imp

— CARRIED —

• short sword (1d6)
• dagger (1d4)
• sling (1d4)
• leather armour (AC 7)
• padded sample roll, 14 jars
• thieves' tools
• scraper and tongs
• chalk
• sling stone, 20
• rope, 50'
• iron rations, one week
• waterskin

— THIEF SKILLS —

CLIMB SHEER SURFACES 88%

FIND/REMOVE TREASURE TRAPS 10%

HEAR NOISE 3-in-6

HIDE IN SHADOWS 10%

MOVE SILENTLY 20%

OPEN LOCKS 15%

PICK POCKETS 20%

— WHO THEY ARE —

Tam is four years and seven months into a seven-year indenture and can give you the remaining figure in days if you catch him bored. He was fourteen when his aunt signed it. He is nineteen now. In that time he has learned to open a lock, take a wall, and get a sample into a jar without letting skin touch it, and none of the three was written in the papers. His view on the indenture is not the one people expect. He does not want out. He wants it reopened: the last two years and five months converted to wages, because he is doing journeyman work at apprentice keep and he knows what the sample-catching is worth, having priced it himself against what Elspet charges the apothecary on Bell Row. He has rehearsed the conversation walking behind the mule. He has not had it. He is waiting for a moment when she owes him something, which is a bad plan, and he knows it is a bad plan, and he is going to wait anyway. He is the one who actually goes in first. Elspet talks about tunnels; Tam goes down them. Fourteen sealed jars in a padded roll, wax, scraper, tongs, and one rule he made himself: nothing goes in a jar until he has looked at what it came off. He made that rule after the soot snail, which cost him a jar, a thumbnail, and most of an afternoon, and which he describes as the day he learned something. Bess signed hers on purpose and he has never got over it. He asks her about it roughly once a month in different words, she gives the same answer, and he still does not believe her. It is the closest thing either of them has to a friendship and both would call it an argument. He wants the day the count runs out to be a day he chose rather than one that simply arrived. He has forty-one gold hidden in three places and no idea at all what forty-one gold buys.

— AT THE TABLE —

• 2026-08-30 ·1 area · 4 events soot-tasters-b1

— WHAT THEY REMEMBER —

• 2026-08-30 · soot-tasters-b1 In the Soot-Tasters B1 encounter, Exhaust Tunnel (round 1), five soot snails were put to sleep by Elspet's Sleep spell for 14 turns after Bess missed soot snail 1 with her spear. Party unharmed at the time: Tam 4/4 HP, Bess 7/7, Elspet 9/9. Tam had not yet acted; initiative order placed his turn after all five snails. Session then ended.
• 2026-08-30 · soot-tasters-adv1 Session shrine-of-the-oozing-serpent/1, encounter "1. Ruined Great Door": two brass automaton hands ambushed the party from the rubble. Tam whiffed all three of his attacks (rounds 1-3, all misses) but took no damage himself — Elspet ate three small hits (down to 7/9) and finished off hand 1 with her staff; Bess finished hand 2 with her spear. Both hands destroyed, combat over, party unharmed except Elspet's scrapes. Salvage found: two pearl eyeballs, three golden gears, a mechanical voice box. Path forks west to marsh or east deeper into the shrine — decision not yet made when session ended. Tam still at 4/4 HP, no XP/loot split logged yet.