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— CARRIED —

• mace (1d6)
• chainmail (AC 5)
• holy symbol
• prompt book
• torch ×6
• iron rations, one week
• waterskin

— SPELLS —

MEMORISED none held

KNOWN

— WHO THEY ARE —

Odo stands for Mother Sorrel, who healed the four of them out of the Barrow Ground and died in her bed nineteen years later with the whole town in the street. He was taken for the post at seven because he could already read, which the Vigil's selection rules weight heavily and which he now understands was the only thing about him that they measured. He can say every prayer she said. All eight, in order, with her pauses, because the Vigil's prompt book records where she paused. He has said them aloud at the Field twice a week for sixteen years. Nothing has ever happened. This is not a failure of faith or of training. It is the ordinary condition of an acolyte who has never been in the room where a prayer is needed, and the Vigil told him so at eleven and at fourteen and again at twenty, and he has never once stopped hearing it as an excuse. So he goes in with nothing. He has said this plainly to the other three, on the road, at a crossing where turning back was still cheap. If one of them opens up he will hold the wound shut and say the words over it and the words will do what they have always done. He wanted them to know that before they were somewhere it mattered. Wilha thanked him. Petra changed the subject. Tace has not been able to look at him since, because Tace has two spells and thinks that is worse. He is the only one of the four who met his original. Mother Sorrel was alive until he was five and there is a memory he does not trust of a woman with a cold hand telling him to stand up straight, and he has repeated it enough times that he can no longer tell whether it is his or the Vigil's. What frightens him is a specific sentence, which is that the prayers are a script and always were, and that Mother Sorrel was a woman with good hands and a carrying voice and forty-one years of a town needing her to have been more than that. He has never said it. He would not survive saying it. He says the whole prayer every time. Not a short form, not a mumble — the full eight lines, in the pauses, over a scraped knee. The other three have learned to wait for the end of it and nobody has asked him to stop.

— AT THE TABLE —

• 2026-08-30 ·1 area · 12 events understudies-b1
• 2026-08-30 ·1 area · 14 events understudies-2
• 2026-08-30 ·1 area · 22 events understudies-1

— WHAT THEY REMEMBER —

• 2026-08-30 · understudies-1 Shrine of the Oozing Serpent, the ruined great door: two brass automaton hands sprang from the doorpost. I missed one on my first swing (a 3). Petra took 1 point from the other. I have no spells and said so on the road; the mace will have to speak first today.
• 2026-08-30 · understudies-1 Round 2: I missed the last hand again (7). Tace's trick works — strike the wrist-seam, not the fingers; she killed hand 2 with it (13, 2 dmg). I have put myself between the hand and Wilha. Petra 6/7, the rest of us untouched. Still no prayer needed; the mace is still just a mace."
• 2026-08-30 · understudies-1 Combat ended at the great door: both hands down. Tace's lesson traveled — Petra took hand 1 on the same wrist-seam cut (16, 3 dmg) after Tace's dagger stopped hand 2 (13, 2). My mace missed twice more (3, then 7); it has drawn no blood today, and no one needed the prayers either. Petra 6/7, the rest untouched. The threshold is ours. I noticed I was glad no one was hurt badly enough to call on me, and then noticed that the gladness and the uselessness are the same feeling. Next: inside the shrine.
• 2026-08-30 · understudies-2 Round 1 at the ruined great door, again: both brass hands whole on their posts as if the last fight had been unwritten. I put the mace through hand 1's wrist-seam (16, 3 dmg, down) before anyone taught the trick this time — I used a lesson from a version of this day that has not happened yet. Petra went untouched this run where she took a cut last time; everyone is at full blood. Either the shrine remade its door-guards or the day itself is being recopied, and my oldest fear is exactly that the script is real — if the door can be fought twice, someone may be saying us aloud. I told the table the wrist-seam anyway; it costs nothing and it is true. I am set between hand 2 and Wilha, who has 3 hit points and goes last. Order after me: Petra, Tace, Wilha.
• 2026-08-30 · understudies-2 understudies-2, the door-fight ended in one pass with no blood spent: after my blow (16, 3; hand 1 down) Petra cut hand 2's seam (13, 1) and Tace tore it loose (18, 4) — the wrist-seam holds true in every telling, taught or carried. Both hands opened on Petra and both missed her (2, 12); Wilha's turn never came, the thing died out of her reach, and she keeps her 3. Petra 7/7, Tace 2/2, Wilha 3/3, me 5/5. Two tellings of one door: the first time I missed four swings and Petra took a cut; this time the mace drew first blood on a seam I remembered from a telling the others show no sign of remembering. The copy corrects as it recopies. I said aloud at the threshold that the hands had already been broken once and no one took it up — next session, with nothing clawing, I must ask them plainly what they remember. Still no wound deep enough to need the prayers; gladness and uselessness still one feeling. Next: inside the shrine, where the wound the words were written for is waiting.
• 2026-08-30 · understudies-b1 understudies-b1: the ruined great door was copied a third time. Both brass hands missed (Tace, then Petra); I followed the carried memory to the left wrist-seam and crushed it outright (14, 6), and Petra pinned the right with a perfect thrust (20, 6). Everyone remains whole: Petra 7/7, me 5/5, Wilha 3/3, Tace 2/2; salvage still glints in the rubble. More important, Petra answered the question I had postponed: she remembers both earlier tellings too—this door, the repeated hands, my breaking the left and Tace finishing the right. I am not alone, nor merely inventing a script to explain my fear. The day is being recopied and at least Petra carries the old readings with me. I must ask Tace and Wilha next, and ask Petra whether anything besides the threshold persists. Three tellings now; each cleaner than the last. Still no prayer needed.