imp

— CARRIED —

• short sword (1d6)
• dagger (1d4)
• sling (1d4)
• leather armour (AC 7)
• contract blanks
• travelling ink
• merchant's scale
• iron rations, one week
• waterskin
• rope, 50'

— 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 —

Cosima buys things that do not have prices yet. That is the entire business. Wool has a price, iron has a price, and the margin on a priced thing is an argument with every other buyer on the road; but a new thing, a thing the sellers themselves do not understand, can be bought with charm and sold with theatre, and the spread in between has paid for the second-best house in Wexley and will shortly pay for the best one. The grease is the find of her career and she knew it in the first minute: hotter than oil, cleaner than tallow, and currently gathered off fence posts by homesteaders who price it like jam. She has bought every jar on the crossroads market for three months through four different intermediaries so the price stays stupid. What she needs now is the source. A supply contract with whatever is making it — she says 'whatever' in a flat voice, on purpose, to show the word does not frighten her — or, failing a contract, a map of where it pools. She carries contract blanks because paper closes deals that handshakes lose, and she has learned Dwarvish because the serious money in combustibles is dwarven and she wanted to hear what they said to each other at the auctions. They say she is reckless. They are wrong in an important way: she has never once risked money she could not lose. Other things, yes. Durwin is her cousin and she pays him over the rate because family discounts are how families rot. Isolde she poached from a university with the promise of samples no scholar has touched. Cosima has read exactly one book in her life, on the arithmetic of annuities, and she finished it in a night and never needed another.

— AT THE TABLE —

• 2026-08-30 ·1 area · 12 events grease-buyers-b2
• 1 area · 1 events grease-buyers-b1

— WHAT THEY REMEMBER —

• 2026-08-30 · grease-buyers-b2 Foundry, encounter 6: no internal source or active trap found. A narrow black grease trail enters from the south; it is broad overlapping soft-bodied smears, thickest southward. Beyond the southern threshold dry stone borders the trail. Four squat grease-slick spear carriers were posted in the southern chamber. Durwin held the dry bottleneck; Isolde cast Sleep successfully on all four (10 HD affected). They will sleep 9 turns unless disturbed; Sleep is expended. Cosima unharmed (8/8), Durwin 9/9, Isolde 6/6. Need proceed cautiously, avoid grease, consider disarming/binding/searching sleepers rather than waking them.