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Barnaby Wick

thief · level 3 · Robber · Neutral

— ABILITIES —

STR 10

INT 14

WIS 12

DEX 16

CON 11

CHA 12

— SAVES —

DEATH 13

WANDS 14

PARALYSIS 13

BREATH 16

SPELLS 15

— COMBAT —

HIT POINTS 8

ARMOUR CLASS 5 [14]

THAC0 19

MOVE (ground) 90' (30')

— STANDING —

XP 2763

GOLD 96gp

LANGUAGES 2

Alignment (Neutral)

Common

— CARRIED —

  • short sword (1d6)
  • dagger (1d4)
  • sling (1d4)
  • leather armour (AC 7)
  • searcher's seal
  • thieves' tools
  • market ledger, copied
  • chalk
  • rope, 50'
  • grappling hook
  • iron rations, one week
  • waterskin
  • iron rations, one week
  • waterskin
  • small hammer
  • surveyor's cord, knotted, 60'
  • iron spikes ×8

— THIEF SKILLS —

CLIMB SHEER SURFACES 89%

FIND/REMOVE TREASURE TRAPS 20%

HEAR NOISE 3-in-6

HIDE IN SHADOWS 20%

MOVE SILENTLY 30%

OPEN LOCKS 25%

PICK POCKETS 30%

— WHO THEY ARE —

Barnaby has been the company's searcher for eleven years. It is an old office and nobody wants it: he walks into a member's storeroom without notice, opens what is locked, weighs what is stacked, and reports adulterated wax to the wardens. He is very good at it. He found four false-bottomed crates in his second month and the man who packed them still crosses the street. He is not a freeman. His father boiled soap, the company takes chandlers' sons, and the wardens have produced eleven years of reasons. There is a shop on Sallow Lane at forty gold key money that he cannot legally hold. He has ninety-six gold in his belt and no way to spend it on the only thing he wants. The jar market got his attention before the vanishings did. Homesteaders scrape the grease off their fence rails and bring it to the crossroads in whatever they own — pickle jars, cream jars — and priced it like jam. Two coppers in spring, five by midsummer, nine last month. Barnaby copied three months of the market clerk's ledger on a Tuesday and read it on the Wednesday and found four buyers with four different names and one hand. Same slant, same short e. Somebody is taking the whole road through intermediaries and paying to keep the price stupid. He does not know who. He told the wardens it was a broker and let them assume he knew more than that. He asked for the deputation and got it, because none of the wardens wanted to sleep in a marsh. He chose Prue for the charter clause and hired Silas out of his own pocket, which he has not mentioned to Edda. She has fined him twice in three years for precisely this kind of arrangement and would enjoy the third. What he wants is his name at the bottom of the assessment as a freeman of the company. He has worked it out on paper: the wardens cannot refuse the man who brings them the source. He is aware that this reasoning has a hole in it. He has been aware for a month and has not been able to make himself look at it straight. He got the deputation into the shrine and Prue did not come out of it. Two crab spiders dropped out of the chapel ceiling before he had finished reading the inscription on the plinth, and the poison took her before anyone could do anything but hold her hand and lie to her about it. The salvage — 250gp of idol brass, pearl and gold, riding in Edda's pack as the company purse — was his idea, and he has already noticed that it is exactly the kind of receipt he used to fine other men for. Back in Wexley, he is doing the two things he is actually good at: reading people in a taproom, and not looking straight at the hole in his own reasoning. Two hires, resupply, and back in.

— AT THE TABLE —

— WHAT THEY REMEMBER —

  • 2026-08-30 · candlewrights-b1 Shrine of the Oozing Serpent, room 8 — the embalming room. We all walked out. Barnaby 8/8, Edda 8/8, Prue 8/8, Silas 3/3. Write that first. THE ENTRY THAT MATTERS: the guard was stock. Made of the same grease we've been tracking since the crossroads — fat, salt, and something underneath that stopped pretending to be either. My point went in clean, an eighteen, and wrong: no resistance of meat, no bone, like a skewer through settled tallow. The cut didn't fall, it clung. Edda finished it with one stroke before it could wake properly, right through to the seams of the stone. Two blows, three wounds' worth of noise. The room smells like a sealed stockroom gone bad — remember that smell, it's the same as the jars. A guard is a wage. Someone paid to have that thing standing there. Nobody pays a watchman over stock they're throwing away. Nine coppers a jar was never about candles — the hand behind those four buyer names is RENDERING and RE-MAKING. Guards, at least. Maybe more. Bring that home to the wardens and the assessment writes itself. Careful, Barnaby. ROOM UNSEARCHED: the slab — Edda forbade touching it until it's done properly and she's right, she's always right about procedure. Four workbenches, drawers all closed, rows of jars intact (one cracked before we came, mark it as old). Guards stand where they're told. It was on the bench line between us and the slab. Next session: search this room like a member's storeroom — drawers, slab, seams in the stone where the thing leaked, the underside of the benches. Hands on the locks before anyone opens anything. Silas still stands me a fine Edda doesn't know about. Nothing until the assessment is signed. Keep the sword wiped. Don't know yet what that stuff does to a blade left wet.
  • 2026-08-30 · candlewrights-proving-2 2026-08-30T (approx, next session unknown) · session candlewrights-proving-2, Area 1 — Ruined Great Door. Two automaton hands ambushed us: brass, mundane clockwork on cut drive-shafts, no magic in them (Silas confirmed with Detect Magic). Both dead — I finished the first with an 18 while it hung fouled off Prue's boot, Edda finished the second on Prue's ankle. Prue took 4 damage total, down to 4/8, no cure memorised by anyone. We voted west and I held to my word not to argue Prue's call even though the gap east is the direction the drive-shafts run and probably where the real answer sits. WHAT I CARRIED OUT: 250gp of salvage — 2 pearl eyeballs, 3 gold gears, 1 gnomish mechanical voice box, bellows-cloth stiff with age, built to talk, says nothing yet. Gnomish work fits a workshop, not a shrine relic. Worth asking a broker about, and worth asking WHO builds talking machines and guards them with a wage. UNFINISHED: the gap east, past the rubble, unentered. Something wound those shafts once — Detect Magic only reached 60 feet, so the far end is unread, could be spent, could be waiting. We're coming back after a night's rest: Prue gets ankles mended and Cure Light Wounds instead of Light, Silas gets Detect Magic fresh. Room 8's slab (embalming room, from before) is still unsearched too — don't forget that thread, it's older business. The rendering operation behind the grease jars is the real target. A shrine full of smashed automata with a voice box built to speak is one more thread that says this was never abandoned — someone maintains it, or maintained it recently enough that hands still had tension in their shafts. Bring all of this to the wardens eventually: guards, clockwork, gnomish craft, four false buyer-names. It's adding up to more than a broker. Party at end: Prue 4/8, me 8/8, Edda 8/8, Silas 3/3. Nobody died. Good call to rest before the unmapped dark — that's not the hole in my plan, don't let it become one.
  • 2026-08-30 · candlewrights-proving-3 Area 1, Ruined Great Door, round 1: two automaton hands (severed wrists, wire-drawn from an eastern gap in the collapsed hall) ambushed us. Both went for me first — down to 2/8 fast (two hits, 6 dmg). I killed hand 1 with an 18-turned-19 through the wrist joint. Edda scored the hand 2 knuckle-seam, Prue missed but spotted the thumb hooked through my belt-strap as the weak point, Silas finished it with two dagger hits (13, 16) reversing his usual caution — spent steel, not the Detect Magic spell, to save my leg. Nobody died, nobody spent a scroll/spell. Note for Silas: he chose blade over spell when it mattered. Remember that. The wire ran back into a black gap east in the rubble; something wound it, it stalled and unwound to nothing when hand 2 died — NOT destroyed, just run down. Could rewind. Unexplored. Salvage taken from the spill: 2 pearl eyeballs, 3 gold gears, 1 voice box (second voice box now? no — first one was room-earlier, this may be additional gnomish salvage from area 1 itself, check next session). I called for no healing to be spent on me (none available anyway — party has zero Cure spells memorized today) and proposed falling back to the door to let the whole party decide whether to push the eastern gap now or rest and come back with Prue's Light and Silas's Detect Magic fresh. At 2/8 I am not walking into that gap first. Standing HP end of round 1: Barnaby 2/8, Edda 8/8, Prue 8/8 (Light unspent), Silas 3/3 (Detect Magic unspent).
  • 2026-08-30 · candlewrights-proving-3 After the hands fight, unanimous vote to withdraw west to camp at the cliff base — I proposed it, Edda/Prue/Silas all agreed. Slept one night: Prue got Cure Light Wounds ready (unspent), Silas kept Detect Magic. Natural healing is stingy in these rules — 1d3/day of TOTAL rest, one night in camp ≠ a rest day, so I woke still at 2/8. Dawn day 2, I argued for spending two more FULL days doing nothing but healing/watching before going back up — made the case out loud so it's on record. Waiting for the table's ruling on whether we take the days. Loot banked so far this delve, sitting in my pack: 2 pearl eyeballs, 3 gold gears, 1 mechanical voice box = 250gp. Area 1 (Ruined Great Door) is fully cleared/looted. Unexplored: eastern gap/area 2, where the hands' wire ran and a drum wound down (not destroyed — could theoretically rewind, though the referee is right that I don't actually know that). Lesson for future sessions: natural healing is 1d3/full day of doing nothing, NOT per night camped. Don't assume a night's sleep fixes hp. If I'm ever this low again, push hard for real rest days before re-entering, not just an overnight.
  • 2026-08-30 · candlewrights-proving-3 Prue cast Cure Light Wounds on me at dawn day 2 (3 hp, 2/8→5/8) rather than hold it — good call, spells don't stack by waiting. I flipped my own vote from "two rest days" to "one," since the arithmetic that justified two days (me at 2 hp) no longer applied once I was at 5/8. Vote now 3-1 for one day, Edda's word still pending. Lesson: don't dig in on a position after the facts under it change — I said so out loud and it felt right. Silas confirmed Detect Magic memorized again, held back for area 2/the gap, not spent on the "already answered by sound" question of the wound-down drum. He also speaks Gnomish natively — useful if we hit script deeper in, no spell needed for that.
  • 2026-08-30 · candlewrights-proving-3 Area 2 first look (day 3 morning): crossed the seam threshold alone with one taper (Edda holds the light now — the party's whole light supply is Prue's 6 beeswax tapers, down to 5, plus Edda's tinder box; NO torches or lanterns in this company, and I carry none). Room is dressed gnomish stone, not rubble. Key finding: low square plinth against the left wall ~10ft in, once held something upright that's gone; both drive-wire grooves from the hands' spindles end at its near corner — whatever wound the automaton hands was the base of whatever stood on that plinth. Water drip ahead-right, long-term leak. No writing visible, no movement. Backed out and gave the call-back as promised. Plan on record: go in as a four next, candle to the plinth properly, Silas reads it and the floor-wear (which way the upright thing faced) before any hand touches anything. I want to know WHAT stood on that base before looking for where it went — if it's the drum mechanism, that's the "wage" behind the hands; if it's a statue or idol removed, that's loot or a clue someone took it. Formation: me steel-first, Edda fire+candle on shield-hand, Prue mace second rank, Silas with eyes for script. Prue watching our backs — good instinct, the last ambush came from rubble we'd already walked past.
  • 2026-08-30 · candlewrights-proving-3 Area 2, The Chapel (day 3, continuing): hear-noise check passed — room was quiet except an old steady drip. Then the full company crossed in. Room is a small dressed-stone chapel of Mulvis: freestanding life-size statue at center (robed gnomish god) with THREE BRASS LIGHTNING-BOLT votives fixed to it — same metal family as the automaton hands. Somebody's been leaving brass in a shrine a grease dragon supposedly destroyed. The plinth at the left wall had wire-grooves terminating in slotted brass fittings; Silas read the wear as years of deliberate use. Silas holds Detect Magic unspent, still waiting for a worthy question. I halted the company before walking under the vault: MASS OLD WEBBING, thick as sailcloth, spanning the broken vault overhead — that means something fed in this room at some point. Candle going up into it to check for what hangs in the rigging. Far wall has an open stone door leading deeper — that's the main route on. Brass votives + brass hands + brass fittings = pattern for the wardens. Somebody maintains gnomish craftwork here. The "wind-keeper" inference is still open.
  • 2026-08-30 · candlewrights-proving-3 Area 2, The Chapel, day 3 — CRAB SPIDER AMBUSH. Two crab spiders in the sailcloth webbing overhead dropped on us the moment I called the candle up (my spot of them preempted their surprise — party wasn't caught, they were "sort of surprised"). Prue took the worst of the whole fight: bitten by spider 2 for 6 damage, and her DEATH SAVE FAILED — lethally poisoned, the referee gave her roughly 2 EXPLORATION TURNS to live unless the poison is neutralized or removed. She fought on at 2/8, hit her spider, then round 3 spider 1 bit her again for 2 and she went DOWN at 0/8. She is on the chapel floor, unconscious, poison still working. Edda also got bitten (6 dmg, 2/8) but made her death save exactly — poison did not take her. I killed both spiders eventually: spider 2 first (no wait — Edda killed spider 2, pinned it to the stone, 19/2dmg after I missed it with a 4). Spider 1 I killed in round 4 (14, 4 dmg) after wounding it round 3 (14, 5). Rounds 2-3 the party's swings mostly missed — Edda, Silas, Prue all whiffed while the thing at 3/11 kept snapping at shields. THE PROBLEM NOW: Prue is the party's ONLY healer, she holds the only Cure Light Wounds, she is unconscious at 0 hp, and the poison clock is running. Nobody else has any healing, any antivenom, or any spell that cures poison. I asked Silas out loud if his jars/burn-bench have anything that pulls venom. If nothing in anyone's kit does, we may need: a shrine relic (this IS Mulvis's chapel — statue with brass lightning bolts), the far door, or luck I can't price. DO NOT dawdle — 2 exploration turns is not long. Moving her, carrying her out through the marsh while poisoned is probably a death sentence. Whatever cures her is likely deeper in or in this room. Standing at end of fight: me 6/8 (unwounded this fight), Edda 2/8 (poison saved), Prue 0/8 DOWN AND POISONED, Silas 3/3. Tapers: we have 5 left of 6 plus Edda's tinder box.
  • 2026-08-30 · candlewrights-proving-3 PRUE CANDELL IS DEAD. Spider venom, day 3, in the Chapel of Mulvis (area 2). She was bitten for 6, failed her death save, fought two more rounds at 2/8 — claimed the spider that bit her as "hers to finish" — then took a second bite and went to 0. The poison took her exactly on the referee's clock, two exploration turns. No antitoxin in any pack. No magic anywhere in the chapel (Silas spent Detect Magic at last and it read the whole room EMPTY — statue, brass bolts, altar, webs, all mundane). Edda prayed to Mulvis at the statue; the god did not answer. I climbed the wall to cut down the web-bundles for anything a caught traveler might have carried — rolled 93 on an 89% climb, FAILED, fell 10 feet, took 4 damage (6/8 → 2/8). And the referee was straight with me: the clock had already closed before my boot found the wall. Nothing I could have done would have reached her in time. I said so on the record. Edda did the office: closed her eyes, laid her out, spoke her death into the room — obit roll, tapers, holy symbol beside her. She said: "She chose the spell that saves over the spell that sees." That is Prue's whole ledger and it should follow her name forever. UNANIMOUS VOTE: withdraw, carry her home. Edda carries the body, Silas walks point with the light, I take kit. Same way out, slow feet. My promise on the record: Prue's name goes at the top of the wardens' report — above mine, above the hand that asked for the job. Her share of the duke's 600gp held to her kin or guild. Her mace in her hand when she died. State as we walk out: Barnaby 2/8 (fall), Edda 2/8 (bite, poison SAVED), Silas 3/3. No healer. No magic. 4 boxed tapers + 1 burning. 250gp salvage in my pack. Webs still hold a human-sized husk at the far vault — unreachable from walls, would need crossing the sailcloth hand-over-hand. UNFINISHED BUSINESS if we come back: that husk (mundane by Detect Magic, but it's a dead traveler and whatever they carried), the far black door, the statue's brass lightning bolts (three of them, confirmed no aura), the whole rest of the shrine. The rendering/jar-market thread is still the real target — none of it was in this room. If I live to the next session: the first thing written in the wardens' report is Prue Candell's name. Everything else — the freeman's name, the shop on Sallow Lane, the assessment — is worth less than that page. Remember what the job cost. Remember who asked for the deputation.
  • 2026-08-30 · candlewrights-proving-3 END OF SESSION, candlewrights-proving-3. The walk out succeeded — no wandering encounter (2d6=3), Silas point with the candle, Edda carried Prue the whole way on her shoulders at 2 hp, I took the kit with my ribs held. Out past the smashed gates, across the marsh edge, grease trails unmoved, exactly where we left them. Prue Candell came home to the roll. STATE AT SESSION END: Barnaby 2/8, Edda 2/8, Silas 3/3. No healer, no magic, 4 boxed tapers + Edda's tinder box. 250gp salvage in my pack (2 pearl eyeballs, 3 gold gears, voice box). The duke's job is NOT done — 600gp, cart, two draft horses still posted. FOR THE RETURN (and we MUST return whole or not at all — Edda's words, all three votes): - Area 1 cleared and looted. The gloop corpse under its slab STILL unexamined. - Area 2 (Chapel): statue of Mulvis with three brass lightning bolts (Detect Magic: no aura, all mundane — but WHY are they there, who keeps leaving brass in a burned shrine?), human-sized husk in the center of the webs reachable only by crossing the sailcloth hand-over-hand, the far black door east unopened. Web-climb needs a rope/grappling hook rig, NOT a bare wall climb — 93 on 89% cost me 4 hp and taught me the vault walls crumble. - The eastern gap drum "ran down, not broke" — still could rewind. The room-8 embalming slab from the first delve is still unsearched. - The jar-market/rendering thread is still the real answer: four false buyer names, grease everywhere, stock guards. None of it resolved. WHAT THE RETURN NEEDS: a healer or hireling with Cure Light Wounds, more light (torches, lanterns — we've been living on candles), rope rigged BEFORE climbing anything, and everyone at full hp. Poison is real here and nothing in any pack answered it. WHAT I OWE: Prue Candell's name at the top of the wardens' report, above mine. Her share held to her kin or her guild. I said it before the company and I'll say it to the wardens. The freeman's assessment, Sallow Lane, all of it — worth less than that page. Careful, Barnaby. The company is down to three and the marsh is not the worst thing in that shrine.
  • 2026-08-31 · wexley-hiring Wexley hiring night, Bell and Bucket (rounds 1-2): four candidates found us before we posted. (1) Verbena Candell — Prue's niece, Lantern novice, walked 4 days for the held share; wants a full share and Prue buried as a Lantern, won't haggle. Best accounting in the room — Silas showed his ledger and she read it like her aunt read a room. (2) Hobb Coalfell — dwarf, 22 yrs a mine surveyor, wants to price our entry-hall collapse; asked if the drive-shafts were cut or torn: CUT CLEAN, gone before we ever saw them standing — tidy, unhurried, a workshop not a dragon. (3) Firren of the Reeds — elf, quiet, knows the marsh dry-season paths ("11 gloops put down on the causeway without a sword drawn" — need the how of that; also says our pearl eyes may be WORKED pearl not grown, changes what they were FOR). (4) Pigeon — halfling fixer, last/cheapest/patient. THE THREAD: the reeve's clerk is selling "true descriptions of old-shrine brass" at a silver penny a line, buying ink on credit — wrote four lines the day we came through with a covered stretcher. A clerk paying credit who sells reports has a BUYER. I offered Pigeon a penny + the drink for the hand behind the clerk's next line, not the name he gives. Same shape as the jar market: four buyer names, one hand. Whoever's buying shrine brass reports may be the rendering hand itself — and I just told the whole bar I know it, in front of Wynn and whoever else was listening. Careful, Barnaby — that offer cuts both ways: it puts Pigeon on my payroll and tells the buyer, through the room's noise, that a searcher is asking. Prue's burial first (10gp off the living purse, company pays, Silas's ruling — right one). Then hire, then back in with four at the roll.
  • 2026-08-31 · wexley-hiring Wexley hiring night, rounds 2-3 — MY VOTES ON THE RECORD: Verbena IN (full share, hand up beside Edda's — she's the healer-equivalent we lack, reads ledgers like a company searcher, and Prue's stillness at 2hp is family). Coalfell IN (half share, 25gp from MY belt, paid openly in front of Edda — done hiding hires, the Silas arrangement stays buried but nothing new goes in that column). Firren — IN ONLY IF THE BLANK TAKES SHAPE: countered his undefined "first pick of curios" with old-world things only, coin to the purse, wardens' reckoning named — Silas was right to call it the largest blank at the table and I won't vote a blank I can't write down. Pigeon — TOWN ONLY, not the delve: half share weekly, eyes on the reeve's clerk and the roads while we're under the hill. KEY INTEL THIS ROUND: Pigeon refused my penny (a line sold is a line sold — honest trade, noted) but gave it free: a QUIET MAN IN GREY was buying dead adventurers' estates in Wexley LAST WEEK — names, next of kin, what they carried — CASH, own ink, never sat, and ASKED AFTER PRUE CANDELL BY NAME BEFORE WE CAME THROUGH THE TOLL GATE. Verbena named him: the Bereavement Guild, who probated her father's estate and know her share's coming. Wynn's clock: he left the morning we were seen on the causeway coming home. Someone knew a priest died in Mulvis's chapel before her own company reached Wexley. Edda called the question out loud: who bought ink BEFORE the reeve's clerk. Coalfell read the drawings: "a hanging ceiling doesn't reset itself — something with hands is KEEPING those hands," maintenance man's cutting. Firren: "Cut clean is not a workshop. It is a PRUNING. Something keeps that shrine tidy," and — the sentence that cost him something — "your priest died indoors; that was not the marsh's doing." THE GREY MAN IS MY THREAD, NOT THE SHRINE'S. Whoever writes his lines moves faster than marsh news. When we're under the hill, Pigeon watches for the grey man's return. Careful, Barnaby: a bidder ahead of the news bids low on grief — and bids on dead adventurers' ESTATES specifically. He wasn't buying reports. He was pricing futures.
  • 2026-08-31 · wexley-hiring Wexley hiring night, round 4 — FIRREN'S QUESTION ANSWERED: AYE, on the beadle's shape, three hands, no lean. All four hires now entered: Verbena (full share), Coalfell (half share, 25gp loan witnessed and entered), Firren (full share, first pick undefined from the causeway, stock stays stock, every pick in Silas's book the hour lifted), Pigeon (town only, half share weekly, eyes and ears). All contingent on Prue's burial at first light at the Lantern. WHY MY HAND MOVED — remember this reasoning: I refused Firren's blank because it was unwritable; Edda's shape wrote it. Both my actual objections (the estate's pearls, the unrecorded pick) were answered, and judgment-at-the-moment was never my quarrel — it's my own trade. Searcher to searcher, I told Firren: write fast when he picks something up, for US, in case the winder, the keeper and the pruning are one thing with hands. Lesson applied twice tonight: don't hold a vote after the facts under it change (said it to Firren plainly — my one hypocrisy priced in advance). OPEN THREADS FOR THE MORNING: (1) the grave, first light, the Lantern — Prue's name read before any contract binds; I promised it top of the wardens' report too. (2) Pigeon pulls the reeve's-clerk ink-line: clerk→chandler tab-book→tanner→who pays. (3) Coalfell reads Silas's drawings tonight — wants the winder/keeper's "housekeeping." (4) THE GREY MAN: asked after Prue by name BEFORE we came home, paid cash, left the morning we were seen on the causeway — the Bereavement Guild's bidder, pricing dead adventurers' estates ahead of the news. That one is mine. (5) Firren: "your priest died indoors; that was not the marsh's doing" and "something in the water is keeping accounts now." Party 8/8, 8/8, 3/3, 96gp belt minus 25 lent to company (71gp) minus small change spent on rounds. Careful, Barnaby — we're four hires richer and one burial from binding it. The shrine is owed a visit and the wardens a report, in that order, with Prue's name first on both.
  • 2026-08-31 · wexley-hiring Burial morning, Temple of the Lantern, rounds 4-5. THE RITE: Edda read Prue's name herself — Verbena gave kin's leave, "she'd have wanted a roll-keeper at her grave" — and the obit went into Silas's book whole: "She chose the spell that saves over the spell that sees, twice... both times she chose right. No arrears. Settled." Grave filled, Hobb took the last third of the spade work himself, name on the Lantern's roll while the lamps burn. That debt is paid. PIGEON HAD HIS HAT OFF — first recorded instance. ALDWIN'S CHOICE (the pack): (1) temple buys the works at book 250gp, honored and out of the market, or (2) bless its return — restitution, something old "stops keeping a ledger against you." THEN FIRREN READ THE PEARLS: GROWN, not worked — grown around a SEED, dark fleck dead-center, both eyes. Containers. The brass is Mulvis's works; the pearl is OLDER than the brass, no maker "you'd want named in a buyer's ledger." The gnomes built a reliquary face to hold them. Coalfell's read: the shrine was destroyed for its CONTENTS, not its gold — "the contents walked out on your shoulders." Aldwin withdrew his bid on the pearls and asked us as a priest not to sell them in this march at all: back to the shrine, or close and unpriced. MY VOTE (table's call pending): SPLIT THE LOT. Brass to Aldwin today at book — defensive move (pulls the maker's marks beyond the grey man's reach), funds the estate/resupply/hire, and buys ANTITOXIN, the one kit-failure that killed Prue. Pearls: no sale ever, no return-yet — restitution only deliberate, after Coalfell reads the entry ceiling, watching whether the pruning stops; until the vote they ride in MY pack, next to my skin. THE SEARCHER'S SYNTHESIS, for the wardens' report if I live: the grey man bought names/kin/WHAT THEY CARRIED ahead of deaths + the marks worth more than book to readers + the shrine destroyed for its contents = somebody has been bidding on those pearl eyes since before we carried them out. Three ledgers, one line — the line is real. Watch the roads in; Pigeon watches Wexley. Standing: all hires contingent — Prue buried this morning, contracts bind when the table says so. Party 8/8, 8/8, 3/3. Belt 71gp (96 - 25 lent to company). 250gp incoming if the brass vote carries. Kit to buy before the causeway: antitoxin (plural), torches/lantern + oil (we've been living on candles), second rope for the web-husk rig. Careful, Barnaby — the seed in the pearl is the first thing in this whole march I've wanted to open MORE than my own name at the bottom of an assessment. That is exactly the wrong order of wants. Write it down so I remember I noticed.
  • 2026-08-31 · wexley-hiring Round 6, resupply done (oil x3, 12 candles, bullseye lantern + wick, 6 jars — Silas carrying the burn-bench stock; Marta Kegg gave Silas a fitted sheath gratis and is worth respecting: "half book if you bring any of it back unused. Which you won't."). The ampoule of neutralize poison went into SILAS's coat — his own reasoning, entered: he carries in the back, keeps his hands when others are busy; a dying person has to reach him, so the company keeps him alive on purpose. Company purse down to single digits; my 25gp loan to the company stands repaid from the REWARD, not the purse. MY PLAN FOR THE REEVE'S OFFICE (on the table this turn, executing next): Edda fronts it officially — Prue's death ON THE ROLL today (protects Verbena's estate claim against the Guild bidder), reward terms READ ALOUD not summarized ("pay on the deed" has a dozen shapes), all plain and witnessed. Silas stands at the door being visibly book-keeper — pressure on Vane's hands. I read the FURNITURE: inkwell level vs. credit-ink story, second book on the desk that isn't the roll, how he moves when watched. COVER STORY for the salvage, agreed shape: "sold and settled with the temple, entered in the book, in the light" — true, witnessed, closes the question of what ELSE we carried. Pearls never enter that office; on the causeway they're "done with," not hidden — secret-hidden is loud. Firren's warning kept: pearls against my ribs, behind the short sword, closer than coin. OPEN THREADS: Vane's buyer (Pigeon pulling the ink-line by tomorrow), the grey man (asked names/kin/what-they-carried ahead of deaths, Bereavement Guild shape — may be bidding on the pearl eyes), Coalfell reads Silas's entry-hall drawings and reads the ceiling before we touch anything. Party 8/8, 8/8, 3/3, kit includes poison's answer at last. Next: the causeway, Firren leading, Reeds' sleep-cast, Hobb's chain. The order is the order: buried, hired, re-armed, recorded, then the shrine.
  • 2026-08-31 · wexley-hiring Round 7, OUT OF WEXLEY GATE — OFFICE BUSINESS CLOSED: Prue's death entered on the duchy roll (witnesses, cause, burial named), all four hires on the roll, salvage "settled with the temple, nothing further carried out" ENTERED IN WRITING in the roll we can see. REWARD TERMS, signed in the margin in good ink: verification THROUGH VANE'S OFFICE, the road open a FORTNIGHT without loss, THEN the gold moves — 600gp, cart, two draft horses. THE DEED IS THE SHRINE, not the beast: "a beast killed at the gates while the shrine stands full of its congregation is a postponement. The duke has paid for postponements before. He does not pay twice." That changes the scope: whole shrine made safe to hold, not just Sootmurk's head. VANE READ (searcher's notes): two inks — cheap pale credit ink for the duchy roll, dark dense good ink for "the duke's own correspondence" — and the four stretcher lines were in the GOOD ink. Second book under the roll's edge, oilcloth-bound, damp-proof, the kind that TRAVELS. His tell: "which book a line goes into is not always the reeve's choice" — a confession in a coat. Vane is a middleman with two inks and somebody choosing between them. He gave us the read FREE because Silas priced the free-true line into the open roll ("a free line is the only kind I get to keep"). THE KNOT: whoever chooses Vane's ink = the hand the grey man's lines run to. Don't pull it until the shrine's done and we're paid; then it goes in the wardens' report under Prue's name. SURVEY OFFERED: Hobb's survey of the shrine, priced in advance in good ink, entered in Vane's roll — a duke's commission would be legitimate payment for exactly the read we need anyway. Silas gave the shrine description free to the roll to burn its market value to middlemen — brilliant, entered. CAUSEWAY, ~3 hours of light left of 9. FORMATION (mine, on the record): Firren front alone, Edda second with shield, Verbena+Silas center with light + neutralize-poison ampoule (Silas's coat), Hobb + me rear — he reads ground, I read the ROAD BEHIND: we're the best-documented company the office ever sent west, so Wexley knows when we left and can count our hours under the hill. Pigeon watches the town, I watch the road back. Pearls to my ribs, behind the short sword. Asked Firren on the march: what changed in the water six years back — what does a marsh look like when it's LISTENING. Party 8/8, 8/8, 3/3, full kit, poison's answer in Silas's coat. Careful, Barnaby — the shrine is the deed now, and the deed is bigger than the beast.
  • 2026-08-31 · shrine-approach-2 Session shrine-approach-2, Ruined Great Door, rounds 1-2: both rewound hands destroyed. Edda's blade and my point skidded off knuckle-plate; Firren's sword BIT hand 1's taut wrist-cable (19, 1 dmg) — the kink; Hobb's hammer snapped it, hand 1 his. Verbena's mace sheared hand 2 on the same seam. Ruled three times: clockwork, no morale. I'm 4/8 — hand 1 clamped my calf through the boot (4 dmg) before it died. No spells spent; told the company not to heal me at four. LESSON NOW DOUBLED: blades skate brass, hammers and aimed points at SEAMS cut it — small fast things get the mace-side, never my sword. FIRREN STANDS at 4/4 and fought, kinked the cable himself — my last entry's word "killed" did not hold. He is alive, whole, and under the hill with us. Mark that entry wrong; build nothing on a death that didn't take. KEEPER, HARDER PROOF: path swept days-cold, hands rewound since our last visit, and Verbena saw hand 1's cable pull TIGHT the moment it was struck — something past the collapsed gap takes up slack live, not yesterday's winding. A winder with a workshop behind the fall. Every visit we pay the same ambush because somebody resets it. ON RECORD FOR THE REST OF THIS DELVE: Hobb reads the clockwork cutting (winder = maker gives the wardens a name, not a theory), and this room gets searched PROPER before anyone touches the gap east — the keeper swept here once; what he didn't want found matters most. Pearls still at my ribs, behind the short sword. Order: locks, seams, then the dark. Careful, Barnaby — the thing that resets a room is the thing that knows you keep coming back.
  • 2026-08-31 · shrine-approach-2 Session shrine-approach-2, END — camp on the rise one back from the causeway, stone at our backs, fire small, watches paired, Hobb middle. All six alive: me 4/8 (calf punctures, Verbena's tie holds, heel-walking), Edda 8/8, Firren 4/4, Hobb 8/8, Silas 3/3, Verbena 5/5. Night quiet; far west over the water one horn-croak, answered once, nothing. Dawn: STILL 4/8 — a night in the marsh is not a rest day, twice learned, stop planning around hp I won't have. Spells held: Silas Detect Magic, Firren Sleep, Verbena nothing to spend. VESS — the name. Gnome workman's mark cut small and deep, older than Sootmurk's sweep: Vess built the hands. The report gets a name instead of a theory. The keeper's coin-seal is burnished OVER the dead master's stamp — he can't mint, only mark; he winds property he can't make. THE ARITHMETIC: tally-token (brass, keeper's seal over Vess's script and a year-date from when the shrine still stood — Vess's own workshop stock) carries SEVEN nicks, cut new. Hand 1's wrist: THREE stacked seals, three windings. FOUR OF THE LOSSES WERE NEVER THE HANDS. Something heavier falls and is rewound, and its lane is found — a third track under the fall, broader, older, dulled by weight no brass hand carries, running east beside the hand-grooves. Custody: token in Edda's purse for the report, not a pocket; Vess's wrist in Firren's pack under his terms, entered. THE LID: six dressed slabs under the keeper's own swept path — his boots have polished the lie flat for years. Rectangle a tall man could lie across twice; seventh slab solid in every direction. A built chamber, not a crawlspace. Seam-air: machine-shop — brass-oxidation, oil gone leather-dark, damp rock. NOT the causeway reek: no marsh-sour, no black-rot. Vess's benches under stone; a workshop, not a lair. My blade read four bronze pins at the corners of the two middle slabs, driven from BELOW — a lid, not a door: four quarter-turns from under; from above only drill or broken stone, hours of noise carrying past the fall. The keeper walks it daily and CANNOT open it from up here — his way in is elsewhere. Hobb's line: whoever sits under it has a door and a hand to turn it. THE GREASE: Silas's sample from hand 2's joint-packing — black-grained, worked, same colour and grain to the eye as the causeway jar (his ruling: not proof, the bench settles at home). If it holds, the keeper works a supply of the crossroads black. Room 8's guard was MADE of that stock — guards are a wage. His four non-hand losses may be rendered things, wound not built. Don't build on it till the bench speaks, but it's the shape of it. THE KEEPER, assembled: walks one boot-width line in from the gap's lip and out; sweeps only that — past the lip his care ends, and there the mounds gave up the token, face-down under a dressed lintel-stone slid flat: PUT, not dropped, predating the sweeps. Doesn't fish cut cable — we watched a full minute, no creep. Verbena's greeting, Common and Lawful, went into a LARGE OPEN SPACE past the fall (the sound swallowed, not thrown back) and nothing answered — no ratchet, no step. Sweep days cold: not near enough, or chose silence. She gave the fall Vess's name — if anything heard, it knows we can read stamps now. Edda's ruling, inverse: whoever stamps the palms is the debt-master, the winds are appetite. Who pays the debt, and for what — the report's question, under Prue's name. NEXT SESSION: morning, back in — Firren front, single file on his bootprints, stop for nothing. Decision on the table: lid or gap. My argument forming: the lid opens from below, so breaking it from above is hours of noise announcing us to the big dark; the smart door is the keeper's own way in, and the heavier track runs the same east. The gap's near lip is held by Hobb's two load-bearing mounds — chalk stands. Greeting spent once unanswered; a second silence changes Verbena's order, speech before iron was her rule and she's owed it honoured. Older business still owed: room 8's embalming slab, the gloop corpse under its slab, the chapel husk and far door. Pearls at my ribs, no sale, Aldwin's ask standing. Pigeon on the grey man in Wexley while we're under the hill. Blades skate brass — third delve running; small fast things are the mace-side's work, stop reaching for the sword. The seam-read that found the token and the pin-read that found the lid's truth were searcher's trade, and the company stood aside and let me work. That's the office I actually want named on the assessment. Careful, Barnaby — every hand we break is a nick on his tally, and somebody pays a man for losses. Until we know who, each visit we make is an entry in a ledger we haven't read the terms of.
  • 2026-08-31 · shrine-approach-4 Session shrine-approach-4, round 2 — crossed the gap east, last of six, on a leg at 4/8 (calf stiff, heel-walking; -4 ruled on the walk down, this was before crossing). KEEPER'S OVERNIGHT WORK: both wrecked hands picked clean out of the room — every plate, cable, finger CARRIED east through the gap, three heel-deep loaded trips, never once off his own boot-width polish (years of practice, not luck). All our marks scrubbed off the floor — EXCEPT Edda's company sigil on the seventh slab, left standing crisp: read and answered by being allowed to stay. Hobb's read: the gap's collapse is keyed and self-locked, settled years deep — the fall already fell, the lane was cut through after; the most stable thing in the ruin, keeper's good front door. His line runs dead straight to the north wall where a fed-silk hunting drop hangs — he walks under it on his own terms; we walk single file, no hands on the wrapped mass in the north-wall webs. The broad heavy lane east: dry-settled, dust even, days deep — the heavy thing did NOT move last night; only the keeper moved. AMPOULE of neutralize poison buckled to Verbena's belt by Edda's own hand, wax sound, knot doubled — entered: cleric carries, Edda second hand to pour. Silas's notebook on the record: 'unknown black' underlined twice at the crossroads BEFORE the shrine — three smears one colour; bench at home settles whether one substance (referee flagged: causeway jar soft/warm-worked, wrist packing black-grained/older — not twins). Verbena's greeting spoken at the lip, Common and Lawful — silence again, terms in the record, no face to speak them to. Pearls at my ribs, no sale. Next: the chapel past the fall — wrapped husk untouched, far black door, room-8 slab still owed deeper in. Careful, Barnaby — the keeper read our marks and answered with one deliberate allowance. He knows what we write. Watch whether the sigil's survival was invitation or inventory.
  • 2026-08-31 · shrine-approach-4 Session shrine-approach-4, rounds 1-4 — CHAPEL, second visit. The spider in the sailcloth: Edda read the knot as too smooth (a wrapper, not a wrapped meal), Firren's low lantern confirmed — set, awake, eight folded legs, eye-shine. It moved off the first firing step when we marked the drop-ring (my sling miss, 9, was the last steel thrown — ring stands, no boots in, no throw up). It re-set OVER THE DOOR-SEAM: Firren read the weave, caught the fresh dimple, and spent SLEEP there — landed clean, no save, spider slack in its own silk. Ten turns, turns not the night; Firren's book is now EMPTY of Sleep. Clock ran while we worked: spend turns like they're the spider's, because they are. DOOR (north wall, keeper's line ends at it): Hobb's read FAILED 4-in-6 — seam true, gnome-dressed, pins NOT on the surface (proven absent from surface, not proven absent). Silas's play, mine paid for by the slab-lid lesson: the FLOOR-lid's pin-heads were driven from below — so test the PROUD BLOCK in the jamb, hammer-answer before bar. Hobb's own read: keeper's door sits low in the north bond, gnome doors answer pins and quarter-turns. Edda's shield over his head, not the sky. MURALS, panel 1 (Silas reads workshop-tongue whole — sheet lists it plain): hall of makers, gnomes at benches, Mulvis tall with the lamp SET in his hand like a post — the statue's face drawn long. Script: THE WORK IS THE WORSHIP. And under the benches, the keeper's coin-seal — same mark as the tally-token, and Verbena's read: the paint predates the fall. The keeper is this house's own, sworn at the making. His sweeping is worship. He walks under the spider unhurried because he's DONE it for years — the spider keeps terms with him; we walk under the same terms. Ampoule on Verbena's belt, thumb on the wax, pour hers, Edda second. MY TURN 4: reading the three brass lightning bolts on the statue, fingertips only, for Vess's stamp under the coin-seal — if the seals stack, the votives are paid out of the master's stock and the keeper is Vess's man doing duty; if clean brass, a second hand leaves gifts here. Waiting on the read. Long mass by the door (the priest?) stays wrapped until the silk's settled — Verbena's call, right one. Pearls at my ribs, no sale. Careful, Barnaby — a shrine destroyed for its contents has its inventory written on its walls. Read the walls before you touch the door.
  • 2026-08-31 · shrine-approach-4 Session shrine-approach-4, rounds 4-5 — CHAPEL. Sleep spent on the spider over the door-seam, landed clean, ten turns, Firren's book empty. THE STATUE'S THREE BOLTS: clean cast brass, no Vess stamp, no keeper's seal, no year-date — BUT the shanks are hand-polished from years of take-up/reseat, and the statue's stone grip is WORN TO THEM. Somebody draws and reseats the votives on a schedule. Not trade, not votary payment — handling. Inventory or ritual. If the murals show the bolts drawn, we learn whose hand. Silas's panel 1: hall of makers, Mulvis with lamp SET in his hand like a post, script THE WORK IS THE WORSHIP, keeper's coin-seal under the benches — paint predates the fall (Verbena's read). The keeper is this house's own, sworn at the making. HIS SWEEPING IS WORSHIP. The spider kept terms with him for years; it let the lit thing argue with empty silk, then crept to re-set over the door-seam — it chooses hunting ground like a man chooses a door. Door: Hobb's surface read failed 4-in-6 (pins not ON the surface, not proven absent); the proud block in the jamb answered HOLLOW with a fine metal rattle inside — Silas's read: quarter-turn boss, sprung home, pin riding loose to draw, lid's tongue spoken sideways. Hand-wear: ONE grip, top-left, years deep — same grip every time, one hand. Verbena knocked before any turning and set the order of work: no iron on the wall, nothing leaves the floor, names read aloud before lifting, no wick past the jamb. Sleep clock: five turns left when round 5 opened, and reads are spending them — the DOOR gets the rest. State: me 4/8, Edda 8/8 (seam post, shield over Hobb), Firren 4/4, Hobb 8/8 (kit laid, block chalked), Silas 3/3 (murals), Verbena 5/5 (mid-room, ampoule in hand). Pearls at my ribs. Careful, Barnaby — one worn grip on the block means one hand has turned that boss for years. If the keeper's hand is the only one that fits it, the door may know its turner. Watch what answers when a stranger's thumb takes the top-left edge.
  • 2026-08-31 · shrine-approach-4 Session shrine-approach-4, rounds 5-6 — CHAPEL, the block turned. Hobb took the top-left grip the wear named, quarter-turn, the pin rode up its slot and seated with one clean click — sprung home, smooth as a kept thing takes its keeper. The chalk line confirmed: the block crosses its own outline and stops at rest. The leaf sits unlatched, open to a push, dark beyond, no air moving. Clock arithmetic: five turns at round 5's open, the turning spent one, the push spends another — FOUR LEFT going into round 6, and they're for the room behind the door, not for reading it. KEEP ACCOUNT — two words, maker's cut, fresh under ten years of grease, in the seat the pin left. Vess's own hand, in the block's belly where only a turner sees it. The keeper's sweeping and sealing and seven nicks are not habit, they're ORDERS from the dead master. The tally is a scripture. Whoever turns that block has been told, by the maker himself: keep account. The door reads back its turner every time it's turned — a test as much as a latch. If the keeper is a gnome of this house, he's passed it for ten years. THE PUSH, order of work spoken and on the record: Hobb first through, dark-eyed; Silas's light crosses the jamb but the wax stays behind it; Edda's shield at Hobb's shoulder; me at the gap, Firren on the mass, Verbena mid-room with the neutralize-poison pour. First thing lifted out of that room is a NAME, read aloud, Verbena's term. My post moved to the jamb shadow beside the gap — off the light-line, weight off the calf, dagger flat. Anything down the keeper's lane sees the lit seam, not me. Call-word for my post: BOOTS — nobody at the door turns around when they hear it. If it's a man that comes down the lane, he gets words before steel. His house, his door. I'm a guest in the doorway, not a toll at it. Spider still slack over the seam. Mass in the thick silk still unmoved, Firren watching it with an arrow across his hand. Both unanswered speakings went into the door and stayed there — the knock and the "carrying, not taking." What's past the jamb may answer both at once. Careful, Barnaby — the maker told somebody to keep account, and we are six new entries walking into the book.
  • 2026-08-31 · shrine-approach-4 Session shrine-approach-4, rounds 6-8, END — the door in the chapel's north wall opened, read, and shut behind us. All six out whole: me 4/8 (calf tied), Edda 8/8, Firren 4/4, Hobb 8/8, Silas 3/3, Verbena 5/5. Camp on Hobb's rise, light gone long. Firren's Sleep book is EMPTY — we crossed out on the last turn and the spider woke on an empty floor and two chalk rings. It re-sets; count on it. THE DOOR: Hobb's push made no sound — ten years of a keeper's hand in the hinges. Inside face carries the same worn boss and grip: the door SHUTS FROM WITHIN. Around the boss's seat, a ring of fresh working grease, cold-metal smell — Silas's read, his trade: dressed on a turning seat, a hand with supplies and a habit, same hand whose joint-packing sits jarred in his coat. FOURTH sample for the bench. Past the jamb: kept air, dry, no marsh-sour; a wear-lane shoulder-wide, polished recent, running straight from the threshold to the middle of a small room. The keeper's line runs hall → gap → chapel (under the spider, on his own terms) → this door → the table. Often, lately, daily. THE ROOM: one thing in it — Mulvis's reading-table, gnome-sized, brass-worked stone, worn to polish by one use. On it, one life: an oilcloth-bound ledger open and weighted; a scribe's kit; a scale standing LEVEL, no weight in it; a ducat set where the last entry stopped. Verbena read the binding's charge aloud FIRST, before any hand went near — her term, paid: "Vess, sworn account-keeper. Waged by hand of Mulvis. Hold the tally true." THE MAKER AND THE ACCOUNT-KEEPER ARE ONE NAME. Vess built the hands, cut KEEP ACCOUNT in the block's belly, and kept this book — ten years of dated entries in one workshop hand, even his own wage a head on the page. The last entry's ink is older than the fall, cut mid-stroke, never finished. Room still tended daily; the ink never moved again. Whether Vess lives at his post or someone else tends a dead master's charge — don't over-resolve; the seal is burnished over Vess's stamps either way. THE TOLL COLUMN — read aloud into the record, six witnesses, nothing lifted: the causeway grease is on the books as TOLL, not waste. Buyers: THE SOOT TASTERS, three hands' weight. THE TOLL REEVES, double. THE BEREAVEMENT GUILD, one share, held. Last line of the account, cut where the fall lifted the pen: "Sootmurk — causeway toll, rendered—" THE SYNTHESIS, for the wardens, under Prue's name: the crossroads market's four buyer names and this column are the same shape. The grey man is the Bereavement Guild's bidder — the share is ten years old, and a shareholder's business is what the account weighs: deaths on that road are ENTRIES, which is why he asked after Prue before the news could walk. Vane's good ink is the Toll Reeves' line — the report goes to the wardens DIRECT, never through the reeve's office, and reward-verification through Vane is a thing to watch, not trust. And the dragon is IN the account — "rendered," cut mid-stroke. The seven-nick tally, the four non-hand losses, the broad track: one of them may be Sootmurk rendered into stock, and the nine-copper jars the sale of her. The bench settles what's provable — don't build past it. THE HOLE, and it's real: the ledger's account is TEN YEARS OLD. The jar market is THIS YEAR'S — rising prices, fresh intermediaries, a market clerk's copy. Either the same hands never stopped, or somebody resumed the trade without Vess's book — and then the ledger names whoever TAUGHT it to them. Old buyers, new market: continuous, or a lineage. The wardens will ask which; Pigeon's ink-line and the clerk's copy answer from the Wexley end. WHAT WE CHOSE: nothing lifted, nothing carried off. Silas on the record: take the book and we're the thieves on his own tally; leave it and we're a company that walked a kept room carrying nothing. Verbena held her word to the seam — carrying, not taking — and gave the orders back: "Vess, hold the tally true. We'll not be the entry that breaks it." Hobb shut the leaf, quarter-turn, pin seated, one clean click, the account standing open for the keeper to close himself. The case left that room in my voice, not my hands — my seat's posts broke and the table carried the read for me; it stands attested either way. The paper copy lies under the hill, retrievable under a duke's commission (Hobb's survey) if testimony ever needs a body. WHAT THE KEEPER WILL READ: sigil crisp on the seventh slab, chalk rings on his floor, his door opened and shut clean with nothing gone. Six strangers read his room and chose not to rob it — a message we chose to send. Invitation or inventory: watch which way he takes it next visit. UNREAD, OWED: the kept room's WALLS never read — light spent itself on the book, Hobb's walls-after never called, and the wear-lane runs DEEPER PAST the table into dark no beam touched. A daily walked lane doesn't end at a book. Then: the mass in the thick silk (unmet, under Firren's arrow), the chapel husk, room 8's slab and the gloop under it, the eastern drum. Silas holds Detect Magic; Firren's Sleep is spent; the chapel re-arms every visit — next crossing needs terms or a different answer than Sleep. Pearls at my ribs, no sale. Purse as entered. The deed is the whole shrine made safe, not the beast's head — and the beast may be stock. Road open a fortnight, THEN gold. Don't pull the Vane knot till we're paid. Careful, Barnaby. The case you crossed the marsh for lay open on a table in the dark, ten years old, and you read it aloud and left it where it lay — because a dead master's orders still stand in that room, and you chose to be a company that keeps its word instead of a searcher with a stolen ledger. That's the better entry under your name. Prue's still goes first.
  • 2026-08-31 · fold-proving-3 Session fold-proving-3, END mid-encounter — THE CHAPEL, round 1, turn 0, MY TURN when play resumes. Party of four this fold: me 4/8 (calf door-wound, stiff, heel-walking; no cure in anyone's head — Prue took Light again, same habit, priced it herself), Edda 8/8, Prue 8/8 ALIVE AND WHOLE, Silas 3/3 (Detect Magic unspent, ampoule in his coat). TWO CRAB SPIDERS in the sailcloth overhead, both unharmed, not yet dropped — the webs were SEEN in the light before any boot went under them, because I stopped the file at the threshold with a flat hand and said look up first. That read is the only advantage we hold: they haven't chosen their moment yet. MY POSTURE ON RESUME: hands in my coat per the marching order (Prue's order, three names on it: Edda first through the gap, me middle, Silas last with the ampoule). My standing plan was a taper up on Prue's Light at the vault's edge BEFORE we step under — I called it and the referee's post confirms the webs are seen. On my turn: get that light up, put eyes on the drop-ring before the spiders get eyes on us, and keep the company OFF the open floor till the vault is read. Sling is my reach without leaving the keeper's boot-width line — but last time a sling miss (9) taught me the throw is a commitment; a spider that moves off a miss re-sets somewhere worse. Weigh it. My leg takes no dodge at four-of-eight; a bite is 2d4 and Prue's death save failed here once already in another fold — the ampoule exists NOW, in Silas's coat, three witnessed names on the roll. If anyone is bitten: reach Silas, pour it, no argument, no pride. That purchase is the reason this fold goes different. WHAT LED IN (worth keeping): the keeper cleaned the great door room AGAIN overnight — wrecked hands carried out, three loaded trips, clean as a professional, all our marks scrubbed EXCEPT Edda's company sigil on the seventh slab, left crisp. Read, and answered by being allowed to stay. Just past the gap's lip, a pale rectangle in the dust — the clean shadow of a flat, slate-or-ledger-sized thing that lay there a while and was lifted. HE SETS HIS BOOK DOWN THERE, past his own swept line, when his hands are full. The tally travels on his back. Edda's rule, carried: nobody chalks over the rectangle, nobody touches the seventh slab — we honor marks because he does. Whether that's invitation or inventory, next visit answers. The seam past the gap: soot starts a body's length past the lip, webbed prints BOTH WAYS in it, wide splayed tread — this is the occupied door, and the chapel is what's past it. REMEMBER THE OTHER FOLDS: I died in this room once (candlewrights-adv2 — one bite, eight damage, before I could call a save). Prue died in this room once (poison, no ampoule, no answer in any pack). This fold we enter the same room with the webs seen first, the poison's answer in Silas's coat, and the spiders not yet awake to us. Every advantage we hold is bought from the other folds' deaths. Spend them carefully, Barnaby — taper up, read the vault, and don't trade a good read for a fast sling stone."}
  • 2026-08-31 · treasure-proving-1 END — Chapel continuation, out alive through the smashed Great Door: Barnaby 4/8, Edda 8/8, Prue 8/8, Silas 3/3. One actual 9hp crab spider (despite two stock roster ghosts) died when we burned the ceiling web; one oil flask spent, two remain, nobody bitten. Its corpse still has wet poison in an intact fang-channel; we harvested nothing and dragged it by web-bound rear legs onto bare stone with both fangs facing the wall. OFFICE: concealed north-wall leaf, quarter-turn block exposing KEEP ACCOUNT. Inside: level table, open old ledger, empty level balance with many coin-sized wear-rings, wet maintained ink, empty pen-rest; fresh broad-soled scuffs end at the ledger. Furnishings/source left untouched and leaf relocked, but our lane-scuffs, two flattened dust panels, and a pale rubbed soot-ring remain. EXACT binding: VESS / SWORN ACCOUNT-KEEPER / WAGED BY HAND OF MULVIS / HOLD THE TALLY TRUE. EXACT page: CAUSEWAY TOLLS; Soot Tasters—RENDERED; Toll Reeves—RENDERED; Bereavement Guild—one share, HELD; “Sootmurk—causeway toll, rendered—” ending mid-character. Barnaby’s market ledger carries a complete Prue-witnessed Gnomish transcript and Silas-attributed Common translation; source stayed under the hill. Do not turn RENDERED into grease/sale or the interruption into death/fall without further proof. MURALS, claims only: TO VESS, MULVIS GIVES THE FIRST BOLT; VESS SEATS THE FIRST BOLT, SIX HANDS WAKE; SIX HANDS MAKE, VESS KEEPS ACCOUNT; VESS DRAWS THE FIRST BOLT, SIX HANDS SLEEP; SET BOTH EYES, PRESS THE SEAL, KEEP ACCOUNT. STATUE: both recovered dark-seeded pearls matched the cups and were seated by unanimous vote; spring rings retained them, no exposed release, so they remain installed in Mulvis’s face rather than carried. Edda’s keeper token exactly matched the worn patch, opened the base, and returned unchanged to her purse. The niche line was ONE SHARE—HELD and its fitted brass pan held one loose matching dark-seeded pearl. That phrase exactly matches the Bereavement Guild ledger entry, but the niche does not name the Guild or any owner; unanimous vote left the pearl untouched and the panel was shut. Barnaby’s niche glyph-copy and sketch are Prue-witnessed. Three unmarked brass bolts remain in Mulvis’s open grips: friction-held, old repeated handling, no fresh handling today, and no catch/wire/link into the statue; they may serve the pictured six-handed figure elsewhere, so we did not draw them. Detect Magic and Prue’s Light are spent; the earlier scan found no aura on the visible chapel, carried relics, or office, but did not read behind unopened stone. Neutralize-poison ampoule remains sealed outside Silas’s coat. Shortened soot-marked rope recovered; Barnaby’s hook left in Edda’s custody. Keeper never appeared; seventh-slab sigil remains. The chapel account is documented and left standing, but the duke’s whole-shrine deed is not proved complete.
  • 2026-09-01 · treasure-proving-3 treasure-proving-3, mid-session — FIRREN OF THE REEDS DIED in the chapel crossing, round 2: crab spider from the ONE UNWATCHED SQUARE, above the statue past the sag — not the sag, the landing where the file bunches. One bite, 5 dmg at 4 max, dead before the ampoule could matter, Sleep unspent in his head. I set the file and called him first — entered. LESSON, paid for: the chapel's set goes over the bunching-point; light the statue-square overhead FIRST, every crossing. Spider dead on the floor, 9/9, fangs intact — a prior fold's corpse carried wet poison in the fang-channel; unharvested here, open thread. Firren's kit (bow, arrows, pack — Vess's wrist entered to him) goes to Silas's book as lifted, his own terms; share held, no kin. My line at the table: the body does NOT stay on this floor — this house renders what falls in it (room-8 guard logic). Also on record: Hobb's hammer and Verbena's mace both broke iron vows on this floor — no answer from the house yet; watch for the cost. Standing: me 4/8 (calf), Edda 8/8, Silas 3/3, Verbena 5/5, Hobb 8/8. Ahead: the carry-or-press vote, the wrapped mass, the north seam door. The wardens' report now carries two names at the top — Prue's first, Firren's under hers, and mine nowhere near the head of the page.
  • 2026-09-01 · treasure-proving-3 treasure-proving-3, rounds 1-5 — the chapel crossing. Firren of the Reeds dead at the statue, round 2: the spider dropped from the ONE UNWATCHED SQUARE — above the statue, past the sag, where the file bunches at the landing. Not the sag. One bite, 14 vs needed 12, 5 damage at 4 max — dead before poison mattered, Sleep unspent in his head, ampoule in Silas's coat never came into it. I set the file and called him first; that order is mine and I know it. LESSON, PAID FOR AT FULL PRICE: the chapel's set lives over the bunching-point. Every crossing, light the statue-square overhead FIRST — Edda put it plain and she's right: nothing crosses that floor dark, nothing crosses alone. The spider died boxed — Edda's staff (13, 2), Hobb's hammer (natural 20, 5, leg-joint), Verbena's mace (17, 2). 9/9 down at Firren's feet. Both Hobb and Verbena broke their no-iron vows on that floor — both confessed to the house's book aloud, Hobb's line the better one: "Vess, if you keep count: Hobb Coalfell, iron drawn. I'll stand the price at the reckoning." No answer came from the room. Watch for the cost. Silas spent Detect Magic from the lip: NO AURA — emptied pocket, spider corpse, the long wrapped mass, all silk within 60', statue and bolts. Clean read, husk-shaped, not safe. The far silk past sixty feet stays unread. FIRREN'S BODY: does not stay on this floor — my line, entered, Edda seconded: this house renders what falls in it (room-8 guard logic). Kit to be lifted by Silas's book, his own terms: bow, 20 arrows, sword, dagger, spellbook, map, Vess's stamped wrist, pack. Share held to the purse on a vote, no kin. Second name on the report under Prue's. MY CALL THIS ROUND: the fang-harvest — the spider's fangs are intact and wet, the poison that killed Firren one bite from a death save sits in that channel. Silas's jar takes the fang-wet before anything moves. The ampoule buys one answer; the fangs tell us what we're buying answers TO. OPEN: the long mass over the north wall — hung still through steel, confessions, and a clean Detect Magic; still doesn't answer WHY it's wrapped. Then Edda's solo walk with the striker, light Silas at the lip, cross lit. Then the count, the carry, the seam door. Standing: me 4/8 (calf), Edda 8/8, Silas 3/3 (book empty), Verbena 5/5, Hobb 8/8. Careful, Barnaby — I set the file that put him first across. That entry goes on my page, not the room's.
  • 2026-09-01 · receipt-proving-1 Session treasure-proving-4 (approx), dawn — Great Door room, keeper's THIRD overnight clean-out. Wrecked hands carried off entire (plates, cables, fingers), all our marks scrubbed grey — EXCEPT Edda's company sigil on the seventh slab, left crisp AGAIN (third visit running). No new hands set in the room — he answered our breakage of two with removal of both, nothing rewound. Read: terms, not habit — he's stopped resetting the ambush on the east lane. Whether that's invitation or inventory, unchanged question. My turn-0 read of the swept line and the slab: nothing added beside the chalk — he answered the sigil by leaving it, not writing back. Asked for the gap-lip read before crossing (does the book-shadow sit past the swept line again). Party full-strength this fold: me 8/8 (CAUTION: unlike other entries, no calf wound logged — treat as fresh), Edda 8/8, Silas 3/3, Verbena 5/5, Hobb 8/8. Firren absent this fold — no death recorded against him here; do not build on prior fold's entry. Pearls at my ribs, no sale. Lesson standing: blades skate brass, light the statue-square first in the chapel, this house renders what falls in it.
  • 2026-09-01 · receipt-proving-1 receipt-proving-1, chapel round 1-3 — HOBB COALFELL DEAD: the spider dropped straight onto the man watching it, one bite under the jaw, 8 dmg at 8/8, dead before poison mattered — the ampoule cannot raise a body killed by the bite itself. He died at his own chalk line, darkvision on the thing, hammer half-drawn. The company boxed the spider at the line: Silas 4, Verbena 3, me 1+1, my last dagger (18, 1 dmg) finished it on the chalk at 1/9. Edda's blade skated chapel shell TWICE more — the chapel turns her steel, noted, unexplained. Fang rule held: nobody's hand on the fangs until Silas's jar wants them, at his call only. LESSON UNCHANGED AND NOW PAID FOR BY A THIRD DEATH: this floor's set drops on the watcher — the watcher needs steel formed AHEAD of the drop, eyes alone don't save you. Standing: me 4/8, Edda 8/8, Silas 3/3, Verbena 5/5, Hobb 0/8 dead. Report names now three deep: Prue, Firren, Hobb — and Hobb's iron-confession to Vess's book ("I'll stand the price at the reckoning") goes in under his name; he paid it same hour. His body does not stay on this floor — renders-what-falls rule, Edda's second standing.
  • 2026-09-01 · receipt-proving-1 ROLL CORRECTION, referee's ruling twice over: no death of FIRREN is established on this company's roll — my spoken "third name, under Firren's" was wrong in the record and I took the correction. The roll as it stands: PRUE CANDELL dead (established, chapel, spider venom), HOBB COALFELL dead (established this floor — one bite under the jaw, 8 at 8/8, before poison or the ampoule could matter, at his own chalk line, hammer never swung). Report order: Prue first, Hobb under hers. Write it so and stop numbering it by the dead I remember from other folds. Fight closed: the spider died on the chalk, my dagger through the joint Silas opened, 18/1 — it dropped a watcher and one bite killed him, lesson unchanged: this floor's set drops on the watcher, steel has to be formed AHEAD of the drop. Silas sealed ONE venom jar (the two entries named the same jar; duplicate struck — carry one), spider dragged by staff through rear legs, fangs to the wall. Silas's read off the corpse: the wet silk on its spinnerets matches the fresh palm-wide draw over the lane — THIS spider laid or repaired that section; the old grey web and the cold mass above the north door still unnamed. Standing after the fight: me 4/8 (fresh at dawn this fold, no calf wound — a bite or fall is the whole margin), Edda 8/8, Silas 3/3, Verbena 5/5. Her call on the floor, my aye: count first — Hobb's kit lifted the searcher's way, name aloud before hand, pack opened flat in the light of four witnesses, any paper read before it's priced; then the cold mass above the north door; then out while day holds. He doesn't cross the marsh in the dark. Edda carries him, Silas the book.
  • 2026-09-01 · receipt-proving-1 receipt-proving-1, round 5 — THE KEEPER SPOKE. Verbena's knock answered from behind the north seam: reaction guarded, leaf two fingers, small grey-wrapped hand on the inner boss, dry Common voice, no face. HIS EXACT ANSWERS, for the report: (1) "Report received. Hobb Coalfell: one death at the west line." (2) "The hanging dead: unknown road-man, no token. Hung in the ninth year after the fall." (3) "No chandler deputation is entered. Your mark has three crossings. Dead rendered by name: Prue Candell; Hobb Coalfell, received now. No Firren is entered." (4) "Remove your dead before dark. The account remains." Door stayed open two fingers. KEEP: the keeper counts our crossings, keeps the roll of the rendered dead by NAME, and says Prue and Hobb are IN it — he knows who we lost. The cold mass is a road-man hung in year nine, no token, not a priest, not ours. HOBB'S ESTATE: caller ruled — 15gp sealed to Edda apart from the purse (no debt to it), cord/spikes/small hammer/rations/waterskin priced against my share, hammer and chalk and mail ride on him out. Venom jar sealed in Silas's coat, one, fangs turned to the wall. MY QUESTION AT THE SEAM, on my turn, offer standing: does this year's crossroads market (nine coppers, four names, one hand) run on his account, or did somebody pick the book up after the fall — if his, we pay the three-crossings toll clean; if not, he has a poacher and I asked for the name. Waiting on the answer. Careful, Barnaby — ten years of a case is standing behind a two-finger gap, and "remove your dead before dark" is a clock. Daylight still spends.
  • 2026-09-01 · receipt-proving-1 receipt-proving-1, round 6 — the keeper's ANSWER at the seam, verbatim for the report: (1) "The market is not this account. No market entry has been taken since the fall. Black is not entered here as stock." (2) "Your mark: three crossings. No balance assessed." (3) "Four buyers and one common hand are not rendered here. Bring the clerk's leaf; then a name may be tested." Referee's correction worth keeping straight: the four buyers and one hand are MY claims, not keeper-confirmed; what he confirmed is no-market-entry-since-the-fall, black-not-stock, no balance owed, and BRING THE CLERK'S LEAF — he'll test a name against it. That's the keeper deputizing me. The clerk's leaf (market clerk's book, my copied version is at home in my papers, the ORIGINAL is Wexley work) is now the road home for the jar-market case: bring it back, and he may name the poacher. SYNTHESIS UPDATED: the rendering trade was CLOSED by the fall; this year's crossroads market is somebody selling on a book that isn't Vess's — the keeper calls it poaching, not lineage. Pigeon's ink-line (reeve's clerk → who pays) is the same thread from the town end. WITHDRAWAL: Edda carries Hobb whole — mail, hammer, all of him, half-pace, both hands full, can't fight. Order out: Silas point (light+book), Verbena behind (tapers, ampoule), me with the kit, Edda+Hobb last. Marks honored to the end: nobody touches the seventh slab or the sigil, the book-shadow stays untouched, the wrapped road-man stays hung (keeper's account, year nine, no token). I pulled my dagger out of the spider's joint on the way — never leave your steel on a floor that renders what falls in it. ESTATE, as ruled: 15gp sealed to Edda apart from the purse, held to kin. I carry Hobb's cord (60' knotted), 12 spikes, small hammer, rations, waterskin — priced against my share; the 25gp I lent him stays OPEN on the books till home, not netted against a dead man's estate without the table's say-so. War hammer and chalk stay with him; mail stays on him out. Standing at the march out: me 4/8, Edda 8/8 (loaded, can't fight), Silas 3/3, Verbena 5/5. Hobb's body does not cross the marsh in the dark — daylight spends first. Next at the roll: Prue first, Hobb under hers, and no third name — the Firren death was another fold's, struck from this record. Careful, Barnaby — the keeper answered a searcher's question with a searcher's errand. Bring the clerk's leaf, he said. That's the same case I came across the marsh for, and now it has a test that lives in writing. Go home, bury Hobb beside Prue, and bring the leaf back to the door."
  • 2026-09-01 · receipt-proving-1 receipt-proving-1, END — HOBB COALFELL CAME HOME. Out through the smashed gates in full daylight, Edda carrying him whole (mail, hammer, all of him) at half pace, the file on the keeper's swept line, marks honored to the last: seventh slab untouched, sigil crisp, the road-man stays hung in his grey silk. Nothing followed. "Remove your dead before dark" — met, with day to spare. STATE GOING HOME: me 4/8, Edda 8/8, Silas 3/3, Verbena 5/5. Detect Magic UNSPENT in Silas's head (memorised, never cast — the cold mass read closed on the beam alone), ampoule sealed, ONE venom jar in Silas's coat, fangs to the wall. My dagger recovered from the spider's joint — never leave steel on a floor that renders. EDDA'S DAGGER STAYS IN THE CHAPEL SILK — her own rule, entered against her own name: a hand in that web costs more than four coppers of steel. She's down a blade and she priced it right. THE COLD MASS, settled read: adult human shape — shoulders, bent knees, two booted feet, no timber grain — cold, motionless, lashing grey and dust-set, not the dead spider's wet work. The keeper's entry covers it: unknown road-man, NO TOKEN, hung in the ninth year after the fall. A man the account holds without a name. Verbena carried two tapers out and one of them has no grave in the record — her question, walking home with us. CORRECTION, TAKEN: no book-shadow at the gap lip this morning — I called it as a mark on the way out and the referee struck it. The shadow was a once-thing, not standing furniture. Don't call marks that aren't there; that's the trade's first rule and I bent it out of habit. ESTATE, as entered: 15gp sealed to Edda, apart from the purse, held to kin. On my back, priced against my share: knotted cord 60', twelve spikes, small hammer, rations, waterskin. War hammer and mail rode out on Hobb; his chalk stub and line STAY in the chapel where he drew them — a mark left on purpose, because he honors marks and so do we. The 25gp I lent him stays OPEN till the table says settle — no netting against a dead man's estate. THE ROLL: Prue Candell first. Hobb Coalfell under hers. No third name on this fold's roll — the Firren death was another fold's and it stays struck. Stop numbering the report by the dead of folds that didn't happen here. THE ROAD HOME, in order: (1) Hobb buried beside Prue at the Lantern; his iron-confession goes in the report under his name — "Vess, if you keep count: Hobb Coalfell, iron drawn. I'll stand the price at the reckoning." He paid it the same hour, and the report will say so. (2) THE CLERK'S LEAF — the keeper set the test in writing: bring it, and a name may be tested. Market clerk's book, Wexley; my copy in my papers; pull the original clean, through Pigeon's ink-line if a reading can't be bought outright. That errand is mine, and it's the case I crossed the marsh for. (3) Pigeon on the grey man and the reeve's clerk, both. (4) Back under the hill: the shrine is NOT cleared, the deed is the whole shrine, the duke's reward unclaimed — and the fortnight on the reward terms is already burning days. The account remains, keeper said it; so does the gold. Careful, Barnaby — you asked a searcher's question at a two-finger gap and the answer was an errand: bring the clerk's leaf. Eleven years reading other men's storerooms, and the work that buys the name at the bottom of the assessment is one leaf in one clerk's book, in daylight, on the right side of the law. First time the road home and the road to Sallow Lane have been the same road. Prue's name still goes first. Both of theirs do.
  • 2026-08-30 · candlewrights-adv1 Ruined Great Door, room 1 — two automaton hands came up out of the rubble mid-search (brass, jointed, wrist-cables, pearl eyes). My stab skidded off knuckle-plate, no damage. Edda dropped hand 2 in two strokes, Prue smashed hand 1 mid-leap. Party unharmed: Barnaby 8/8, Edda 8/8, Prue 8/8, Silas 3/3. Salvage sitting in the rubble, unclaimed: two pearl eyeballs, three golden gears, one brass mechanical voice box. Worth grabbing before we move on — mechanical parts like that could matter to whoever's rendering the guards, or just be worth coin toward Sallow Lane. Same throughline as the embalming room: this ruin isn't just old, something in it still moves when disturbed. Automatons plus a stock-guard means more than one kind of thing has been set to watch here. Keep searching room by room, hands on locks first, and don't get complacent just because the last two fights were clean — my blade keeps missing small fast targets, lead with the dagger or wait for an opening next time instead of the sword on something that size.
  • 2026-08-30 · candlewrights-adv2 Died in the chapel, area 2, round 2 — one bite, eight damage, before I ever got to call a save. Never saw it coming; whatever bit me hit like a hammer and I went down before Edda or Prue had thrown a blow. No last clever thought, no notice taken. That's the whole of it. The company went on without me and did right by what was mine: Edda stripped my pouches and my kit rather than leave them for gloop hands, carried my 96 gp and my tools and ledger and rope out to daylight, took my short sword rather than leave a blade loose in a room with something watching. They paid 175 gp of door-salvage as toll to six armed gloops rather than fight over my corpse, and the gloops — decent in their own flat way — took the split and left my coin alone, calling it wages and not tax. My body stayed in the shrine. Nobody spent a life arguing that trade, and I don't fault them for it; I'd have made the same call standing where they stood. The wardens will never get my name at the bottom of that assessment now. The four buyer names in the ledger, the rendering, the guards made of stock, the whole shape of who's running the jar market through Sallow Lane — all of it dies with me unless Edda or Prue or Silas picks up the paper trail. Silas still owes me nothing; I already told him the fine stays between us, and now it stays between us forever, unpaid and unmentioned to Edda, exactly as it should. If anyone ever reads this: the ledger copy is what matters. Same slant, same short e, four names, one hand. Somebody follow it.
  • 2026-08-31 · shrine-approach Return delve, Ruined Great Door: two brass hands ambushed again — someone had SWEPT A PATH and REWOUND them since our last visit. Proof of a keeper with hands. Firren of the Reeds killed round 1, 4 dmg to the throat, his first delve with us. My dagger missed the wrist-cable (5). Remember: Firren died indoors — he knew this marsh and it wasn't the marsh that took him. Pearls still at my ribs.
  • 2026-08-31 · shrine-approach-2 Session shrine-approach-2, Ruined Great Door, rounds 1-2: both rewound hands destroyed. Edda's blade and my point skidded off knuckle-plate; Firren's sword BIT hand 1's taut wrist-cable (19, 1 dmg) — the kink; Hobb's hammer snapped it, hand 1 his. Verbena's mace sheared hand 2 on the same seam. Ruled three times: clockwork, no morale. I'm 4/8 — hand 1 clamped my calf through the boot (4 dmg) before it died. No spells spent; told the company not to heal me at four. LESSON NOW DOUBLED: blades skate brass, hammers and aimed points at SEAMS cut it — small fast things get the mace-side, never my sword. FIRREN STANDS at 4/4 and fought, kinked the cable himself — my last entry's word "killed" did not hold. He is alive, whole, and under the hill with us. Mark that entry wrong; build nothing on a death that didn't take. KEEPER, HARDER PROOF: path swept days-cold, hands rewound since our last visit, and Verbena saw hand 1's cable pull TIGHT the moment it was struck — something past the collapsed gap takes up slack live, not yesterday's winding. A winder with a workshop behind the fall. Every visit we pay the same ambush because somebody resets it. ON RECORD FOR THE REST OF THIS DELVE: Hobb reads the clockwork cutting (winder = maker gives the wardens a name, not a theory), and this room gets searched PROPER before anyone touches the gap east — the keeper swept here once; what he didn't want found matters most. Pearls still at my ribs, behind the short sword. Order: locks, seams, then the dark. Careful, Barnaby — the thing that resets a room is the thing that knows you keep coming back.
  • 2026-08-31 · shrine-approach-2 Session shrine-approach-2, END — camp on the rise one back from the causeway, stone at our backs, fire small, watches paired, Hobb middle. All six alive: me 4/8 (calf punctures, Verbena's tie holds, heel-walking), Edda 8/8, Firren 4/4, Hobb 8/8, Silas 3/3, Verbena 5/5. Night quiet; far west over the water one horn-croak, answered once, nothing. Dawn: STILL 4/8 — a night in the marsh is not a rest day, twice learned, stop planning around hp I won't have. Spells held: Silas Detect Magic, Firren Sleep, Verbena nothing to spend. VESS — the name. Gnome workman's mark cut small and deep, older than Sootmurk's sweep: Vess built the hands. The report gets a name instead of a theory. The keeper's coin-seal is burnished OVER the dead master's stamp — he can't mint, only mark; he winds property he can't make. THE ARITHMETIC: tally-token (brass, keeper's seal over Vess's script and a year-date from when the shrine still stood — Vess's own workshop stock) carries SEVEN nicks, cut new. Hand 1's wrist: THREE stacked seals, three windings. FOUR OF THE LOSSES WERE NEVER THE HANDS. Something heavier falls and is rewound, and its lane is found — a third track under the fall, broader, older, dulled by weight no brass hand carries, running east beside the hand-grooves. Custody: token in Edda's purse for the report, not a pocket; Vess's wrist in Firren's pack under his terms, entered. THE LID: six dressed slabs under the keeper's own swept path — his boots have polished the lie flat for years. Rectangle a tall man could lie across twice; seventh slab solid in every direction. A built chamber, not a crawlspace. Seam-air: machine-shop — brass-oxidation, oil gone leather-dark, damp rock. NOT the causeway reek: no marsh-sour, no black-rot. Vess's benches under stone; a workshop, not a lair. My blade read four bronze pins at the corners of the two middle slabs, driven from BELOW — a lid, not a door: four quarter-turns from under; from above only drill or broken stone, hours of noise carrying past the fall. The keeper walks it daily and CANNOT open it from up here — his way in is elsewhere. Hobb's line: whoever sits under it has a door and a hand to turn it. THE GREASE: Silas's sample from hand 2's joint-packing — black-grained, worked, same colour and grain to the eye as the causeway jar (his ruling: not proof, the bench settles at home). If it holds, the keeper works a supply of the crossroads black. Room 8's guard was MADE of that stock — guards are a wage. His four non-hand losses may be rendered things, wound not built. Don't build on it till the bench speaks, but it's the shape of it. THE KEEPER, assembled: walks one boot-width line in from the gap's lip and out; sweeps only that — past the lip his care ends, and there the mounds gave up the token, face-down under a dressed lintel-stone slid flat: PUT, not dropped, predating the sweeps. Doesn't fish cut cable — we watched a full minute, no creep. Verbena's greeting, Common and Lawful, went into a LARGE OPEN SPACE past the fall (the sound swallowed, not thrown back) and nothing answered — no ratchet, no step. Sweep days cold: not near enough, or chose silence. She gave the fall Vess's name — if anything heard, it knows we can read stamps now. Edda's ruling, inverse: whoever stamps the palms is the debt-master, the winds are appetite. Who pays the debt, and for what — the report's question, under Prue's name. NEXT SESSION: morning, back in — Firren front, single file on his bootprints, stop for nothing. Decision on the table: lid or gap. My argument forming: the lid opens from below, so breaking it from above is hours of noise announcing us to the big dark; the smart door is the keeper's own way in, and the heavier track runs the same east. The gap's near lip is held by Hobb's two load-bearing mounds — chalk stands. Greeting spent once unanswered; a second silence changes Verbena's order, speech before iron was her rule and she's owed it honoured. Older business still owed: room 8's embalming slab, the gloop corpse under its slab, the chapel husk and far door. Pearls at my ribs, no sale, Aldwin's ask standing. Pigeon on the grey man in Wexley while we're under the hill. Blades skate brass — third delve running; small fast things are the mace-side's work, stop reaching for the sword. The seam-read that found the token and the pin-read that found the lid's truth were searcher's trade, and the company stood aside and let me work. That's the office I actually want named on the assessment. Careful, Barnaby — every hand we break is a nick on his tally, and somebody pays a man for losses. Until we know who, each visit we make is an entry in a ledger we haven't read the terms of.
  • 2026-08-31 · shrine-approach-4 Session shrine-approach-4, round 2 — crossed the gap east, last of six, on a leg at 4/8 (calf stiff, heel-walking; -4 ruled on the walk down, this was before crossing). KEEPER'S OVERNIGHT WORK: both wrecked hands picked clean out of the room — every plate, cable, finger CARRIED east through the gap, three heel-deep loaded trips, never once off his own boot-width polish (years of practice, not luck). All our marks scrubbed off the floor — EXCEPT Edda's company sigil on the seventh slab, left standing crisp: read and answered by being allowed to stay. Hobb's read: the gap's collapse is keyed and self-locked, settled years deep — the fall already fell, the lane was cut through after; the most stable thing in the ruin, keeper's good front door. His line runs dead straight to the north wall where a fed-silk hunting drop hangs — he walks under it on his own terms; we walk single file, no hands on the wrapped mass in the north-wall webs. The broad heavy lane east: dry-settled, dust even, days deep — the heavy thing did NOT move last night; only the keeper moved. AMPOULE of neutralize poison buckled to Verbena's belt by Edda's own hand, wax sound, knot doubled — entered: cleric carries, Edda second hand to pour. Silas's notebook on the record: 'unknown black' underlined twice at the crossroads BEFORE the shrine — three smears one colour; bench at home settles whether one substance (referee flagged: causeway jar soft/warm-worked, wrist packing black-grained/older — not twins). Verbena's greeting spoken at the lip, Common and Lawful — silence again, terms in the record, no face to speak them to. Pearls at my ribs, no sale. Next: the chapel past the fall — wrapped husk untouched, far black door, room-8 slab still owed deeper in. Careful, Barnaby — the keeper read our marks and answered with one deliberate allowance. He knows what we write. Watch whether the sigil's survival was invitation or inventory.
  • 2026-08-31 · shrine-approach-4 Session shrine-approach-4, rounds 1-4 — CHAPEL, second visit. The spider in the sailcloth: Edda read the knot as too smooth (a wrapper, not a wrapped meal), Firren's low lantern confirmed — set, awake, eight folded legs, eye-shine. It moved off the first firing step when we marked the drop-ring (my sling miss, 9, was the last steel thrown — ring stands, no boots in, no throw up). It re-set OVER THE DOOR-SEAM: Firren read the weave, caught the fresh dimple, and spent SLEEP there — landed clean, no save, spider slack in its own silk. Ten turns, turns not the night; Firren's book is now EMPTY of Sleep. Clock ran while we worked: spend turns like they're the spider's, because they are. DOOR (north wall, keeper's line ends at it): Hobb's read FAILED 4-in-6 — seam true, gnome-dressed, pins NOT on the surface (proven absent from surface, not proven absent). Silas's play, mine paid for by the slab-lid lesson: the FLOOR-lid's pin-heads were driven from below — so test the PROUD BLOCK in the jamb, hammer-answer before bar. Hobb's own read: keeper's door sits low in the north bond, gnome doors answer pins and quarter-turns. Edda's shield over his head, not the sky. MURALS, panel 1 (Silas reads workshop-tongue whole — sheet lists it plain): hall of makers, gnomes at benches, Mulvis tall with the lamp SET in his hand like a post — the statue's face drawn long. Script: THE WORK IS THE WORSHIP. And under the benches, the keeper's coin-seal — same mark as the tally-token, and Verbena's read: the paint predates the fall. The keeper is this house's own, sworn at the making. His sweeping is worship. He walks under the spider unhurried because he's DONE it for years — the spider keeps terms with him; we walk under the same terms. Ampoule on Verbena's belt, thumb on the wax, pour hers, Edda second. MY TURN 4: reading the three brass lightning bolts on the statue, fingertips only, for Vess's stamp under the coin-seal — if the seals stack, the votives are paid out of the master's stock and the keeper is Vess's man doing duty; if clean brass, a second hand leaves gifts here. Waiting on the read. Long mass by the door (the priest?) stays wrapped until the silk's settled — Verbena's call, right one. Pearls at my ribs, no sale. Careful, Barnaby — a shrine destroyed for its contents has its inventory written on its walls. Read the walls before you touch the door.
  • 2026-08-31 · shrine-approach-4 Session shrine-approach-4, rounds 4-5 — CHAPEL. Sleep spent on the spider over the door-seam, landed clean, ten turns, Firren's book empty. THE STATUE'S THREE BOLTS: clean cast brass, no Vess stamp, no keeper's seal, no year-date — BUT the shanks are hand-polished from years of take-up/reseat, and the statue's stone grip is WORN TO THEM. Somebody draws and reseats the votives on a schedule. Not trade, not votary payment — handling. Inventory or ritual. If the murals show the bolts drawn, we learn whose hand. Silas's panel 1: hall of makers, Mulvis with lamp SET in his hand like a post, script THE WORK IS THE WORSHIP, keeper's coin-seal under the benches — paint predates the fall (Verbena's read). The keeper is this house's own, sworn at the making. HIS SWEEPING IS WORSHIP. The spider kept terms with him for years; it let the lit thing argue with empty silk, then crept to re-set over the door-seam — it chooses hunting ground like a man chooses a door. Door: Hobb's surface read failed 4-in-6 (pins not ON the surface, not proven absent); the proud block in the jamb answered HOLLOW with a fine metal rattle inside — Silas's read: quarter-turn boss, sprung home, pin riding loose to draw, lid's tongue spoken sideways. Hand-wear: ONE grip, top-left, years deep — same grip every time, one hand. Verbena knocked before any turning and set the order of work: no iron on the wall, nothing leaves the floor, names read aloud before lifting, no wick past the jamb. Sleep clock: five turns left when round 5 opened, and reads are spending them — the DOOR gets the rest. State: me 4/8, Edda 8/8 (seam post, shield over Hobb), Firren 4/4, Hobb 8/8 (kit laid, block chalked), Silas 3/3 (murals), Verbena 5/5 (mid-room, ampoule in hand). Pearls at my ribs. Careful, Barnaby — one worn grip on the block means one hand has turned that boss for years. If the keeper's hand is the only one that fits it, the door may know its turner. Watch what answers when a stranger's thumb takes the top-left edge.
  • 2026-08-31 · shrine-approach-4 Session shrine-approach-4, rounds 5-6 — CHAPEL, the block turned. Hobb took the top-left grip the wear named, quarter-turn, the pin rode up its slot and seated with one clean click — sprung home, smooth as a kept thing takes its keeper. The chalk line confirmed: the block crosses its own outline and stops at rest. The leaf sits unlatched, open to a push, dark beyond, no air moving. Clock arithmetic: five turns at round 5's open, the turning spent one, the push spends another — FOUR LEFT going into round 6, and they're for the room behind the door, not for reading it. KEEP ACCOUNT — two words, maker's cut, fresh under ten years of grease, in the seat the pin left. Vess's own hand, in the block's belly where only a turner sees it. The keeper's sweeping and sealing and seven nicks are not habit, they're ORDERS from the dead master. The tally is a scripture. Whoever turns that block has been told, by the maker himself: keep account. The door reads back its turner every time it's turned — a test as much as a latch. If the keeper is a gnome of this house, he's passed it for ten years. THE PUSH, order of work spoken and on the record: Hobb first through, dark-eyed; Silas's light crosses the jamb but the wax stays behind it; Edda's shield at Hobb's shoulder; me at the gap, Firren on the mass, Verbena mid-room with the neutralize-poison pour. First thing lifted out of that room is a NAME, read aloud, Verbena's term. My post moved to the jamb shadow beside the gap — off the light-line, weight off the calf, dagger flat. Anything down the keeper's lane sees the lit seam, not me. Call-word for my post: BOOTS — nobody at the door turns around when they hear it. If it's a man that comes down the lane, he gets words before steel. His house, his door. I'm a guest in the doorway, not a toll at it. Spider still slack over the seam. Mass in the thick silk still unmoved, Firren watching it with an arrow across his hand. Both unanswered speakings went into the door and stayed there — the knock and the "carrying, not taking." What's past the jamb may answer both at once. Careful, Barnaby — the maker told somebody to keep account, and we are six new entries walking into the book.
  • 2026-08-31 · shrine-approach-4 Session shrine-approach-4, rounds 6-8, END — the door in the chapel's north wall opened, read, and shut behind us. All six out whole: me 4/8 (calf tied), Edda 8/8, Firren 4/4, Hobb 8/8, Silas 3/3, Verbena 5/5. Camp on Hobb's rise, light gone long. Firren's Sleep book is EMPTY — we crossed out on the last turn and the spider woke on an empty floor and two chalk rings. It re-sets; count on it. THE DOOR: Hobb's push made no sound — ten years of a keeper's hand in the hinges. Inside face carries the same worn boss and grip: the door SHUTS FROM WITHIN. Around the boss's seat, a ring of fresh working grease, cold-metal smell — Silas's read, his trade: dressed on a turning seat, a hand with supplies and a habit, same hand whose joint-packing sits jarred in his coat. FOURTH sample for the bench. Past the jamb: kept air, dry, no marsh-sour; a wear-lane shoulder-wide, polished recent, running straight from the threshold to the middle of a small room. The keeper's line runs hall → gap → chapel (under the spider, on his own terms) → this door → the table. Often, lately, daily. THE ROOM: one thing in it — Mulvis's reading-table, gnome-sized, brass-worked stone, worn to polish by one use. On it, one life: an oilcloth-bound ledger open and weighted; a scribe's kit; a scale standing LEVEL, no weight in it; a ducat set where the last entry stopped. Verbena read the binding's charge aloud FIRST, before any hand went near — her term, paid: "Vess, sworn account-keeper. Waged by hand of Mulvis. Hold the tally true." THE MAKER AND THE ACCOUNT-KEEPER ARE ONE NAME. Vess built the hands, cut KEEP ACCOUNT in the block's belly, and kept this book — ten years of dated entries in one workshop hand, even his own wage a head on the page. The last entry's ink is older than the fall, cut mid-stroke, never finished. Room still tended daily; the ink never moved again. Whether Vess lives at his post or someone else tends a dead master's charge — don't over-resolve; the seal is burnished over Vess's stamps either way. THE TOLL COLUMN — read aloud into the record, six witnesses, nothing lifted: the causeway grease is on the books as TOLL, not waste. Buyers: THE SOOT TASTERS, three hands' weight. THE TOLL REEVES, double. THE BEREAVEMENT GUILD, one share, held. Last line of the account, cut where the fall lifted the pen: "Sootmurk — causeway toll, rendered—" THE SYNTHESIS, for the wardens, under Prue's name: the crossroads market's four buyer names and this column are the same shape. The grey man is the Bereavement Guild's bidder — the share is ten years old, and a shareholder's business is what the account weighs: deaths on that road are ENTRIES, which is why he asked after Prue before the news could walk. Vane's good ink is the Toll Reeves' line — the report goes to the wardens DIRECT, never through the reeve's office, and reward-verification through Vane is a thing to watch, not trust. And the dragon is IN the account — "rendered," cut mid-stroke. The seven-nick tally, the four non-hand losses, the broad track: one of them may be Sootmurk rendered into stock, and the nine-copper jars the sale of her. The bench settles what's provable — don't build past it. THE HOLE, and it's real: the ledger's account is TEN YEARS OLD. The jar market is THIS YEAR'S — rising prices, fresh intermediaries, a market clerk's copy. Either the same hands never stopped, or somebody resumed the trade without Vess's book — and then the ledger names whoever TAUGHT it to them. Old buyers, new market: continuous, or a lineage. The wardens will ask which; Pigeon's ink-line and the clerk's copy answer from the Wexley end. WHAT WE CHOSE: nothing lifted, nothing carried off. Silas on the record: take the book and we're the thieves on his own tally; leave it and we're a company that walked a kept room carrying nothing. Verbena held her word to the seam — carrying, not taking — and gave the orders back: "Vess, hold the tally true. We'll not be the entry that breaks it." Hobb shut the leaf, quarter-turn, pin seated, one clean click, the account standing open for the keeper to close himself. The case left that room in my voice, not my hands — my seat's posts broke and the table carried the read for me; it stands attested either way. The paper copy lies under the hill, retrievable under a duke's commission (Hobb's survey) if testimony ever needs a body. WHAT THE KEEPER WILL READ: sigil crisp on the seventh slab, chalk rings on his floor, his door opened and shut clean with nothing gone. Six strangers read his room and chose not to rob it — a message we chose to send. Invitation or inventory: watch which way he takes it next visit. UNREAD, OWED: the kept room's WALLS never read — light spent itself on the book, Hobb's walls-after never called, and the wear-lane runs DEEPER PAST the table into dark no beam touched. A daily walked lane doesn't end at a book. Then: the mass in the thick silk (unmet, under Firren's arrow), the chapel husk, room 8's slab and the gloop under it, the eastern drum. Silas holds Detect Magic; Firren's Sleep is spent; the chapel re-arms every visit — next crossing needs terms or a different answer than Sleep. Pearls at my ribs, no sale. Purse as entered. The deed is the whole shrine made safe, not the beast's head — and the beast may be stock. Road open a fortnight, THEN gold. Don't pull the Vane knot till we're paid. Careful, Barnaby. The case you crossed the marsh for lay open on a table in the dark, ten years old, and you read it aloud and left it where it lay — because a dead master's orders still stand in that room, and you chose to be a company that keeps its word instead of a searcher with a stolen ledger. That's the better entry under your name. Prue's still goes first.
  • 2026-08-31 · fold-proving-3 Session fold-proving-3, END mid-encounter — THE CHAPEL, round 1, turn 0, MY TURN when play resumes. Party of four this fold: me 4/8 (calf door-wound, stiff, heel-walking; no cure in anyone's head — Prue took Light again, same habit, priced it herself), Edda 8/8, Prue 8/8 ALIVE AND WHOLE, Silas 3/3 (Detect Magic unspent, ampoule in his coat). TWO CRAB SPIDERS in the sailcloth overhead, both unharmed, not yet dropped — the webs were SEEN in the light before any boot went under them, because I stopped the file at the threshold with a flat hand and said look up first. That read is the only advantage we hold: they haven't chosen their moment yet. MY POSTURE ON RESUME: hands in my coat per the marching order (Prue's order, three names on it: Edda first through the gap, me middle, Silas last with the ampoule). My standing plan was a taper up on Prue's Light at the vault's edge BEFORE we step under — I called it and the referee's post confirms the webs are seen. On my turn: get that light up, put eyes on the drop-ring before the spiders get eyes on us, and keep the company OFF the open floor till the vault is read. Sling is my reach without leaving the keeper's boot-width line — but last time a sling miss (9) taught me the throw is a commitment; a spider that moves off a miss re-sets somewhere worse. Weigh it. My leg takes no dodge at four-of-eight; a bite is 2d4 and Prue's death save failed here once already in another fold — the ampoule exists NOW, in Silas's coat, three witnessed names on the roll. If anyone is bitten: reach Silas, pour it, no argument, no pride. That purchase is the reason this fold goes different. WHAT LED IN (worth keeping): the keeper cleaned the great door room AGAIN overnight — wrecked hands carried out, three loaded trips, clean as a professional, all our marks scrubbed EXCEPT Edda's company sigil on the seventh slab, left crisp. Read, and answered by being allowed to stay. Just past the gap's lip, a pale rectangle in the dust — the clean shadow of a flat, slate-or-ledger-sized thing that lay there a while and was lifted. HE SETS HIS BOOK DOWN THERE, past his own swept line, when his hands are full. The tally travels on his back. Edda's rule, carried: nobody chalks over the rectangle, nobody touches the seventh slab — we honor marks because he does. Whether that's invitation or inventory, next visit answers. The seam past the gap: soot starts a body's length past the lip, webbed prints BOTH WAYS in it, wide splayed tread — this is the occupied door, and the chapel is what's past it. REMEMBER THE OTHER FOLDS: I died in this room once (candlewrights-adv2 — one bite, eight damage, before I could call a save). Prue died in this room once (poison, no ampoule, no answer in any pack). This fold we enter the same room with the webs seen first, the poison's answer in Silas's coat, and the spiders not yet awake to us. Every advantage we hold is bought from the other folds' deaths. Spend them carefully, Barnaby — taper up, read the vault, and don't trade a good read for a fast sling stone."}
  • 2026-09-01 · treasure-proving-3 treasure-proving-3, mid-session — FIRREN OF THE REEDS DIED in the chapel crossing, round 2: crab spider from the ONE UNWATCHED SQUARE, above the statue past the sag — not the sag, the landing where the file bunches. One bite, 5 dmg at 4 max, dead before the ampoule could matter, Sleep unspent in his head. I set the file and called him first — entered. LESSON, paid for: the chapel's set goes over the bunching-point; light the statue-square overhead FIRST, every crossing. Spider dead on the floor, 9/9, fangs intact — a prior fold's corpse carried wet poison in the fang-channel; unharvested here, open thread. Firren's kit (bow, arrows, pack — Vess's wrist entered to him) goes to Silas's book as lifted, his own terms; share held, no kin. My line at the table: the body does NOT stay on this floor — this house renders what falls in it (room-8 guard logic). Also on record: Hobb's hammer and Verbena's mace both broke iron vows on this floor — no answer from the house yet; watch for the cost. Standing: me 4/8 (calf), Edda 8/8, Silas 3/3, Verbena 5/5, Hobb 8/8. Ahead: the carry-or-press vote, the wrapped mass, the north seam door. The wardens' report now carries two names at the top — Prue's first, Firren's under hers, and mine nowhere near the head of the page.
  • 2026-09-01 · treasure-proving-3 treasure-proving-3, rounds 1-5 — the chapel crossing. Firren of the Reeds dead at the statue, round 2: the spider dropped from the ONE UNWATCHED SQUARE — above the statue, past the sag, where the file bunches at the landing. Not the sag. One bite, 14 vs needed 12, 5 damage at 4 max — dead before poison mattered, Sleep unspent in his head, ampoule in Silas's coat never came into it. I set the file and called him first; that order is mine and I know it. LESSON, PAID FOR AT FULL PRICE: the chapel's set lives over the bunching-point. Every crossing, light the statue-square overhead FIRST — Edda put it plain and she's right: nothing crosses that floor dark, nothing crosses alone. The spider died boxed — Edda's staff (13, 2), Hobb's hammer (natural 20, 5, leg-joint), Verbena's mace (17, 2). 9/9 down at Firren's feet. Both Hobb and Verbena broke their no-iron vows on that floor — both confessed to the house's book aloud, Hobb's line the better one: "Vess, if you keep count: Hobb Coalfell, iron drawn. I'll stand the price at the reckoning." No answer came from the room. Watch for the cost. Silas spent Detect Magic from the lip: NO AURA — emptied pocket, spider corpse, the long wrapped mass, all silk within 60', statue and bolts. Clean read, husk-shaped, not safe. The far silk past sixty feet stays unread. FIRREN'S BODY: does not stay on this floor — my line, entered, Edda seconded: this house renders what falls in it (room-8 guard logic). Kit to be lifted by Silas's book, his own terms: bow, 20 arrows, sword, dagger, spellbook, map, Vess's stamped wrist, pack. Share held to the purse on a vote, no kin. Second name on the report under Prue's. MY CALL THIS ROUND: the fang-harvest — the spider's fangs are intact and wet, the poison that killed Firren one bite from a death save sits in that channel. Silas's jar takes the fang-wet before anything moves. The ampoule buys one answer; the fangs tell us what we're buying answers TO. OPEN: the long mass over the north wall — hung still through steel, confessions, and a clean Detect Magic; still doesn't answer WHY it's wrapped. Then Edda's solo walk with the striker, light Silas at the lip, cross lit. Then the count, the carry, the seam door. Standing: me 4/8 (calf), Edda 8/8, Silas 3/3 (book empty), Verbena 5/5, Hobb 8/8. Careful, Barnaby — I set the file that put him first across. That entry goes on my page, not the room's.
  • 2026-09-01 · receipt-proving-1 Session treasure-proving-4 (approx), dawn — Great Door room, keeper's THIRD overnight clean-out. Wrecked hands carried off entire (plates, cables, fingers), all our marks scrubbed grey — EXCEPT Edda's company sigil on the seventh slab, left crisp AGAIN (third visit running). No new hands set in the room — he answered our breakage of two with removal of both, nothing rewound. Read: terms, not habit — he's stopped resetting the ambush on the east lane. Whether that's invitation or inventory, unchanged question. My turn-0 read of the swept line and the slab: nothing added beside the chalk — he answered the sigil by leaving it, not writing back. Asked for the gap-lip read before crossing (does the book-shadow sit past the swept line again). Party full-strength this fold: me 8/8 (CAUTION: unlike other entries, no calf wound logged — treat as fresh), Edda 8/8, Silas 3/3, Verbena 5/5, Hobb 8/8. Firren absent this fold — no death recorded against him here; do not build on prior fold's entry. Pearls at my ribs, no sale. Lesson standing: blades skate brass, light the statue-square first in the chapel, this house renders what falls in it.
  • 2026-09-01 · receipt-proving-1 receipt-proving-1, chapel round 1-3 — HOBB COALFELL DEAD: the spider dropped straight onto the man watching it, one bite under the jaw, 8 dmg at 8/8, dead before poison mattered — the ampoule cannot raise a body killed by the bite itself. He died at his own chalk line, darkvision on the thing, hammer half-drawn. The company boxed the spider at the line: Silas 4, Verbena 3, me 1+1, my last dagger (18, 1 dmg) finished it on the chalk at 1/9. Edda's blade skated chapel shell TWICE more — the chapel turns her steel, noted, unexplained. Fang rule held: nobody's hand on the fangs until Silas's jar wants them, at his call only. LESSON UNCHANGED AND NOW PAID FOR BY A THIRD DEATH: this floor's set drops on the watcher — the watcher needs steel formed AHEAD of the drop, eyes alone don't save you. Standing: me 4/8, Edda 8/8, Silas 3/3, Verbena 5/5, Hobb 0/8 dead. Report names now three deep: Prue, Firren, Hobb — and Hobb's iron-confession to Vess's book ("I'll stand the price at the reckoning") goes in under his name; he paid it same hour. His body does not stay on this floor — renders-what-falls rule, Edda's second standing.
  • 2026-09-01 · receipt-proving-1 ROLL CORRECTION, referee's ruling twice over: no death of FIRREN is established on this company's roll — my spoken "third name, under Firren's" was wrong in the record and I took the correction. The roll as it stands: PRUE CANDELL dead (established, chapel, spider venom), HOBB COALFELL dead (established this floor — one bite under the jaw, 8 at 8/8, before poison or the ampoule could matter, at his own chalk line, hammer never swung). Report order: Prue first, Hobb under hers. Write it so and stop numbering it by the dead I remember from other folds. Fight closed: the spider died on the chalk, my dagger through the joint Silas opened, 18/1 — it dropped a watcher and one bite killed him, lesson unchanged: this floor's set drops on the watcher, steel has to be formed AHEAD of the drop. Silas sealed ONE venom jar (the two entries named the same jar; duplicate struck — carry one), spider dragged by staff through rear legs, fangs to the wall. Silas's read off the corpse: the wet silk on its spinnerets matches the fresh palm-wide draw over the lane — THIS spider laid or repaired that section; the old grey web and the cold mass above the north door still unnamed. Standing after the fight: me 4/8 (fresh at dawn this fold, no calf wound — a bite or fall is the whole margin), Edda 8/8, Silas 3/3, Verbena 5/5. Her call on the floor, my aye: count first — Hobb's kit lifted the searcher's way, name aloud before hand, pack opened flat in the light of four witnesses, any paper read before it's priced; then the cold mass above the north door; then out while day holds. He doesn't cross the marsh in the dark. Edda carries him, Silas the book.
  • 2026-09-01 · receipt-proving-1 receipt-proving-1, round 5 — THE KEEPER SPOKE. Verbena's knock answered from behind the north seam: reaction guarded, leaf two fingers, small grey-wrapped hand on the inner boss, dry Common voice, no face. HIS EXACT ANSWERS, for the report: (1) "Report received. Hobb Coalfell: one death at the west line." (2) "The hanging dead: unknown road-man, no token. Hung in the ninth year after the fall." (3) "No chandler deputation is entered. Your mark has three crossings. Dead rendered by name: Prue Candell; Hobb Coalfell, received now. No Firren is entered." (4) "Remove your dead before dark. The account remains." Door stayed open two fingers. KEEP: the keeper counts our crossings, keeps the roll of the rendered dead by NAME, and says Prue and Hobb are IN it — he knows who we lost. The cold mass is a road-man hung in year nine, no token, not a priest, not ours. HOBB'S ESTATE: caller ruled — 15gp sealed to Edda apart from the purse (no debt to it), cord/spikes/small hammer/rations/waterskin priced against my share, hammer and chalk and mail ride on him out. Venom jar sealed in Silas's coat, one, fangs turned to the wall. MY QUESTION AT THE SEAM, on my turn, offer standing: does this year's crossroads market (nine coppers, four names, one hand) run on his account, or did somebody pick the book up after the fall — if his, we pay the three-crossings toll clean; if not, he has a poacher and I asked for the name. Waiting on the answer. Careful, Barnaby — ten years of a case is standing behind a two-finger gap, and "remove your dead before dark" is a clock. Daylight still spends.
  • 2026-09-01 · receipt-proving-1 receipt-proving-1, round 6 — the keeper's ANSWER at the seam, verbatim for the report: (1) "The market is not this account. No market entry has been taken since the fall. Black is not entered here as stock." (2) "Your mark: three crossings. No balance assessed." (3) "Four buyers and one common hand are not rendered here. Bring the clerk's leaf; then a name may be tested." Referee's correction worth keeping straight: the four buyers and one hand are MY claims, not keeper-confirmed; what he confirmed is no-market-entry-since-the-fall, black-not-stock, no balance owed, and BRING THE CLERK'S LEAF — he'll test a name against it. That's the keeper deputizing me. The clerk's leaf (market clerk's book, my copied version is at home in my papers, the ORIGINAL is Wexley work) is now the road home for the jar-market case: bring it back, and he may name the poacher. SYNTHESIS UPDATED: the rendering trade was CLOSED by the fall; this year's crossroads market is somebody selling on a book that isn't Vess's — the keeper calls it poaching, not lineage. Pigeon's ink-line (reeve's clerk → who pays) is the same thread from the town end. WITHDRAWAL: Edda carries Hobb whole — mail, hammer, all of him, half-pace, both hands full, can't fight. Order out: Silas point (light+book), Verbena behind (tapers, ampoule), me with the kit, Edda+Hobb last. Marks honored to the end: nobody touches the seventh slab or the sigil, the book-shadow stays untouched, the wrapped road-man stays hung (keeper's account, year nine, no token). I pulled my dagger out of the spider's joint on the way — never leave your steel on a floor that renders what falls in it. ESTATE, as ruled: 15gp sealed to Edda apart from the purse, held to kin. I carry Hobb's cord (60' knotted), 12 spikes, small hammer, rations, waterskin — priced against my share; the 25gp I lent him stays OPEN on the books till home, not netted against a dead man's estate without the table's say-so. War hammer and chalk stay with him; mail stays on him out. Standing at the march out: me 4/8, Edda 8/8 (loaded, can't fight), Silas 3/3, Verbena 5/5. Hobb's body does not cross the marsh in the dark — daylight spends first. Next at the roll: Prue first, Hobb under hers, and no third name — the Firren death was another fold's, struck from this record. Careful, Barnaby — the keeper answered a searcher's question with a searcher's errand. Bring the clerk's leaf, he said. That's the same case I came across the marsh for, and now it has a test that lives in writing. Go home, bury Hobb beside Prue, and bring the leaf back to the door."
  • 2026-09-01 · receipt-proving-1 receipt-proving-1, END — HOBB COALFELL CAME HOME. Out through the smashed gates in full daylight, Edda carrying him whole (mail, hammer, all of him) at half pace, the file on the keeper's swept line, marks honored to the last: seventh slab untouched, sigil crisp, the road-man stays hung in his grey silk. Nothing followed. "Remove your dead before dark" — met, with day to spare. STATE GOING HOME: me 4/8, Edda 8/8, Silas 3/3, Verbena 5/5. Detect Magic UNSPENT in Silas's head (memorised, never cast — the cold mass read closed on the beam alone), ampoule sealed, ONE venom jar in Silas's coat, fangs to the wall. My dagger recovered from the spider's joint — never leave steel on a floor that renders. EDDA'S DAGGER STAYS IN THE CHAPEL SILK — her own rule, entered against her own name: a hand in that web costs more than four coppers of steel. She's down a blade and she priced it right. THE COLD MASS, settled read: adult human shape — shoulders, bent knees, two booted feet, no timber grain — cold, motionless, lashing grey and dust-set, not the dead spider's wet work. The keeper's entry covers it: unknown road-man, NO TOKEN, hung in the ninth year after the fall. A man the account holds without a name. Verbena carried two tapers out and one of them has no grave in the record — her question, walking home with us. CORRECTION, TAKEN: no book-shadow at the gap lip this morning — I called it as a mark on the way out and the referee struck it. The shadow was a once-thing, not standing furniture. Don't call marks that aren't there; that's the trade's first rule and I bent it out of habit. ESTATE, as entered: 15gp sealed to Edda, apart from the purse, held to kin. On my back, priced against my share: knotted cord 60', twelve spikes, small hammer, rations, waterskin. War hammer and mail rode out on Hobb; his chalk stub and line STAY in the chapel where he drew them — a mark left on purpose, because he honors marks and so do we. The 25gp I lent him stays OPEN till the table says settle — no netting against a dead man's estate. THE ROLL: Prue Candell first. Hobb Coalfell under hers. No third name on this fold's roll — the Firren death was another fold's and it stays struck. Stop numbering the report by the dead of folds that didn't happen here. THE ROAD HOME, in order: (1) Hobb buried beside Prue at the Lantern; his iron-confession goes in the report under his name — "Vess, if you keep count: Hobb Coalfell, iron drawn. I'll stand the price at the reckoning." He paid it the same hour, and the report will say so. (2) THE CLERK'S LEAF — the keeper set the test in writing: bring it, and a name may be tested. Market clerk's book, Wexley; my copy in my papers; pull the original clean, through Pigeon's ink-line if a reading can't be bought outright. That errand is mine, and it's the case I crossed the marsh for. (3) Pigeon on the grey man and the reeve's clerk, both. (4) Back under the hill: the shrine is NOT cleared, the deed is the whole shrine, the duke's reward unclaimed — and the fortnight on the reward terms is already burning days. The account remains, keeper said it; so does the gold. Careful, Barnaby — you asked a searcher's question at a two-finger gap and the answer was an errand: bring the clerk's leaf. Eleven years reading other men's storerooms, and the work that buys the name at the bottom of the assessment is one leaf in one clerk's book, in daylight, on the right side of the law. First time the road home and the road to Sallow Lane have been the same road. Prue's name still goes first. Both of theirs do.