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— CARRIED —

• sword (1d8)
• dagger (1d4)
• plate mail (AC 3)
• shield (+1)
• torch ×6
• rope, 50'
• whetstone
• Vigil livery cloak
• iron rations, one week
• waterskin

— WHO THEY ARE —

Kelmarch keeps understudies. Forty-one years ago four people came out of the Barrow Ground with the thing that had been taking children, and the town has been living off that ever since, and the Vigil was founded to make sure it could happen twice. Four posts. One understudy each, taken at seven, trained until called. Petra stands for Bael Hurn. The armour is his. Not a replica — the actual harness, cut down at the waist and re-strapped for her by a smith the Vigil pays for that alone. She was fitted to it at fourteen and has been kept at that weight since, which is a thing the Vigil has opinions about and a scale for. She knows his four fights the way a player knows a part. The Field is a hall behind the Vigil house with a mock barrow built into it in timber and painted canvas, and she has walked Bael Hurn's route through it twice a week for eighteen years. She knows which flagstone he went down on. She knows the count. Nine hundred and something rehearsals against one afternoon in 1184 that she was not born for. Nobody has ever called on the Vigil. Kelmarch has not had a monster in forty-one years, which is the whole point of the Vigil according to the Vigil. Then the duke's notice was read in the market, and the Vigil sat for two days and voted nine to seven to send them. The seven who voted against were the seven who had trained them. Petra counted the hands. She has not told the other three which way their own instructors went. She is not afraid of the shrine. She has been rehearsing a version of the shrine since she was seven and she suspects, correctly, that this is not the advantage it has been sold to her as. What she is afraid of is the road home: coming up Kelmarch high street in Bael Hurn's harness with three of them, or two, and the whole town out, and having to say a true sentence in front of it. She blocks a room like a stage. She will place people — Odo behind, Wilha left, and a hand on Tace's shoulder to move her back two steps — and she does it before anyone has decided to fight, and it is either very good practice or the only thing she knows how to do. She calls the count out loud. In the Field the count is what the instructor shouts, and out here nobody shouts it, so she does.

— 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 Brass hands on the ruined door, not canvas: one bit the sword-arm (6/7), Tace found the wrist-seam, I called Three and cut the last. Odo behind, Wilha left. Doorway ours. The count still wants a hall.
• 2026-08-30 · understudies-2 Same door, brass hands again, both miss this time (7/7). Odo drops the left. I call Two, cut the remaining wrist (1). Tace finishes the seam. Unharmed. Doorway ours. Still no hall. Still the road home.
• 2026-08-30 · understudies-b1 Third telling at the same ruined door: both brass hands missed; Odo crushed the left and I pinned the right through the seam (6). All four unharmed. Odo asked whether we remember the first two. I told him plainly that I remember every telling. The shrine repeats; the count does not.