Ashes to Ashes (5e)

From Dust You Come and to Dust You Shall Return

Far from the trade roads and walled cities of the interior lies the town of Thistlewatch, built on the bones of something older and buried. Perched between the hills and the forests of the outer frontier, Thistlewatch survives on stubbornness alone. Its fields are poor.

The town is surrounded by a land once known for fertile fields, now half-swallowed by scrubland and moss-slick boulders. The forests here are twisted thickets gnarled and grown over ruins where birds do not sing and paths loop back upon themselves. Animals have gone still. Rangers whisper of sleeping deer that do not rise, of foxes curled under trees unmoving, of bears snoring beside their kills. And now, in Thistlewatch, the children are beginning to fall asleep and never wake again.

It began with one. Then two. Now there are twelve, perhaps more. Healthy children, laughing and playing, who one day did not rise from their blankets. Their breathing is steady. Their hearts are strong. But nothing, neither medicine nor prayer can wake them. They sleep as if buried in a grave.

Desperate, the townsfolk turned to the Temple of St. Cuthbert, the moral anchor of Thistlewatch. Sister Lenna, the priestess there, found something older buried beneath its foundations, a sealed stair, hidden under a cracked stone near the altar. And now, amid fear and famine, she begs for aid. Something lies below. Something ancient. Something that breathes the same dust that now chokes her sleeping flock. The player characters have been asked to look into what is happening.

Ashes to Ashes is a Fifth Edition adventure for 2–6 characters of levels 4–8+ (Tier 1–2).