The Horse Fair

Three hundred people here make their whole living out of other people's horses.

Every argument this road cannot take to the border courts gets settled on one bench, by whoever the crowd trusts that week.

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🐴 THREE TRADES THROWN OUT

This week the bench-judge has thrown out three trades in a row. He will not say why.

Three families have lost their season. One of them is finished.

So the fair is trying him instead — and it needs somebody with no horse in it.

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🤝 BOTH SIDES ARE RIGHT, AND THE ADVENTURE KNOWS IT

Cass Ryle was correct about the horses.

He is also a judge who destroyed three people's year without telling them why — because saying it aloud would have ruined three hundred instead of three.

Both arguments are on the page by the fourth scene. No verdict is free.

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🚫 NOT ONE FIGHT IN IT

No creature and no combat anywhere in this adventure.

That is a design decision rather than an omission. The pressure is entirely people, and the clock is the crowd.

🎲 A 35-page one-shot adventure for D&D 5e — 2-3 hours, 4 players, level 1.

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📦 WHAT YOU GET — 34 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 1st-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.

Tam Auker is in this one, and in two more of them.

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✨ THIS IS FOR YOU IF

▪ Your table would rather argue than roll initiative

▪ You want an evening with no combat at all, and real pressure anyway

▪ You like a problem where both sides have a case and somebody still loses

▪ 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 — 35 pages, colour and printer-friendly

▪ US Letter — 39 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.