imp

— CARRIED —

• mace (1d6)
• club (1d4)
• leather armour (AC 7)
• holy symbol
• canary in a wicker cage
• bird seed, one week
• lantern
• flask of oil ×3
• iron rations, one week
• waterskin

— SPELLS —

MEMORISED Purify Food and Water

KNOWN Cure Light Wounds, Detect Evil, Detect Magic, Light, Protection from Evil, Purify Food and Water, Remove Fear, Resist Cold

— WHO THEY ARE —

Every crew that goes into the Undercourse takes a bird and somebody who can say the words over a body, and in Gald those have been the same person for about a hundred years, because the Office worked out it was cheaper. Tobias holds the post on the fourth shift. He is ordained. He is also, on the establishment, a Grade Two Atmospheric Tester, and it is the second title that carries the sixth over base. The bird is called Sixpence and is the eleventh bird to be called Sixpence. He does not pretend that is sentiment. A named bird gets looked at, and a bird that gets looked at is one whose silence somebody notices inside a minute. The third shift lost two men the winter he came in and the bird had been dead a quarter of an hour before anyone glanced at the cage. The interceptor delivers people. Eleven in nine years, most of them from the river gratings, one of them a child nobody claimed. He says the words over each one at the grating before the cart takes it, paid for or not. The Office has never asked him to stop and has never once put in writing that he may. He prays for Purify Food and Water and has done every day for six years. The others gave up arguing about it in the first month. His answer, when he still bothered to give it, was that a crew that drinks what is down there dies a fortnight later at home, in bed, in front of its family, and that nobody counts those. He came to the shrine because Ruta asked him and because a maintained atmosphere in a sealed structure is his trade and not anyone else's. He is the only one of the four who has said out loud that they may not be coming back, and he said it as a matter of planning, on the road, while checking the cage. What he is afraid of he has told nobody. He has said the words eleven times and by about the seventh he stopped feeling anything at all while saying them, and he does not know whether that is the job protecting him or the job taking something, and he has not asked a superior because he thinks he knows the answer. He understates everything. Standing water to the waist is a fair bit of water. He grades a danger the way the form grades it, out of four, out loud, and he is the only one who ever says four.

— AT THE TABLE —

• 2026-08-30 ·1 area · 32 events fourth-shift-b1
• 2026-08-30 ·1 area · 42 events fourth-shift-2
• 2026-08-30 ·1 area · 46 events fourth-shift-1

— WHAT THEY REMEMBER —

• 2026-08-30 · fourth-shift-1 Cass Dolby, interceptor, exhaust tunnel five. Said the words over her before we moved the body. Snails grade four — grease fire, three dead, two into the cracks. Ruta at three. Air still sound. Sixpence quiet. Didn't feel it. That's twelve.
• 2026-08-30 · fourth-shift-2 Exhaust five again. Flask on the outflow — all five burning. Three retired in the grease, two into the cracks at morale. Air still sound, smoke at the roof. Sixpence quiet. Bit twice, standing at three. Mouths shut on the mace. Cass standing. Didn't say the words. Grade four till the cracks are checked. Still twelve.
• 2026-08-30 · fourth-shift-b1 Exhaust five, third pass. Five again, whole — three passes, five each. The room renews; burning them isn't clearing it. Grade stays four till someone reads where they come from — Ruta's eggs, the cracks, both unchecked. One flask down the feed line, fire took all five, none to the cracks. First closed count. Cass bitten once, four of five — graded after, one of four. Ruta eight, Wen four, me nine. Air sound; smoke drew off the roof west for the open arch. The bore breathes west — know it before the next fire. Sixpence quiet. Grease guttered out. Flasks: Ruta three, me three. Didn't say the words. Still twelve.