The Tidal Mark
The waterline in the Ward of the Salt Shore in Old Town,
south of the Yellow City.
For twenty-two years the salt-flat workers have left offerings
here on dark moon nights: cracked shells arranged in
congregation-circles, cupped side up, with yellow flowers at
their centers. The line of offerings runs forty yards along the
waterline in various stages of age and weathering.
Tuket calls them waiting offerings, not mourning offerings —
a distinction that matters once you know
Cheth was not killed but taken.
Who tends them
The unnamed old crab-man — for
twenty-two years. He sat in the shadow of a collapsed archway twenty
feet back, watching, when Vothrog and Krah-Moh arrived in
Turn 10.
What happened here
- Turn 10 — Vothrog and Krah arrive; the old man watches. Krah
touches the mud at the mark with a flat claw — a gesture that
read as reverence. - Turn 12 — Vothrog casts Speak Truth to the Wretched, spending
1 HP, and speaks plainly through Krah’s relay. - Turn 13 — Vothrog reads the veth-cheth wave-scar on Krah’s
shell. - Turn 15 — The old man recognizes the mark. Cheth is alive,
somewhere distant. Krah came from that direction.
Visual
(Vothrog, Krah, and the
old crab-man at the offerings line; Gemini 2.5 Flash Image,
Turn 15).