// THE PREMISE
What this world is
Saltmarsh Bay is a decaying New England fishing town in the autumn of 1925, and something ancient is waking under the sea. The fish have come back after a decade of empty nets, and the town has grown strange and prosperous in the same season. People who leave do not come back; people who stay are changing - their eyes, their gait, the things they will and will not say. You arrive as an outsider with a reason to dig: a missing relative, a folklorist's commission, a reporter's nose, an unwanted inheritance.
This is investigation first and dread always: legwork, old records, interviews with people who answer the wrong questions, and the slow uncovering of a truth the mind is not built to hold. The Order of the Deep Tide, the secret theocracy under Reverend Obed Marsh-Coram, made a pact generations ago and tends it on the nights of the high tide. The Old Families, intermarried bloodlines led by the matriarch Hepzibah Gilman, are changing into something that belongs to the sea. Roric Blackwood's dwindling Holdouts refuse the change and know they are being culled. The Fenland Runners smuggle through the labyrinthine waterways. And the thing in the trench beyond the Devil's Reef stirs toward a waking.
The pact is succeeding too well - the change is accelerating, the high tides are climbing, and the Drowned God's dreams leak into the town. You, digging into one small mystery, pull a thread that runs all the way down to the trench. Gather the truth, hold onto your mind while doing it, and decide what to do with knowledge that cannot be unlearned.
// PLAY PROFILE
What this world plays like
Your first ten turns are the quiet wrongness of Saltmarsh Bay: the too-full nets, the locked chapel, the townsfolk who answer a different question than the one you asked. You read a record you weren't meant to. The town is already noting which doors you knock on.
By turn fifty your standing with the Order of the Deep Tide, the Old Families, the Holdouts, and the Fenland Runners is tracked as real attitude, and the question you pressed on turn nine has marked you as a problem. A truth you uncovered on turn twelve costs you a night's sleep you do not get back. The high tide is climbing.
By turn one hundred the pact is near its terrible fruition and you hold knowledge that cannot be unlearned. Whoever you trusted, whatever you saw beneath the reef, the town keeps the account - and some doors, once opened, look back.
The Drowning Town does not reset between sessions. Close the tab. The tide still comes in wrong.
// FACTIONS IN MOTION
Principal factions
The secret theocracy that rules Saltmarsh Bay, composed of the Old Families and their sworn enforcers. They venerate the Drowned God, uphold the ancient Pact for prosperity and longevity, and quietly manage the town's slow, horrifying transformation. Their primary goals are to maintain secrecy, manage the 'Change' in their bloodlines, and ensure no outside influence disrupts their bargain.
The economic engine of Saltmarsh Bay and the public face of the Gilman and Marsh-Coram families' power. The Cooperative controls every boat, sets the price for every catch, and runs the cannery, effectively holding every fisherman in a state of debt peonage. They enforce the Old Families' will through credit, script, and control over who is allowed to work the sea.
A dwindling community of Holdouts who have fled the town's corruption for the perceived safety of the deep woods. They are deeply paranoid, fiercely self-sufficient, and cling to a puritanical faith as a ward against the influence of the Drowned God. Desperate and isolated, some have begun listening to the faint, dry whispers of the other ancient power that sleeps beneath the forest floor.
A pragmatic crew of smugglers and bootleggers who use the labyrinthine waterways of the fens to bypass the Cooperative's control. They trade in mainland liquor, untaxed gasoline, and other contraband, dealing with both desperate Holdouts and, discreetly, members of the Old Families. They value profit above all and are careful not to draw the full attention of the town's true rulers.
// KEY FIGURES
People you'll meet
// SITES OF RECORD
Places that matter
A vast, ancient forest of gnarled oaks and pines that crowds the edges of Saltmarsh Bay, growing right down to the high tide line in places. The canopy is so thick that the forest floor is in a perpetual twilight. The trails are few and twisted, and it is said the woods actively try to lose travelers.
A sprawling marshland of brackish water, sucking mud, and tall reeds that obscure the border between land and sea. The Fens are a maze of tidal creeks and stagnant pools, home to smugglers, recluses, and things that wash ashore. The air is heavy with the smell of decay.
A cluster of salt-bleached buildings clinging to a hook of land around a deep-water harbor. The air is thick with the smell of fish, low tide, and coal smoke from the cannery that never seems to stop running. The town is too quiet for its newfound prosperity, and the stares of its inhabitants linger too long.
A treacherous black reef, visible only at low tide, that guards the entrance to Saltmarsh Bay. Beyond it, the sea floor plummets into an abyssal, uncharted trench. The water above the trench is unnaturally cold and still, and fishermen give it a wide berth, casting their nets only at its edges.
// LIVE TURN
A real turn from this world
Reverend Marsh-Coram pours the tea you will not drink. "You've been to the harbor at the low tide," he says, gentle as a sermon. "You've seen how far out it goes now. How the reef shows itself." He smiles, and there is something wrong with the number of his teeth. "We don't fear it here. We were afraid, once, the way you are now. It passes. Everything passes, and then it comes home."
He is the kindest man in Saltmarsh Bay and the most dangerous, and they are the same thing.
Standing with the Order of the Deep Tide: watched. The town logs who the Reverend takes tea with. The thing in the trench, in its way, logs it too.
// SYSTEM RATIONALE
Why The Drowning Town holds up over a long campaign
Most AI roleplay tools are built around a single session. They start to fall apart at hour ten and are barely playable at hour fifty. The Drowning Town doesn't, because the world isn't living in a chat history - it's living in a database.
Mechanical truth in a real database. Coins, inventory, NPCs, factions, locations, properties - all in real database rows. The narrator describes around the database; the database is what's true. By turn 500, your business ledger still balances and your apprentices still have the names you gave them.
Long memory that doesn't fade. The hundredth turn still knows what happened in chapter two. Old threads stay intact instead of blurring into vague backstory.
The right detail, when it matters. A promise you made 800 turns ago resurfaces at exactly the moment it counts. The world kept the receipt.
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