The Coldstile Wake

Once a year the hill village of Coldstile mourns the drowning of a valley that nobody in it drowned in.

Two hundred people who have spent three hundred years being the only ones who were never under the water.

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⚰️ THIS YEAR THE WAKE IS FOR OLD TOLLER

Ninety-one. The oldest person in Lowmere.

And in the frozen water meadow below the ridge, the hardest frost in forty years has cracked the ground open — over stones that were cut and squared by somebody.

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🔗 IF YOU HAVE RUN THE FIRST CART OR LANTERNS AT CANDLE FEN

Your table has already met the man this wake is for. Old Toller appears by name in both.

You do not need either to run this — but if you own them, this is the first time the line spends its own history.

🎲 A 44-page one-shot adventure for D&D 5e — 3-4 hours, 4 players, level 4.

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📦 WHAT YOU GET — 43 pages, nothing left for you to invent

▪ 5 scenes, every one written out in full: read-aloud text, what happens if they fail, what to do if they skip it

▪ 2 battle maps in three versions each — DM, player, and a copy with no grid. 70 px per 5-foot square, so it drops straight into Roll20 or Foundry already aligned

▪ 4 ready-to-play 4th-level characters, finished — ability scores, armour class, hit points, attacks, spells and gear. Hand them out and roll

▪ Every character in it, player and NPC alike, has a drawn portrait

▪ A plain-English glossary of the basic rules words — DC, saving throws, advantage

▪ A section for your first time running a game

▪ A summary up front listing every scene with its page and how hard each fight is

▪ 10 secrets, tables and handouts, and written help for when the party goes sideways

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🗓️ PART OF THE LOWMERE YEAR

Sixteen adventures in one valley, spring to winter, collected in one campaign book with a finale that is not sold on its own.

This adventure stands completely alone — it needs nothing from any other — but a table that plays four of them starts seeing the year take shape.

Old Toller is in this one, and in two more of them.

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✨ THIS IS FOR YOU IF

▪ You already own other stops in this valley and want the one where they connect

▪ You like a mystery that starts at a funeral and ends under a field

▪ You want a dnd one shot that fits in an evening and finishes

▪ You are new to running games and want the read-aloud text already written

▪ You run on Roll20 or Foundry and want maps that import at the right scale

▪ You want to hand out finished characters instead of spending session one building them

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📄 THE FILES

Four PDFs, plus the maps.

▪ A4 — 44 pages, colour and printer-friendly

▪ US Letter — 52 pages, colour and printer-friendly

▪ 6 map images

🗺️ The battle maps also print at table scale — two extra PDFs, A4 and US Letter, lay every map out at one inch per five-foot square across numbered sheets with a cut line. Print them at home, tape them together and put miniatures on them.

The printer-friendly build is the same book in pure white, nothing removed.

⬇️ Instant digital download. Nothing is posted to you.

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📜 THE SMALL PRINT

Compatible with Fifth Edition.

Made with AI assistance: the text and maps of this adventure were written and generated with AI, then edited, checked and laid out by hand.

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🕯️ ONE GOOD EVENING

Games for a table, and for a chair by the fire.