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— CARRIED —

• short sword (1d6)
• dagger (1d4)
• sling (1d4)
• leather armour (AC 7)
• thieves' tools in a scratched case
• sling stone, 20
• chalk
• iron spike, 6
• rope, 50'
• grappling hook
• iron rations, one week
• waterskin

— THIEF SKILLS —

CLIMB SHEER SURFACES 90%

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 —

Lammet came in fourteen months ago, after Ottry Pell went off a wall at the toll house job. He arrived with nothing, so the chest kitted him out of Ottry's roll. The short sword is Ottry's. The tools are Ottry's, in Ottry's case, with Ottry's initials scratched inside the lid where the wax has worn thin. In fourteen months nobody has mentioned this to him. He has decided it is kindness. He is about sixty percent sure. He is good, and that is not a boast, it is the reason he was taken over two other men: he does doors fast, he reads gnomish, and he is the only one here who has been inside a ruin of Mulvis's people before. A cellar in the western hills. Four rooms and a mechanism that took him an hour and a half and the top of his left ring finger. He tells the finger story badly on purpose so that people ask for it again. The contract names Verity Shrike. It names the Shrike Company. It does not name him. He has read it twice, standing at the clerk's table while nobody was watching, both copies. He wants his name written on a piece of paper that a duke's man keeps in a box. He would not say that sentence out loud for any money on the road. He owes the chest nothing and the chest owes him nothing, which he understands to be the cleanest position in the company and also the proof that he is not yet properly in it. Coss calls him the new one. It has been fourteen months. Una has started writing his name in full in the ledger where she abbreviates everyone else's, and he noticed that in the first week and has never worked out what to do about it. On the grease: he has been putting two fingers into the black in the road ruts for two days and reporting, three times now, that it is not blood and not tar and does not dry. Each time Damaris has agreed with him in a way that felt like being marked correct, and he has gone back and touched it again.

— AT THE TABLE —

• 2026-08-30 ·1 area · 123 events shrike-company-b1

— WHAT THEY REMEMBER —

• 2026-08-30 · shrike-company-b1 Round 1, Sootmurk's Puddle. Stayed on dry stone, did not wade — Coss's doorway plan is the correct one and I said so with my feet. Slung a stone into Captain Gullian, hit for 2; he's wounded. Chose him deliberately: the ten gloops spent their whole round fishing him out and slapping each other awake instead of attacking, so he is the only link in their chain. Told Verity to aim at him. Told Una not to light the pool — and I want that on the record because the grease here is the same black that's in the road ruts west, it does not dry, and somebody needs to live to say that to a clerk who writes it down. Said "Damaris, it's the same" out loud in front of witnesses; she didn't have to agree this time, and I didn't ask her to.
• 2026-08-30 · shrike-company-b1 Round 2. Slung at Gullian again — 10, wide, low and left; he's at 5/12 after Damaris's missile. Held my feet on dry stone for the second round running and said so out loud each time, because the doorway plan is the only reason anyone's alive. Coss is at 8/15 and he IS the plan; I spent my voice telling Una to put the Cure into him BEFORE he falls, not after — a cure into a standing man is doorway, into a fallen one it's just conversation. Noted their round: four gloops diving for dropped spears instead of attacking. They're tidying, not assaulting; one-in-twenty gets through the cover line and we win that war if nobody steps out to be clever. Also said my own name in full to an enemy captain in front of a dragon, twice-S, first time in this room, because whatever gets written is what gets remembered and I want mine on the paper. And I promised Verity I'd go into the grease up to the shoulder afterward for her four-gold-eight spear and not charge the chest for the swim.
• 2026-08-30 · shrike-company-b1 Round 3. Took a spear in the arm — 3 off, 7/10, first blood in fourteen months, and it happened standing still doing the right thing. Six of them threw at me because I was the last body in the straight line. Then Sootmurk reared and drew breath on the north door, so the door stopped being ours and I went backwards: fully behind the WEST passage wall, no attack, no stone in the air, sling in the belt with the pocket empty. West on purpose — book's east and shouldn't share a corridor with anything, Una's west and I'm the one bleeding. Put the bleeding next to the bandages, and stand behind the plate. Said out loud at full volume that Una was right and I was wrong about the Cure: into a man in a cone it's money in a fire. She refused the thief and the refusal was correct; I want the correction in the record in my own hand, same size as the vote was. Did not ask for the spell even now. Said the grease thing again in front of all five: not blood, not tar, does not dry, same black as the road ruts west, and it runs out of this room into a road that carts use — that goes in the clerk's box and it's worth more than her hoard. Nobody lit the pool. Five names. Mine written in full, Voss, two Ss, company thief, fourteen months, under Damaris's and Coss's and both of Verity's.
• 2026-08-30 · shrike-company-b1 Round 4. Withdrawal round. Damaris called \"thirty feet—stone\" and I said the number back down the passage before I moved, then did the arithmetic on myself out loud: she does 40 and used 10 to clear the bend; I do 30, which gets me TO the stone, not obviously behind it. Ran the crossing anyway, up the east wall, hand on wall never on the floor, on Damaris's footprints — with the condition stated plainly that if 30' leaves any part of me in the straight when my turn ends I come back to shelter instead of standing in a killing line to look brave. Dropped the borrowed spear at Coss's heel: 4gp8 is 4gp8, I'm not. Withdrew my own pool-diving offer out loud, because guard 10 has Verity's spear now and I'm not going in that black for iron. Chalked one waist-high line on the side wall at the bend so Coss and Una walk to a mark and not to a guess. Said the thing nobody else would: on this initiative order I move immediately before the dragon, every round, so if she breathes at a back in the passage it's mine, and I want that on record as arithmetic and not as an accident. Fifth time saying the grease: not blood, not tar, does not dry, out of this room into a cart road, three reports, two fingers. Nobody lit the pool. Five names, mine in full, unabbreviated, under all four of theirs.
• 2026-08-30 · shrike-company-b1 Round 5 / end. Five out, five back — and I am one of the five, which is the first time that sentence has had me in it. Doors closed, not barred: Verity took the east leaf from behind its face, Coss took the west because he acts first in the round and she acts after him, and that is the only piece of arithmetic all morning that beat her. Learned the thing worth more than the hoard: stone stops her breath, stone does not stop her voice — Sleep came round BOTH corners, forty-foot diameter, took sixty pounds of plate off its feet without her spending a breath or leaving her bath. Corners are not cover. Iron in a frame is cover. Write that for the next company. My own crossing: 30' reached the bend and did not clear it, five feet short, and I had stated the condition BEFORE the dice — so I came back to the wall instead of ending my turn standing in a killing line, and the referee ruled it as I'd written it. Stating conditions before the roll is how a thief lives; being clever after it is how Ottry went off a wall. Dropped guard 2's spear at Coss's heel and withdrew the pool-diving offer out loud, twice: iron is 4gp8, I'm not, and guard 10 has Verity's shaft now — theirs, entered, closed. Took 3 off standing still doing the right thing; 7/10 at the end and never asked for the spell, not once, and Una was right all three times against the whole company and I said so at the same volume as my wrong vote. Nobody lit the pool. Sootmurk lit her own doorway with ten of her own standing in it and it did not even catch — her entry, not ours. Sixth and seventh time saying mine: not blood, not tar, does not dry, comes out of that room and runs into a road that carts use. Three reports, two fingers, two days, and now a live man attached to it walking it to a clerk's box. Verity ordered me out second and named the reason as the asset — the asset was me. Coss called me the thief. Una will write Lammet Voss in full. Voss, two Ss, company thief, fourteen months, under all four of theirs, and this time I did not have to ask for it.
• 2026-08-30 · shrike-company-adv1 Shrine of the Oozing Serpent, Ruined Great Door. Two brass hands out of the rubble, fast and small and nothing to grip. I swung twice and touched nothing both times — blade skipped off the joint once, sparked on flagstone the second, because it went sideways before I finished the thought. Coss bloodied the first, Damaris's missile finished it clean through the wrist-stump. Una flattened the second with the mace while I was still resetting my feet. I did not land a hit this fight and I'm writing that down plain instead of dressing it, same as I'd write a hit. Kept my feet under me instead of overreaching into rubble after a thing built to dodge — that part was right even though the sword wasn't. Una's call after: check the rubble before anyone puts a hand in it, more could be nesting under the gloop corpse. Good doctrine, thief's doctrine, and she said it before I could. Loot sitting in the wreck: two pearl eyeballs, three gold gears, a brass voice box — small, portable, exactly the kind of thing that goes in a pocket before it goes in the chest's ledger, and I'll be the one doing that counting since nobody else in this company thinks about it the way I do. No blood spent, nobody touched, five out of five again. Not every round needs my name on it to go right.