Events · The Shard Coast

A convict transport barge labors along the crystal cliffs with forty chained prisoners shivering on her open deck, escorted by an armed mine-guard cutter. The prisoners are singing a rough work-shanty to stay warm.

A sudden gale off the refinery towns kicks up a mile-wide cloud of toxic silver dust, driving it straight toward your ship.

A massive crystal leviathan—three times the length of your ship—floats beside the cliffs, grazing on mineral veins. Door-sized plates of raw crystal flake off its back and tumble into the clouds below.

A Guild auditor in a borrowed skiff flags you down frantically. "I've got proof of massive fraud at the Farrowdeep mine, and their security cutter is right behind me!" Sure enough, an armed mine-guard cutter is rounding the cliffs in hot pursuit.

A major tunnel collapse shut down the Kettle Cliffs mine last week. The mining company paid off the surviving day shift in worthless company scrip and left them stranded on the cliff landing, waiting for any passing ship.

A Guild crystal carrier is wallowing dangerously in a heavy crosswind, badly overloaded. The convoy master signals you: he'll sell excess crystal at rock-bottom cost to any ship willing to lighten his load.

On a windswept cliff ledge, local miners have built a memorial shrine to comrades killed underground: a hundred small oil lamps, most blown out by the wind, surrounded by offerings of raw crystal.

Two hours out from the penal cliffs, your crew discovers a Blooded Lupine convict hiding behind your water casks in prison rags. Moments later, an armed mine-guard cutter appears astern in pursuit!

A refinery barge hovers off the cliffs with a dangerous fracture down one of her main processing vats. Raw liquid mana is spraying from the crack like glowing rain, overloading every lamp on her deck.

A heavy cable car running between the cliff mines and a refinery town has jammed halfway across the mile-wide chasm, swinging precariously in the wind with a terrified work crew trapped inside.

A pirate raider hoists a truce flag and offers to sell you "lightly used" Guild mage-casting permits. The official wax seals look genuine, though the original owners' names have been scraped off.

Corsair raiders have captured a small Guild crystal skiff and are stripping her cargo at their leisure while her crew sits tied to the mast.

A Guild payroll courier boat is fleeing toward the cliff mines with corsair raiders hot on her tail, flashing distress signals. You happen to know that the miners' wages aboard are mostly paid in company scrip, redeemable only at the company store.

A lifeboat drifts near the refinery towns carrying a lone woman in an expensive coat. Her eyes have turned solid silver: she was a mage who burned through the last of her mana channels and went completely Hollow.

At a cliffside registry post, a corrupt Guild clerk is selling official pardons that strike a name from the Charter's Lowborn rolls for forty silver each. A long line of desperate sailors waits outside his booth.

Dead Hush weather has engulfed a cliffside penal mine, extinguishing every lamp. The guards have fled in the only cutter, abandoning forty chained convicts at the tunnel mouth in the freezing, magic-draining fog.

Ahead in the grey Hush fog, a Guild ore convoy is slowly sinking as the dead air unravels their keel-levitation enchantments. With their lamps dead, the panicked crews are flashing hand mirrors for rescue.

A crystal leviathan floats dead in the Hush fog, its hide drained to a dull slate-grey. An unlit vessel is moored alongside the carcass, where silent figures with silver-stained hands are hacking loose crystal plates.

A shattered convict prison ship lies wedged on the crystal cliffs from last winter's storms, her iron cells split open to the sky. Inside the ruined paymaster's cabin sits a heavy lockbox containing all the valuables confiscated from the prisoners.

A leviathan-hunting ship lies wrecked across a crystal ledge with a massive, jagged plate of leviathan crystal impaling her hull. Her heavy harpoon ballista is still intact on the foredeck.

A refinery transport skiff has crashed into a narrow crystal canyon. Her ruptured cargo of refined dust coats the ravine floor in toxic silver glitter for a hundred yards, though several sealed crates remain intact.

A chain gang of convicts is mining a floating crystal rock under the watch of a single, bored company guard who looks cold and very open to bribes.

A tall spire of pure crystal juts from a floating rock, vibrating in the wind with a high, piercing tone that sets your crew's teeth on edge and makes your mages' mana channels hum.

A massive crystal leviathan is peacefully grazing on the far side of this floating outcrop. Its side of the rock has been chewed bare, but your side still glitters with rich crystal seams.

At the port's refinery dock, a company agent in a fine grey coat is hiring freighters. "The Tallowmere needs her waste barrels hauled out to sea and dumped—twenty silver per load, no questions and no customs inspections." You know those barrels are full of toxic silver dust.

On the dock at the port, the mining company is auctioning off one-year convict labor leases. A line of chained prisoners stands on the block in prison smocks, and bidding is slow.

An abandoned mine tunnel opens in the cliff face, its crystal walls glowing faintly from within. The mining company bricked it up after a deadly cave-in years ago, but someone has recently broken the seal open.

Two hundred yards into the tunnel, the floor drops away into a deep vertical crystal shaft. Halfway down on a narrow ledge lies an injured salvor beside a heavy pack, barely conscious.

At the back of the gallery behind an old rockfall, you discover a century-old Guild survey room containing wall charts, a locked strongbox, and an ancient crystal lamp still burning brightly.

A ruptured processing vat flooded the lower vault of this cliffside refinery with toxic, dust-laden water, forcing the company to abandon it. Down beneath the shimmering silver water lies the intact strongroom.

At the bottom of the steps stands the heavy strongroom door, surrounded by knee-deep water shimmering with toxic silver dust. Anyone who wades through it risks silver-poisoning.

The seals on the inner strongroom held dry! Inside sit racks of mana flasks, crates of raw crystal, and a brand-new ship cannon still in company paint.