What The Saltmarsh Council Hall’S Inside Looks Like?

The Council Hall in Saltmarsh is a simple brick building with a small council chamber, built from sturdy stone and hardwood from nearby marshes. It stirs up feelings of hope, fear, curiosity, and anger among the various community members. The map was created specifically for council meetings and features a wooden sign depicting a net filled with fish.

The town council provides leadership, interprets the King’s Commands, and passes local ordinances. They collaborate on a weekly report to the Duke in Seaton. The council hall houses storage, Eliander’s office, Ander’s office, and Manistrad’s office. The interior is open to the air, filling with the scents and sounds of the marsh while remaining protected from the elements by the encircling steel frames. Light-colored wood cladding gives the interior a tranquil look, while the steel frames have been lacquered a deep shade of gold.

NewbieDM has shared some initial glimpses inside the book Ghosts of Saltmarsh, which releases on May 21st. The main hall space occupies three complete bays, while the sleeping, cooking, and washing spaces occupy half bays along with a perimeter. The Saltmarshe Hall hotel emerges as a sanctuary of cleanliness with its immaculate gardens and rooms, as guests often note.

Saltmarsh might be a sleepy town, but many see it as the ideal place to enter Keoland without drawing notice. As a criminal in town, you are likely involved in the town’s activities.


📹 Ghosts of Saltmarsh: Dungeons and Dragons Story Explained

Hey D&D peeps! Here’s another viewer recommended Dungeons and Dragons adventure that I’d cover! I know these are taking a …


How old are the Marsh Arabs?

The Marsh Arabs, a society of 500, 000 people who have lived in and around an enormous freshwater wetland ecosystem for 5, 000 years, have suffered the total destruction of their economy, culture, habitat, and way of life. The devastation has not been due to direct assault on the people themselves, but on the environment that was the foundation of their existence—the marshlands. As recently as 1985, the three contiguous marshes have been drained, burned, and dammed to the point that only remnants of them still exist.

Researchers have concluded that the destruction of the marshlands had no economic or developmental purpose, but rather was carried out with the singular purpose of destroying the Marsh Arab people. Most of the Marsh Arabs have left the area, with only a few thousand remaining. The rest have fled to refugee camps in Iran or dispersed throughout Iraq. On November 11, 2002, the U. S. Institute of Peace held a Current Issues Briefing on the plight of the Marsh Arabs, co-editors of a new book entitled The Iraqi Marshlands: A Human and Environmental Study.

How old is Rowan in Kingdom of Ash?

Rowan Whitethorn Galathynius is a full-blooded Fae with powers of cryokinesis and wind manipulation. He can take the form of a white-tailed hawk and is over three centuries old. The series, Throne of Glass, is a high fantasy young adult novel series by American author Sarah J. Maas. It follows the journey of Celaena Sardothien, a teenage assassin in a corrupt kingdom led by the King of Adarlan. The series concluded in October 2018, and it appeared on the New York Times Best Seller list. The series was optioned for a television series adaptation by Mark Gordon in 2016, but nothing came forward, and the rights went back to the author.

What does a salt marsh look like?
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What does a salt marsh look like?

Salt marshes are areas of low, flat, poorly drained ground that are subject to daily or occasional flooding by salt water or brackish water. They are common along low seacoasts, inside barrier bars and beaches, in estuaries, and on deltas, and are also extensive in deserts and arid regions. These marshes are covered with a thick mat of grasses, sedges, and rushes, which are halophytic and adapted to survive in saline habitats. Some plants, like glassworts, can also tolerate high salinity and accumulate salts in their leaves and stems.

Invertebrates have adapted to the limited oxygen supplies in salt marsh water in various ways, such as rat-tailed maggots, shore flies larvae, and nematodes. Some small marsh animals have great resistance to lack of oxygen, such as nematodes that can live indefinitely in the complete absence of oxygen, which is essential for their distribution.

What does marsh look like?

A marsh is a type of wetland where water covers the ground for extended periods, dominated by grasses and herbaceous plants. These plants, which can be annuals, biennials, or perennials, grow and die back on a regular cycle. They grow in waterlogged, rich soil deposited by rivers, with roots binding to the muddy soil and slowing water flow. This slows the water flow, encouraging the marsh’s spread, making it rich in biodiversity. Marshes are typically treeless, unlike swamps, which are dominated by trees.

What is the structure of a marsh?
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What is the structure of a marsh?

Marshes are wetlands located at the edges of lakes and streams, forming a transition between aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. They are dominated by grasses, rushes, or reeds, and are sometimes called carrs if woody plants are present. They provide habitats for various invertebrates, fish, amphibians, waterfowl, and aquatic mammals, containing 0. 1 of global sequestered terrestrial carbon. Marshes also significantly influence climate resilience by absorbing high tides and extreme weather changes.

Marshes provide habitats for many species of plants, animals, and insects that have adapted to living in flooded conditions. Many plants have aerenchyma, channels within the stem that allow air to move from the leaves into the rooting zone, and rhizomes for underground storage and reproduction. Common examples include cattails, sedges, papyrus, and sawgrass. Aquatic animals, such as fish and salamanders, can live with low oxygen levels in the water, some obtaining oxygen from the air, while others can live indefinitely in low oxygen conditions. Marshes have a neutral to alkaline pH, unlike bogs, where peat accumulates under more acidic conditions.

Do salt flats smell?
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Do salt flats smell?

Salt marshes, despite appearing solid land, have soils that are mostly waterlogged and devoid of oxygen, leading to a buildup of hydrogen sulfide. This byproduct of microorganisms creating energy in an inhospitable environment causes a rotten-egg smell. An aquatic ecologist typically enters the salt marsh by disembarking from a boat, thigh deep in muck, flooding their rubber boots immediately. Once they can gain a foothold, they are poked in the eye by pointy black needlerush plants that grow taller closer to the water’s edge, where the soil is less salty due to daily tide flushing.

As the salt builds up in the soil farther away from the water’s edge, the plants become hand-height, which is fine in summer when they are green and healthy. However, in winter, when many of these plants die back, the sharp tips snap off, causing dozens of black needlerush splinters.

What are the natural characteristics of a saltmarsh?
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What are the natural characteristics of a saltmarsh?

Salt marshes are coastal wetlands that are flooded and drained by salt water from tides. They are marshy due to the presence of deep mud and peat, which is made of decomposing plant matter. The peat is waterlogged, root-filled, and very spongy. Due to their frequent submersion by tides and high decomposing plant material, salt marshes can experience hypoxia, a condition where oxygen levels in the peat are extremely low. This is caused by the growth of bacteria that produce the sulfurous rotten-egg smell associated with marshes and mud flats.

Salt marshes are found worldwide, particularly in middle to high latitudes, and are common habitats in estuaries. In the U. S., salt marshes are found on every coast, with approximately half of the nation’s salt marshes located along the Gulf Coast.

What is the anatomy of a salt marsh?

The marsh is comprised of three distinct vegetation zones: low marsh, high marsh, and upper border. These zones are primarily determined by the frequency of saltwater tidal flooding and small elevation differences relative to normal or mean high water.

What are 5 characteristics of a marsh?
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What are 5 characteristics of a marsh?

Marshes are slow-moving wetlands often associated with rivers, lakes, or oceans, and are characterized by their soft-stemmed vegetation, such as grasses and sedges, adapted to saturated soil conditions. They are intermittently or continuously flooded with shallow water, and their water can be fresh, brackish, or saline. They do not accumulate substantial peat deposits like swamps. In North America, marshes are dominated by soft-stemmed vegetation, while swamps are dominated by woody vegetation.

However, this distinction may not apply in other areas, such as Africa, where swamps may be dominated by papyrus. In contrast, marshes are distinguished from swamps by having less open water surface and shallower water than swamps.

What setting is Saltmarsh in?

Ghosts of Saltmarsh is a 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons adventure set in a classic D and D setting, reimagined as setting-neutral and self-contained. The book is primarily for Dungeon Masters and includes a brief setting guide, several adventures, and tools for crafting a nautical campaign. The book features stats and rules for ship-to-ship combat, new sea creatures, and various location and encounter charts.

How old is Saltmarsh?
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How old is Saltmarsh?

The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh, a book by Dave J. Browne, is a collection of stories that explore the world of the Sea Princes. The book claims that the Sea Princes raids occurred within living memory, but the canonical date of the book is unclear. The establishment of the Hold of the Sea Princes (4444 CY) is described as “decades ago”, but mentions of King Skotti date it to no earlier than 564 CY. The book also mentions the Kingdom of Keoland, which was established in 444 CY.

The book also mentions the Encyclopedia Greyhawkania Index, which is based on the work of Jason Zavoda through ’08, and his work as continued and updated by Eric Johnson, Richard DiIoia, Jason “PupickDad” Jacobson, a French fan group, and numerous other fans over the years. The wiki page for the EGI has a list of sources, full product names, abbreviations, and a link to the full, downloadable index.


📹 AD&D Review – The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh

Review and DM tips for the classic AD&D module “The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh.” Great adventure for First Level characters.


What The Saltmarsh Council Hall'S Inside Looks Like
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Rafaela Priori Gutler

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22 comments

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  • I ran this module back in the early 80s for my group. They IMMEDIATELY took to interrogating and abusing Ned Shakeshaft in a manner that made me (correctly) suspect that someone had read the module before we played it. They unceremoniously killed him, but I took the DMs revenge upon them for their cheating. Fred Shakeshaft, Ned’s twin brother, bedeviled the party for years as he sought his revenge… and when I say “years” I mean 8th grade through 11th grade. He stole their horses after they entered the Hidden Shrine of Tamochan. He alerted every non-human in the Caves of Chaos that they were on the way. He swapped out their holy water with well water as they prepared to assault Castle Ravenloft. He followed them around and screwed with them with a tenacity that would have made Gollum blush. He was my first arch-villain. The party was finally able to track him down and kill as we wrapped up that campaign, but Fred Shakeshaft’s name is still uttered in hushed whispers as mothers warn their children not to read the damn module before the DM runs it.

  • Hey Seth, I feel like once you hit a certain pillar of success (like yourself) there is a certain amount of head-nodding granted toward community response. I just wanted to say that I consider your craft to be of a very high quality. I hope that you feel happy about your work, because it is both well explained and entertaining. I am a public school teacher, and after perusal your website for the past two weeks my jaw has been dropped to the floor. The way you explain preparing a session and engaging your group is part and parcel for what the job of an instructor is.Your articles on GM advice fit exactly within in the classroom: expressing expectations, designing an entertaining session, and managing and rewarding behavior, I believe you are a very talented individual, so I would just like to thank you for your insight and work. Please keep it up!

  • Ghosts of Saltmarsh is a book that reprinted this as the first adventure which not only makes sure to add onto Saltmarsh, but gives a reason for the PC’s to go to the mansion. I ran this with an apothecary hiring them to clear out the places since ghost stories are bad for business and Saltmarsh was becoming a good port town for trade. It’s been going rather interesting given how nuts they’ve been. I’ll leave it this way, they scarred Ned intentionally.

  • The upcoming Ghosts of Saltmarsh hardcover details Saltmarsh, making it a mini-setting and quest hub. So anyone who wants to wait until May 2019–you can save yourself some work by just using WotC’s 5E conversion and expansion. While the original was set in Greyhawk, the 5E version is going to be setting-agnostic (a first for any official WotC hardcover). With the fleshed-out Saltmarsh setting, and all the additional adventures, the nautical and underwater mechanics, new monsters etc.–this looks like a really great product.

  • GM notes (mostly for my own reference haha) 0:50 the adventure will take 2-3 sessions 2:29 the maps 3:00 the town 3:30 suggestions why the PCs participate 11:34 foreshadow the lizardman tribe nearby 6:00 exploring the house 6:30 the ‘prisoner’ 7:15 secret doors to the smugglers lair 7:55 the main villain and his henchmonsters 8:27 …a few days later: the town council’s assignment 9:19 the smuggler’s ship 9:50 the aquatic elf 10:15 the lizardmen & a pseudodragon 12:00 there are 2 sequels

  • Great summary. Thanks for the great trip down memory lane from way back in the 80’s. I remember seeing this module arrive at our gaming store(That was a Train hobby store BTW) a I Dm’d it way back when and exactly what you stated was the problem. no town and no real reason why they would go there. Wish I had you back then to DM this for us. Thanks again.

  • I ran this and the party took out the pirate crew pretty quick, but that captain dropped a couple of them before a shape-changing psionicist (he liked taking a hybrid eagle form..hands turned into talon and arms into wings). Making the town was kinda tricky and had some NPCs as class trainers…the thief was a halfling that had the smallest patch of farmland and spent most of the time smoking his pipe or just tilling a small plot by hand (but never got anything done). After taking the ship, they named it “The Ill-Gotten Booty” and ended up taking all the stuff in the hold to Waterdeep (but they only got like 10%).

  • The hook I use to get parties to investigate; is “Where are my cows?” so; lifestock and perhaps some people keep turn up missing; clues lead to the haunted house; but this hook coincides with the second module. So the missing clues lead to the party hearing about weird lights and sounds and thus the house in question. And I agree; DM’s have to flesh out the town, I make it a neutral town of fairly selfish, self concerned people who dont want to get involved. They fish; they drink; they have poor farmland and export peat, and tar, from the swamp and some herbs and some salted fish. This give ships a reason to come here; I usually have the PC’s guard a shipment of something to the town council sent by they benefactor.

  • This was a great adventure. We got shined on the house by the local sheriff, who wasn’t capable of checking the house and perusal the town. It was when we learned the awesome power of color spray and illusions on both sides. The other installments proved equally impressive and fun, but were completely different.

  • I run it at the end of the las millennium. That was a smashing module. Before that one, I had never even looked at printed adventures. That was middle of 90s in Poland, so no chance of getting that stuff before, but I happened to get access to the internet then and somehow found that adventure in txt format. Yes, with a map of the Saltmarsh Inn created from dashes and slashes 🙂 I made my own village, a lot of different backstories in the village and around that Inn and smugglers and village I had a mini campaign. Great times.

  • I played through this adventure… Well, a 5E conversion…. well, a 5e conversion of half of it. It was baaaaad. I think most of it had to do with the GM. Should’ve recognized the signs early on, the dude had the worst time keeping players and stalled us extensively… He seemed more enamored in developping the town NPCs and setting up the surrounding areas than getting us in the adventure. We were only TWO players by the time we actually got to the house (plus a dwarf fighter NPC) and he only managed to wrangle up one more player by the end of it. The “adventure” seemed to conclude after the illusionist’s defeat. I called it quits one session after when he magi-ported us off to Orlane (Cult of the Reptile God) and it became clear he was just jumping us from part of a module to another with no rhyme or reason.

  • Modules like Sinister Secret of Salt Marsh, Village of Homlet, Bone hill, and Under Illifarn are great because they provide a stable starting location that can serve as a hub for adventures in the surrounding areas. While some have lackluster adventures, there is plenty of room for the GM to add his own material or even set other modules within a weeks travel time, since few villagers will have traveled more than a few days from their homes, even in many fantasy worlds.

  • A great module and adventure. We played it about five times and quick-scrawled our Saltmarsh with charcoal on plywood. My lure to the house was a rabid wolf reported by a nearby farmer, with tracks and calf entrails to make the trail oh-so-clear to novice gamers. Did we ever figure out who the guy with the lantern on the porch was . . . ?

  • My group just started the 5e version of this adventure. Our party is a bunch of amoral bastards including two Dagon worshippers so when we found Ned we took away his weapon and used him as our “forward scout” by which I mean we shoved him first into every room until he got killed by a swarm of spiders.

  • Just ordered my POD last night actually! $AUS15.31 (about $9.96) Prices are not too bad here in Australia, it’s more postage, but as they are (well my last order) was printed here and not in the UK, postage and delivery time is pretty good (4 days last time!) I like how they used to charts in the DM’s guide to describe potions!

  • In my campaign, I am using this module as a jumping off point for a nautical campaign. I’m considering taking a page from the book of Call of Cthulhu and have one of the characters having inherited the haunted house. They go to town talking about their inheritance, find out that it is haunted and there is their call to action. It also might draw some incidental encounters on the way as surely the smugglers will have heard of the heirs coming to town.

  • This is the first game me and my oldest buddy played at like 11 or 12 years old. We had no idea how to play other than the directions we read on the original AD&D how to red boxset.I think there was a blue boxset that told you how to DM also.My buddy learned from that as well as an 11 or 12 I year old could understand. We never learned from an experienced player or DM. But we actually had a great time even if we did almost everything wrong. We played other module still lost But by the time it started gaining momentum and the rules changed we were in our early to mid teens we had given up dice for beer and babes.As I was growing up I noticed my baby brothers had all the handbooks and newer modules although it was mostly for the artwork they also failed when they tried to make the game work like me.Now although I think the new rules on the new races and classes are ridiculous the game has really picked up steam in the last few years and with you tube and the internet I figured out how bad we were and even though fun, it looks much better with a creative DM who knows how to play and people we know how to play. I would really like to try this again I know my brother did and at a shop just for that. I wonder if you can get in on a game maybe with other newbies to learn with a DM that can teach them how to play correctly. Is there online open games or places like my brother goes to play with others. I want to play correctly and only with serious people who want to learn not goof off.

  • I’m running this in 5E, I introduced my characters as Slaves on a slaver vessel. The cleric was a cleric of Procan, so he prayed for help from his God. So Procan sent out a Kraken to assault the vessel and destroy it. The PC’s were rescued at sea by a fishing vessel and taken to Saltmarsh. I introduced the Scarlet Brotherhood as having a couple members on the slaver vessel. So they will be sent to the Haunted House as they are searching a rumor of the slaver’s activities.

  • Definitely one of the best modules I’ve run as a DM. I think this was also one of the first modules to come out of the UK (thus the U designator). Ned became an ongoing villain in my game as he high-tailed it once the jig was up. My players commandeered the Sea Ghost, and it remained in active service well into their teen levels. One pc eventually made it the flagship of his trading (ei smuggling / privateer) empire. Oceanus became a long-lived trusted follower of a pc ranger, and the pseudo-dragon became a ‘familiar’ to the party cleric. Don’t think I’ve ever run a module that had this much influence on players.

  • I just ran this adventure, and the party ended up hitting me with a few snags. I told them the story of the Alchemist who lived in the manor years ago and how he disappeared and now haunts the manor. They waited until day despite the towns people betting them to go at night(they used trickery to make it seem they were in there at night) after figuring out it the ‘haunting” was illusions and tricks, they came to the incorrect conclusion that the Alchemist was still alive, just wanted to be left alone so set up all these traps. After coming to that conclusion and finding Ned and believing his story about being bonked on the head, they just left the manor with what treasure they found and left an apology note to the Alchemist.

  • Ah… how I loved this adventure. Definitely one of my favorite published adventures… and it is true that there weren’t enough low-level adventures printed back in the day. I did always think it was amusing that they didn’t actually supply you with a town of Saltmarsh… so the DM had to prepare a town before you would be able to play. heh I understand why they left it up to the DM, though.

  • When I played in this I ran a Cleric of the Sky God we returned to the village only to be told we’d only be paid with evidence we had done the job in the form of severed heads. So annoyed we returned and retrieved the heads and returned then my character was struck dead by his god for doing this. Not joking about that!

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