The Reed Roads

Four square miles of standing water, never drained, at the low end of Lowmere.

Across them run causeways of packed reed over stone — straight, old, and never once sunk. Nobody has ever admitted to maintaining them.

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☀️ THE DRIEST AUGUST IN FORTY YEARS

A causeway has come out of the water that was not there last summer.

It runs south-west. Beautifully made. Eleven miles from finished.

South-west is Marrowdown.

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🕯️ LOWMERE'S SINGLE DARK SLOT

The rest of this line is built on talk and choice.

This is the one time that does not work.

🎲 A 48-page one-shot adventure for D&D 5e — 3-4 hours, 4 players, level 5.

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📦 WHAT YOU GET — 47 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 5th-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.

Anser Pell is in this one, and in three more of them.

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✨ THIS IS FOR YOU IF

▪ You want the dark one, and you want it to be genuinely dark

▪ Your party is 5th level and most one-shots are written for 1st

▪ 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

⚠️ Not the one to pick if your table wants to talk its way through. Nothing here negotiates.

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📄 THE FILES

Four PDFs, plus the maps.

▪ A4 — 48 pages, colour and printer-friendly

▪ US Letter — 53 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.