The High Cut

There is one way through the range for forty miles in either direction, and somebody cut it by hand long before there was a road that needed it.

Two travellers wide at its best. One, now.

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🪨 TWO DAYS AGO

The old lower section came down, which it has not done in living memory.

It came down on the man who keeps the pass.

His hip is broken, his hut is on the wrong side, and behind him there is nothing at all for two days.

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🗣️ HE HAS DECIDED HE IS NOT GOING

Marrit Fen is not confused and not being brave about it.

He is sixty-one with a broken hip, and he knows exactly what happens to a cut-keeper who leaves the cut on a stretcher.

Two people can lift him and he will not resist.

⚖️ It costs every word he would have said to them afterwards.

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💨 THE CLOCK IS THE WIND

He has to go west through a gap you can only cross when the wind drops.

And the creature in that gap does not know you exist. It is not hunting anybody.

That is what makes it dangerous.

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👥 BUILT FOR EXACTLY TWO PLAYERS

Encounters, pacing and ready characters are all written for a pair.

🎲 A 38-page duet adventure for D&D 5e — 2-3 hours, 2 players, level 2.

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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 2nd-level characters, finished — ability scores, armour class, hit points, attacks, spells and gear. A pair can pick the two they like

▪ 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

▪ 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.

Ossie Fenn is in this one, and in four more of them.

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✨ THIS IS FOR YOU IF

▪ You play with one other person and are tired of scaling four-player adventures down

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

▪ You would rather run a rescue somebody is refusing than a fight

▪ 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 your player a finished character instead of spending session one building one

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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.