Where Shadows Bloom

Description

Adventure Summary

Where Shadows Bloom is a 3rd-level adventure for 3–5 characters set in the Dockside district of a sprawling medieval city. The party investigates disappearances that strike every full moon, chasing a feared crime lord they believe is responsible — only to discover he has been containing something far worse in the sewers below. The adventure runs 3–4 hours and blends investigation, moral choices, and a climactic supernatural battle.

Background

Three months ago, a crack opened in an old ward-stone deep beneath the Dockside grain warehouses, forming a tiny rift to the Shadowfell. A wraith — a creature of living shadow and spite — seeped through, but an ancient binding circle left by a forgotten priest-king held it trapped inside the sewer junction below the district. Starving, the wraith began to feed. Drunks who stumbled into the wrong tunnel. Beggars seeking shelter from the rain. The missing were written off as runaways or claimed by the river.

Aldric Venn, the Dockmaster, noticed the pattern first. A former smuggler who clawed his way to unofficial rule over Dockside, Venn knows every corpse that floats under every wharf. He traced the disappearances to the old sewers and found the wraith — hungry, patient, testing its cage. He also found the binding circle was weakening. If the wraith broke free, it would hunt the streets above without restraint.

So Venn made a choice the city would never forgive: each full moon, when the rift widened and the wraith grew restless, he offered it a meal. Thieves, bruisers, rival gang muscle — men and women the Watch wouldn’t mourn. He told himself it was math. A few bad deaths against hundreds of innocent ones. The wraith accepted the bargain. It has been three months. The math is getting harder.

This full moon, the wraith’s hunger has outgrown Venn’s offerings. The rift is widening faster than he can feed it. He is desperate, running out of time, and running out of criminals he’s willing to sacrifice.

The Hook

The party arrives in Dockside for any of the following reasons:

• The City Watch has noticed the disappearances but lacks jurisdiction in Dockside (Venn pays off the Watch captain). Sergeant Tella Vance, a honest Watch officer, hires the party as independent agents.
• A grieving family member — the sister of a missing dockworker — begs the party to find her brother. She has scraped together her life savings (25 gp) as payment.
• The party is themselves targeted by Venn’s kidnappers after a deal goes bad, forcing them to investigate who wants them silenced.

Read or paraphrase: “The Dockside district smells of fish, rot, and brine. Narrow alleys twist between leaning timber warehouses where lanternlight barely touches the cobblestones. Every full moon, someone vanishes. The locals don’t talk about it. The ones who do — cross themselves and walk faster. Tonight the moon rises full and heavy over the harbor. Something is waiting in the dark.”