The Kraken of Zoutmaren

The harbor city of Zoutmaren thrives as never before, but at every new moon a ship vanishes with all hands, and no one dares ask aloud why. The merchants smile too broadly, the harbor is too rich, and beneath the quays murmurs a secret no one wants to know.

The truth lives in the trench just outside the harbor: the Young Kraken, fed for years by a hidden cult of merchants who bought their prosperity with lives. They sacrificed ships to ward off storms and rivals. But the creature grows, and it is becoming too large and too hungry to be satisfied with offerings any longer.

You follow the trail of missing ships, unmask the cult members behind their trading houses, crack open their hidden ritual chamber beneath the customs hall, and finally descend into the trench itself, in a diving bell or on the back of conjured sea life. Every step brings you closer to the Young Kraken, which regards the whole city the way you regard a meal.

The twist: the cult no longer wishes to feed the kraken but to free it, in exchange for power, and your intervention hastens exactly that. The climax rages in the churning trench: weaken the Young Kraken and drive it back into the deep, or destroy the cult beacon that lures it toward the city, while the sea draws back and the first arm already closes around the lighthouse of Zoutmaren.