"The tide pulls in slow and heavy, humming with a tune just beneath hearing. Ropes creak. The sea stinks of wet copper and salt-rotted wool. Seagulls scream as though in warning, not hunger. Beneath the dock, water ripples with syllables."

The party is in Shallowport’s Sea Market when a group of sailors collapses mid-song — all humming the same unfamiliar melody. The local constable pays them to “look into it quietly,” and Merrin Vatch soon appears with a torn page she claims “called the tide to mercy.”

Significant NPCs:

• Merrin Vatch – Candle-voiced street preacher who believes the hymn can calm the sea, and wants it completed.

• Dockmaster Erel Hobbs – Anxious official trying to suppress talk of “singing tides” before the Trade Guild pulls out.

• “Slipjack” Kalin – Smuggler and former chorister who recognizes the hymn — and knows what drowned it the first time.

Rewards:

• A locket that silences the wearer’s voice — and their thoughts, from magical detection.

• A rewritten version of the hymn that may calm (or command) spectral entities.

• A bottle containing the last breath of a drowned god.

Lore Tie-Ins:

The hymn matches fragments found in Endon’s oldest psalm-books — those supposedly penned before the Sundering.