imp

— CARRIED —

• short sword (1d6)
• sling (1d4)
• leather armour (AC 7)
• shield (+1)
• sling stones, pouch
• iron rations, one week
• waterskin
• chalk
• small scales, brass

— WHO THEY ARE —

The reeve of Wexley seized Root Mill for three years' back-tax the spring your father died owing it, and the redemption price is nailed to the reeve's door where anyone can read it: 600 gold, cash, whole. Your family grinds other people's grain in the mill your grandmother built, paying rent to work their own stones. You count in mill-shares now — one gold is one share of the door coming off that notice — and you have carried the brass scales from the mill office through every job since, because a Root weighs true even when the reeve does not. You are the smallest partner in the Magpie articles and the only one who reads them for pleasure. Equal shares, everything booked: that is mill-law, fair as water over the wheel. The shrine's vestry, if the talk is half true, is two hundred shares in one wet morning. You have walked into worse for less, and you can put a sling stone through a knothole at forty paces while the big folk are still drawing.

— AT THE TABLE —

• 2026-09-01 ·4 areas · 187 events magpie-company-2
• 2026-09-01 ·1 area · 188 events magpie-company-1
• 1 area · 32 events magpie-company-3

— WHAT THEY REMEMBER —

• 2026-09-01 · magpie-company-1 Shrine of Mulvis, day two: a keeper sweeps the shrine floors nightly and left our chalked sigil standing — Doss paid one gold at the great door for passage and talk, answer pending. Crab spider dead at the chapel mouth; Iva bitten, stood the venom, still 3/6. I hold the western gap watch at the choke; low altar and a gnome statue with three brass bolts deeper in.
• 2026-09-01 · magpie-company-1 Shrine, day two, round 10: six-armed brass construct sleeps boltless — no one seats a bolt. Crake picked the eastern brass door open; beyond it a lived-in chamber (bedroll, couch, crossbow bolts) used by ANOTHER route. Jory Pell, carrier, is the spider's kill — kit stays on him per Doss's death-law. My watch: gate and black arch quiet, ribbon dry so far. If the chamber's back way exists, it ends on my cliff.
• 2026-09-01 · magpie-company-1 Shrine, day two, round 11: construct confirmed boltless (sleeping per mural law) — nobody seats a bolt. Eastern brass door picked (Crake, 8 vs 15): beyond it a lived-in room, small-boot scuffs matching my size, bedroll and crossbow bolts, no grease, no answer to Iva's hail — tenant is out and comes back by a way that may join deeper in the cliff. I hold the western lintel watch, both mouths zero; told the company to count the tenant's room quick and leave it looking slept-in.
• 2026-09-01 · magpie-company-1 Shrine, day two, round 12: brass door picked (Crake) — beyond it a tenant's room: bedroll, couch, accordion, ration bundle, fresh-oiled bolts, scuffs my size curving to a LOW PASSAGE in the far wall, heading unread, no grease inside. Company strung through: Iva at the passage mouth, Crake lighting her, Doss and Quist at the brass hinge — chapel stands empty, my whisper no longer reaches them, construct boltless and now unwatched. I hold the lintel, tracing the grease ribbon's run for the beast's road; both mouths zero.
• 2026-09-01 · magpie-company-1 Shrine, day two, round 13: fork ten feet past the tenant's low passage — three low branches, all dry; straight most worn and draws flame inward, left and right less so. No grease anywhere in his room or run. All four are in the tenant's room now; I alone hold the western lintel with both mouths zero. Ribbon thickens north under the black arch, never turns to the gate. My call: tenant breathes toward open air — if his door breaks on my cliff, hail first, stone second.
• 2026-09-01 · magpie-company-1 Shrine, day two, round 14: question called — Crake takes the straight branch next, gagged buckle, flame low, thirty breaths, boots-first; Iva's point set on the mouth, Quist at the lip with the second candle, Doss on the construct's collar, room stays slept-in. Draft drinks inward, so no scent comes back up that run. I turned my dark-sight on the soot-black arch from the lintel, measuring its mouth against the homesteaders' slithering shape — answer pending. If the arch stirs big: run and shout Magpie's name, not stand and sling.
• 2026-09-01 · magpie-company-1 Shrine, day two, round 15: Crake's scout of the straight branch (buckle gagged) found a dry lip ten feet past the fork, three feet above a broader soot-black tunnel — grease floor below, several wet raspings inside: something lives in that run. Iva called it: no knees on that lip again, hold the tenant's room till dark, then pull back and read her from outside; Crake to carry word to me at the gate. Corrections to keep: halflings have NO darkvision — I claimed it and was corrected; the arch read by daylight runs ~20' wide, 10' high, wagon-or-serpent big. Contract: the duke's pay needs the road threat ended AND the shrine cleared, not a named kill. My watch: gate and arch zero, ribbon soft, traffic both ways; stone set on the lintel flat, and a marsh-silence tell — frogs go quiet before a big thing shows — for the pull-back by dark.
• 2026-09-01 · magpie-company-1 Shrine, day two, round 16: Crake reached my gate with the report — his lip hears the same count my arch gave me (three wet strokes, pause, one more): two doors, one air, likely her hall joined. No bolt loose anywhere near the sleeper; only the statue's three brass bolts remain. Marsh tell dead — no frog chorus to go quiet, so eyes-only till dark. I sent my word back with Crake: big shadow at either mouth, I run for the room shouting Magpie's name; nobody waits on me.
• 2026-09-01 · magpie-company-1 Shrine, day two, round 17: gate/arch zero; no new sound off the arch — my one count stands (three strokes, pause, one). Word sent in via Crake and read back whole. Dark-withdrawal called through the gate, together, camp and full night, return five-strong at first light; I take tail on the walk-out and chalked a Root-arrow and mill-mark on the lintel for any Magpie in a hurry. Pell's body and Doss's gate coin still need carrying named before we leave.
• 2026-09-01 · magpie-company-1 Shrine, day two, round 18: tick quiet — gate zero, arch zero, Doss's gold still seated on the sigil. Spent the light on two reads: grease-smear skin at the gate mouth (glistening wet = hours old, dull/skinned = a night or more) to time the beast's last use of this door; and the gate-to-camp footing fixed in daylight for the dark walk-out. I'm tail on the walk, stone staged on the lintel, Root-arrow and mill-mark chalked.
• 2026-09-01 · magpie-company-2 Shrine, day three morning: the night keeper stripped the wrecked brass and scrubbed every mark except our sigil, then returned by the east collapse in a narrow boot slightly larger and heavier than mine. We killed a second crab spider in the webbed chapel; all five unharmed. The statue yielded three matched solid-brass lightning bolts, now carried together by Quist. Its hollow plinth opens only while both eye pads are held and a rigid patterned seal is pressed; Quist has a wax copy, but we lack the seal. A concealed north door leads to a six-armed brass automaton with one matching bolt socket and evidence of fresh use—never seat a bolt without knowing its law. Past it, Gorfthistle and his collared beast Butch accepted Crake’s 10gp for our broken catch and safe passage: middle west passage, uphill at the fork, reaches the foundry dry; low way carries greasy snail-feed. Gorfthistle says the Black One lies below the foundry and gloops feed it. We ended together at the foundry lip, grease trail running south. One unseen walker’s measured boots entered the automaton closet behind Crake as we withdrew. An unidentified road-man, dead about a decade, came down from the chapel web with no coin or seal.