The setting at a glance
The campaign takes place in and around Yanagihama, a remote river town of 225 souls in eastern Akanegumo, in the year 3,015 AC — 115 years before the present day of Eldranis, in the turbulent first years of the Age of the Wandering Dungeons. It opens on Suncrest 1, 3,015 AC — the first day of summer — the morning after the Reenactment Festival.
Eldranis keeps twelve months of thirty days, in six-day weeks (Lunaris, Vireday, Embriday, Eirunday, Hearthday, Duskwane). The campaign spans one full year, one adventure per season:
Season | Months | Campaign |
|---|---|---|
Spring | Thawingtide, Blossombloom, Greengale | The Reenactment Festival — Greengale 30 |
Summer | Suncrest, Brighthearth, Verdantwave | Adventure 1 — the ghost season opens Suncrest 1 |
Autumn | Goldleaf, Harvestfall, Emberglow | Adventure 2 — harvest, and preparations for winter |
Winter | Frostwane, Snowveil, Deepchill | Adventure 3 — the season everyone is dreading |
Spring | Thawingtide, Blossombloom, Greengale | Adventure 4 — the year comes round |
New Year's Festival — Thawingtide 1. The year turns with the thaw: debts settled, houses swept, ancestors greeted at the household shrine.
Reenactment Festival — Greengale 30. Yanagihama's own. The feast, the masks, the mock abduction — and this year, you're the abductees.
The ghost season — Suncrest 1–21. Not a celebration but an observance: three weeks of the Eight Practices, lit lanterns, and early nights while the Yūreimori's hauntings crest.
First Long Night — Harvestfall 15. The autumn equinox, and rural Shenyun's most anticipated holiday: a day spent honoring the dead — cleaning ancestral graves, scattering silver dust to appease the hungry gaki, performing last rites for the neglected — followed by a riotous evening of hot desserts, shared fires, and the three traditional contests. Solemn by daylight, loud by dark: a festival of cautious hope, reminding the living and the dead of the tenacity of life. Pre-festivities begin a week or two early.
The Quiet Relighting — Frostwane 1. Akanegumo's remembrance of the Severing. At dusk every household extinguishes and relights its lanterns twice — once for the empire that left, once for the neighbors who stayed.
Two years ago, in 3,013 AC, the Severing cut Akanegumo out of the empire: the daimyo's house fell, the court quarantined the province, and the garrisons marched home over the passes. For most of Akanegumo this has meant chaos. For Yanagihama — a town the empire ignored even in better days — it has mostly meant quiet. The hated lumber lords fled with their wealth. The tax collectors stopped coming. Governor Wen Zhao-Lin, a relatively benign administrator, stayed at his post, and the town has carried on as it always has: self-sufficient, superstitious, and stubbornly alive.
The news from outside is stranger. Rumor says spider-women — jorogumo — have claimed the province's high seats. Rumor says the ruler of Kumocho, the city beyond the mountains, died and kept ruling. The people of Yanagihama shrug, light their lanterns, and tend their own.
And the winters are getting worse. The storms of 3,013 were the worst in living memory, and everyone is quietly nervous about the season to come.
In the Cloud Province, ghosts and monsters are not superstition — they are weather. The practices its people keep arise from necessity. Akanegumo's culture is a deep mix: old founding families, lumber-era arrivals from across Shenyun, Eirendor-descended elves, halflings of Imperion-enclave stock, and more, with names and customs drawn from many tongues.
The first weeks of Suncrest are the ghost season, when the hauntings of the surrounding forest — the Yūreimori, the Ghostwood — reach their yearly peak. Yanagihama's answer is the Reenactment Festival, held on Greengale 30, the last day of spring: a great feast that ends with townsfolk in paper masks "abducting" a few chosen victims, while everyone else playacts panic, mourning, and a desperate search. The farce is meant to trick the real ghosts into believing the town has already been haunted, so they'll seek their misery elsewhere.
This year, you have been chosen as the abductees. It's an honor, mostly. After the feast you'll be rolled up in straw mats, carried to a forest clearing on the town's edge, and left to spend the night under the stars. At dawn, the festival's sponsor — Bae Han-Sol, the beloved leader of the town's millers — will arrive with a ransom of breakfast delicacies and lead you home in triumph.
The abduction is theater, not robbery: you may bring all your starting items and gear with you to the clearing. Anything you choose not to bring waits for you at home (see Home and Heirloom).
The campaign begins when you wake in that clearing on the first day of summer... and no breakfast comes.
During the ghost season, everyone in Yanagihama follows eight pieces of advice. Whether they truly help against malicious spirits is hotly debated; whether you follow them is up to you.
Do not call a ghost a ghost.
Do not pat anyone on the head or shoulders.
Stay out of the water when a ghost is near.
Do not eat food with two stick-like objects standing in it.
Do not lean against walls during the day.
Do not whistle at night.
Do not leave laundry out overnight.
If something calls your name from behind you at night — do not turn around.
This is a horror campaign: hauntings, dread, and some genuinely dark turns. Before play begins, talk as a table about tropes or themes anyone wants softened or avoided, and agree on how to flag discomfort during play. Everyone should get to enjoy being scared on purpose.