Falin, male elf ranger (Shawn)
Jasna, female gnome bard (Niki)
Soren, female dwarf fighter (Marta)

Three young adventurers -- an elf, a dwarf, and a gnome -- set out to find their fortune in Teravide's northwest, where the war has just ended, and the process of rebuilding has just begun.  The trio are in Crozet, the entrepôt for the old Aubrien capital of Fillion, at the mouth of the Roussel.  The city is still under dwarven occupation.

The party is approached in the city market by Unai, a menacing half-orc.  He is quite harmless, however.  In fact, he is the butler to one of the city's faded stars, a downtrodden merchant named Audric Décagny.  Décagny needs assistance with a special project, and hopes the party can assist.  Years ago, before the war, Décagny lost his prize vessel, the Emperor of the Waves, somewhere near the White Isles.  Mysteriously, the ship seems to have reappeared not far from Crozet, drifting with the currents.  Décagny needs the party to explore the vessel and retrieve a valuable box from its hold.  The party agrees.  Joining them is an old associate of Décagny's, Aurore Alduy, a human cleric of Thibault.

The party discovers the ship listing and unsteady.  Below decks, the cabins are covered in cobwebs, and filled with dangerous vermin, including monstrous spiders, centipedes, and spider swarms, as well a pair of orc zombies encased in spider silk.  The party fights all of them off with healing assistance from Aurore.

Pressing onward, they find the quarters of the new master of the ship: a huge half-orc druid who delivers punishing attacks with his club.  The party barely manages to survive the encounter before he is slain.

They locate the box in the watery ship's hold, scrambling to avoid a ghoul who makes his home there.  But soon after they retrieve the item, a giant squid attacks the ship!  He attacks blindly with his tentacles, gouging holes in the ship's already-cracked hull.  It's clearly time to leave.

The party moves through the rapidly-flooding cabins as the ship begins to list more severely.  Aurore loses her balance, and never regains it, pulled under as the ship sinks.  The rest of the party reaches the deck, fights off one last spider swarm, and escapes the Emperor of the Waves with Décagny's precious cargo.

* * *

Weeks later, Décagny has a new mission for the group: to take Aurore's share of the reward for the salvage operation, and deliver it to her hometown of Welwyn, where she had accumulated a debt.  En route to the town, the party is ambushed by orc highwaymen, led by a ranger.  Falin relishes cutting down his favored enemy, and the party is glad to find in his possession a wand of cure light wounds, which both Falin and Jasna can use.

They arrive in Welwyn in the middle of a public ceremony: the young mayor of the town, Arabella Varain, is delivering a memorial to her late father, Lord Mayor Garrick, slain one year ago by a red-fletched arrow.  The party of strangers clearly stands out in the crowd, drawing awkward stares.  After the gathering ends, the party seeks out the magistrate's office to pay Aurore's debt.  The magistrate, a cleric of Fiset named Marcellin, seems strangely untruthful with the party about the exact amount owed.  They pay him anyway.  They are met outside, though, by town guards, who escort the party to the Varain estate.

Lady Arabella wishes to meet the party, and ask their assistance with a series of robberies that have plagued Welwyn in recent weeks.  The guard have tracked the thieves to the town well.  Arabella offers the party a reward to investigate further.  They agree to descend into the well the next morning.

Near the base of the well, they quickly find a secret door, leading to an underground cave complex.  They fight and defeat a giant trapdoor spider, and find a silver dagger among the debris in its lair.  Heading north, they come across a heavy lowered portcullis.  Jasna searches the area closely, and discovers a glyph of warding. She uses prestidigitation to try to lift the portcullis and trigger the trap harmlessly.  She succeeds, but the party is then attacked by unknown assailants, poking through an adjacent wall with their spears.  Finding a hidden lever which raises the gate, they flee to the west.

The trio inadvertently trip three more traps down a long corridor, before finding a dire badger's nest.  They slay the enraged creature with some difficulty.

They come at last to a dank, squalid chamber.  Hiding there is a human armed with bow and shortsword, who leaps to the attack.  The party defeats him after a tough battle, and he surrenders.  They tie him up for questioning.  However, when their backs are turned, he assumes the form of a badger, slips his bonds, and scampers away through a tiny passage to the north!

The party rummages through his possessions, and discovers several potions of improved reduce person, which would enable them to follow the werebadger into the tunnels.  They also discover what turns out to be a map, as well as a number of strange leather harnesses.  Falin and Soren drink the potions, and shrink to the size of housecats; Jasna believes she can squeeze into the tunnels as is.

They locate a small chamber with a family of badgers, one of which appears to be the wounded werebadger.  Soren and Falin eventually wear down the normal badgers, with Jasna's song of courage providing a critical boost to their damage-dealing ability, given their small size.  Falin hamstrings the werebadger with a tanglefoot bag, and they take the lycanthrope hostage yet again, threatening him with their silver dagger.  They plan to turn him over to the Welwyn authorities.  At the last minute, though, the werebadger tries to make a break for it.  He is finally cut down.  The party, still tiny, heads back into the narrow warrens.

After encountering (and wisely ignoring) a band of rats, the party comes across a cold underground river blocking their path.  Jasna spots a hungry trout waiting for them.  Still at her normal size, she is able to carry the other two party members, and walk very carefully across stepping stones in the river.

Many minutes of walking later, the party finds a rubble-strewn cave with more narrow passages heading west.  They scramble across the rocks just as ominous clicking sounds from the passages begin to grow audible.

Their next and unfortunately final stop is a large cavern with a wide, deep chasm and a narrow tightrope.  The party ties a rope around Soren, and lowers her into the chasm to investigate.  The dwarf is surprised by a choker, who lashes out with a tentacle, scoring a critical hit.  Soren is disabled immediately.  The party pulls her back up to the ledge as the choker climbs out.  Falin manages to hit the aberration, but his strike is feeble, and does little damage.  The choker counterattacks, grappling the elf and dropping him as well.  Jasna heals Soren and Falin, but the choker grapples her, too, and she and Soren are quickly killed.  Falin, at 0 hit points and unable to do anything else, crawls away helplessly while the choker devours his friends...