A Green Lord hall stands on the only hill in Ferrier’s Fen, and the hill is hollow.
Daagon
dreams in the black well under it. The suarachan sing it to sleep. Late autumn they stock captives so it stays fed while they sleep through winter.
Isbeal is alive, in the Larder. Killing the chorus wakes what is under it.
HP 8; Armor 1 (leather cuirass) Damage knife (hand), sling (near, reload) Instinct to assume the worst Cost competence shown
Spot/avoid a hidden hazard
Berate outsiders for carelessness
Do something gross or unpleasant without flinching
The party’s guide. Treat her as a follower only if someone Recruited her; otherwise she takes her own cuts.
She packed salt (six handfuls), wax for four, a rope, and bendis root.
Salt the lever
Salt burns Suarachan skin
Thrown in the face:
damage, ignores armor, and drives them back a step (forceful).
A line laid across a threshold: Singers will not cross it. Hunters will,
swearing, and take the d4 doing it.
A pouch is ◇ and holds about six handfuls. Track them.
The guide has a pouch if nobody else brought one.
The lullaby custom move
The song starts at the Stair. It is not frogs. Write the words out when they first hear it.
When the chorus takes up the lullaby and you try to hold on to your own thoughts,
roll +WIS: on a 10+, you hold; on a 7–9, pick 1 —
mark dazed · you lose the thread and act last in the exchange · you find yourself
humming, and the nearest Singer turns its head toward you; on a 6−, the GM says
what happens — you drift, you kneel, you set down what you were carrying.
While the song is up: nobody hears a shout. No Aid at range, no warnings
called, disadvantage to notice anything by ear.
Wax, wool, or stopped ears: skip the move, but you cannot hear each other.
Trigger it once per area below, not per exchange.
Travel — Chart a Course
Drawn up in Marshedge, not Stonetop. Two days in. A fen-walker is already along as guide.
“Keep the root burning. You let it go out, the midges write their name on you.”
“She’s dead. We’re walking in for bones. Pack for that, and be glad if I’m wrong.”
Ferrier’s Fen sets its own terms. Choose 1:
A pouch of ◇ bendis root per day, burnt constantly (Value 1 each in Marshedge) —
the guide brought it; they still pay, or
You risk drawing the attention of the suarachan. (Which is one way in — see the Poles.)
“Two days of mud that grabs and lets go, grabs and lets go. On the second afternoon the frogs
stop — all of them, at once — and after that there is only one sound out there, and it is
coming from ahead, from higher up than anything in the Fen has a right to be.”
The Offering-Poles
Sign / choiceHidden
“A mudflat under three grand willows, and standing out of the muck a dozen peeled poles bound
with woven grass. Some bindings are grey and rotted through. Two are new. The new ones have
been cut open from the inside, or something was cut down off them.”
This is where the tithe is left. Isbeal was tied here nine days ago. The Witches did not take
her; the suarachan did.
Four hunters are hidden in the reeds, watching.
They do not step out unless startled or the party rolled a 6− on Reading it.
“I don’t look at them. That’s the rule. You can look if you want to.”
“Charter work. Ferriers’ year. They sent a servant and I walked her here. I didn’t look back. That’s how it’s done.”
Reading it
Track / Know Things / forest eyes: 10+ — a woman, boots, tied then carried
east, and the carriers went on all fours part of the way. Also: the grey bindings go back
decades, on a seven-year rhythm. 7–9 — the direction, not the pattern.
6−: they’ve been watched the whole time. Hunters open with blowguns from the reeds.
HP 6; Armor 1 (scaly hide) Damage cudgel (close, crude), snapping tongue (reach), poison blowgun needles (near) Special qualities excellent night vision, salt burns their skin Instinct to bring home captives for sacrifice
Surround their quarry unnoticed
Leap a shocking distance
Club someone senseless on the head
Tie a fast knot
They want captives, not corpses.
A blowgun hit means Defy +CON or go heavy-limbed (disadvantage) for the fight.
Fight them: salt ends it fast. Survivors flee east, and the hall knows they are coming.
Follow them: Defy +DEX through the reeds. They reach the Stair unnoticed and skip its first hazard.
Let themselves be taken: bound, disarmed, gear dumped on the Larder pile, carried straight there.
The Stair, the Hall, and the Gallery become the way out.
“East, where the willows thin, the ground does something the Fen never does: it rises. A
green hill with a straight edge along its top, like a roof under the turf, and a stair cut up
the side of it. A thin sheet of black water runs down the steps.”
The Swallowed Stair
AscentHazard
“A stair climbs the hill, cut into it — no, grown out of it. Green Lord work: the stone has
grain like wood, and there are faces in it that turn away when you look. Black water runs down
the treads from somewhere above, a sheet of it, never more than an inch deep. Forty steps up,
the singing starts, and the hill hums with it under your boots.”
The hall stands on the hilltop; the stair is the front way in, and it ends at the hall’s open
door. Water from the hall runs down it, so every tread is wet. The first lullaby roll happens
here. Under the mud-smell, a second smell cycles — ozone, rust, rot — coming down the stair
from the hall.
“Don’t touch the song. Don’t even look like you’re going to.”
Ways in
Climb the stair → the Hall. They walk it, in the wet.
Snaplilies
root in the seep on every tread: 1d4 (hand, grabby) as they latch on, and anyone who trips among them
takes
with advantage (grabby, messy) and slides a flight back down. Move slow and calm = no roll. Rush or panic = Defy +DEX.
The stair ends at the hall door; a narrow grown stair just inside it climbs to the Gallery.
Round the outside → the Gallery. Leave the stair and climb the hall’s outer
wall to a split in the roof: fast and dry, and it puts them on the gallery without crossing
the door. No roll if they set the rope carefully. If they rush it, Defy +DEX or the rope scrapes and faces below turn up.
The culvert → Larder. The only swim: a Green Lord drain leaves the foot of
the hill where the black water runs out. Forty feet of it, flooded, uphill in the dark. Dashed
on the map. Defy +CON. Success — past the Hall entirely, surface in the Larder’s sump.
Miss = surface in the Hall’s channel out of breath and separated.
“The stair tops out at a door with no door in it, and the singing comes through it like heat.
Beyond is a hall the size of the whole village, a channel of black water running down the
middle of its floor, and every ledge of it is crowded.”
The Gallery
OverlookMajor arcanum
“A dry gallery running round the hall above head height, Green Lord stone, a split of grey
fen-light in the roof. The hall floor is below you. Every ledge is packed with suarachan —
hunched, scaled, eyes shut — singing the same song with their whole throats. Hundreds of them.
At the back of the hall, three arches. Through the middle one, cages. The right-hand one is
black, and the singing is aimed at it. The faces in the stone turn away from that arch —
all but one, still looking inward, a tattered cloak of patchwork hides hanging from a peg in
its mouth. The air here is fen, then ozone, then rust, then rot, and then fen again.”
The upper gallery, dry, above the Hall. Daylight from the roof-split. This is the look-down,
not a fight. The hanging cloak is a Green Lord thing. The suarachan have never taken it down.
“Look now. Then we go around. We are not walking through that.”
“The cages are moving. I was wrong about her being dead. That happens. Once.”
“That smell isn’t the fen. Whatever hung that up, the frogs won’t touch it.”
Look: no roll. Hundreds of Singers on every ledge, eyes shut, busy.
Three arches at the back of the hall. Middle: cages (four moving, two still) — the Larder.
Left: warmer, thicker water steaming a little — the Spawn-cistern. Right: black, and the song is
aimed at it — the Mouth. One inward face, and the cloak on its peg — up here, not down on the floor.
The faces in the stone: Know Things / 10+ —
Green Lords,
still turning from what came to rest under that arch.
The inward face kept the cloak when they fled. 7–9 — they turn from the arch, not from you; the inward one is looking at the cloak.
6− — one looks at you, and for a breath you look at the black arch.
Ledge to the Larder: the gallery narrows to a ledge along the hall’s side wall
and ends above the middle arch — a drop into the Larder. Skips the Hall floor.
Defy +DEX as a group. Miss: a scrape, Singers look up; drop, or spend a handful of salt and keep going.
Down to the Hall: the inner stair by the door, quiet; or jump down onto the crowded ledges, fast and loud. Faces already turned.
The hanging cloak
Demonhide Cloak
— Major Arcana 3. Tattered patchwork on a bronze peg in the one face that still looks inward.
The Green Lords left it when they fled the hole.
Take it: pull the peg. The face looks at whoever does it. They see what the
Green Lords saw when the hole opened —
Daagon
turning over, bigger than the hall. Mark dazed, or take the vision and keep their feet.
One Singer below glances up, smells the cloak, shuts its eyes again.
Wear it in this room: the roof-split is harsh light. Wrapping the cloak does not hide them here.
Wrap it once they’re off this gallery: they pass Singers unnoticed if they
move calm and stay out of the light from the roof. Anyone they pass may remember a smell.
A basin under the roof-split holds a little of the same black water as the well. Someone can take a vial.
“Hundreds of suarachan. Squatting on every ledge and sill and step of the hall, eyes shut,
singing. Not one of them looks at you. Down the middle of the floor a channel of black water
runs toward the back, and it is running the wrong way — uphill, into the dark. The sound is so
deep and so loud you feel it in your teeth, and the water in the channel shivers with it.”
A horde of hundreds, and they are busy. They will not break the song for trespassers unless the song itself is threatened.
HP 3; Armor 0 Damage fists and bite w/ disadvantage (hand), snapping tongue w/ disadvantage (reach) Special qualities excellent night vision, salt burns their skin, mutations Instinct to sing the eternal lullaby
Drown out all other noises with their song
Raise a shrill call of alarm
Scuttle away and hide
Keep a prisoner living, long enough
Don’t track individuals. Track how much of the song is still going.
Crossing it
Walk through quietly: Defy +DEX as a group, or one roll with Aid.
Success: across, untouched. Miss: a dozen rouse; salt or a shove breaks them, and the song thins there.
Salt line behind you: covers the retreat later. Costs one handful.
If they attack the Singers
HP 3, Armor 0, attacks at disadvantage. Per exchange the song is broken:
The water stops shivering. It goes flat, and then it goes taut.
Every Singer still alive stops singing at once and looks at the water. Not at the party.
Something very large turns over below the floor. Lights go out. Everyone marks dazed.
The Soothsayer comes up from the Mouth, unarmed, and begs.
It wakes. Run this as escape, not combat.
Restart the song (Singers left, the Soothsayer, or a PC who hums and means it) and this resets to 1.
“Three arches in the back wall. Through the left one the water is warmer, and thicker. Through
the middle one, woven grass — baskets the size of a man, hanging in rows. Some of them are
moving. The right-hand arch is black all the way in, and that is where the channel goes, and
that is where the singing is pointed.”
The Spawn-cistern
Side chamberLeave them
“Through the left arch, a round chamber off the back of the hall, and a pool in it warmer than
it has any right to be. The water is jelly-thick with egg-mass. Things the size of a fist turn over in it — too many eyes, too many limbs, some of
them already humming, badly, the way a child hums a song it does not know yet. One Singer sits
on the lip and does not look at you.”
Next year’s hunters. Harming them thins the song in the hall.
“Leave them. I have done ugly work. I will not watch you invent worse.”
“Those aren’t children. They’re next year’s hunters. You start here and the song breaks.”
The tender: one Singer, HP 3, Armor 0. It will not attack. It alarms if the eggs are touched.
Harm them: each mass broken is one step on the song countdown.
The tender alarms. The Soothsayer comes up from the Mouth to see who did it.
The crack through: a flooded split in the cistern wall, ten feet of it, into the
Mouth’s well. Defy +CON, or come up in the Mouth coughing. No Singer follows.
“Through the middle arch, a long dry chamber off the back of the hall, and woven grass cages
hung from the Green Lord stonework the whole length of it. Four hold people. Two hold what’s left of people. There is a pile of taken gear in the
corner, sorted — boots with boots, knives with knives — by something that has watched humans a
long time and never understood them.”
“I walk. You don’t carry me.”
“Four names. I know who put me on that pole.”
(if they ask) “Caineach Tricklebank. Muiris Hawtrey. Ailbe Eldershaw. And Brennan, who told them to do it.”
(Isbeal, to Riona) “You. You tied me.”
“I did. It was charter work. You’re alive. So walk.”
“That’s not how this goes.”
Who is here
Isbeal — Billy’s girl. Nine days in a cage. Lucid, furious; she walks out or nobody does.
She overheard who signed her onto the pole:
Caineach Tricklebank,
Muiris Hawtrey, Ailbe Eldershaw, and
Brennan.
Two field-hands from the Marshedge fields, taken in the autumn sweep. One can walk. One cannot.
A fourth, months gone, well down the
fen blight
and hiding his hands. He begs to come. Taking him home means taking the blight to Marshedge.
Quiet and fast with one person. Slow and loud with four.
Three hunters come to check the stock a few minutes after the party arrives. They raise a shrill alarm before closing.
HP 6; Armor 1 (scaly hide) Damage cudgel (close, crude), snapping tongue (reach), poison blowgun needles (near) Special qualities excellent night vision, salt burns their skin Instinct to bring home captives for sacrifice
Surround their quarry unnoticed
Leap a shocking distance
Club someone senseless on the head
Tie a fast knot
Kill them quietly / salt them fast: no alarm over the song.
Let one flee: the Soothsayer comes up, and the Mouth scene happens here.
Look back through the arch and up: the gallery. A patchwork cloak hanging
from a face that still looks this way. The smell drops down when the air moves. The ledge
along the hall wall ends above this arch — that is how they reach it.
The sump: a black pool in the floor at the far end, where the culvert
surfaces. The way out that skips the Hall — forty feet of flooded drain, Defy +CON, and it
comes out at the foot of the hill.
Gear pile: one find — Value 1–2. Knives with knives, boots with boots. Nothing hanging.
“Back through the arch, the singing is louder pointed at the black arch beside this one than it
is anywhere else. They are all singing at it.”
The Dreaming Mouth
ClimaxOptional
“Through the right-hand arch, a third chamber, and it has no floor. The channel pours over the
lip into a well of water so still it looks like floor, going down through the hill, and under
that, a long way under, something pale turns over slowly the way a sleeper turns. It is bigger
than the hill. The hill is sitting on it.”
Daagon, Who Waits in Deep Waters
is dreaming in the well under the hill. The Singers keep it asleep. This is not a fight.
Its Instinct is to take from the surface and never let go.
“I’ll wait up here. I’m not watching you feed that.”
HP 12; Armor 0 Damage poisonous skin (hand), snapping tongue (reach) Special qualities excellent night vision, salt burns their skin, marked by
the Things Below Instinct to mollify
the Things Below
Secrete various poisons: debilitating, hallucinogenic, deadly
Bright wet scales. She has been holding a lid down since before Marshedge was built.
Talk
Suarachan have no spoken language. Her bright slime is hallucinogenic.
If a PC lets her touch them (or takes a hit from the skin), they can perceive spirits and speak
with her, and with Daagon if it is stirring. When the poison wears off, mark a debility
(dazed if available).
“You take the meat. Fine. Meat is nothing. The song is the thing.”
“Marshedge leaves them on the poles. We only carry them in out of the rain.”
“Winter comes. We sleep. It does not. Something must be in its mouth while we sleep.”
“Take four and leave us nothing, and we will come to the Marshedge fields for four more. That is not a threat. That is arithmetic.”
(if they harmed the spawn) “Those were the next throats. You have made winter louder.”
Ways this ends
Walk out with the captives, song still going. Isbeal goes home. The lullaby continues. Daagon stays asleep.
Kill her. HP 12, Armor 0. Anyone in reach of her skin takes
(hand). Nobody is left to shush Daagon. Start the Hall’s song countdown; it runs on its own over the following weeks if they leave the Singers singing, or now if the song is already dead.
Bargain. She wants a mouthful for Daagon through winter: livestock, drowned dead, a promise the poles stay stocked, or the four names — so next winter the tithe comes from High Town, not Low Town.
Wake it. The water rises. Run it as escape, not combat. Nobody rolls to hurt Daagon.
Quiet exit (no alarm, song intact): ledge back to the Gallery and out the
roof-split, or through the Hall and down the stair. One lullaby roll. Done. Wrapped in the
cloak, off the gallery’s light: they walk the Hall unnoticed; the
Singers may remember a smell.
Loud exit (alarm raised, Soothsayer dead, spawn harmed, or captives slowing
them): Hunters pursue through the reeds for two days. Two hard moves on the way out —
separate them in the dark, drown a light, take back a captive. A salt line laid earlier
cancels one.
Carrying more than one: travel is slow. Add a day, and everyone rolls to
resist fen blight
who spent time in the black water.
Aftermath
Billy is the exceptional engineer/foreman the mill needs, and this was his price. Follower, or he comes to Stonetop with Isbeal.
Isbeal will use the four names. In Marshedge, not Stonetop.
The Witches’ debt is still open: they were owed a child and were paid a servant. That price was not accepted.
If they go through killing
Marshedge has always heard “frogs” from the fen at night. Those are the Singers. The palisade
braziers of bendis are for what happens when that sound stops.
They butcher the Singers or the spawn in the hall: run the Hall countdown
now. At 5, Daagon wakes. The water rises. Escape, not a fight. Then the Loud exit: hunters
in the reeds for two days.
They kill the Soothsayer and leave the Singers singing: Loud exit. Over
the following weeks the song frays with no one to lead it. In late winter Marshedge’s palisade
goes quiet — the “frogs” stop. A week after that, suarachan hunters come to the fields east of
Eastgate for replacement captives. They do not walk to Stonetop.
Daagon woke and they ran: the Sruth runs black in late winter. Anyone in
Marshedge who stares too long at deep water marks a debility. People start vanishing into the
river. That is Marshedge’s problem until the party goes back.
4 Suarachan Hunters