The Ferry

One boat, one family, three generations, and a crossing fee that has to be exact — because Marl Vance has never once made change.

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🪙 THIS SPRING THE FEE STARTED REFUSING COIN

Not foreign coin. Not clipped coin.

Ordinary money that crossed this water without comment last year.

He turns it over in his hand, hands it back, and does not explain.

🚏 There are nine carts on this bank and four on the far one, and the boat has not moved in three days.

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👁️ THE THING HE CANNOT SAY

Marl Vance is going blind, and has been for two years.

The exact-fee rule is the entire architecture that has let him keep working — he knows the old coins by weight, and the new ones defeat him.

⚖️ Every person on both banks respects him. Telling them is the one thing he cannot survive.

Getting across tonight means deciding what you do with that.

🎲 A 38-page one-shot adventure for D&D 5e — 3 hours, 4 players, level 3.

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📦 WHAT YOU GET — 37 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 3rd-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

▪ 11 secrets, tables and printable handouts

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🧂 PART OF THE SALT ROAD

Sixty miles, sixteen stops, each a day apart. Every one of them has noticed the same thing and not one of them has said so out loud.

This adventure stands completely alone — it needs nothing from any other — but a table that plays four of them starts comparing notes without being prompted.

Sister Wren is in this one, and in five more of them.

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✨ THIS IS FOR YOU IF

▪ You want a mystery whose answer is a person, not a villain

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

▪ Your table likes deciding what to do with the truth once they have it

▪ 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 — 38 pages, colour and printer-friendly

▪ US Letter — 42 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.