The Salt Auction

The last real market before the border. Five hundred people. One bell that is rung exactly once per lot.

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⚖️ SELLING UNDER WEIGHT

This week the lots have been selling under weight, and the scales test perfectly clean.

Nobody has worked out why, and there was never going to be time.

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🕳️ AT THE THIRD LOT OF THE AFTERNOON

The floor of the Long Store drops eleven feet, with nine people standing on it.

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🚫 NO CREATURE ANYWHERE IN IT

The danger is eleven feet of collapsed floor, five hundred people trying to help at once, and a building that is still deciding what else it is going to do.

Every hazard is written out with its own numbers.

🎲 A 42-page one-shot adventure for D&D 5e — 2-3 hours, 4 players, level 4.

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📦 WHAT YOU GET — 41 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

▪ 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.

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✨ THIS IS FOR YOU IF

▪ You want a disaster rather than a monster

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

▪ Your table likes a rescue where the building is the enemy

▪ You are new to running games and want every hazard written out with its numbers

▪ 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 — 42 pages, colour and printer-friendly

▪ US Letter — 45 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.