imp

— CARRIED —

• short sword (1d6)
• sling (1d4)
• dagger (1d4)
• leather armour (AC 7)
• counting frame
• false-bottomed strongbox key
• chalk
• iron rations, one week
• waterskin
• rope, 50'

— THIEF SKILLS —

CLIMB SHEER SURFACES 88%

FIND/REMOVE TREASURE TRAPS 15%

HEAR NOISE 3-in-6

HIDE IN SHADOWS 15%

MOVE SILENTLY 25%

OPEN LOCKS 20%

PICK POCKETS 25%

— WHO THEY ARE —

Fenwick spent eleven years moving goods past toll gates and four years running one, and he will tell you the second job is the same job facing the other way. The duke's assessors know what he was. That is why they hired him: a man who has hollowed out a cart axle can find a hollow axle, and the eastern gates' recovery of concealed goods tripled in his first year. His arithmetic is beautiful. His signature is not accepted on anything, by standing order, which he considers fair. He learned Gnomish for the worst possible reason: the old smuggling route ran through gnomish ruin-cellars, and the wayfinding marks were written by people who assumed any reader would be a gnome. He can read the Shrine of Mulvis's door-script the way you can read a road sign, and he has known this fact was worth money from the moment the duke's notice went up, and he has not yet decided who to sell it to. Coming along was the honest option and he is still surprised he took it. He worked out in his first month that Yandro cannot read, and has spent nine years quietly arranging the office so it never matters. He does not know why he does this. It is the longest sustained kindness of his life and it embarrasses him profoundly. Twelve missing tollpayers: Fenwick knew three of them. Carters, regulars, men who tipped him information about rival hauliers with genial dishonesty. He is not sentimental about it. He has simply noticed that he keeps counting to twelve at odd moments, and that he sharpened the dagger twice this week, and he is too good an auditor not to know what those numbers mean.

— AT THE TABLE —

• 2026-08-30 ·1 area · 16 events toll-reeves-b1

— WHAT THEY REMEMBER —

• 2026-08-30 · toll-reeves-b1 Checkpoint of the Black One's pilgrims, southern passage. Four gloop guards, crude tribute baskets, no tariff board, and a price set in stone: fifty gold plus every weapon we carry, held until we come back. For that they sell "an audience." Not a pit, the guard said — though a pit-keeper would say the same. I offered twenty in good silver, a proper receipt, blades sheathed but in our own hands. The guard never even looked at the frame. No silver rate. No receipt. Pay, wait your turn, or leave. Ancel played the courteous assessor, gave them room and a price point; I matched it with arithmetic. Neither of us moved them. So the books stay open and nobody's blade is out yet — that's the one thing I count as a win. The pilgrims hate us properly. Dryskins pay double, they say. Back of the line. Mashed at moonrise, mashed at eclipse, and every jar worth more than my silver offer in that temple's eyes. Twelve of them. I have a history with the number twelve, and I don't like standing in a barricaded hall with it. No agreement. No blow. Door still shut, weapons still ours, fifty gold still theirs to demand. I'll note for the record: they wanted the steel off us more than they wanted the coin. A guard that disarms before an audience is a guard that expects the audience to go badly for the visitor. Worth remembering when we decide what to pay with.
• 2026-08-30 · toll-reeves-adv1 2026-08-30 session, Shrine of the Oozing Serpent, Ruined Great Door: two brass automaton hands came off the doorposts at us — leftover shrine mechanism, not shrine guards. Ancel took the first through a wrist-seam with the dagger, clean. Second one bounced off Yandro's shield trying for him, and I put the short sword through the same seam trick while it was still spinning to right itself. Both down in under a minute, nobody scratched. Good trade: two dead machines, salvage left in the rubble — pearl, gearwork, and something like a small brass larynx worth a look before we move on. Path east through the collapsed hall is open; marsh to the west. No sign yet of what's actually running this place, and I haven't forgotten the twelve. Keep the blade out until I know what's past that hall.