Salt and Ash: The Marshal's Debt
The archipelago runs on fear: island governments trade grain for soldiers' loyalty, and the rural islands pay the bill in blood. Water swallowed the old cities centuries ago, and the drowned still keep their own laws under the reef.
Kilirome
Starts at Cinder HollowAn agile swordsman from a burned rural village, with a criminal past and friction with some islands and no family left to claim him. He has then built a fraction and sworn to kill Binmerio and the soldiers who followed him—he will sacrifice his fraction and allies to do so—and he does not expect to walk away from it.
Looks likeLean and wiry, with sun-dark skin, short black hair and an old scar splitting one eyebrow. He wears a patched oilskin coat over a padded jacket and carries a long cutlass at his hip.
Stats
- Health100
- Breath80
- Watch Heat5
- Crew Bond55
Traits6
- Blade Work
- Street Craft
- Long Wind
- Cold Nerves
- Nameless Past
- Thievery
Inventory4
- Cutlass
- Oilskin Coat
- Flint and Steel
- Charred Door Iron
Who's in it10
StarringKiliromewithand
Aliado5
Neutro3
Hostil2
Sides in play6
Where you'll go10
Cinder Hollow
Black stumps and a caved-in well mark where a village stood three months ago. Refugees sleep in tents over the burned cellars, and gray ash still drifts along the lanes when the wind turns.
Nerissa Vail- TidegateA port city of wet stone and toll gates, where clerks sell passage and the watch looks away for coin. Cranes lean over crowded docks, and every gate has a price chalked beside it. It has a black market aside from it, with heavy surveillance everywhere.
Ilse Marrow and Captain Rhusk - The Gilded SpireThe capital island, all white towers and guarded bridges, where rich officials live above the smoke of the lower quarters. Soldiers stand at every stair and nobody poor stays after dark. It is very modern—more modern than any of the other islands—and the population gets denser the lower you go.
Binmerio and Aurel Vantiss - IronmarchA flat island of drill yards, coal smoke, and gray barracks. Hummil soldiers march between walls built on an older, drowned foundation that still shows at low tide. Almost always in war and has violence in it. It has the highest crime rate among all of the islands but is the fourth richest and is competing for the strongest. Smuggles slaves and illegal goods across the ocean.
Dovan Kray - GreenholtThe last free rural island, terraced fields and dry stone fences running down to a fishing shore. Unfamiliar ships have started watching from the water, and the elders count them every morning. It offers refugees to the other island natives with its port.
- The Sunken CathedralA city of green-lit domes and broken streets under thirty feet of water, still lit by living lamps. The old doors are shut, and something inside keeps them that way.
Lisst - The NarrowsA smugglers' cove of rope ladders, hidden warehouses and night traffic between the rocks. Nothing here is registered, and nobody asks what is in the crates.
Marn Tallow and Quill - Broken ReefA graveyard of wrecked hulls caught on coral, marked by gulls and one leaning lighthouse. Salvagers work the shallows and leave before the tide turns.
- The KilnsA rural island turned factory, where ore smoke has killed the orchards and workers sleep beside the furnaces. The Combine counts it as a model island. The natives now live under it to plan an attack one day.
Sisk - Gull Point LightA lonely watch post on a cliff above the shipping lanes, with a lamp kept by a keeper who counts every sail. From the gallery you can see half the archipelago and all of its traffic.