The Sunken Crown

The hook

Three hundred years ago the kingdom of Maravel angered the sea and sank in a single night — harbor, palace, crown and all. Port Vellamy was built on its bones, and its fishermen have always paid a quiet tithe of first catch “to the neighbors below.” This season the tithe stopped working. Nets come up cut. A lighthouse keeper swears the drowned bell tower rang. And at low tide, for the first time in living memory, the top of the old palace gate breaks the surface — as if the city below were standing up.

What’s really going on

Maravel never died; it adapted, slowly and strangely, under the rule of whoever holds the Sunken Crown. The old king’s line ended last winter. Now three courtiers claim the crown: Lady Serapha of the merfolk guard, who wants the old treaty with the surface restored; Ozram the Tide-Vizier, a sea hag’s bargain wearing a chancellor’s robes, who wants the surface to pay; and the Herald — a thing of living water raised as kingmaker, which will crown whoever survives. The disturbances above are campaign politics below.

The descent, in three acts

Act I — Trouble on the Tideflats

Vellamy hires the party to find out who is cutting nets. The tideflats at night: reef sharks driven inshore, a merfolk skirmisher line testing the shallows, and a message scratched into a hull in courtly, antique script: “The tithe is not yours to stop. — S.” Lady Serapha wants to talk, if the party can be trusted to get wet.

Act II — The Drowned Court

By hag-charm, kelp-draught, or Serapha’s escort, the party walks the drowned streets. Maravel is beautiful and wrong: banners of woven eel-grass, a market that trades in air, a palace lit by lure-light. Court audiences play like any intrigue — except Ozram’s faction wants the party dead quietly, and the sea hag behind him keeps her true face in a locked grotto. The palace vault holds the crown, the treaty stone, and the truth about the night Maravel sank.

Act III — The Herald Rises

The succession must be settled before the spring tide, or the Herald chooses by storm. However the party has tipped the scales, the finale breaks at the palace gate as the Herald rises through it — a tower of black water wearing the crown’s light. Fight it, bind it with the treaty stone, or crown a claimant in its presence and watch it kneel. Vellamy’s harbor holds its breath either way.

Key NPCs

• Lady Serapha — merfolk guard-captain, honorable to a fault, and the only claimant who remembers why the treaty mattered. Fights like a storm front.
• Ozram the Tide-Vizier — courteous, patient, and increasingly less able to hide the hag’s voice under his own. His bargain has a witness clause.
• Old Pell the lighthouse keeper — heard the bell, kept the log, and owns the last surface copy of the treaty. Refuses to set foot on a boat.

Running it

Give the two worlds two sounds: the City set above the waves, the Haunt set below, and let the party feel the pressure change. Track the tides with the campaign clock — the palace gate only breaks the surface at low tide, and the spring tide is the deadline the whole court is racing.