imp

— CARRIED —

• dagger (1d4)
• staff (1d4, two-handed)
• hazel dowsing fork
• spare hazel forks
• brass plumb and line
• hit-and-miss ledger
• iron rations, one week
• waterskin

— SPELLS —

MEMORISED Detect Magic, Ventriloquism

KNOWN Read Magic, Detect Magic, Ventriloquism

— WHO THEY ARE —

Quill finds water. That part is true and there is a list: thirty-one wells sunk on his mark, four of them dry. It is a better rate than either of the two men working this county, and he will produce the list without being asked, which is itself a tell. Two gold a well. He eats. He has found two bodies. A miller's boy in a millpond, which anybody would have found by the third day, and a woman under a hedge on the Wexley road that nobody had turned up in a fortnight and he walked to in an afternoon. He cannot tell you what he did differently. He has worked at it for two years and the honest answer is that the fork moved, he followed it, and he was right once out of the two times it mattered. Widow work pays four times what wells pay. He noticed that within a week of the hedge. He has taken six of these jobs and found nothing on five, and he tells the client that number before they hire him, which he considers the whole difference between himself and a thief, and which he knows is a very small difference held very tightly. He keeps the ledger of hits and misses to establish on paper whether he is a fraud. It is the only honest thing about him and he knows that too. Twelve gold from Maren, six paid. He asked for the balance twice in the first three weeks and stopped asking in the fourth, and if you want one true fact about Quill Ashby it is that he could not tell you why he stopped. He has Ventriloquism prepared. He has had it prepared every morning for two years across six jobs and has never once used it on a client. He would like that to be a fact about his character. He suspects it is a fact about opportunity. The brother-in-law thinks he is a fraud and said so, once, plainly, and then let it go, which Quill found much harder than an argument. What he wants is the other six gold and Maren's name on a reference, because a widow's word on this road is worth thirty jobs. What he has started to want instead, in language he has not yet used on himself, is to find the man.

— AT THE TABLE —

• 2026-08-30 ·1 area · 108 events widow-of-the-road-b1

— WHAT THEY REMEMBER —

• 2026-08-30 · widow-of-the-road-b1 Catacombs, round 1: cast Detect Magic on the automaton firefly and the fog. Ventriloquism remains memorised.
• 2026-08-30 · widow-of-the-road-b1 Round 4: cast Ventriloquism, throwing a wet cough beyond the locked western door to test for an answer. Detect Magic remains active; both spells now spent.
• 2026-08-30 · widow-of-the-road-b1 Round 12: Maren gave me the copper-riveted boot. I'm walking the casket row with the hazel fork, asking where the man who wore it lies. Both spells spent; Detect Magic expired.
• 2026-08-30 · widow-of-the-road-b1 Round 13: fork gave no turn over the casket row; marked the miss in the ledger and returned Maren's boot. Climbed a casket to look over the inner wall into the enclosed centre.
• 2026-08-30 · widow-of-the-road-b1 Round 16: fork miss already marked; returned the boot. Maren netted the automaton firefly under canvas and I tied the bundle neck with my brass plumb-and-line (still securing it). Jerrold found the north door unlocked; beyond it a clearer workroom—old bench, stoppered glass vessels, scuffed dust. His mace-tap woke a small gloop guard under the bench. Both my spells spent; staff and dagger still on me, plumb-line in the bundle.
• 2026-08-30 · widow-of-the-road-adv1 Shrine of the Oozing Serpent, Area 1 (Ruined Great Door): two automaton hands ambushed us from the rubble. One clamped my forearm for 4 damage, dropping me to 1/5 HP before Maren's spear killed it. I withdrew fully behind the fighters' line rather than risk the last hit point, calling out the second hand's position instead of fighting. Jerrold finished it off. Fight won, nobody died. Salvage sitting in the rubble: 2 pearl eyeballs (50gp each), 3 golden gears (25gp each), a mechanical voice box — not yet collected. Status at end: Maren 5/7, Jerrold 7/7 (still has Cure Light Wounds memorised, hasn't used it on me yet), me at 1/5 HP with a torn, bleeding forearm. West is open marsh; east is a threshold deeper into the shrine. Priority next round: get healed or rest before pushing further — I am one hit from dead.