The Smugglers of Blackcreek

Rain lashes down as you enter the harbor town; lanterns sway along the quays like drunken stars and the air reeks of pitch, fish, and something hidden beneath them. Men with wet collars fall silent the moment you pass. In the doorway of a lit tavern waits a landlady with a scar through her eyebrow. "You're looking for work, or you're looking for trouble," she says. "In Zwartkreek that's the same thing."

The Smugglers of Zwartkreek live by smuggling, and turning a blind eye to it is an old arrangement. But the last cargo wasn't brandy: ever since that night, villagers have been disappearing, and the smugglers themselves are more frightened than anyone. The landlady wants you to find out quietly what came into the cove that evening—and who let it in.

You navigate a web of lies: a harbormaster who knows too much, a shippers' guild with two sets of books, hidden cellars linked to the cove through tidal caves. Every trail leads deeper into the cliff, and every witness lies about something different. All the while the clock is ticking—someone who saw too much won't live to see the morning.

The twist: the "cargo" was no good but a creature—the Face of the Cove, a shapeshifter that has nested itself in the village and orchestrates the disappearances to stay unnoticed. It wears the face of someone you trust, right up until the moment the skin slides off the skull like wax. In the climax, deep in the tidal cave at the turning of the water, you must unmask who it truly is before it changes face again. Wait too long, and the evidence—and the next victim—drown in the rising flood.