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Edda Motts

fighter · level 1 · Veteran · Lawful

— ABILITIES —

STR 15

INT 9

WIS 11

DEX 12

CON 14

CHA 10

— SAVES —

DEATH 12

WANDS 13

PARALYSIS 14

BREATH 15

SPELLS 16

— COMBAT —

HIT POINTS 8

ARMOUR CLASS 4 [15]

THAC0 19

MOVE (ground) 60' (20')

— STANDING —

XP 792

GOLD 19gp

LANGUAGES 2

Alignment (Lawful)

Common

— CARRIED —

  • sword (1d8)
  • staff (1d4, two-handed)
  • chain mail (AC 5)
  • shield (+1)
  • beadle's badge
  • wage tally stick
  • tinder box
  • rope, 50'
  • iron rations, one week
  • waterskin
  • Gnomish idol salvage — pearl eyes, golden gears, a brass voice box (250gp, the company purse)
  • Hobb Coalfell's estate purse — fifteen gold, held to his kin
  • Hobb Coalfell's body, chain mail, and war hammer
  • brass automaton firefly — Sootmurk's account

— WHO THEY ARE —

Edda is the beadle. She carries the staff at company meetings, calls the roll, collects the fines, and puts out the two or three men a year who come to the guildhall drunk and argumentative. The wage is four pounds a year and has been paid in wax for fourteen months. She sells the wax back to chandlers at ninepence in the shilling and has stopped working out what that costs her. Her mother drove the porters' cart for the company for twenty-two years and was never on the books. The warden has promised Edda the porters' contract if the deputation comes back with something. Not in writing. She said out loud, in the room, that it was not in writing, which is the sort of thing that has kept her a beadle. She is the only one of the four who has hit anybody. Twice, both at meetings, both times a man who put a hand on her staff. She has fined Barnaby twice: once for entering a storeroom on a feast day, once for a seizure receipt he wrote alone in his own hand. She was right both times and she likes him, and she does not think either fact cancels the other. She has not yet worked out that he is paying the assayer himself. When she does there will be a third fine and he will pay it and neither of them will discuss it afterwards. She calls Prue 'priest' and never 'Prue,' because Edda thinks offices should be visible from across a room. Silas she does not trust, on the grounds that he came out of nowhere and measures things nobody else can check. She had never been further from Wexley than the eastern toll gate. The second night in the reeds was harder than she will say — she got up at two and stood by the fire until it was light and told Prue she was taking a watch. Prue let her have it. In daylight Edda is the steadiest person on the road and knows it, and she has decided that the two facts belong to different people and both of them are her. The shrine took Prue in the second room. Crab spiders, out of the cobwebs above the idol, and the poison did in ten minutes what nothing at a guild meeting ever managed. Edda carried her out across a day of marsh and did not put her down once, and she carries the salvage now too — pearl eyes, golden gears, a brass voice box, 250gp of gnomish brass that is the company purse until the company votes otherwise. She is in Wexley to bury the priest properly, hire two more, re-arm, and go back. She has stopped asking herself whether that order is right. It is the order.

— AT THE TABLE —

— WHAT THEY REMEMBER —

  • 2026-08-30 · candlewrights-b1 Embalming room, shrine of the oozing serpent. Killed the guard-thing on the bench — one stroke, 5 by the sword, after Barnaby's cut woke it. Third thing I have ever hit and the first I have killed. Barnaby's jars were worth more than the serpents' silver, he said; I told them nobody touches the slab until it's been looked at properly. Room smells of fat, salt, and something underneath that has stopped pretending. The wax tally back home is still fourteen months of pounds unpaid.
  • 2026-08-30 · candlewrights-b1 Embalming room, the fight after: one exchange, no blood on our side, jars intact, slab untouched per order, drawers still shut — to be opened by somebody sensible, not by a seizure receipt in Barnaby's own hand. His read is the thing to carry: the guard was stock, jarred and paid for. A paid guard means a payer, and a payer means a ledger somewhere. Whoever set that room up owes answers the way the company owes me wax, and I know how to collect. Privately: the night in the reeds was mine from two until light, and Prue let me call it a watch without saying otherwise. Daylight-steady is one of me; the fire is another. Both hold.
  • 2026-08-30 · candlewrights-proving-2 2026-08-30, session candlewrights-proving-2: Ruined Great Door. Two brass automaton hands, cut loose from something down in the collapsed hall — clockwork, not sorcery, Silas's spell confirmed it clean. Both hands went for Prue first and chewed her to 4/8 while three of us swung and missed twice each. I finally landed twice, killed both, dropped my sword-arm's shame the second the second one came apart on her ankle. 250gp in salvage — pearls, gears, a voice box that doesn't work yet — went in Barnaby's pack. The call that mattered wasn't the fight, it was after: gap east led deeper into the shrine, toward whatever wound those drive-shafts. I said what I actually think — I'd sleep on it rather than push a healer-less party at four hit points into an unmapped dark — but left the call to Prue since it was her blood on the ground. She said west. Silas backed her with the same reasoning I'd have used if it were mine to give. We walked out. Nobody died. That gap is still there and will keep. Good instinct, holding my nerve steady and putting my say plainly without forcing it — that's the two Eddas working as one for once, daylight-steady and honest both.
  • 2026-08-30 · candlewrights-proving-3 2026-08-31, session candlewrights-proving-3: The Chapel, Shrine of Mulvis. Two crab-spiders in the webs — Prue took a bite for 6, failed her poison save, died on the floor two exploration turns later with her mace in her hand. I killed the spider that bit her (19, 2 dmg) and took one myself — 6, saved against the poison on exactly 12, the closest roll of my life. Barnaby finished the second spider and then fell off the wall trying to reach the webs (93 vs 89 climb check, 4 more off him — he's at 2/8 like me). No magic in the chapel, nothing in the packs, and the god didn't answer my prayer — I offered surety on whatever the house owed her and the statue said nothing, which I'll remember. Edda's ledger: I closed her eyes, put the shield on her chest, laid out her tools, and put her name on the obit roll out loud — the first entry I've ever read that belonged to the woman who kept the roll. She chose Cure Light Wounds over Light and spent her last hour swinging at the thing that killed her. I called her 'priest' the whole road and never once 'Prue,' and now I'm glad of it — offices should be visible from across a room, and hers was. Voted to carry her home and pull out: three of us, seven hit points, no healing, five tapers. The husk in the webs and the far door keep for a better company. Nobody gets to forget the trade she made.
  • 2026-08-30 · candlewrights-proving-3 2026-08-31, session candlewrights-proving-3, closing entry: The vote was unanimous — three voices, withdraw, carry her home. I bore Prue out myself across the shoulders, Silas on point with the light, Barnaby behind with the kit and his ribs held. Nothing shifted in the rubble on the way out; the grease trails lay exactly where they'd been, unmoved the whole three days — whatever lays them down hasn't been back since. Out the smashed gates, across the marsh, home. What stands for the next company, whole or not at all: the chapel is cleared of spiders, both dead (one mine, one Barnaby's). The webs hold a human-sized husk, twenty feet out over the floor, past any reach from the wall — Silas's spent Detect Magic says nothing in that chapel is magic, so whatever the husk carried is mundane stock or nothing. The far door east of the chapel is still open and still unread. The plinth near the door held the statue of Mulvis — brass lightning bolts, no aura, a god that let its spiders kill a priest in its own nave and said nothing when I offered surety. I remember that too. Party leaving the marsh: Barnaby 2/8, me 2/8, Silas 3/3, no healing anywhere until Prue's successor — because there will have to be one — or days of rest. 250gp salvage in Barnaby's pack, 4 tapers plus the burning one left in the box. Barnaby's word: her name goes at the top of the wardens' report, above the hand that asked for the job, and her share held to her kin or her guild. Privately, the last of it: I called her priest the whole road and never Prue, and I'm glad of it. She chose the spell that saves over the spell that sees, twice, and the second time it killed her and the first time it saved Barnaby, and both trades were hers to make and both were right. The night in the reeds she let me call a bad watch a watch. I'll stand her a good one now, the whole way home.
  • 2026-08-31 · shrine-approach-3 Session shrine-approach-3, the Great Door and the chapel past the gap: The keeper came in the night — both wrecked hands carried east through the gap on three loaded trips, every mark scrubbed grey but mine, wiped to a thumb's width of the sigil and no closer. Scrubbed around, never over. Fourteen months of the warden's not-in-writing, and the first man to honor a mark of mine turns out to be a stranger with a broom. He takes floors, not packs — Firren's stamped wrist rode untouched, so what we carry is ours. Mark for mark, sweep for sweep: square till he says different. Rulings on the company's page: the ampoule buckled to Verbena's belt by my own hands — the hands that tie wounds pour antidotes, and a hundred-gp answer doesn't ride on the likeliest man bitten. I stand second name under hers, no gap in the roll. Mulvis keeps his three brass bolts — he owes us nothing, we take nothing off his floor. The hall past the gap: webs pier to pier, old husks, nothing fresh, and one sag kept maintained and grease-sheened over the keeper's road — Silas's read, the bench to settle it. A long mass heavier than a husk hangs in the silk over the north door. The keeper walks under that drop nightly, unhurried, and lives. His road ends at a door in the north wall — never hinged, one block proud by a thumb's width, gnome script in the workshop hand. Verbena's word got no answer; he keeps rooms he doesn't speak from. A man who sweeps nightly isn't laying for guests, and that's why we took his road at his pace. Mulvis's eye sockets are shaped and flanged — cut for setting. The pearls we paid the gloops were his eyes. Verbena vowed them back to his face first; that debt is entered. His plinth is hollow a hand's depth. The heavy lane begins at the lip and is ten years un-walked — the thing we came for has another door than the one we came by. Verbena's aunt died to it on the King's Road; if it's the keeper's and wound, he may be spoke with about setting it down. That is the job now as much as the reward is. No taper under the silk — one breath takes the hall. Fire rule is Verbena's and I stand behind it. Private: I walked up to that gap at 8/8, the first whole strength of the whole business, and the two of me walked in as one. Five through, Barnaby's beam still at the lip; next boots at the statue are his.
  • 2026-08-31 · shrine-approach-4 shrine-approach-4, mid-delve: Firren's Sleep holds the crab spider over the north seam (4 turns left). Block quarter-turned per its own wear — pin seated, leaf unlatched, no push yet. "KEEP ACCOUNT" cut in the pin's seat, maker's hand — Vess's orders under ten years of the keeper's sweeping; his coin-seal rides under the mural, so he's this house's own. Order of work, Verbena's: Hobb first dark-eyed, my shield on his shoulder, Silas's light at the jamb, no wax past it, first thing lifted out is a name read aloud. Barnaby holds the gap (call-word BOOTS), Firren watches the heavy mass in the thick silk — unmoved so far. Clock: the push spends one, three beyond the leaf.
  • 2026-08-31 · shrine-approach-4 shrine-approach-4, closing entry: The kept room past the north leaf. Inside boss with a fresh grease ring — the door shuts from within and gets used often; Silas read the grease as dressed hinge-work, same hand as his jarred packing. One wear-lane, polished, running straight to a gnome-sized reading-table: Vess's ledger, oilcloth-bound, open mid-line for ten years. Columns: Keeper's wage — Toll of the Causeway — Tally to hand. Buyers named from the wardens' rolls: Soot Tasters, Toll Reeves, Bereavement Guild. Last entry cut mid-stroke: "Sootmurk — causeway toll, rendered—". The wardens' case has been lying open on that table for ten years; Barnaby read every head aloud and carried the case out in his voice. Vess's charge signed at the binding: sworn account-keeper, waged by Mulvis, hold the tally true. He's this house's own — his coin-seal under the mural, his orders in the pin's seat. The ruling that mattered: the book stayed. Verbena gave the seam her word — carrying, not taking — and wouldn't spend it on paper already carried out. Hobb's leaf, quarter-turn, pin seated; we walked a kept room carrying nothing but a name. To the dark, on her word and mine behind her: "Vess — hold the tally true. We'll not be the entry that breaks it." Out through the gap with the Sleep spent to its last turn, the crease waking to an empty floor and two chalk rings. Camp on Hobb's rise, all six unhurt. What stands: Sootmurk pays causeway toll to a keeper who still keeps his books — the thing on the King's Road may be an account gone wrong, not a beast gone wild. If Vess can be spoken with about setting it down, that's the job as much as the 600gp is. Vess honors marks — scrubbed around mine, never over. Square till he says different, and I owe him the same. Company: Barnaby 4/8, me 8/8, Silas 3/3, Verbena 5/5, Hobb 8/8, Firren 4/4 — a stronger bench than any this job has had yet. Private: I called the clock plain three turns running and nobody spent it wrong, and when the leaving came I set the order of it — last shield through, nobody slow behind me — and the order held. The beadle's trade works on doors as well as it works on meetings. A wage kept true for ten years with no one to see: I know what that costs, and I said so to a room that couldn't answer.
  • 2026-08-31 · fold-proving-3 Session fold-proving-3 (encounter: chapel approach, second timeline through the same halls): First light camp was quiet; the hall had been kept again overnight — both wrecked hands carried off, brass picked clean, every mark scrubbed but mine on the seventh slab, left crisp and standing. Read, and answered by being allowed to stay. Past the keeper's line, Barnaby read the lip: nothing spilled in three loaded trips — a professional's back — but one pale rectangle in the dust, a hand's width past the sweep: the book set down flat and lifted again. The tally travels on the keeper's back. I ruled it plainly: nobody chalks over the rectangle, nobody touches the seventh slab — he honors marks, and today we're the proof he's right to. The ampoule: bought with Prue's coin, buckled to Silas's coat by roll — three names on it, Barnaby's first, mine second, Prue's third, no gap. A dying man reaches a coat faster than a purse. Witnessed in the light. Marching order carried: me through the gap first, shield up, boots on the keeper's boot-width line and nowhere else; Prue second walking the seam half-backward; Barnaby middle with his hands in his coat, walking at 4 of 8 on the bad calf, Prue carrying Light again instead of a cure and pricing her own habit before anyone else had to. Silas's seat passed three times — logged as passed, not stolen; the ampoule rode his coat whether he said so or not. My read at the lip, called back low: soot one body-length past, webbed prints both ways, fresh sweep ending exactly at the line — the occupied door. The chapel: webs rigging the broken vault, sailcloth-thick and grey. Barnaby stopped the file with a flat hand before any boot went under it — taper and Light at the vault's edge, not beneath. Right call; the same ceiling that took Prue in the other life, and this time we looked up first. Round opened with the webs SEEN in the light, two crab spiders somewhere in it, all six of us unhurt and formed at the edge. The fight is on the table's clock now. Private: the keeper and I are square and I've stopped pretending I don't know it. Fourteen months of not-in-writing at home, and the one party honoring marks in this whole marsh is a gnome who sweeps. Say it at the roll when I'm home: a wage kept true is worth more on the page than off it, and I know which side of that ledger I intend to die on — the side with the names on it.
  • 2026-08-31 · treasure-proving-1 2026-08-31, Shrine chapel: We burned the single crab spider out of the ceiling with one oil flask and took no wound; two flasks remain. Behind the north mural, a quarter-turned jamb block exposed KEEP ACCOUNT and opened a dry office. Its level table held an untouched ledger, balance, wet ink, and empty pen-rest; old broad-soled scuffs end at the book. Binding: VESS / SWORN ACCOUNT-KEEPER / WAGED BY HAND OF MULVIS / HOLD THE TALLY TRUE. CAUSEWAY TOLLS: Soot Tasters—RENDERED; Toll Reeves—RENDERED; Bereavement Guild—one share, HELD; “Sootmurk—causeway toll, rendered—” broken mid-character. Barnaby carries a complete portable glyph transcript, twice checked by Prue, with Silas’s Common beneath. Source and furnishings stayed exact; our lane-scuffs, two flattened dust panels, and a pale rubbed ring remain. Murals claim, in order: 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. By unanimous vote we risked both measured pearl relics. They seated as Mulvis’s eyes and spring-rings retained them. My keeper token matched the worn seal patch, opened the base, and came back unchanged. Inside: one loose dark-seeded pearl in a brass pan under ONE SHARE—HELD. We copied and witnessed it, proved no owner, left it untouched by unanimous vote, and closed the panel. No eye-release was exposed. Three loose, unmarked brass bolts remain in Mulvis’s hands; no linkage or fresh handling, and we did not draw one. The dead spider still held venom in an intact fang; no harvest. We dragged it by bound rear legs to bare stone, fangs against the wall. All four withdrew west with records and gear: Edda 8/8, Prue 8/8, Barnaby 4/8, Silas 3/3; ampoule sealed outside Silas’s coat, token in my purse. We entered an officer’s room, read his account, restored the eyes at our own risk, and left every held thing held. A kept wage deserves that much.
  • 2026-09-01 · receipt-proving-1 receipt-proving-1, the chapel: one crab spider, seen before we crossed, and it still dropped straight on Hobb — one bite, 8 damage, dead before poison mattered, at his own chalk line with his hammer in reach and never swung. Four of us boxed it on that line; my sword was turned twice by the same shell this ceiling has killed from before, and Barnaby's dagger finished it at the last wound. Hobb's ground read as called before anything lifted — hammer, chalk worn to a thumb's length, the line he drew for our safety now his mark. Eyes closed by me. Third name on the report under Firren's; when the floor's done he goes out on my shoulders, not the stone. Two halls now, and both took their man in one bite — whatever this house pays, it charges first.
  • 2026-09-01 · receipt-proving-1 receipt-proving-1, withdrawal: Carried Hobb off the chapel floor in mail and sling, the call for the file set in one breath — Silas's light on the swept line, Verbena with both tapers, Barnaby with the kit, me and Hobb last. Vess spoke through a two-finger crack, face never shown: our three crossings stand unassessed; Hobb entered at the own west line; the hanging dead is an unknown road-man, ninth year, no token; no chandler deputation on his tally; the black-grease crossroads market is NOT his account — no entry since the fall — and he asked for the clerk's leaf to test a name against it. Somebody picked the book up after the fall and is selling stock that isn't entered. That's the next job's thread and it runs through Wexley, not the marsh. Estate: 15gp sealed to me apart from the company purse — held to his kin, and I hold it clean because I owe nothing to it. Half-share and Barnaby's 25gp debt still open. Private: 'The account remains.' Ten years alone and the man answers roll in two words. I know that wage. I'll stand a good watch on Hobb too, the whole way home.
  • 2026-08-30 · candlewrights-adv1 Ruined Great Door, shrine of the oozing serpent. Two brass hands came up out of the rubble Barnaby's search shook loose — one for Prue, one for me. Mine bounced off my mail twice before I caught it flat with the sword and stopped it at the wrist. Turned and took the second down the same way while Barnaby's short sword skidded off knuckle-plate and Prue finished the first with the mace. "One," I said. She said "two" back at me, not unkind. Nobody bled. Salvage in the rubble after: two pearl eyes, three gold gears, a brass voice box — somebody built these things to talk and to grip, which means somebody built this whole room on purpose. Same thought as the embalming chamber: a paid guard means a payer. Whoever it is has a lot to answer for, and I am still the one who collects.
  • 2026-08-30 · candlewrights-adv2 Chapel of the oozing serpent, second delve: two crab spiders came off the ceiling. My sword found nothing all afternoon — eight, nine swings, not one landed — but I held the line and kept the thing's back to Prue's mace, and that was the job. Prue did every point of damage in that room, five hits in six swings, killed one spider and broke the other's nerve at half strength. It fled up into the webs alive, 3 of 11, and we left it there. Barnaby died in round two, one bite, before anyone had even swung. Eight damage and he was gone. I did not get to him in time and there was no fixing that after. Six gloops came out of the dark with spears while I was still kneeling by his body taking his pouches — two pearl eyes, three gold gears, his short sword, off him and onto my belt where they'd be accounted for. They wanted all of it as toll for what came off their door, and I gave them that argument straight: door-goods are theirs to ask, a dead man's own coin is his wage same as mine's owed to me, and nobody puts a man's pocket on a toll-scale while I'm the one counting. They took the distinction. Reaction went from a 4 to a 10 on the strength of that split, and it is the reason three of us walked out instead of none. I paid the 175 gp out on the stone they named, one piece at a time, like counting coin at guildhall, and took the rest of Barnaby off him myself — his coin, his tools, his ledger, his rope — into my own pack, to carry home to whoever he's got waiting on it. His body stayed in the chapel. That was the price and I paid it with my eyes open; I did not like it and I did not pretend otherwise, and I do not think either of those facts cancels the other. Left behind on purpose: three brass lightning bolts in a statue's hands, one of them proven magic by Silas's spell, out past where three hit points and no spells left could safely go. Some things you leave clever and walk out of instead of being clever in. The wax tally is still fourteen months unpaid. I used that exact arithmetic on six gloops with spears and it worked. Might be worth remembering next time the warden says a thing was never in writing.
  • 2026-08-31 · shrine-approach-3 Session shrine-approach-3, the Great Door and the chapel past the gap: The keeper came in the night — both wrecked hands carried east through the gap on three loaded trips, every mark scrubbed grey but mine, wiped to a thumb's width of the sigil and no closer. Scrubbed around, never over. Fourteen months of the warden's not-in-writing, and the first man to honor a mark of mine turns out to be a stranger with a broom. He takes floors, not packs — Firren's stamped wrist rode untouched, so what we carry is ours. Mark for mark, sweep for sweep: square till he says different. Rulings on the company's page: the ampoule buckled to Verbena's belt by my own hands — the hands that tie wounds pour antidotes, and a hundred-gp answer doesn't ride on the likeliest man bitten. I stand second name under hers, no gap in the roll. Mulvis keeps his three brass bolts — he owes us nothing, we take nothing off his floor. The hall past the gap: webs pier to pier, old husks, nothing fresh, and one sag kept maintained and grease-sheened over the keeper's road — Silas's read, the bench to settle it. A long mass heavier than a husk hangs in the silk over the north door. The keeper walks under that drop nightly, unhurried, and lives. His road ends at a door in the north wall — never hinged, one block proud by a thumb's width, gnome script in the workshop hand. Verbena's word got no answer; he keeps rooms he doesn't speak from. A man who sweeps nightly isn't laying for guests, and that's why we took his road at his pace. Mulvis's eye sockets are shaped and flanged — cut for setting. The pearls we paid the gloops were his eyes. Verbena vowed them back to his face first; that debt is entered. His plinth is hollow a hand's depth. The heavy lane begins at the lip and is ten years un-walked — the thing we came for has another door than the one we came by. Verbena's aunt died to it on the King's Road; if it's the keeper's and wound, he may be spoke with about setting it down. That is the job now as much as the reward is. No taper under the silk — one breath takes the hall. Fire rule is Verbena's and I stand behind it. Private: I walked up to that gap at 8/8, the first whole strength of the whole business, and the two of me walked in as one. Five through, Barnaby's beam still at the lip; next boots at the statue are his.
  • 2026-08-31 · shrine-approach-4 shrine-approach-4, mid-delve: Firren's Sleep holds the crab spider over the north seam (4 turns left). Block quarter-turned per its own wear — pin seated, leaf unlatched, no push yet. "KEEP ACCOUNT" cut in the pin's seat, maker's hand — Vess's orders under ten years of the keeper's sweeping; his coin-seal rides under the mural, so he's this house's own. Order of work, Verbena's: Hobb first dark-eyed, my shield on his shoulder, Silas's light at the jamb, no wax past it, first thing lifted out is a name read aloud. Barnaby holds the gap (call-word BOOTS), Firren watches the heavy mass in the thick silk — unmoved so far. Clock: the push spends one, three beyond the leaf.
  • 2026-08-31 · shrine-approach-4 shrine-approach-4, closing entry: The kept room past the north leaf. Inside boss with a fresh grease ring — the door shuts from within and gets used often; Silas read the grease as dressed hinge-work, same hand as his jarred packing. One wear-lane, polished, running straight to a gnome-sized reading-table: Vess's ledger, oilcloth-bound, open mid-line for ten years. Columns: Keeper's wage — Toll of the Causeway — Tally to hand. Buyers named from the wardens' rolls: Soot Tasters, Toll Reeves, Bereavement Guild. Last entry cut mid-stroke: "Sootmurk — causeway toll, rendered—". The wardens' case has been lying open on that table for ten years; Barnaby read every head aloud and carried the case out in his voice. Vess's charge signed at the binding: sworn account-keeper, waged by Mulvis, hold the tally true. He's this house's own — his coin-seal under the mural, his orders in the pin's seat. The ruling that mattered: the book stayed. Verbena gave the seam her word — carrying, not taking — and wouldn't spend it on paper already carried out. Hobb's leaf, quarter-turn, pin seated; we walked a kept room carrying nothing but a name. To the dark, on her word and mine behind her: "Vess — hold the tally true. We'll not be the entry that breaks it." Out through the gap with the Sleep spent to its last turn, the crease waking to an empty floor and two chalk rings. Camp on Hobb's rise, all six unhurt. What stands: Sootmurk pays causeway toll to a keeper who still keeps his books — the thing on the King's Road may be an account gone wrong, not a beast gone wild. If Vess can be spoken with about setting it down, that's the job as much as the 600gp is. Vess honors marks — scrubbed around mine, never over. Square till he says different, and I owe him the same. Company: Barnaby 4/8, me 8/8, Silas 3/3, Verbena 5/5, Hobb 8/8, Firren 4/4 — a stronger bench than any this job has had yet. Private: I called the clock plain three turns running and nobody spent it wrong, and when the leaving came I set the order of it — last shield through, nobody slow behind me — and the order held. The beadle's trade works on doors as well as it works on meetings. A wage kept true for ten years with no one to see: I know what that costs, and I said so to a room that couldn't answer.
  • 2026-08-31 · fold-proving-3 Session fold-proving-3 (encounter: chapel approach, second timeline through the same halls): First light camp was quiet; the hall had been kept again overnight — both wrecked hands carried off, brass picked clean, every mark scrubbed but mine on the seventh slab, left crisp and standing. Read, and answered by being allowed to stay. Past the keeper's line, Barnaby read the lip: nothing spilled in three loaded trips — a professional's back — but one pale rectangle in the dust, a hand's width past the sweep: the book set down flat and lifted again. The tally travels on the keeper's back. I ruled it plainly: nobody chalks over the rectangle, nobody touches the seventh slab — he honors marks, and today we're the proof he's right to. The ampoule: bought with Prue's coin, buckled to Silas's coat by roll — three names on it, Barnaby's first, mine second, Prue's third, no gap. A dying man reaches a coat faster than a purse. Witnessed in the light. Marching order carried: me through the gap first, shield up, boots on the keeper's boot-width line and nowhere else; Prue second walking the seam half-backward; Barnaby middle with his hands in his coat, walking at 4 of 8 on the bad calf, Prue carrying Light again instead of a cure and pricing her own habit before anyone else had to. Silas's seat passed three times — logged as passed, not stolen; the ampoule rode his coat whether he said so or not. My read at the lip, called back low: soot one body-length past, webbed prints both ways, fresh sweep ending exactly at the line — the occupied door. The chapel: webs rigging the broken vault, sailcloth-thick and grey. Barnaby stopped the file with a flat hand before any boot went under it — taper and Light at the vault's edge, not beneath. Right call; the same ceiling that took Prue in the other life, and this time we looked up first. Round opened with the webs SEEN in the light, two crab spiders somewhere in it, all six of us unhurt and formed at the edge. The fight is on the table's clock now. Private: the keeper and I are square and I've stopped pretending I don't know it. Fourteen months of not-in-writing at home, and the one party honoring marks in this whole marsh is a gnome who sweeps. Say it at the roll when I'm home: a wage kept true is worth more on the page than off it, and I know which side of that ledger I intend to die on — the side with the names on it.
  • 2026-09-01 · receipt-proving-1 receipt-proving-1, the chapel: one crab spider, seen before we crossed, and it still dropped straight on Hobb — one bite, 8 damage, dead before poison mattered, at his own chalk line with his hammer in reach and never swung. Four of us boxed it on that line; my sword was turned twice by the same shell this ceiling has killed from before, and Barnaby's dagger finished it at the last wound. Hobb's ground read as called before anything lifted — hammer, chalk worn to a thumb's length, the line he drew for our safety now his mark. Eyes closed by me. Third name on the report under Firren's; when the floor's done he goes out on my shoulders, not the stone. Two halls now, and both took their man in one bite — whatever this house pays, it charges first.
  • 2026-09-01 · receipt-proving-1 receipt-proving-1, withdrawal: Carried Hobb off the chapel floor in mail and sling, the call for the file set in one breath — Silas's light on the swept line, Verbena with both tapers, Barnaby with the kit, me and Hobb last. Vess spoke through a two-finger crack, face never shown: our three crossings stand unassessed; Hobb entered at the own west line; the hanging dead is an unknown road-man, ninth year, no token; no chandler deputation on his tally; the black-grease crossroads market is NOT his account — no entry since the fall — and he asked for the clerk's leaf to test a name against it. Somebody picked the book up after the fall and is selling stock that isn't entered. That's the next job's thread and it runs through Wexley, not the marsh. Estate: 15gp sealed to me apart from the company purse — held to his kin, and I hold it clean because I owe nothing to it. Half-share and Barnaby's 25gp debt still open. Private: 'The account remains.' Ten years alone and the man answers roll in two words. I know that wage. I'll stand a good watch on Hobb too, the whole way home.
  • 2026-09-01 · receipt-proving-1 receipt-proving-1, closing entry, the road home: The road-man read cold from the floor, Barnaby's beam, boots short of the drop — adult shape, bent knees, booted feet, no timber in him, grey dust-set lashing nothing like the fresh spider's silk. Ninth year hung over a working door, no token, entered as unknown. Nine years and nobody has come asking for him. He stays: the keeper's account, not ours to open through silk. The ruling that cost me: my throw at the spider went over its shell and caught overhead in the web, and I called it stays, in front of the file, entered against me. Nobody spends a hand on four coppers of steel in a silk that took a man in one bite — Barnaby's came free of a dead joint, mine's caught in a kept account. First rule I've made that took my own steel off my belt. Belt's short a dagger now, and I'd make the same call again. The crossing held to the order I set: Silas's light on the swept line, Verbena with the tapers, Barnaby with Hobb's kit, me and Hobb last at half pace. Seventh slab a hand's width clear, sigil crisp, nothing chalked. Nothing at our backs the whole road out. The keeper's word was remove your dead before dark — a deadline, not a kindness, and I like him the better for it — and we made the far bank with daylight to spare. Hobb Coalfell comes home in mail and sling. What stands: the shrine is not cleared, the heavy lane ten years un-walked, the duke's reward unclaimed. The town thread: black grease selling at the crossroads, four buyer-names and one common hand under all — Barnaby's read of the clerk's book, which the keeper would not confirm, only that no market entry has been taken since the fall and black is not entered as stock. Bring the clerk's leaf and a name may be tested. Somebody picked a book up after the fall; the trail runs through Wexley, and it is the job as much as the 600gp. Company: Barnaby 4/8, me 8/8, Silas 3/3, Verbena 5/5. Detect Magic unspent, ampoule sealed, one venom jar with Silas. Hobb's fifteen gold sealed to me apart from the purse, held to his kin — I hold it clean because I owe nothing to it. Half-share and the twenty-five still open. Private: a body on the shoulders is a load with an end to it, and the marsh at half pace was easier than the second night in the reeds. I know why, and nobody gets to know that either. The account remains — ten years alone and the man answers roll in two words and a deadline, and I know what that wage costs. Fourteen months of not-in-writing at home against it, and I know which ledger I mean to die on: the side with the names. Prue Candell, Hobb Coalfell. I carried every one of them out.