The Stilt Docks (Low-Hela)

The stilt-built fishing village and piers on the outer spit of Isla Hela — where the party made landfall in Session 10 and killed Brother Lorn on the boardwalk in Session 11. Gus’s Bunker is in the cliffs above it.

[!important] Low-Hela (a.k.a. “The Spit”) is the village; The Stilt Docks are its piers. This is the site of the Battle of the Stilt Docks (S11, Day 8). It is not Glimmer Reef — that is the bleached outer barrier reef a mile seaward, and nobody lives out there.

Canon Facts

• The party’s landing point on Isla Hela (S10, Day 8). A deliberately low-key arrival aboard the Shadow Sprinter, which was then hidden under rough kelp nets at the piers.
• They met Gus here and sheltered in Gus’s Bunker in the cliffs above the village, where the party reached Level 6.
• S11 opened here. Gus woke Longstride with a kick to the boot: someone had arrived in town at the stilt docks — a standard Tide Caller signal — then left without explaining himself. Briony crafted her living bio-seal (Nature 24) in the bunker to mask the Siphon Core and the Clarion crate.
• Brother Lorn landed here. Three men came ashore by dinghy in ash-grey robes with salt-stained sleeves, off the brine-lugger The Pale Wake, anchored ~100 yards out. Lorn was stopping to wait out the low tide before crossing the sound to Great Hela — he did not arrive knowing the crate was here. He carried a whalebone dowsing pendulum that beelined straight for the Shadow Sprinter.
• Briony’s seagull. She bribed a coastal gull (Speak with Animals) into harassing Lorn, forcing him to burn Thunderwave to blast the birds off the water and Detect Magic to scan the village — which picked up faint magical auras along the western dock.
• The Battle of the Stilt Docks (7 rounds). Morrigan stepped out in disguise to stall Lorn on the boardwalk. Longstride took the smokehouse roof for high ground (and slipped on a roof jump, Athletics 7). Briony wild shaped into an 800 lb polar bear three times and dropped a 3rd-level Moonbeam through Lorn’s defensive mist. Morrigan’s clutch 3rd-level Counterspell shut down his max-damage Call Lightning (Lorn rolled a Nat 1 on the save), and she shoved a zealot off the smokehouse roof into a conjured snake pit. Longstride landed a Nat 20 crit with his longbow. Lorn detonated his suicide salt bombs and was then dragged down into a dark brine puddle by Briony’s spectral serpents. Lorn and both zealots died. No PC casualties.
• The looting. Taken off Lorn’s body on the bloodstained planks: the Salt-Blight Mace, the Tide-Dowsing Pendulum, Elder Kaia’s sealed letter (the Deep Moon = Day 22), bone daggers, a salt bomb, and a pouch of coins and pearls.
• Gus’s aborted theft, and the covenant. Panicking, Gus tried to steal the crate to return it to the sea himself. The party talked him down and made the return a shared decision instead.
• The extraction. Pass without Trace off the docks, Gus at the helm, the Shadow Sprinter gliding out silently through the mangrove channels toward the outer reef. Morrigan’s Sending shell to Zyla went dead cold on the way.
• The village is the least cultish place on Isla Hela. First point of contact for arriving ships: pragmatic fisherfolk, smugglers and retired divers whose real religion is tide tables and staying out of Atlas’s crosshairs. They respect the Children of the Salt without being them — and the village at large had no appetite for lynching strangers on Lorn’s word.

Overview

A weathered collection of driftwood shacks on stilts over shallow water, connected by boardwalks and piers, with drying nets, conch-shell middens and fish-salting troughs. The piers are shallow enough for fishing smacks, salt-luggers and the Shadow Sprinter, and low tide gates the three-mile crossing east to Great Hela.

Atmosphere

• Visuals: Grey driftwood, stilts, nets, pilings furred with weed; limestone sea-cliffs rising to the north with Gus’s Bunker hidden in them. Fat-bellied local fishing smacks — against which the Shadow Sprinter’s sleek twin charcoal hulls and Ghostcloth rigging scream “elite outlander vessel.”
• Sounds: Waves lapping against the stilts — the line the DM used twice to mark the silence after the battle. Gulls, boardwalk footfall, conch horns and signal-mirror traffic relaying news across the sound.
• Smells: Coarse brine and salting fish. The salting sheds’ sharp smell conveniently masks alchemical work and smuggled goods.

Points of Interest

The Piers / Western Dock

Shallow wooden piers, the Shadow Sprinter’s berth under kelp nets. The western dock is where Lorn’s Detect Magic caught the party’s auras.

The Smokehouse

The roof Longstride fought from and Morrigan shoved a zealot off. The village’s most useful piece of vertical terrain.

The Salting Sheds

Communal brine-packing sheds. Cover, concealment, and a smell that hides things.

Gus’s Bunker

A fortified, lead-reinforced salvage hold cut into the limestone sea-cliffs just north of the village proper. The party’s safe house on Isla Hela — see its own file.