DHW 05: Cold Ash

Cold Ash: A Daggerheart Adventure in the Witherwild

Emvara stopped existing three hundred years ago. It has not noticed.

A volcano took the town in a single morning, and the ash sealed everything exactly where it stood — the cup on the table with the handle still pointing the right way, the meal half-made in the bakery window, the people. They're all still here. Still buying fish, still mending nets, still walking routes that no longer lead anywhere. They do not know they are dead.

Cold Ash is a Daggerheart-compatible adventure for level 3 characters, set in the unruly, spirit-riddled expanse of the Witherwild. It is not a dungeon. It is a grief, and the party walks straight through it.

Perfect for groups who love atmosphere over body count, quiet horror, and moral questions that refuse to resolve, this adventure includes:

• A fully-realised haunted town — the Haunted City environment, where the streets remember a market day they can't stop replaying, and the layout shifts as the dead manifest the world they lost
• The Echo — the Apocalypse Then mechanic in practice: the town's final morning erupts around the party as a five-turn projection of the disaster, and they must navigate two realities at once before the countdown reaches zero
• Three spectral adversaries — an Archer on the rooftops, a Guardian who won't stop protecting a home that's gone, and a harbor Captain still managing a harbor that no longer exists. None of them are evil. All of them were reaching for something when the world ended
• The Flower — a crimson Lady's Veil growing where nothing should grow, a known cure for the Serpent's Sickness, and a frozen hand that has been reaching for it for three hundred years. A choice with no correct answer, and no time limit on making it
• Raven's Perch — a shattered chapel to a goddess of dawn, a cracked quartz eye that throws the shadow of a feather, an inscription that reads "Light to those who seek the truth," and proof that someone living has been here within the last few months
• Buried Knowledge discoveries, scaled stat blocks, and example skill checks woven through every scene
• Two routes onward — northeast through coastal forest toward Alora, or south along the volcanic shore toward the Lightning Mountain
• Collaborative prompts throughout that ask each player what they saw, what they'd do with the flower, and what they carry out of a town that only wants to be remembered

This isn't a haunted house. Nothing here is trying to scare you. The dead just want someone to notice they were people.

The town on the charts should be a ruin. It is intact. That's worse.

The ash gets on your boots. No matter how much you scrape, some of it stays.

Written by Richard Kevis and K.S. Kuffer | Playtested by Karl Pohl | Inspired by Daggerheart by Darrington Press | Licensed under the Daggerheart Community Gaming License | Witherwild Designed by Carlos Cisco, Rowan Hall, and Spenser Starke