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— CARRIED —

• mace (1d6)
• sling (1d4)
• leather armour (AC 7)
• parish burial book
• holy symbol
• flask of chrism oil
• iron grave-nail
• sling stone
• iron rations, one week
• waterskin

— SPELLS —

MEMORISED Cure Light Wounds

KNOWN Cure Light Wounds, Detect Evil, Light, Protection from Evil, Purify Food and Water, Remove Fear

— WHO THEY ARE —

Jerrold reads the service when the priest cannot ride out, which in this parish is most weeks. He is not ordained. He has the burial book, the oil, and a diocesan licence that fits on one side of a page. He has put nineteen people in the ground in six years, four of them children. People ask for him by name and he has never got used to it. There is a rite for the dead and a rite for the missing and they are not the same rite. He has used the wrong one for his brother twice: once in the eighth week because Maren's mother asked him to, and once at Christmas, alone in the church at night, which he has told nobody about and which he thinks about far more than the first. He also put his name on the notes for the second cart. Twenty-two gold to a man in Threeoaks who has been patient for eight months and has lately, politely, begun to stop being patient. Without a death the estate does not settle. Without a body there is no death, only a man who is away. Jerrold has done that arithmetic and it makes him feel like something with its hand in a dead man's pocket, and he has done it twice more since, because the number does not change. He loved his brother and did not much like him. Anders was loud, took the long contract every time it was offered, and borrowed off Jerrold four times without once being asked to pay it back. What Jerrold feels is not clean and he has stopped waiting for it to become clean. He told Maren once, in the kitchen, that the dowser was selling her something. She said I know. That ended it and he has not raised it again. He watches Quill work the fork and takes an interest he would rather not have: the man is careful, writes down his misses, and does not perform. Jerrold came ready for performance and does not know what to do with its absence. What he wants is to say the right words over the right thing and close the book on it. He does not expect the marsh to give him that. He came so that if it does, somebody standing there knew Anders' name before it was a line on a board.

— AT THE TABLE —

• 2026-08-30 ·1 area · 108 events widow-of-the-road-b1

— WHAT THEY REMEMBER —

• 2026-08-30 · widow-of-the-road-b1 Round 10: I read the plaques. Gnomish, all ten distinct, none matching the name-cluster on the wall. The wall names no one buried here.
• 2026-08-30 · widow-of-the-road-b1 Round 16 ended: north door opened on a chamber with a used workbench and stoppered glass vessels; Maren and Quill hold the captured firefly in canvas and plumb-line. I stepped in and my mace-tap woke a small gloop guard under the bench—it stares, no blow struck yet. West door locked; inner wall solid; all ten caskets sound alike.
• 2026-08-30 · widow-of-the-road-b1 The firefly is an articulated machine—head, six jointed legs, folded wings, pulsing blue abdomen, no key—and my chrism line did not slow or turn it. Chrism flask is partly used. Quill dowsed with Maren's boot and got nothing; she has it back.
• 2026-08-30 · widow-of-the-road-adv1 Shrine of the Oozing Serpent, Area 1 (Ruined Great Door): two brass automaton hands ambushed us from the rubble. One nearly took Quill's arm off (he dropped to 1/5 HP) before Maren speared it dead. The second latched onto Maren's wrist; I finished it with the mace after a couple of clean misses. Fight ended with both hands destroyed, Maren 5/7, Quill 1/5 with a torn forearm, myself unhurt at 7/7 — I still have Cure Light Wounds memorised and unused; Quill needs it before we go further. Salvage in the debris: 2 pearl eyeballs (50gp each), 3 golden gears (25gp each), a mechanical voice box. West is open marsh, east an open threshold deeper into the shrine — that's the way toward whatever answers wait for Anders. Note for next time: cast CLW on Quill before pressing on.