D&D 5e - Etheryn

Started: 2024-03

The work started in Silverport — a prison break, a wink from Tylsa, and a letter ordering their deaths. Vath had never been much for cities. He found the sewers familiar in ways he didn't examine.

The Brass Dominion's reach followed them east. Kill orders. Accounts of a turtle-shaped vessel burning ships from below — only rumor, at first.

Serenholme was the next reckoning: eyeless dead in a salt mine, black ichor spreading through the living, a church that was never a church. They lit the tunnels and left. It didn't feel like victory.

Then the Tremor. Every bird gone at once. Beneath Mistyvale, something older than Etheryn had left fresh tracks going up instead of down. A temple to a god who made offers. A mine full of bodies posed like records filed, and creatures wearing corpses as vehicles.

Now something that used to be a woman has passed through Land Ho heading south. A ship with no sails moves against the current. The operation connects to a continent none of them have stood on.

Vath keeps his own counsel. The land does not always wait to be asked.

• Something Wearing a Woman

  2026-06-03

  Two nights before the party arrived in Land Ho, something passed through heading south — a dark horse from Serenholme, hooves too light for what it seemed to carry, a witness who almost saw a face before a sound from above made her look away. Svala called it plainly: something wearing a woman. Off East Point, a veteran fisherman had watched the Turtle Ship move against the current. The party redirected east.

• Getting Out of Town

  2026-04-29

  Fabri was caught leaving Mistyvale with the gilded acorn and said the dead boys were because of him. Calan Muscgrove translated the sorceress's notes: Poskadari, wild elvish from Anchorome — the western continent, where no one in the party had been. Cain said the word necromancy like a gravestone settling. Calan hugged Vath before they left. Both Maron and Calan, independently, named the Emerald Enclave in Helmar.

• The Mine — Second Descent

  2026-04-08

  The sorceress in the ancient cave beneath the mine east of Mistyvale died when her own fireball rebounded. The missing hunters were dead. The missing boys, Ketch and Hayden, had been laid out with their arms crossed — posed with the care of records being filed, one still holding an uncut red gemstone. Ten black cloaks hung nearby, salt-stained to mid-height. The operation was larger than one sorceress.

• Wearing the Body

  2026-03-11

  In the old mine east of Mistyvale, the rat-humanoid creature tore itself open mid-fight — a blob animating the body from inside, using it as transport. Cain named it during the fight: not undead, a construct. The blob abandoned the host when the body was destroyed and became its own threat. The thing had tried to trigger a cave-in using the wire ceiling. It knew what it was doing.

• So Be It

  2026-02-25

  Kamosh's avatar appeared in the temple east of Mistyvale and made each of them an offer. All refused. The avatar named Takasis and other old deities in passing — whatever it was aware of operated at a scale larger than one mine. The missing children were not in the temple; they were in the mine, with clawed humanoid tracks beside their footprints. Vath watched Victor's face during the offer.

• Seven Points

  2025-12-10

  The doors in the ancient structure north of Mistyvale bore oculus skulls with a seven-pointed star — the same mark as the road skeletons, the same mark as the skeleton in the Silverport sewer. A single pattern was connecting sites across the campaign. Deeper in: a life-sized statue of Kamosh with arms spread wide, the seven-pointed star his symbol. Victor walked north into the structure alone.

• Old Ground

  2025-11-12

  Maron told them in Mistyvale that Etheryn itself is only four hundred years old — whatever lay beneath the land predated the land entirely. The stairwell they found north of town confirmed it: proportions from no known construction tradition, built before this region existed. The footprints at the entrance went outward, not in. Something had come up. Blue-eyed skeletons waited at the bottom.

• Whittling

  2025-10-08

  A fourteen-year-old came alone to Land Ho to find the party: two hunters, two boys, and a pair of twins missing from Mistyvale. A cave had opened north of town after the Great Tremor. The missing persons' tracks led east toward the old mine — the one the mayor had told the Watch Commander to stay away from, the one the town had avoided for generations.

• Before We Left

  2025-09-10

  Mirabelle's journal was in the Serenholme tunnels — energy detected, contents unread. Alongside it, a chest of artifacts from the Whispering Tide pirate ship, with no explanation for what they were doing there. The tunnels were set alight; the ichor sphere's eyes began popping as the fire reached it. In the wreckage: a Valkur holy symbol, undamaged except for its tips, which had been snapped off.

• Liar

  2025-07-30

  Behind the Sea-stone Inn's fireplace in Serenholme was a room built for poisoning people. At the church, Mirabelle apologized — her master demanded this — and stood in front of a carved obsidian sculpture with a pulsing yellow eye. Every page of the Valkur teachings had one word written across it in black ink. The room below the church held eight eyeless corpses feeding ichor into a sphere of human eyes.

• What Came Out

  2025-05-28

  Mirabelle extracted black goo from Bodean at the Serenholme church — physical, removable, and confirmed to have been in him about two weeks. Near the church tree line, a child of ten moved like Devy Cromwell. Victor was poisoned through the feast food; no one else was affected. The party was woken in the night by townsfolk with black ichor from their eyes. None of them fled. None surrendered.

• What He Kept

  2025-04-23

  Merle was dead in his hut in Serenholme — killed by Stend while possessed. His effects revealed an unnamed organization with Eslin's crest; Merle had been working this coast for a long time. A voice spoke from Stend's sleeping body in an unknown language and asked questions about the party before he woke and turned violent. At the mine, Bodean Sulder was impersonating Ern Lindsor. He surrendered without a fight.

• Moving Wrong

  2025-03-19

  Beau was taken by a Chuul in the salt mine and dragged into the ocean. On the road south, Stend Strongbow reappeared the day after being returned to Mica — black tears from both eyes, dragging two of his children toward the Serenholme waterline, speaking the unknown language. The fish-folk hit from both sides simultaneously. Whatever was directing them coordinated across the mine, the coast, and the people it had already changed.

• Black Tears

  2025-02-26

  Stend Strongbow was face-down on the Serenholme beach, emaciated — the party carried him to Mica before continuing north to the salt mine. Seven bodies inside: Ern Lindsor with his eyes removed, ichor dried to black in the sockets; Darrian's nephews carrying deep-water seaweed on their bodies in an inland mine; four fishermen in the same state. Ern had been ready to leave. Something had reached him first.

• Help Us

  2025-01-25

  A cloth note slipped to the party in Serenholme: speak with Merle, west of the church, help us. Merle was direct — the town was dark and full of evil, and whatever was wrong with Mayor Cromwell was not political. The mayor's wife was found catatonic in the road, clacking rocks, saying something had slithered from the ocean. Zephyr found no divine cause.

• The Church on the Hill

  2025-01-15

  Serenholme was dark and evasive. Ern Lindsor had been gone a month; the salt mine sat empty. A Valkur priestess at the church on the hill offered Vath the land for a Grove — the grounds held ten to fifteen fresh graves from the recent storm. Zephyr felt something wrong with the town before anyone said a word. The goo in the vial launched itself when Remove Disease was cast.

• Glistening Shapes

  2024-12-04

  The second attack on the coast road approaching Serenholme was longer and harder than the first — the creatures tried to drag prey into the water, dissolving afterward as before. Darrian's nephews were already in Serenholme ahead of the party, asking about Ern Lindsor; the investigation had a head start and was going badly. Victor used something in the fight no one had seen before.

• Warrior's Rest

  2024-11-20

  Something came out of the sea near Land Ho and attacked the Teuren family's coastal home — creatures that dissolved without trace after the fight, leaving nothing to study. Land Ho took the party in afterward, feasted them, and became something like home. At the feast, someone looked at Beau's armor and named the man it had belonged to. Beau's reaction answered the question no one had thought to ask.

• Carved in Bone

  2024-10-09

  The skeletons on the road east wore bone-plate armor with runes carved into the material — not druidic, not ritual, something older and unidentified. Their eyes glowed blue, the same as the skeleton in the Silverport sewer. Victor copied the glyphs onto parchment. By nightfall the birds had still not come back; the land was holding something in, and no one knew what.

• Before the Birds Flew

  2024-09-25

  Before the birds flew, Nathaniel mentioned a name — Gemerwid, looking for Vath — and apologized for something he didn't explain. That evening on the road east from Vogler, the ground shook for a full minute. Every bird within earshot left at once. The skeletons came that same night, as though something had been waiting for the signal.

• Five Ships

  2024-09-04

  In Vogler, Nathaniel Silverblade laid out the shape of the disruption: the Serenholme salt supply had been absent a month, Darrian's nephews were gone, and five intelligence ships had sailed east two weeks ago without a word. The docks looked normal. There was no wreckage, no signal, no visible mark of anything wrong. That was the part that troubled him most.

• The Black Barnacle

  2024-07-17

  The ambush on the road east came with a death warrant for Cain, signed C. — the Brass Dominion's reach didn't stop at Silverport's alleys. Gashak, the Black Barnacle, took Tilsa off their hands and named C. plainly: Colivik Arande, the man signing kill orders. One of Gashak's crew looked at Victor and called him something — Reaver — as if it were a type, not just a name.

• Something Like a Turtle

  2024-06-26

  Before the party left Silverport, a man posing as a Kelemvor priest found Cain alone and offered to pay him to deal with Tilsa — a test of loyalty conducted away from witnesses. Tilsa's account of the Black Eel came later: a creature shaped like a turtle, moving against the current, breathing fire. The ship was gone. She was done with smuggling. The Turtle Ship was real.

• Claws Are Deep

  2024-06-12

  Tylsa surrendered in the Silverport sewer and named her price: take her to Esselyn. A letter on the dead crossbowman confirmed someone had already ordered the party killed — signed C. Eslin organized the decoy and dispatched them east, warning that the enemy's claws were deep inside the Silverwatch itself. They came up from the sewer different than they went down.

• The Blue Light

  2024-05-15

  Deep in the Silverport sewer, something waited with a blue light in its chest. A Brass Dominion crossbowman stood with it — not an abandoned corridor but an active post. The fight that followed was raw and uncoordinated; a fire started and no one could say where from. The blue light was the first of a pattern no one recognized yet.

• Fifteen Feet Down

  2024-05-01

  Eslin laid it out plainly in Silverport: the Brass Dominion runs through the city's hidden infrastructure, and the sewers beneath the Market District are theirs. A boat in the channels, organized stonework — not a hideout but an operation years in the making. The investigation went underground. Tylsa was the name they were after.

• A Strange Way to Start

  2024-03-27

  The prison wagon broke open on Market Day in Silverport — masked children, a rooftop archer, and a ringleader who winked at Cain before she disappeared. The Brass Dominion's first move was a coordinated act of theater. The Silverwatch commended the party and pulled them in. Somewhere in the crowd, an archer walked away clean and was never found.