Description

The ship has drifted over an ancient wreck site, pre-classical, somewhere south of Crete. Something went down here before there was a name for the sea. The dead went down with it. Nobody performed the rites. Nobody spoke the words over them. And so they have waited.

Mediterranean seafarers have always known about them. The Dalmatian crew have a name — oni koji čekaju dolje (“those who wait below”). The Greek sailors have half a dozen names and will not say any of them aloud after dark. The folklore is consistent across the Eastern Mediterranean: the sea does not give up its dead cleanly. The unburied have no passage. They cannot move on. They can only knock.

They knock because that is what drowning men do — beat on a hull from outside, desperate to be let in. The knocking is patient. Rhythmic. Three slow blows. A pause. Three more. It has been going on for two thousand years.

By Night 2, what is audible through the planking is not meaningless percussion. The moaning that vibrates through the hull resolves, on careful listening, into corrupted Ancient Greek:

“Mártys… mártyres…” — witness… witnesses… “Anápausis… anápausin…” — rest… give rest… “Ídete… ídete hemâs…” — see… see us…

This is a funerary invocation, worn down by centuries of water until only fragments remain. They are reciting what they remember of the prayer that should have been spoken over them. They are not demanding. They are begging.

By Night 3, when they climb aboard, the nature of their need becomes unmistakable. They do not attack. They pull. Cold, bloated hands close on wrists and ankles and hair, dragging people toward the rail, toward the water. The motivation is not violence — it is desperate longing. They want company. They have been alone in the dark for two thousand years, and they do not know how to ask for anything except this.

Stat Block

Characteristic	Value
STR	40
CON	— (already dead)
SIZ	50
DEX	25
HP	8 (per body)

Combat	Details
Attack	Grapple 40% — opposed STR to resist being pulled toward the rail and overboard
Damage	1D4 (cold grip; bruising, not lacerating)
Armour	None, but resistant to impaling weapons — waterlogged flesh takes reduced damage from blades and bayonets
Fire	Effective, but open flame on a wooden ship creates an immediate secondary threat
Behaviour	They do not dodge. They do not stop. They do not respond to pain.
Waves	5–6 per round during the Night 3 climax
Recovery	Every body pushed off the hull climbs back. Reducing an individual to 0 HP causes it to collapse and slide into the water — it does not die again, but it does not immediately return. More come.

The fight is an endurance test, not a victory condition. There is no total defeat available through combat. Dawn drives them below the surface. The following night, they return.

SAN Loss

Trigger	SAN Loss
Seeing faces below the surface — pale, patient, bloated, eyes open, mouths moving — on Night 2	1/1D6
Hearing the moaning from below the hull resolve into recognisable words — a begging that has a language	0/1D4
The dead climbing over the rail — hands and heads appearing at the gunwale, waterlogged bodies pulling themselves aboard	1D3/1D8
SAN reward: Witnessing or participating in a funeral rite that succeeds — watching the dead release, go still, and sink	+1D6

Abilities

Grapple and drag. The Drowned close on living people and pull them toward open water. This is the only combat action they take. The intent is not to harm — it is to bring someone down with them.

Cold grip. Contact with a Drowned inflicts 1D4 cold damage per round of maintained grapple. The cold is not supernatural; it is the temperature of deep water carried in waterlogged flesh.

Corrupted speech. On Night 2, the moan becomes articulate. Fragments of Ancient Greek, badly eroded, emerge from the sound vibrating through the hull planking. Any PC with Greek, Latin, or a successful INT roll can parse the words and recognise them as a funerary invocation.

Structural resonance. The dead generate low-frequency vibration through sustained physical contact with the hull. By Night 2, the ship’s carpenter Ivo can report that the hull timbers are resonating wrong — not damage, but sustained sympathetic vibration. The Command Tuning Fork responds to this frequency; Georgiana Wentworth may feel it hum in her marked hand before anyone translates the words.

Climb. The Drowned ascend anchor chains, hull planking, and rigging. They are slow but persistent. They cannot be permanently driven off by pushing — only laid to rest.

Persistence. Reducing individual bodies to 0 HP removes them from the immediate fight but does not destroy them. They sink, and others take their place. The mass of the dead at the wreck site appears inexhaustible on any single night.

Weaknesses

The funeral rite. The permanent solution. Someone stands at the rail and speaks directly to the dead — acknowledging their existence, their deaths, their right to rest. Sincerity is the operative requirement, not liturgical precision. Full mechanics in The Funeral Rite. When the rite succeeds, the moaning shifts into something almost melodic, the hands release, the faces turn briefly human with recognition and relief, and the dead sink back into the water. The wind returns.

Distance from the wreck site. The Drowned are anchored to the location of the ancient wreck. As a vessel moves away from the site, their strength and numbers diminish. If the investigators take the longboat and row for Gavdos island, the dead will reach for oars initially but weaken after approximately an hour of hard rowing — normal sea resumes. The cost of this option is leaving Capitano Niccolo Zanier and his crew behind.

Dawn. The Drowned retreat below the surface at first light. They do not disperse at dawn — they wait. The same night, they return. Dawn buys time; it does not solve anything.

Fire. Effective against individual bodies. Dangerous on a wooden ship. Using fire during the Night 3 combat is a choice with immediate secondary consequences — the Keeper should call for appropriate rolls and be ready to add a shipboard fire to the crisis.

Impaling weapons (partial). Blades and bayonets deal reduced damage to waterlogged flesh. Blunt weapons, crushing damage, and fire function at normal effectiveness.

Encounters

Night 1 — The Knocking (Introduction)

Available from below the waterline: three patient knocks. Pause. Three more. The sound is muffled by water and hull planking but unmistakable. Petar Boskovic crosses himself and touches his carved saint. The Greek sailors exchange glances without speaking. Investigation of the hold reveals Jasper Endicott’s crate is strange but inert. The knocking continues; it originates from outside the hull, not inside.

Nothing is yet visible. The horror at this stage is sonic and implied.

Night 2 — The Faces (Escalation)

The knocking is louder. Scratching at the hull planking. Looking over the rail is available to any PC willing to lean out in the dark. What is visible: dozens of pale faces just below the surface, patient, bloated, eyes open, mouths moving silently. Then the moan starts — low, sustained, vibrating through the deck underfoot — and shapes itself into words.

Stavros has been murmuring the old sailor’s prayer for the drowned since Night 1. Standing near the galley on Night 2 makes the words audible and recognisable.

SAN loss triggers at this stage: faces below surface (1/1D6), words in the moan (0/1D4).

Night 3 — The Climb (Climax)

The dead begin ascending the hull. Hands and heads appear at the gunwale. They come over the rail — waterlogged, ancient, silent except for the sustained moan. They move toward living people and attempt to grapple.

This is the resolution scene. The funeral rite can be performed at any point during the climax — it does not require waiting for the fighting to end. The rite and the fight are not mutually exclusive, and a PC who begins the rite while others are holding off the dead is following the grain of the scenario.

Resolution (Session 3 — laid to rest)

On ~2 September 1814, south of Crete, the funeral rite was performed. As the dead climbed the hull, Katherine fled in terror and Holt froze, and Emma lost herself in the song — but Georgiana carried the rite alone, her cracked voice acknowledging the drowned and granting them rest. The dead turned toward her, went still, and sank back into the sea. The wind returned. The Drowned of this wreck site are at peace; they do not return. (Their earlier sacrifice of Endicott bought nothing — only the rite ended it.) See [Chapter 04 Session 03 Wrap Up](…/chapters/Chapter 4 - Calcutta/Sessions/Session 03/chapter-04-session-03-wrap-up.html).

Relationships

• Haunts La Speranza — The ship has drifted over the ancient wreck site; the Drowned knock on its hull and climb its sides
• Resolved by The Funeral Rite — Only the spoken funeral rite permanently lays the Drowned to rest; without it they return each night until the wreck site is left behind