Session 3 — Sunday, April 12, 2026

The Job Board

The crew gathered around Mags's job board and didn't deliberate long. One posting stood out: a crate delivery, no questions asked, courtesy of a man named Aldous. Simple premise, solid pay.

Bosyn and Swift went to meet Aldous and get the details. The pickup would be at the Sparrow warehouse on the docks — a commercial shipment arriving by boat. Get the crate, bring it to the Crane family estate, collect payment. The Crane family name is a good one in Saltmarsh. The job seemed clean.

Then Skipper arrived — dripping, reeking of the docks, tracking saltwater across the floor in a way that visibly distressed Aldous. By the time Skipper had thoroughly unsettled the client, the crew had their assignment and a somewhat lower professional reputation than when they'd walked in.

Recon

The crew did their homework.

Bosyn got himself hired as a day laborer at the Sparrow warehouse, putting eyes on the interior layout and learning the rhythms of the dock operation. Meanwhile, Swift and Scarlet talked a pair of farmers into lending their empty cart for the evening — innocent-looking, no questions, back before sunrise. Donaar and Skipper went shopping for thieves' tools.

The plan came together: park the cart in the alley outside the tavern across from the warehouse, wait for the boat, extract the crate. The cart's cover was its own ordinariness — just another load of something dull getting moved around the docks.

The Extraction

The boat arrived on schedule. Bosyn, already inside the warehouse, located the crate and worked it quietly out through the docks. Meanwhile, Skipper turned the tavern across the street into a spectacle — he challenged the entire bar to a drinking contest. Loudly. Effectively.

With all eyes on Skipper's performance, the crate made it into the cart.

Then the cart disappeared.

Wren — one of the Undertow's less subtle members — had materialized from somewhere in the alley, grabbed the cart, and was already sprinting for distance. Scarlet, Swift, and Donaar ran him down with grease and a well-placed lasso. Cornered, Wren smashed the crate open and made a grab for one of the bottles inside — but didn't make it out with anything.

Before the situation could escalate further, a second figure stepped out of the shadows: Pell, the other half of the Undertow pair. Where Wren runs on impulse, Pell thinks. She offered information in exchange for a way out. The party listened.

They'd been hired too, Pell explained. A different council member had contracted them to steal this crate — not to keep it, but to use it as leverage against the Crane family. Blackmail. The Undertow was just doing a job.

The crew let them go. The crate — open now, contents visible — came back to the Copper Barnacle.

What Was Inside

The bottles were labeled. Potions of lingering humanity. A preparation used to manage — suppress — the visible symptoms of vampirism.

The Crane family's name is a good one in Saltmarsh. This crate just complicated that considerably.

The Next Morning

That night, Bosyn slipped out alone to find Bobby. Whatever he shared with his young informant, he kept quiet about afterward — something about fire, and the Undertow's home base.

In the morning, the crew split into two teams.

The first group took the real crate. Armed with disguises and using the hidden sea cave to stage a rowboat approach, they made their way quietly to the Crane estate to complete the delivery as contracted.

The second team set a trap — a decoy crate placed in the street to draw out the Undertow and finish what started in the alley.

The ambush turned ugly fast. Grease was involved. The Undertow arrived as expected. And then Bosyn did something that made everyone stop: he called for the town watch. Out loud. In front of everyone.

There's an informal code among people in their line of work. Grease fires and bruised reputations are the cost of doing business. Bringing the watch in is something else entirely. The Undertow looked at him like he'd done something unforgivable — and maybe he had.

They torched the grease and ran, taking the decoy crate with them. The watch arrived to find a burning alley and a harengon they very much wanted to speak with. Bosyn slipped away before they could take him in — but they got a good look at him first.

The Close

The delivery team reached the Crane estate without incident. Disguises held, handoff was clean, full payment collected. Aldous would be satisfied. The Cranes would have their crate.

The rest of the crew had a fire, a furious rival gang, and questions they hadn't been paid to ask.

Notes & Loose Threads

• The Cranes — A respectable Saltmarsh family with a crate full of vampire symptom suppressants. Someone on the council wanted that information badly enough to hire the Undertow to steal it. Who? And what do the Cranes have to say for themselves?
• The Undertow, again — Pell and Wren walked away with a decoy. They also walked away knowing the party called the watch on them. That's not something they'll forget.
• Bosyn's Problem — The watch wants him for a formal statement, and a harengon in a small port town doesn't blend. He needs to either skip town for a while or find a way to square this before the watch finds him.
• The Secret Plan — Whatever Bosyn told Bobby the night before, it involves the Undertow's home base. He hasn't brought it to the crew yet.

Next session: The fire's out, the crate's delivered, and someone on the council is very unhappy about how this turned out.