Traveler’s Adventures – Fleet of The Unburied

Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition Scenario by Muqarnas Games

A CENTURY-OLD NAVAL BATTLE HAS BEGUN REPLAYING ITSELF AROUND HOLLOW REEF, THE SEA CEMETERY WHERE BOTH FLEETS SANK. THE CHARACTERS ARE SENT TO RESTORE SAFE SHIPPING. BEFORE THE SPECTRAL FLEETS ARE LAID TO REST, THEY DISCOVER THERE IS A CENTURY-OLD MURDER. IT HAS BEEN FEEDING A DYNASTY FROM THE BEGINNING. IT IS RESPECTABLE. IT IS CONNECTED. IT IS NOT FINISHED.

For two weeks, the current-swept shoal of Hollow Reef has been locked in a terrifying, spectral storm. Full-rigged ghost fleets engage in silent, devastating combat every night, threatening living trade vessels caught near the region’s traditional sea cemetery. Hired as elite investigators by a harried trade authority official in the early morning, your party is tasked with sailing into the dead waters and resolving the supernatural crisis before regional maritime trade collapses entirely.

But as the investigation deepens beneath the cold waves, a hidden pattern emerges from the wreckage of the century-old war. The dead are not fighting each other out of eternal hatred. They are caught in a traumatic repetition of a battle that never should have happened. A hundred years ago, opposing commanders Admiral Rade Calloway and Fleet-Mother Imre Vashtene attempted an unauthorized ceasefire to save thousands of lives, only for Calloway’s ambitious flag captain, Joran Hesk, to murder him, frame the enemy, and force the battle to its catastrophic conclusion. Now, the modern Hesk shipping dynasty—whose immense fortune was built on that heroic lie—has sent a secret salvage expedition to destroy surviving evidence of the truce, violently waking the unburied dead. The characters have less than a day to halt the excavation, complete the interrupted truce ritual, and decide who pays for a century of fabricated heroism.

Fleet of the Unburied is a self-contained, atmosphere-driven nautical mystery and ethical diplomacy adventure for 3 to 5 players at levels 8 to 12, lasting 4 to 5 hours. It challenges players to look beyond conventional dungeon heroism to confront the cold, enduring weight of corporate historiography, family dynasties built on murder, and the tragic cost of an interrupted peace.

Adventure Features:

• Perfect for High-Level Intrigue: Calibrated for mid-to-high tier parties (levels 8 to 12), offering a tightly paced, 4 to 5-hour multi-layered investigation and high-seas supernatural mystery with rich narrative texture.
• A Calculated Corporate Dynasty: Step away from standard naval warlords or mindless undead armies. Confront Varin Hesk, an aging, calculating shipping patriarch who uses vast legal, financial, and salvage resources to enforce a hundred-year-old historical lie.
• Deep Multi-Threaded Clues: Piece together a maritime puzzle across ghostly naval engagements. Analyze flawed tactical timelines in weathered memorial archives, inspect secret deep-water salvage camps, and recover a water-damaged, unsent ceasefire proposal.
• Nuanced Supernatural Mechanics: Interact directly with tragic lingering spirits. Establish empathic contact with Admiral Calloway and Fleet-Mother Vashtene, whose spirits search the waters not for vengeance, but for the peaceful meeting denied to them in life.
• High-Stakes Ethical Mechanics: Manage the final resolution through structured choice and spiritual intervention. Facilitate the long-overdue truce ritual to grant the dead rest, and decide whether to publicly expose the powerful Hesk dynasty or balance historical justice against present-day economic fallout.
• SRD 5.1 Compatible: Fully compatible with the 5th Edition Systems Reference Document, designed to drop seamlessly into any high-seas campaign, coastal realm, or dark political fantasy setting.

“I do not propose this meeting to negotiate terms of victory, having none meaningful left to offer or extract, but to propose simply that we stop, before the men currently dying beneath our respective flags do so for a cause neither of our governments can any longer honestly articulate.”

Traveler’s Adventures – Fleet of The Unburied is available through DriveThruRPG in PDF.

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