Tide Weaver of Aethel

The salt wind whips at your face, carrying the mournful cries of gulls overhead. You taste brine on your lips, a familiar flavor that's been with you for as long as you can remember. Your name is Silas, and you are a Tide Weaver. Not in the grand, tempest-summoning sense, mind you. Silas is a simple Tide Weaver. He gathers lost things – trinkets, baubles, scraps of wood, and occasionally, the desperate hopes of sailors lost to the unforgiving embrace of the Azure Deep. He combs the whispering tides that lap at the barnacle-encrusted pilings of the Stilt City of Aethel, a sprawling metropolis built precariously on the backs of colossal, petrified sea beasts long since slumbered into the ocean floor. Aethel is a city of whispers and secrets, where the clang of shipyards mingles with the ethereal song of the undertow. It is a place of precarious prosperity built on the bones of ancient titans, a place where the fortunate trade in shimmering Aether Crystals harvested from the Deep and the less fortunate scavenge for survival. You've lived your entire life perched on the edge of the world, a silent observer of the ebb and flow of fortunes. But today, the tide feels different. The air crackles with an unnatural energy, and the whispers on the wind carry a discordant note, a chilling dissonance that settles deep in your bones. Old Maeve, the village crone, has been acting stranger than usual, muttering about shadows in the Deep and the stirring of something ancient. Your usually bustling market square is eerily quiet, save for the frantic cries of merchants trying to offload their goods at bargain prices. Something is coming. The chipped, bone amulet that hangs around your neck, a relic passed down through generations of Tide Weavers, pulses faintly, a subtle vibration against your skin. It hasn't done that in years. Today, Silas, your scavenging days are over. Today, you must navigate the treacherous currents of fate and uncover the truth hidden beneath the shimmering surface of Aethel, before it's swallowed whole by the rising tide of darkness. What starts as a simple errand for Old Maeve will quickly unravel a conspiracy that threatens not only the Stilt City, but the entire Azure Deep. Ready to answer the call of the tide?