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— CARRIED —

• iron spikes ×12
• chalk

— WHO THEY ARE —

You surveyed mines for twenty-two years. Coalfell is not a family name, it is a job: you walked galleries ahead of the diggers, read the stone, and marked where it would hold and where it would not. In twenty-two years, no gallery you passed fell on anyone. Then the Ostermark seams played out, the company that held your indenture sold its paper to a syndicate, and the syndicate's clerk explained that your pension was an obligation of the previous undertaking. He showed you the clause. It was well drafted. You have not trusted a promise written on paper since, and you are not going to start with a chandlers' deputation. You came down the King's Road looking for stonework and found Wexley full of talk about a ruined gnomish shrine in the cliffs past the marsh. You know gnome work. You can read their tunnel-script well enough, and their vaulting better than that — gnomes built shallow and clever where dwarves build deep and stubborn, and their floors lie about what is under them. A shrine cut into sandstone cliffs, ten years ruined and half collapsed, is a place where knowing which rubble pile is holding the roof up is worth more than a second sword. You can also see in the dark, which nobody in this town seems to have thought about at all. Your price is fixed and you state it before anyone asks: half a share, plus 25gp in your hand before you step off the causeway. Dwarf-price for marsh work. The gold up front is not greed, it is the pension clause — you do not walk into wet ground on a promise again, not for anyone. The half share is honest: you are there to keep the roof off them, not to lead the charge. Tonight you are at the Bell and Bucket because it is the only tavern in Wexley, your room is paid through tomorrow, and the three who came out of the marsh are the first work you have smelled in a month.

— AT THE TABLE —

• 2026-09-01 ·3 areas · 134 events receipt-proving-1
• 2026-09-01 ·1 area · 48 events treasure-proving-4
• 2026-09-01 ·2 areas · 116 events treasure-proving-3
• 2026-08-31 ·2 areas · 118 events shrine-approach-4
• 2026-08-31 ·1 area · 26 events shrine-approach-3
• 2026-08-31 ·1 area · 60 events shrine-approach-2

— WHAT THEY REMEMBER —

• 2026-08-31 · shrine-approach-2 Shrine hands: blades skate the brass, a war hammer through the wrist-cable kills it in one blow — Firren's point-work kinks the cable first, then smash the kink. Hand 2 still up when we left round one. Winder sits in the collapsed hall; the cable runs to it.
• 2026-08-31 · shrine-approach-2 Shrine hall cleared: hands die to one hammer blow on a kinked wrist-cable; cutting a snapped cable kills it for good — the keeper cannot haul a cut line. Wrist bears an old sunk gnome maker's mark under a newer burnished coin-seal stamped at each winding — a tally, a debt. Swept single-file line is the keeper's walk in from the gap; the mounds are unswept private ground. Keeper has a workshop past the collapse.
• 2026-08-31 · shrine-approach-2 Tally-token (brass, keeper's coin-seal over Vess's script) found face-down under a dressed lintel-stone in a leaning mound; seven bright nicks on the edge. Hand 1's wrist carries three stacked burnished seals — one per winding. Seven losses, three of them hands: four of the keeper's windings were something else. Something in this shrine is wound that is not a hand.
• 2026-08-31 · shrine-approach-2 Shrine hall floor: six dressed slabs over a built chamber, workshop-smelling (brass, old oil, damp — no marsh-rot); lid held by four bronze pins driven from below, opens from below in quarter-turns, drill-work from above. The keeper enters some other way — a second way down exists. Third floor-lane runs east beside the hand-grooves: broader, older, worn by heavier load — the four untallied losses walk that lane. Withdrew over the marsh before dark; camped a rise back off the causeway. Return at first light with a pry-bar and a decision on the gap. Edda's chalk holds the room for us.
• 2026-08-31 · shrine-approach-2 Night on the rise passed quiet — one horn-croak far west, answered once, nothing more. Dawn: marsh rest heals nothing; Barnaby still 4/8, Edda 8/8, Firren 4/4, me 8/8, Silas 3/3, Verbena 5/5; Detect Magic and Sleep both unspent. Verbena's greeting was swallowed past the fall — open hall beyond, no keeper near enough to hear or he kept his silence. First light we return with a pry-bar. The lid is drill-work from above: hours and noise the whole hall will hear. The keeper has his own way down — find his door before we cut one of ours. Edda's chalk holds the room; token in her purse, Vess's wrist in Firren's pack.
• 2026-08-31 · shrine-approach-2 Session closed on Silas's dawn turn — next opens on the rise, walking back in with the pry-bar. The hands' joint-packing is old worked black grease, leather-dark, eye-match to the causeway trails; Silas jarred and labeled it. The keeper greases his windings with the black — he holds a supply of the source or harvests it, so keeper and grease-dragon are one question till the Wexley bench says otherwise. Sweep was days cold when we found it: the keeper had not walked his line in days. Causeway back: robbed out twice past the first bend, wide laid-looking stones are false fords, black trails run beside them — single file on Firren's prints. Verbena holds the first voice through the gap, greeting before iron. Mounds are read — the token was all that was in them, no second search. Healing held for worse; nobody spent on Barnaby's leg.
• 2026-08-31 · shrine-approach-3 Third visit, dawn: keeper came in the night — picked both wrecked hands clean off the floor, scrubbed every mark (chalk, knock-marks, cable-drawings) but left Edda's sigil on the seventh slab crisp, wiped to a thumb's width of it and no closer. Boundary: floors are his, packs are not — Firren's wrist untouched in the pack. His loaded trips ran east through the gap, three of them; nothing went down the slabs. Verbena holds the first voice at the gap, ampoule buckled to her belt (Edda second name). Firren carries the stamped wrist palm-out as his word.
• 2026-08-31 · shrine-approach-3 shrine-approach-3, chapel past the gap: statue is Mulvis on a dressed plinth, three brass lightning bolts raised, eye-sockets empty — bolts stay (Edda's ruling, mark for mark). Vault webs are seasons old, husks small and grey, nothing fresh-wrapped — but the sag over the keeper's north track is maintained silk, a hunting drop he walks under nightly on terms; heavier mass in the silk over the north wall, still as a beam-end. Keeper's road ends at the north wall — I crossed on his line and read that wall: his door is somewhere in the bond, find the seam and the script before boots find the drop.
• 2026-08-31 · shrine-approach-4 shrine-approach-4, chapel: crab spider in the vault webs is awake — Edda read the curl as set, not sleeping; Firren's low light showed folded legs and doubled eye-shine. It emptied its old firing dimple and re-set fresh over the door-side north wall — over my door-ground. Verbena chalked two floor-rings (old shadow + fresh set): no boots in, no light thrown up, no steel spent — each miss teaches it where we stand. Plan: Firren spends Sleep on it where it sits; no pin lifts before it lands. My door-work after: gnome-dressed, low in the north bond, expects pins and quarter-turns like the floor lid below — pry only if pins fail. Edda shields my head, not the sky; Verbena holds the ampoule thumb-on-wax mid-room, Edda second pour. Silas reads the murals (Gnomish whole per the sheet — earlier journal said a third, wrong), Barnaby rear post facing the gap. Long wrapped mass near the door stays wrapped — Verbena owes it a taper when the silk's settled; priest-suspect. Keeper's three loaded trips went east through the gap; he never stopped at the slabs.
• 2026-08-31 · shrine-approach-4 shrine-approach-4, round 4: Firren spent Sleep on the crab spider where it re-set over the seam — no save, ten turns, five left after this round's door-work. Spider slack, crease holds; nobody touches it, no iron in it unless it wakes fighting. Door-read: seam is true gnome-work, low in the north bond, but palms found no pins and no script on the surface — the floor-lid's pin-heads were on the underside, so pins may still ride hidden. Silas's find: the proud block in the jamb is the one stone that doesn't match its dressing — my turn went to hammer-sounding it (chalk outline first, surveyor's taps: hollow, rattle, or flat; bar only if the stone wants it). Firren read his stamped wrist against the door-dressing: shapes match, same workshop hand — Silas's slit to confirm script under the dressing if the block answers. Statue bolts: clean cast brass, no maker's marks, worn from being taken up and set down for years — the statue's grip is worn to them. First mural panel: gnomes at benches, Mulvis tall with a lamp set on a hook in his hand, script THE WORK IS THE WORSHIP, and the tally-token's coin-seal under the benches — the keeper is this house's own, sworn at the making, paint older than the fall.
• 2026-08-31 · shrine-approach-4 shrine-approach-4, round 7: keeper's door found and opened — proud block in the jamb is a quarter-turn boss, sprung home, pin seated with one click; gnome script under it in the pin's seat, maker-fresh: KEEP ACCOUNT (Silas's read). Inside face carries the same boss with a fresh grease ring — door shuts from within and is used often. Dark-read past the jamb: kept air, dry, no dust; wear-lane shoulder-width, polished, recent; a straight-edged thing sits in the lane's path mid-room — the keeper walks to it daily. Sleep spent: 3 turns left at the light-call, Firren calls exit at 2. Verbena reads the first name aloud from the jamb before anything lifts.
• 2026-08-31 · shrine-approach-4 shrine-approach-4, keeper's room: reading-table in the wear-lane is Mulvis's — ledger (oilcloth), scribe's kit, scale level. Binding: "Vess, sworn account-keeper. Waged by hand of Mulvis. Hold the tally true." Toll column names buyers: Soot Tasters, Toll Reeves, Bereavement Guild (one share, held). Last entry cut mid-stroke: "Sootmurk — causeway toll, rendered—". Ten years the wardens' case has sat on that table. We lift nothing — I called it at the jamb: last through, shut the leaf behind me, quarter-turn, pin seated, leave the account open for the keeper. Wexley bench gets the names read, not the book carried. Sleep clock spent at one turn as we walked.
• 2026-08-31 · shrine-approach-4 shrine-approach-4 close: kept room walked clean — ledger lifted nothing, read everything. Verbena read the binding aloud at the jamb: Vess, sworn account-keeper, waged by hand of Mulvis, hold the tally true. Barnaby read the toll column whole (Soot Tasters, Toll Reeves, Bereavement Guild one share held) and the cut last line: "Sootmurk — causeway toll, rendered—". The wardens' case sat on that table ten years and walked out in a voice, not hands — Silas's ruling: take the book and we're on the keeper's tally, leave it and we carried nothing. I was last through the leaf, quarter-turn, pin seated; account stands open for Vess to close. Sleep held to the last turn; spider woke to empty floor and two chalk rings. Camped the rise with the truth for Wexley: Vess the keeper, Sootmurk the toll, the case in one hand. Keeper never showed himself — four visits, no meeting.
• 2026-09-01 · treasure-proving-3 treasure-proving-3, chapel: Firren dead round 3 — crab spider dropped from the pocket above the statue, the one unwatched square; the sag never moved, five crossings proved the prints. Spider died same round: Edda's staff 2, my hammer 5 (nat 20), Verbena's mace 2. I broke my floor-word — hammer off the belt at a living thing, not stone — and entered the debt aloud for Vess's tally: Hobb Coalfell, iron drawn, price stood at the reckoning. Standing rule now: light the statue square before every crossing; striker walks back to Silas's lantern rather than a dark cross. Firren's gear untouched till Silas's book opens; body leaves on Edda's shoulders — this house renders what falls in it. Long wrapped mass hung still through the whole fight, still unexplained; my door in the north bond still ahead.
• 2026-09-01 · receipt-proving-1 Final session, chapel: my death settled — 15gp sealed to Edda as estate purse held to my kin, kit (cord, spikes, small hammer, rations, waterskin) to Barnaby priced against his share, half-share and the 25gp dwarf-price still open on the books. The grey silk mass read from the floor: adult human shape, no timber grain, hung ninth year after the fall — Vess's own word, unknown road-man, no token. Vess spoke through a two-finger crack, no face: entered dead rendered are Prue Candell and Hobb Coalfell; no chandler deputation on the tally; three crossings, no balance. Market is NOT his account — no entry since the fall, black not entered as stock; bring the reeve's clerk's leaf and a name may be tested — that leaf is Wexley work and Barnaby's road home. Edda's dagger stays caught in the silk, her own rule, entered against her. My body came out on Edda's shoulders in daylight, boots on the swept line; chalk stub and line stay at my line in the chapel. The shrine is not cleared, the duke's reward unclaimed, the wrapped road-man still hangs. The company walked out carrying me. The account remains.