Here's my work for the first day of Mörktober 2025! I'm introducing my players to the Ashen Sea and Tephrotic Nightmares next week, so I designed a town on the border of the Sea with some inspiration from this year's first prompt: frog. It's still something of a work in progress, so suggestions are welcome. For now it's just words on a page because I'm not up on graphic design, but maybe one day I'll flesh it out and make it look nice. This is of course designed to be used with Tephrotic Nightmares, but the biggest inspiration is Saltburg from Tania Herrero's excellent Crown of Salt, as a town in a liminal space adapting to an extreme change in the environment. Oh, and feel free to use any or all of this for your own games!
The Crossing
At the edge of the Ashen Sea sits a decrepit village on the River Rana, a few rotting huts rising out of the muck. It was once a prosperous farming settlement, but their crops were swallowed up by the Arsonist’s fires. In the time since, the rising tide of Ash has choked the river, conglomerating into a muddy sludge at the town’s edge. With little left to sustain them, those who could left the village. However, the muddy ash slurry proved the perfect habitat for insects and the frogs that feed on them. The buzzing of flies and gurgling of frogs is near constant.
For those who stayed, it became a surprisingly lucrative connection between the Sea of Ash and the rest of the Dying Lands. The inhabitants sell the silty, muddy water of the Rana River to travelers going to and from the Ashen Sea, as well as supplies and boats for crossing the Ash. The town is busy again but populated more by travelers than residents. Whatever the village used to be called has been forgotten. Now it is known as the Crossing.
The few original houses remaining are slowly sinking into the muck, desperately propped up by ramshackle additions. However, several new houses have been built, purpose-made to rise above the mud on high stilts. The biggest of these constructions is the Shipyard. Built on the very edge of the ash, the shipyard is home to the town’s carpenters, who fashion boats for traversing the Ashen Sea. It is also attached to docks in the Ash, where ships arriving from the Sea are moored.
The next largest, though perhaps even more significant, is the Water Exchange. Here travelers can trade their silver for water. The rate of exchange shifts daily and is posted in chalk on a large sign outside. The Head Water Clerk explains this is due to market fluctuations. There is a chalkboard of calculations behind the front desk, equations of weights and measures. On closer inspection, none of them are related or mathematically sound. Inside the building are enormous tanks filled with water and workers busy filling barrels and other containers. Behind the building is a huge pumping and filtration system run by undead servitors on loan from the Burnt Offerings, bringing water in from the river. The town’s relative isolation means it’s usually ignored by raiders, but the importance of water to the Ashen Sea makes the Water Exchange the only building in town with armed guards.
There is also a tavern on swaying stilts, with a sign out front identifying it as the Muckraker. The staff serve frog legs and stale beer at exorbitant rates, but it’s the only gathering spot in town. Travelers looking to hitch a ride to locations in the Ashen Sea often stop here. There are piles of hay in the stables behind the building that can be rented for the night.
Finally, the operation that feeds the town is the Frogcatchers’ Shack. A visitor to the village may first see the masked Frogcatchers outside of town, either wading through the muck or above it on stilts, armed with nets, spears, bows, frog traps, and other custom-made frog-catching equipment. They wear masks with enormous goggles and sometimes snorkels for diving into the river. Visibility in the water is next to nothing, but they still come up with frogs, if they come back up at all. Their shack in town is identifiable by the rows of dried frog legs hanging outside.
Services Available
· The Shipyard: Players can buy boats and boat modules for crossing the Sea of Ash. I would limit the options available to maybe the first four boats and simpler modules, but do what works for the campaign. Stilts are also available for a nominal fee. Their resources are limited, and they pay well for boat-building supplies. This includes wood, metal, bone, and sinew, but also the more exotic materials only found in the Ashen Sea. They can build rare/complex modules if provided the right supplies.
· The Water Exchange: Players can trade silver for water (or vice-versa) at varying exchange rates. To keep it simple, use the rates on page 3 of Tephrotic Nightmares. To complicate it, roll 1d4 and add or subtract that to the rate each time the players visit, however you want (the Market works in mysterious ways). Also, the Water Exchange takes 3% of each transaction as a service fee, or however much they can talk the players into, whichever is greater.
o There is a 20% chance of encountering a clerk from the Cannibal Count’s Mount-Manse with a wagonful of stinking meat and a massive pile of paperwork, arguing with the Water Clerks over the exchange rate.
o Attached to the Water Exchange is a general store. They sell whatever supplies and equipment they have on hand, often items traded for water by travelers.
· The Muckraker Tavern: Food, drink, a pile of hay for the night at double the usual rates. Hirelings and outcasts can also be found here, including members of different factions from the Ashen Sea.
· The Frogcatchers’ Shack: Dried frog legs at wholesale prices. You can buy them cheap here but only in bulk quantities.
NPCs
· Working on it. Maybe I’ll use the next day’s prompt for that. Suggestions are welcome!
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