Crabber’s Cove sits just east of Saltmarsh, tucked against the base of cliffs. A century ago it was a humble coastal area where fisherman built their homes. Then came the storm.

The old stories say massive storm blew in from the Azure Sea across the Javan Bay. Massive waves slammed into the cove, smashing boats, homes, and families. When dawn came, the place was a graveyard of ruined buildings and not a soul survived. Saltmarsh abandoned the cove soon after.

In the decades that followed, nature reclaimed it. Thousands of crabs swarmed into the stone ruins at dusk each evening as the tide ebbs. Locals swear the cove clicks at dusk, a constant clattering chorus of sand crabs just beneath the sound of waves.

Still, the poor and desperate; fishermen, dock-workers, and the Bridgefolk who shelter beneath Sharkfin Bridge, come here at dusk to gather the small shore crabs that scuttle out in huge numbers. A careful crabber can fill a bucket before nightfall. A careless one… might not return.

A handful of Saltmarsh’s old-timers whisper warnings. The most vocal is Barnacle Bob, owner of the tackle shop on Sharkfin Bridge. He insists the disappearances aren’t accidents at all. He claims something huge lives offshore, giant crabs, big as a wagon, with a shell like iron and claws that have tasted too much human meat. Bob swears he saw one drag a man under once.

Whether or not the monster is real, people do vanish. Crabbers slip beneath the waves or wander too far into the ruins. Some blame tides. Some blame smugglers. Others blame the shadows that move in the cove long after the sun goes down.

High above Crabber’s Cove, perched on the edge of the cliffs, stands a single weather-beaten fish shanty. No one in Saltmarsh goes near it. Most claim the place is haunted, that the spirits of the fishermen and families lost in the great storm haunt the place, still searching for their homes.

Best let the dead rest, the locals say.

The shanty is the sole clandestine meeting place of the Scarlet Brotherhood within Saltmarsh. Its isolation, its reputation, and ignored by locals, unpatrolled by the guard, and rarely approached by anyone.

This is where Skerrin Wavechaser holds his secret meetings. Here he meets with Cyrus, the Brotherhood’s assassin who acts as hired help at the Empty Net. Reports are exchanged. Orders are given. And when needed, other Brotherhood agents arrive unseen along the cliff path, slipping through the night for a secret meeting.

The Brotherhood gathers here once a month on the new moon. They meet at the dead hour—1 AM, when most of Saltmarsh sleeps.

If an urgent gathering is needed, the call is made using a simple, unassuming signal:
An X of charcoal is drawn on a particular stone along Sharkfin Bridge. Locals cross it every day and never give it a second glance. But to a Brotherhood agent, it is unmistakable.
It means: Tonight. Dead hour. The shanty.

Beneath the abandoned cliff-side shanty lies a secret. A vampire named Xolec was sealed in a hidden cellar beneath the structure more than a century ago. He has remained there ever since, unmoving yet fully aware, a silent witness to every whisper and footstep in the rooms above.

Xolec’s Fall

Xolec once served as Captain Ineca’s first mate aboard the ghost ship Pale Prow. When rumors surfaced that the long-lost Pearl Heart had reappeared near Saltmarsh, Xolec acted alone. He persuaded a merchant captain to smuggle him into town under cover of darkness. His intention was not conquest or bloodshed, but salvation, to reclaim the Pearl Heart and finally break the curse binding the Pale Prow to its ceaseless undead voyage.

But instead of the artifact, Xolec found the Clerics of St. Cuthbert.

Their divinations exposed his true nature. Though they could not destroy him, they succeeded in binding him with a rare Cuthbertine curse of restriction:

Xolec may leave the cellar only if freed by one who is pure of heart.

Unable to kill him, unwilling to let him wander free, the clerics sealed him in a coffin beneath the abandoned shanty—far from Saltmarsh, and far from temptation.