The Cinder Watch

Your passenger is an emberkin weather-watcher carrying a chalked slate of ash and wind readings. On the dock, she reads a dispatch and freezes.

"The Cinder Watch station in the next region hasn't sent a weather report in a month," she says. "That station tracks the fire-winds for the entire sector. Someone has to go check on it, and I don't have a ship."

Before you cast off, she turns the dispatch letter over. On the back, the Guild weather office has posted a bounty for any ship willing to hold position inside the local ember wind for a full day so she can record ash readings from deck.

"Taking those readings here would keep the local trade lanes open for a month," she says, "or we can head straight to the silent watch-station in the next region."

The stone watch-station sits atop a black volcanic ridge while hot winds whip cinders across the slope. Its signal flags hang in scorched tatters, the heavy door is barred from the inside, and a flock of gloomwings roosts thickly across the roof.

Hot ember winds blast off the burning mountain slopes like a furnace. While the watcher stands at your rail recording spark counts on her slate, glowing cinders land in your furled sails and ignite small deck fires. You must hold the your ship steady in the wind until her count is finished.

Inside the station, a massive dull-red salamander hide hangs above the hearth, extinguishing every stray cinder that drifts near it. On the table lies the late station master's logbook, updated faithfully until the day he died. Your passenger closes the book gently.

Her slate is covered on both sides with fresh measurements. "The ember winds are worse than last year and shifting north. Once the Guild posts these readings, ships can route around the danger."

A Guild weather cutter pulls alongside to collect the slate, while the watcher glances anxiously toward the next region where her mentor's silent watch-station sits.