The Waterline

It is on everything in this valley older than the town — walls, mill footings, the church steps. Nobody in Lowmere mentions it.

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💧 TUESDAY, AND THEN THURSDAY

On Tuesday the Marrowdown well dropped forty feet in an hour and did not come back.

Since Thursday the drying shed floor has been under an inch of water that is coming up, not in.

Somebody has to go down the well and find out which of those two facts is the good news.

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🕯️ LIGHT IS THE ADVENTURE

Oil is the clock, tracked openly on the page.

It is what makes every decision at the bottom cost something — no spell trivialises the choice, only the descent.

🎲 A 40-page one-shot adventure for D&D 5e — 3-4 hours, 4 players, level 5.

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📦 WHAT YOU GET — 39 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

▪ 3 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

▪ Full stat blocks printed beside the scene that uses them

▪ 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 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.

Ordway Peel is in this one, and in two more of them.

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✨ THIS IS FOR YOU IF

▪ You want a descent where the light itself is the pressure, not a monster on a timer

▪ 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

⚠️ Fair warning, because it is the strangest one in the line: you go all the way down, and you do not find out who cut the drain. That is deliberate.

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📄 THE FILES

Four PDFs, plus the maps.

▪ A4 — 40 pages, colour and printer-friendly

▪ US Letter — 47 pages, colour and printer-friendly

▪ 9 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.