmless. A party who can sing his own hymn back at him correctly can turn two of his Choir to their side before the fight begins.
Marn drowned in the black oil forty years ago, and Ilva Suture pulled him back out with a thread through his chest. He has been paying off that debt ever since by drowning others: the Oil Saint sinks tithe-barges of the living into the oil and delivers their last moments to the Loom Heart. He believes he is saving them from a worse death and genuinely pities the people he kills.
Soft-spoken, damp, and endlessly apologetic. He weeps when he drowns someone and thanks them afterward. He smells of oil and old water. He is the most reasonable of the three lieutenants and the hardest to hate, which makes him worse.
Marn fights in the oil, never on it. He drags characters under with a thread from his chest, forcing Athletics checks and drowning rules, and calls drowned divers up from below in waves. He uses the bells to disorient and to summon. At half hit points he retreats into the drowned metropolis and fights again in the flooded archive, where the water is deeper.
He can be killed, and the thread in his chest cut — which kills him instantly and releases every diver he ever bound. He can also be released: if the party can show him the tithe ledger's true total, he breaks down and agrees to sink his own barges. He will not fight a party that offers him forgiveness; he will simply sit down in the oil and stop.
Recommended party: Four characters of levels 1–12. A balanced party works best: one front-line warrior (Fighter, Barbarian or Paladin), one healer or support caster (Cleric, Druid or Bard), one skill expert (Rogue or Ranger) for the many Investigation, Stealth and Survival checks, and one arcane caster (Wizard or Sorcerer) for the seam-lore and the Loom Heart finale. A party of three is workable if one character has the Medicine skill; a party of five scales the lieutenant fights up by adding one additional rank-and-file faction troop per villain.
Before the first session, hold a short session zero. Cover four things. Tone: this is a grim, strange world with warm, ordinary people in it. The horror is in the landscape and the institutions, not in cruelty to the characters. Comedy is welcome; cruelty is not rewarded. Content: the module contains body horror, mustard gas and suffocation, drowning, child endangerment, cult violence, and the deaths of named NPCs the party will like. Get explicit consent for each of these and use a safety tool (the X-card, the lines-and-veils list, or an open-door policy) for the whole campaign. Characters: build four characters at level 1 using the standard 2024 rules. A balanced party works best: one front-line warrior, one healer or support caster, one skill expert for the many Investigation, Stealth and Survival checks, and one arcane caster for seam-lore and the finale. The four pregenerated heroes in this module are Dagna Embervow, Cobb Wren, Halcyon Vane and Ysolde Fenwick, and their personal quests are already tied to the campaign's NPCs. Expectations: tell the players up front that the world is a patchwork of stolen places, that the seams holding it together are failing, and that their choices about whether to repair, replace or release those seams will decide the ending. Do not tell them who Ilva Suture is. Do tell them that NPCs can die and that failure has consequences that stick.
This module is written for four characters of levels 1–12, and every encounter lists its own scaling notes. Use these rules of thumb on top of them. For a party of three, remove one non-villain combatant per encounter and reduce villain hit points by a quarter; the party will still feel the pressure because the terrain hazards do not scale down. For a party of five or six, add one rank-and-file faction troop per villain fight (a Cultist for the Choir, a Guard for Brinehollow, an Oil-Slick Drowned for the Oil Saint, a Loombound Veteran for Ilva) and add one extra hazard trigger per scene, such as a second gas vent or a faster flood. If the party is one level below the suggested range, halve the number of minions and let the villain retreat one round earlier than written. If the party is two or more levels above, keep the roster and instead give the villain one extra action per round and double the hazard damage. Never scale the Loom Heart finale upward past the written roster unless the party has ruined all three harvests, in which case Ilva should be at half strength and the fight should feel like a rout, not a wall. If the party arrives at the Loom Heart with all three harvests intact, do not soften the encounter: let them lose, retreat, and come back after breaking a harvest, because the campaign's whole structure is about the cost of doing the work in the wrong order.
Run this campaign as three self-contained regions with one continuous spine. Each act has the same shape: arrive in a town that is pretending everything is fine, find the local lieutenant's harvest, break it, and follow the clue to the next region. Keep the clue flow tight and never let the party leave a region without the next region's name in hand. The three lieutenants should each be foreshadowed before they appear: Grennick's letter names Ilva, Vex's orders name the Oil Saint, and the Oil Saint's ledger names the Loom-Keeper. Pacing: one region is eight to ten sessions. Level the party at each act milestone and once mid-act. Change the Blinking Eye at every act break: green in Act I, black-beam in Act II, static fog in Act III. Villain pressure: the lieutenants act on a clock. If the party dawdles in Stitchmarket, the well fails. If they dawdle in Hollowcrown, the Choir takes a street a night. If they dawdle in Oilgate, the oil rises a foot a week. Announce these clocks openly so the players feel them. Clues: never hide a required clue behind a single roll. Every clue in this module has at least two routes to it, usually a document and a witness. Tone: the world is a nightmare; the people are not. Give the party at least one warm scene per session, usually with an innkeeper, a maskwright, a ferryman or an archivist. The finale: do not open with initiative. Ilva talks first, answers everything honestly, and is genuinely interested in the party's opinion. The fight is the fallback, not the default.
The party hires on at the spool-towers for a few days of piecework, winding silver seam-thread onto brass spools under Lace Annet's eye. The work is dull, the pay is poor, and the gossip is excellent: every worker in the yard has an opinion about Foreman Grist's new locks and the spools that leave at night.
Requirements: A character must spend at least three days in Stitchmarket and pass a DC 10 Dexterity check to avoid ruining a spool. No other prerequisite.
Rewards: 15 gp per character, plus one concrete rumor from the appendix per day worked, and Lace Annet's tally if the party has not already earned it. A character who works a full week gains advantage on the first Charisma check made against any Needleworks worker.
Time: Three to seven days of in-world time.
Location: The Needleworks district of Stitchmarket (loc-needleworks). It only works before the spool-vault is raided; after that the yard is shut and the Wardens are asking questions.
Use this to slow the party down and let the town breathe. If Grist is still in charge, he watches anyone who asks too many questions and assigns them the worst looms. If the party has already exposed him, the workers are talkative and frightened instead.
Odo the Maskwright fits a brass mask to each character's face, taking measurements, adjusting the seal, and talking the whole time about the people he has made masks for. It takes a full day per mask, and Odo will not rush. Characters who sit with him learn the names of the eleven who never came back.
Requirements: The party must have freed the tithe-cages or otherwise earned the Brinehollow camp's trust. Odo will not fit masks for anyone he thinks will bring the Wardens down on the camp.
Rewards: A fitted gas mask for each character (advantage on Constitution saves against trench gas and similar vapors), plus the names of the eleven captives and Odo's account of the Loombound agent who came through camp two months ago.
Time: One day per mask, so four to six days for a full party.
Location: Odo's workshop in Brinehollow (loc-brinehollow), which is the only warm room in the camp and smells of hot brass and leather.
This is the campaign's best quiet scene. Let the players ask Odo anything. If they press him about the quarantine huts, he admits he has known for two years and has said nothing, and he will only keep helping if they promise the camp will not be punished for Cawl's crimes.
Sister Quill or Warden Thrush takes the party out to walk a seam line, measuring the thread with brass rods and recording every cut, fray and splice. It is slow, cold work, and it teaches the party how the continent is actually held together.
Requirements: The Seam Wardens' stance must be neutral or better, and the party must have returned at least one piece of physical evidence of deliberate cutting.
Rewards: Proficiency with the Wardens' brass measuring rods, a hand-drawn seam-map of the local region (which removes one day of travel time per journey), and a permanent +1 to any check made to identify a seam, a cut, or a Loom-mark.
Time: Two days per survey, and the party can survey up to three times per region.
Location: Anywhere the Stitchroad runs: the ridge above Stitchmarket, the western edge of Hollowcrown, or the harbor wall at Oilgate. Each region has its own seam and its own hazards.
Use this to deliver seam-lore without a lecture. Each survey should end with the party finding something wrong: a cut, a splice, or a strand that has been replaced with something that is not silver. Thrush is a hard teacher and Quill is a patient one; pick based on which relationship the party has built.
Widow Sarn keeps a bell at the end of the dock and rings it for every soul lost to the oil. She will let the party take a shift, which means sitting in the dark listening to the water and writing down the names of anyone who does not come back. It is the only complete record of the Oil Saint's victims.
Requirements: The party must be at the Ossuary Docks and must have spoken to Widow Sarn at least once. She does not let strangers near the list until they have sat a shift.
Rewards: Access to Widow Sarn's list of four thousand names, which is worth 500 gp to the Black Oil Divers' Guild and is the strongest evidence against the Oil Saint. A character who sits three shifts also learns the Saint's true name: Marn.
Time: One night per shift, up to three shifts.
Location: The southern pier of the Ossuary Docks (loc-ossuary-docks), where the oil is shallow enough to see the roofs of the drowned city below.
Play this quietly. Sarn does not chat; she rings the bell and writes. If the party asks about her granddaughter, she tells them the name and nothing else. The list is the reward, and it should feel like one.
Choirmaster Lune teaches the party the children's song that keeps the leaves quiet, and in exchange they help him teach it to Hollowcrown's children on market day. It is the only cheerful scene in the Screaming Autumn, and it is also the party's best chance to learn who in town is already in the Choir.
Requirements: The party must have met Lune and must not have attacked any Choir member in front of the town.
Rewards: The Quiet Song (suppresses the screaming leaves for one hour, three uses), plus the names of four townspeople who sing in the Choir's junior choir and one adult who reports to the Spire.
Time: One afternoon, repeatable once per week.
Location: The market square below the bell tower in Hollowcrown (loc-hollowcrown), where the whole town can hear and nobody raises their voice.
This is the scene where the party learns that the Choir is not an outside force but a local one. Lune is genuinely fond of his students and genuinely terrified. If the party warns him that his name is on the fourth verse, he leaves town and the children lose their teacher, which is a real cost for a real kindness.
# The Leafway
A road of packed red leaves running east through the Screaming Autumn, wide enough for a cart and bordered by trees the size of towers. The leaves overhead are always falling and never land. They scream when disturbed, and they scream louder when someone is afraid.
The road forks twice and both forks look identical. There are no birds. There are no animals at all, except the leaf-harvesters' mules, which wear wax plugs and blinders.
Halfway along, a caravan has been abandoned: three carts, a dead mule, and a great many leaves piled where people used to be.
Run the Leafway as a travel hazard, not a dungeon. The screaming leaves impose a Wisdom save against fear, and fear makes the leaves louder, which attracts Choir patrols. Meg Harrowhand knows the safe path.
# The Cantor Spire
A blackened tower of fused timber and silver thread rising out of a clearing of crushed leaves, shaped like a tuning fork with two prongs and no bell. It hums constantly, and the hum makes the leaves around it scream in harmony.
The Spire has three levels above ground — a robing hall, a dormitory, and a gallery open to the sky — and an undercroft below, where the scream-loom turns. The Choir sings in three shifts, so there is always music, and the music is always the same hymn.
Acolyte Fen sleeps in the dormitory and has not slept properly in months.
The Spire is a small dungeon with a social entrance. Fen can get the party inside as new converts. The undercroft is guarded by six cultists and a priest, and the scream-loom is the objective.
# Hollowcrown
A town of timber houses built in a ring around a bell tower, in a clearing where the leaves do not grow. Every window is sealed with wax. Every door has a felt strip along the bottom. The people speak in murmurs and walk everywhere; nobody in Hollowcrown has run in four years.
The bell tower is the tallest thing for miles and has not rung since the Choir came. The market sells wax, earplugs, pressed leaves and little else. Three houses at the eastern edge burned last winter and have not been rebuilt; the char is still there, and so are the scorch marks on the trees.
Elder Sabine holds court on the tower steps every morning. Warden Thrush holds the leaf-seam alone at the western edge of town, and Choirmaster Lune teaches children to sing on market days, which everyone finds charming and no one finds strange.
Hollowcrown is a town in denial. Everyone knows about the Choir; nobody says so. The party's job is to break that silence. The burned houses are a reminder of what happens when someone screams.
# Oilgate
A warm, red-brick town of arcades and shallow tiled roofs, built on the shore of a sea that is not water. The black oil begins at the harbor wall and goes out to the horizon, flat and glossy and utterly still. Nothing reflects in it. The Blinking Eye's light slides off it like rain off glass.
Oilgate lives on the oil: divers, ferrymen, refiners, tollkeepers. The arcades are full of brass helmets and sealed leather coats. The Guild runs the harbor and the tolls, and the Guild is not fond of the Oil Saint, who has been poaching its divers for nine years.
The harbor bell rings for every soul lost to the oil. It rings often.
Oilgate is the party's last safe town before the drowned city. The Guild sells diving gear, oil-lamps and sealed suits here. Tollkeeper Vasque controls the berths; Nim the Diver knows the way down.
# The Ossuary Docks
A ramshackle camp of stilted docks and tar-paper huts built out over the black oil, south of Oilgate and outside the Guild's protection. The planks are slick and the lamps are sealed. Every third night the Oil Saint's tithe-barges come in to load, and the dockers look the other way.
Brass the Ferryman keeps the southern pier and a boat he has been quietly sabotaging for a year. Widow Sarn keeps the bell at the end of the dock and rings it for every soul lost to the oil. There are four thousand names on her list.
The oil under the docks is shallow enough to see through, and on a clear night you can see the roofs of the drowned city below.
The Ossuary Docks are a staging area. The party can buy sealed suits and lamps here, watch a tithe-barge load, and plan the descent. Brass will ferry them down for free if they rescue his granddaughter.
# The Drowned Metropolis
A city under a roof of black oil. The streets are flooded to the second story, the arcades are full of still water, and the lamps that the Oil Saint lights have never gone out. The light is amber and it moves, because the oil above it moves, and everything below looks like it is happening in a dream.
The city is not empty. The drowned walk here — bound by silver thread, going about the errands they were given when they died. Bell-divers swim between the towers. The bells ring underwater, and the sound comes through your chest rather than your ears.
The flooded archive stands on the highest ground in the city, its upper windows still above the oil. Archivist Telom has been living there for nine years.
Run the metropolis as an underwater city with air pockets. Sealed suits and lamps are essential; without them, characters must hold their breath. The drowned are not hostile unless commanded. The archive is the objective; the bell tower is where the Oil Saint waits.
# The Loom Heart
A circular temple of grey stone at the exact center of the continent, roofless, open to the Blinking Eye. Inside stands the Loom: a frame of blackened timber and silver thread the size of a cathedral, strung with a hundred strands, each one a seam, each one running out to a different corner of the world.
Ilva Suture works here. She has been working here for eleven years. The floor around the Loom is covered in spools, in needles, in the grey shawls of Loombound who have finished their work and been folded away.
Orrin Unraveled has been unpicking himself in the corner for three years. He knows the temple's layout, Ilva's schedule, and the message carved inside the Loom's frame.
The finale. Ilva Suture is here with four Loombound veterans and the Loom itself. The Loom can be used as terrain: it grapples, blinds and restrains. Orrin can guide the party to the frame's carved message, which is the key to the redemption ending.
Ilva Suture, the Loom-Keeper
Failed
Generating character sheet.
Grennick the Mustard Baron
Failed
Generating character sheet.
Cantor Vex of the Screaming Leaves
Failed
Generating character sheet.
Marn Ossuary, the Oil Saint
Failed
Generating character sheet.
Sump Larker
Completed
· CR 1/2
· Aberration
Gaunt, hairless quadruped with slick yellow skin, milky eyes, and lamprey mouth. Hiding in shallow mustard-green gas pools.
Spool Mite
Completed
· CR 1/8
· Monstrosity
A thumb-sized brass-shelled tick with spindle legs and a spinning proboscis, clustering on thread dust in a dark vault corner.
Tithe-Cage Shade
Completed
· CR 2
· Undead
A soot-dark humanoid silhouette wearing a tarnished brass mask, floating slightly above ground in a dim industrial work camp setting.
Scream Wisp
Completed
· CR 3
· Fey
A small knot of crimson and gold autumn leaves held by a silver thread, forming a faint human face. Glows with eerie light in a misty fores…
Hymn-Thrall
Completed
· CR 4
· Humanoid
Humanoid figure in tattered leaf-leather robes, jaw stitched with silver thread, holding a heavy metal tuning fork. Eyes hollow, mouth open…
Oil-Slick Drowned
Completed
· CR 5
· Undead
Bloated humanoid coated in glossy black oil, silver threads stitching mouth shut, glowing lamp-like eyes, dripping viscous substance, stand…
Bell-Jelly
Completed
· CR 6
· Aberration
Translucent, bell-shaped jellyfish the size of a rowboat with a visible clapper organ inside and trailing silver-thread tentacles, floating…
Thread Revenant
Completed
· CR 8
· Construct
Medium construct resembling a humanoid wrapped in miles of silver seam-thread. Brass spool visible in chest cavity. Needle-like fingers. Gl…
Static Fog Mote
Completed
· CR 10
· Elemental
A large, drifting clot of grey static fog with a single glowing green half-closed eye in the center. Arcs of black electricity crackle arou…
Ilva was the Great Weaver's last mortal apprentice, and she watched the Weaver finish the continent and walk away without a word. She believes the work was abandoned half-done: the seams are loosening, the demiplanes are drifting apart, and no one else has the skill to fix it. Her doctrine is that a seam only holds if it is stitched through pain, so she cuts seams open, lets a region bleed agony into the thread, and re-stitches it tighter. She is not lying about the seams weakening. She is simply the one making them weak.
Patient, precise, and unfailingly polite. She speaks in tailoring metaphors and never raises her voice. She genuinely believes she is saving the world and will explain her reasoning to anyone who asks, at length, while her needle works. She does not enjoy cruelty; she simply counts it as material.
Ilva never fights in the open. She begins by cutting the seam under the party's feet, splitting the battlefield into drifting fragments. She uses the Loom to pull threads that grapple, blind and restrain, and she retreats through a seam the moment she is bloodied, returning with Loombound reinforcements. If cornered at the Loom Heart with her harvest intact, she is confident and slow; if her harvest is ruined, she fights with cold, efficient fury and targets the party's healer first.
She can be killed, and the loom falls silent. She can be shown the Weaver's final message — carved inside the Loom Heart's frame — proving the work was finished and the seams were meant to loosen; shown this, she breaks and can be persuaded to unstitch her own work. Or she can be given what she actually wants: an apprentice. A party member who offers to take up the needle and stay can end the campaign with Ilva stepping down, and the continent held together by a new and gentler hand.
Grennick is a failed seam-warden who cut one thread to save his own skin and discovered that the Loom-Keeper paid extremely well for exactly that. He now runs the trench bleed for her: pumping mustard gas out of the torn seam and shipping it, along with anyone the harvesters can grab, down the Stitchroad. He is terrified of Ilva and more terrified of stopping.
Loud, sweating, over-familiar. He calls everyone 'friend' and means none of it. He laughs at his own jokes and stops laughing the instant he thinks he is losing. Under the bluster he is a coward who will bargain for his life with anything he has.
Grennick fights from behind his crew, using the trench's gas vents for cover and forcing Constitution saves. He opens with a thrown gas-flask, then sends two harvesters forward while he retreats toward the bleed-pump. At half hit points he offers to talk, and will genuinely sell out Ilva if the party lets him. If he reaches the pump he opens it fully, flooding the trench and fleeing through a maintenance shaft.
He can be killed, handed to the Seam Wardens for trial, or turned — he knows the trench routes, the pump's mechanism, and the name of the woman in the grey shawl. He cannot be redeemed, only used.
Vex was a Hollowcrown choirboy who heard the leaves scream and decided it was a god speaking. When Ilva Suture came through the forest and told him the screams were a harvest, he did not feel cheated; he felt chosen. He now leads the Hollow Choir, keeping the leaf-seam open and filling a quota of screams for the Loom-Keeper, whom he worships as a saint.
Serene, musical, and completely unshakable. Vex speaks in half-sung phrases and treats violence as a form of accompaniment. He is courteous to the party, genuinely sorry that they will have to be harvested, and will offer them a place in the Choir right up until the moment he attacks.
Vex opens with a hymn that imposes a Charms and Frightened effect on the party, then sends Choir cultists forward in pairs. He stays on the Spire's gallery, using the acoustics to amplify his voice, and widens the leaf-seam if he is losing, filling the undercroft with screaming leaves. At half hit points he stops singing and fights with a tuning fork and a knife, which he is not good at.
He can be killed, or silenced — destroying the scream-loom breaks his faith and leaves him catatonic and harmless. A party who can sing his own hymn back at him correctly can turn two of his Choir to their side before the fight begins.
Marn drowned in the black oil forty years ago, and Ilva Suture pulled him back out with a thread through his chest. He has been paying off that debt ever since by drowning others: the Oil Saint sinks tithe-barges of the living into the oil and delivers their last moments to the Loom Heart. He believes he is saving them from a worse death and genuinely pities the people he kills.
Soft-spoken, damp, and endlessly apologetic. He weeps when he drowns someone and thanks them afterward. He smells of oil and old water. He is the most reasonable of the three lieutenants and the hardest to hate, which makes him worse.
Marn fights in the oil, never on it. He drags characters under with a thread from his chest, forcing Athletics checks and drowning rules, and calls drowned divers up from below in waves. He uses the bells to disorient and to summon. At half hit points he retreats into the drowned metropolis and fights again in the flooded archive, where the water is deeper.
He can be killed, and the thread in his chest cut — which kills him instantly and releases every diver he ever bound. He can also be released: if the party can show him the tithe ledger's true total, he breaks down and agrees to sink his own barges. He will not fight a party that offers him forgiveness; he will simply sit down in the oil and stop.
A broad, grey-braided woman in her sixties with flour on her forearms and a ladle she has never once used as a weapon. She has run the Salt Loom for thirty years and knows every debt, affair and grudge in Stitchmarket. She is kind to strangers and merciless to bullies.
A thin, ink-stained warden in a grey shawl, her fingers permanently calloused from handling silver thread. She speaks quickly and precisely, as though every sentence is being measured. She is exhausted and hides it badly.
A wiry boy of fourteen with a chipped tooth and a coat three sizes too big. He has nine fingers and a story about each missing one. He is faster than he looks and braver than he admits.
A small, sharp-eyed woman with pins in her sleeve and a permanent squint from fine work. She sews the Wardens' ceremonial shawls and hears everything said in the Needleworks' front room. She is not brave, but she is stubborn.
A stooped old man with scarred lungs and a workshop full of half-finished masks. He breathes through a brass tube and speaks in short, wheezing sentences. He has made a mask for every person in Brinehollow and remembers each one.
A gaunt young man in a cracked mask, hiding in a vent shaft with a stolen ledger and a bad leg. He flinches at loud noises and apologizes constantly. He is nineteen and has already seen too much.
A lean, elegant man in an immaculate brass mask, the only person in Brinehollow whose boots are clean. He speaks softly and never repeats himself. He is the camp's owner and its worst-kept secret.
A heavy, red-faced man in a leather apron with a brass spool-hook where his left hand should be. He shouts rather than speaks and treats his workers like machinery. He is sweating more than the work justifies.
A tall, straight-backed old woman with leaves braided into her white hair and a voice that carries across a square. She has run Hollowcrown since before the Choir came and has no intention of losing it now.
A soft, sad-eyed man in a leaf-leather robe who teaches music to Hollowcrown's children on market days. He sings beautifully and never raises his voice. He is genuinely fond of his students.
A weathered woman in a waxed canvas coat with a hooked bill and a satchel of pressed leaves. She has walked the Leafway four hundred times and has opinions about every tree on it. She talks to fill silence, because the silence screams.
A pale boy of seventeen in an oversized robe, with a shaved head and a permanent flinch. He sings in the third shift and has not slept properly in months. He is the only person in the Spire who looks afraid.
A tall woman in a sealed leather coat with a brass tally-board chained to her belt. She has a voice like a closing door and a memory for faces that borders on the supernatural. She has never once been cheated.
A small, wiry diver of about twenty with oil-stained hands and a brass helmet carried under one arm like a pet. Nim talks fast, laughs at nothing, and can hold their breath for four minutes.
A broad-shouldered warden in a mud-stained grey shawl, one eye milky and one hand wrapped around a measuring rod like a club. She has been holding the leaf-seam alone for eleven months and is running on spite.
An enormous old man with brass rings on every finger and a voice like a foghorn. He has ferried the oil for forty years and has never lost a passenger he liked. He is missing his left ear and does not explain why.
A tiny, fierce old woman in a black oilskin shawl who rings the dock bell for every soul lost to the oil. She has rung it four thousand times and can tell you the name of every one. She does not sleep.
A gaunt man in a waterlogged coat with spectacles strapped to his head and a satchel of oil-proofed scrolls. He speaks in a hoarse whisper because his lungs are half oil. He has been cataloguing the drowned city alone for nine years.
A man held together by visible silver stitches, one eye replaced by a brass spool. He speaks slowly and carefully, as though each word must be reattached. He has been in the Loom Heart longer than anyone and has watched Ilva Suture work.
A young woman in a diving suit with a silver thread running into her chest and out through her back. She moves like someone underwater even on dry stone. She remembers her name and very little else.
Step into your campaign
Play a 3D adventure with your party: explore settlements, wilderness and dungeons, and fight in real time with pause. Best on a desktop or laptop with a mouse and keyboard.
Suggested Level: Levels 1–2
The boardwalk is slick with condensation and only ten feet wide, with a two-foot gap between the planks and the ground below. The well's vapor pools in the low ground and gives lightly obscured cover. A copper vent flue runs along the Salt Loom's wall and can be kicked open to release a cloud of gas (Constitution DC 12, 1d6 poison damage, half on a success) that affects everyone in a 10-foot radius.
A brass mask worth 15 gp and proof of Brinehollow work, a rolled carpet, a cart with Brinehollow registration, 12 gp in mixed coin, and a waxed note listing three names and the words 'tithe, third night'.
For three characters, use one Scout and give the other collector the Commoner stat block. For five or six characters, add a third Scout and a Guard, and have the cart driver join the fight. For a level 1 party, drop both Scouts to Commoners with clubs and keep the grab-and-run plan.
Suggested Level: Levels 2–3
Three low chambers stacked with brass spools, connected by a crawlspace two feet high. Loose thread covers the floor and counts as difficult terrain. A lamp-oil trough runs along the wall; a spilled lamp sets the thread alight (1d6 fire damage per round in a 10-foot radius, and the smoke forces a Constitution DC 12 save or the poisoned condition for one minute).
Three cut spools of seam-thread worth 60 gp to the Seam Wardens, Grist's shipping ledger naming Brinehollow and signed by Baronet Cawl, a forged Wardens' seal, 85 gp in a strongbox, and a Loom-mark brand still warm to the touch.
For three characters, remove two Spool Mites and let Grist flee at one-third hit points. For six characters, add two Guards in the yard and a second Bandit Captain as Grist's partner. For a level 1 party, replace Grist with a Guard and reduce the mites to four.
Suggested Level: Levels 3–4
The camp is built on stilts over a slope of yellow rock, so the ground between buildings is a 15-foot drop into gas. Copper vent flues hum at every wall and can be opened to fill a 10-foot radius with vapor (Constitution DC 13, 2d6 poison damage, half on a success). The bunkhouses are cramped, with one door each.
Cawl's shipping manifest listing every shipment of gas and people by date and headcount, a sealed letter from Grennick mentioning the bleed-pump and the woman in grey, 200 gp in Cawl's strongbox, and eleven brass masks that Odo made and nobody collected.
For three characters, drop two Guards and one Scout and let the Shade flee once the cages are open. For six characters, add a second Bandit Captain as Cawl's bodyguard and two more Scouts on the rim. For a level 2 party, remove the Bandit Captain and treat Cawl as a Guard who surrenders immediately.
Suggested Level: Levels 4–5
Scaffold bridges of rusted iron cross a churning river of mustard vapor. The gas is heavier than air and pools in the low ground; anyone standing on the trench floor makes a Constitution DC 13 save each round (2d6 poison damage, half on a success), and gas masks grant advantage. The pump itself is a brass screw the size of a house; shearing it takes a DC 16 Strength check or three consecutive actions at the mechanism.
Ilva Suture's sealed letter, instructing Grennick to hold the seam open until the harvest quota is met and signed with a needle-and-circle, Grennick's strongbox (140 gp and three sealed gas-flasks worth 25 gp each), and a route marker scratched on the shaft wall pointing east to the Screaming Autumn.
For three characters, use one Sump Larker and let Grennick surrender at one-third hit points. For six characters, add two Bandit harvesters on the scaffold and a third Sump Larker in the sump. For a level 3 party, reduce Grennick's hit points by a quarter and remove the Sump Larkers entirely.
Suggested Level: Levels 5–6
The Leafway is a road of packed red leaves bordered by tower-sized trees. The leaves overhead never land and scream when disturbed; anyone who fails a Wisdom DC 13 save is frightened for one minute and the leaves grow loud enough to be heard a mile away. The second fork hides the leaf-seam directly beneath the road, and a character who digs there finds silver thread.
A Choir hymn-book with a verse about the Loom-Keeper and her needle, a silver tuning fork stamped with the Loom-mark, the harvesters' tools left in a neat pile, and 30 gp in the patrol's collection purse.
For three characters, use two Scream Wisps and four Cultists. For six characters, add a Priest leading the patrol and two more Scouts. For a level 4 party, remove the Scouts, halve the cultists, and let the wisps flee after one round.
Suggested Level: Levels 7–8
The undercroft is a domed cellar of packed leaves and charred timber, with a gallery 20 feet up and a second exit into the leaf-seam itself. The scream-loom is a living seam on a frame; it takes three actions to break or a DC 16 Arcana check to unpick. While it is intact, the Choir's hymn forces a Wisdom DC 14 save each round or the character is charmed into joining the singing.
Vex's orders on leaf-leather, naming the Oil Saint at Oilgate and the downriver route, a silver tuning fork stamped with the Loom-mark, the Choir's tithe chest (300 gp in mixed coin and gas-flasks), and the fourth verse of the hymn carved inside the loom's frame.
For three characters, remove the Priest and two Cultists and let Vex retreat to the gallery after one round. For six characters, add a second Priest and four Cultists, and give Vex an extra hymn before the fight. For a level 6 party, halve Vex's hit points and remove the Hymn-Thralls.
Suggested Level: Levels 9–10
The docks are slick planks over black oil; anyone who falls in must make a DC 13 Strength (Athletics) check each round or sink, and the oil is opaque and does not reflect light. The barge's deck is crowded with crates and the tarpaulin, which counts as difficult terrain. A dropped lamp sets the oil alight in a 15-foot radius for one minute (2d6 fire damage per round).
The barge's manifest naming the Oil Saint and the drowned metropolis, a Loombound overseer's orders saying the harvest is behind schedule and the Loom-Keeper is coming, 120 gp in the barge's strongbox, and Widow Sarn's list of four thousand names if the party frees the captives.
For three characters, use three Oil-Slick Drowned and no overseer. For six characters, add two more drowned and a second Veteran, and have the barge begin to drift. For a level 8 party, remove the Veteran and two drowned, and let the dockers fight from the start.
Suggested Level: Levels 10–11
The archive's upper floor is above the oil line and dry; the lower stacks are drowned. The oil rises a foot every ten minutes once the flood begins, shrinking the air pockets. Flooded streets count as difficult terrain and require a DC 15 Strength (Athletics) check to swim against the current. The bells ring underwater and the sound comes through the chest rather than the ears.
The survey map of the Loom Heart, the Oil Saint's tithe ledger listing four thousand names and a running total owed to the Loom-Keeper, Telom's oil-proofed satchel of scrolls, and 400 gp in drowned gold from the archive's strongroom.
For three characters, remove the Bell-Jelly and one Oil-Slick Drowned and slow the flood to a foot every twenty minutes. For six characters, add two more drowned and a second Bell-Jelly, and have Marn summon four drowned at half hit points. For a level 9 party, halve Marn's hit points and remove the Bell-Jelly.
Suggested Level: Levels 11–12
Five cellars connected by low arches, all strung with silver thread that counts as difficult terrain and can be grabbed for a 10-foot climb. The anchor stone in the deepest cellar is a slab of grey rock with the Weaver's message carved into it. The Static Fog Mote's aura imposes disadvantage on concentration checks within 20 feet.
The Weaver's Needle on the anchor stone, miles of silver seam-thread worth 500 gp to the Seam Wardens, six brass spools of the Weaver's own make, and the grey shawls of Loombound who finished their work and were folded away.
For three characters, use one Thread Revenant and remove the Static Fog Mote. For six characters, add a third Thread Revenant and four more cultists. For a level 10 party, remove the Static Fog Mote and one Veteran, and let the revenants fight one at a time.
Suggested Level: Level 12
The Loom is active terrain: each round it pulls a thread that grapples, blinds or restrains one character (DC 15 Dexterity or Strength to resist). Three successful DC 16 Arcana checks unpick a strand and weaken the Loom. The temple floor is carved with Ilva's re-weaving schedule, and the frame carries the Weaver's carved message. The Blinking Eye overhead changes the light every few rounds, imposing disadvantage on ranged attacks when it closes.
The Grey Shawl of the Loom-Keeper, Ilva's spear-length needle, the Loom's hundred strands (each a seam, and each worth a fortune to the right buyer), and the Weaver's carved message, which is not treasure but is the point.
For three characters, remove the Thread Revenant and let Ilva retreat after two rounds instead of one. For six characters, add two Thread Revenants and four Loombound veterans, and give Ilva an extra action each round. For a party that has ruined all three harvests, halve Ilva's hit points and remove the Static Fog Mote.
Flask of the First Seam
Completed
Act I - the Stitch-Well in Stitchmarket, given by Marrow Tallow or Sister Quill
False
Spoolhook of the Needleworks
Completed
Act I - the spool-vault behind the Needleworks' iron door
False
Mask of Hollow Breath
Completed
Act I - Odo the Maskwright's workshop in Brinehollow
True — by any character who has worn it for a full day
Grennick's Brass Valve
Completed
Act I - the bleed-pump scaffold at the trench floor, taken from Grennick or the pump itself
False
Hymn-Book of the Fourth Verse
Completed
Act II - the abandoned caravan on the Leafway, or the Cantor Spire's undercroft
False
Shawl of the Quiet Song
Completed
Act II - Choirmaster Lune's house in Hollowcrown, given for returning the fourth verse
True — by any character
Tuning Fork of the Screaming Leaves
Completed
Act II - the Cantor Spire's undercroft, taken from Cantor Vex or the scream-loom's frame
True — by a spellcaster or a character proficient in Performance
Scream-Loom Thread
Completed
Act II - the scream-loom's frame in the Cantor Spire undercroft
False
Tithe Ledger of the Oil Saint
Completed
Act III - the bell tower of the drowned metropolis, or the Oil Saint's barge
True — by a character who can read and has spoken a name from it
Clapper of the Drowned Bell
Completed
Act III - the drowned metropolis, below the oil line, in the central bell tower
True — by a character who has rung the drowned bell once
The Weaver's Needle
Completed
Act III - the Loom Heart vaults, resting on the anchor stone
True — by a spellcaster
Grey Shawl of the Loom-Keeper
Completed
Act III - the Loom Heart, taken from Ilva Suture or given by her when she steps down
True — by a character who has shown Ilva Suture the Weaver's carved message
