In the bustling port city of Harbor Bay, where steamships dock alongside sailing vessels and traders from across Aeligord hawk their exotic wares, stands the renowned Dockside Inn. Within this establishment, between the bar and the hearth, hangs the famous Harbor Bay Quest Board—a massive oak panel where citizens post requests ranging from the mundane to the mysterious. The board is maintained by Everett Vess, a retired adventurer with a glass eye and countless stories, who carefully vets each posting and matches tasks to appropriate talent. As your party seeks to fill their purses during downtime in the city, they discover the board laden with an unusual abundance of requests: a merchant needs protection during a midnight delivery, the Artificers Guild seeks rare components from the dangerous tidal caves, a nobleman's daughter has lost her exotic pet in the warehouse district, a street performer needs help exposing a rival's sabotage, and the harbormaster requires discreet assistance with "unusual" cargo that arrived without documentation.
What begins as simple coin-gathering through odd jobs gradually reveals subtle connections between seemingly unrelated tasks. The merchant's midnight delivery contains the same rare metal the Artificers seek; the nobleman's daughter's pet was last seen near the warehouse holding the harbormaster's mysterious cargo; witnesses to the street performer's sabotage describe someone matching the merchant's bodyguard. With each completed task, perceptive players uncover fragments of a larger conspiracy involving the smuggling of forbidden artifacts from sunken ruins. The quest board adventure allows the party to engage with Harbor Bay's diverse cast of characters while uncovering a web of intrigue at their own pace—perfect for a session where players wish to explore the city's underbelly without committing to a major plotline, yet rewarding enough for those who connect the dots between the various missions that drew them to that weathered oak board.