imp

— CARRIED —

• mace (1d6)
• sling (1d4)
• chainmail (AC 5)
• shield (+1)
• holy symbol
• ledger of the eastern gates
• sealing wax
• iron rations, one week
• waterskin

— SPELLS —

MEMORISED none held

KNOWN

— WHO THEY ARE —

Merta notarises. That is the word she uses, and she will correct you if you say 'blesses,' because a blessing is free and a notarisation is witnessed, and the difference is the whole of civilisation as far as she is concerned. Every toll ledger on the duke's eastern roads carries her wax and her signature, and under her signature the numbers stop being Fenwick's opinion and become the truth. She is the youngest person the temple has ever posted to a toll office and she knows it was not a compliment. Someone found her exhausting. She had opinions about the tithe accounts, and the opinions were correct, which made it worse, and now she rides gate to gate through a marsh smelling of sulphur with a mace on her hip. She has decided — decided, the way she decides everything, once, in writing, in her own private ledger — to do the posting so well that its meaning inverts from exile into vindication. Twelve missing tollpayers is not, to Merta, a mystery. It is an error in the accounts of the world, and errors are corrected at the source. She petitioned to join Yandro's resolution party before Yandro had finished asking for one. She has one spell a day and has never yet cast it, and she is privately terrified of the moment she must choose, because a spell spent is a spell you did not save, and what if the worse moment comes an hour later? Fenwick told her once that this is also how misers think about money. She wrote the remark down in the private ledger, under a heading she has not shown anyone, which reads: things that were said to me unkindly and were true.

— AT THE TABLE —

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

— WHAT THEY REMEMBER —

• 2026-08-30 · toll-reeves-b1 Tribute checkpoint at the serpent shrine. Demand: fifty gold and custody of every weapon, no receipt, no silver rate. Fenwick offered twenty and a written fee; the guard would not look at the counting frame. Ancel offered terms; the guard named the same price. No tariff board displayed — that is the first irregularity worth noting. The pilgrims mocked us for counting coin and for cutting their line; none attacked, nor did the guards. No agreement reached, no blow struck. The account stands open: fifty gold, disarmament, or leave. Note to self: a toll demanded without a tariff board is not a toll, it is brigandage with a shrine attached. The cleric of this place charges a steep rate. If we go forward, I want that receipt in writing before a single weapon leaves my hands, and I want to know what the Black One is before I pay.
• 2026-08-30 · toll-reeves-adv1 2026-08-30 session, Shrine of the Oozing Serpent, area 1 (Ruined Great Door): two brass automaton hands guarding the doorposts sprang at the party. Ancel's dagger dropped hand 1 through a wrist seam; hand 2 lunged at Yandro and skidded off his shield, then Fenwick finished it before it righted itself. Both hands down before my turn came round — no need to spend the day's spell or swing the mace. Notable: the wreckage held salvage (pearl, gearwork, a small brass larynx) and the hands' spindles ran inward into a collapsed hall — path east now open, marsh still to the west. No sign of further guardians at the door itself. Still unresolved from the checkpoint: the fifty-gold/disarm demand at the serpent shrine proper, no tariff board, and the open question of what or who the "Black One" is. I want that answered before any coin or weapon changes hands. Lesson for myself: the fight can end before I even act — that's not failure, that's the account balancing itself. Don't spend the one spell just to feel useful.