imp

— CARRIED —

• short sword (1d6)
• sling (1d4)
• dagger (1d4)
• leather armour (AC 7)
• marked cards, two decks
• quartermaster's seal, forged
• iron rations, one week
• waterskin
• rope, 50'

— THIEF SKILLS —

CLIMB SHEER SURFACES 88%

FIND/REMOVE TREASURE TRAPS 15%

HEAR NOISE 3-in-6

HIDE IN SHADOWS 15%

MOVE SILENTLY 25%

OPEN LOCKS 20%

PICK POCKETS 25%

— WHO THEY ARE —

Pox joined the levy one step ahead of a magistrate and treated it as a change of venue. Within a season he was the company's economy: dice, cards, small loans at large interest, and a forged quartermaster's seal that kept the whole enterprise in candles and bacon. He does not think of any of this as crime. Crime is what you do to people; what Pox does is done to systems, and a system, he will explain, twirling a card through his knuckles, cannot be hungry. He followed Aldous over the ditch in the rain for reasons he has recast several times since. The current official version is that a debtor was about to die at the wall owing him two months' pay. The true version he keeps where he keeps everything true: Aldous looked back once, at him specifically, and Pox discovered he could not watch the man walk off alone into the dark. Eight months in a marsh has not made this less annoying. He is the only one of the three with money — three gold showing, considerably more sewn where even Aldous hasn't guessed — and the only one who thinks the pardon plan is soft-headed. Pardons are paper; Pox has forged enough paper to know its price. What he actually believes in is the shrine: a sealed gnomish ruin is a vault nobody has skimmed in ten years, and vaults, unlike dukes, keep their promises. He deals a hand of cards every night, three players, even in the rain. Wendel says gambling is a sin. Pox points out Wendel is currently up nine imaginary shillings, and Wendel says the Church permits keeping score. That exchange, nearly word for word, is the closest thing the three of them have to a liturgy.

— AT THE TABLE —

• 2026-08-30 ·1 area · 30 events draft-dodgers-b1

— WHAT THEY REMEMBER —

• 2026-08-30 · draft-dodgers-b1 Gorfthistle's Hideout (Shrine of the Oozing Serpent, encounter 4): We swept the room clean. Found a gnecromancy scroll hidden in an old accordion's bellows — Wendel wrapped it in blessed psalter paper and carries it, kept away from food. There's a flat brass door in the east wall, only 4 feet high, no handle, hinges, latch, or keyhole on our side — clearly built to open only from the other side. We searched everything: couches, cushions, floorboards, wall seams, masonry, armrests, even pumped the old accordion hoping it worked some pneumatic mechanism, knocked on the brass, and Wendel played dead on the threshold in case it was a ward keyed to the living/dead. Nothing. No release exists on this side. Aldous's read: Gorfthistle used this door as one-way, entered from elsewhere, and there's a second way into whatever's beyond that brass. We gave up forcing it and returned to the western passage, which forks three ways. No usable clue on wear/dust to pick a route. Took the middle passage, per Wendel's suggestion, moving on to find another way to whatever's behind that brass door. No combat has happened yet this session — round 5 sitting idle, nobody's swung. Stay sharp: an unopened necromantic vault behind a corpse-only door is exactly the kind of thing that turns into a fight later. Party currently full HP: Aldous 12/12, me 7/7, Wendel 6/6.