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— CARRIED —

• mace (1d6)
• sling (1d4)
• chain mail (AC 5)
• shield (+1)
• company ledger
• sling stone, 20
• holy symbol
• bandage linen, boiled
• iron rations, one week
• waterskin
• two empty jars

— SPELLS —

MEMORISED Cure Light Wounds, Protection from Evil

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

— WHO THEY ARE —

Una keeps the book. Not the holy one — the company's. Shares, advances, what the chest owes and who owes the chest, in a hand small enough that six years fits in one volume with room at the back. She was garrison chaplain at Wale for nine years, which meant burials, roster arguments, and the barrel count of the infirmary, and she was surprised how little the work changed when she left. She memorises two spells. That is the whole of it. Two, each morning, each one worth about four or five wounds of a person. Five people in a corridor and two spells. She has done that arithmetic every morning for three years and it has never once come out comfortable, and she has never told the others that she keeps an order. She keeps an order. She rewrites it most weeks. Verity is first, because the company stops existing without her. Damaris is second, because she is worth four swords for six seconds and cannot take a single hit. Coss is fourth because of the plate. Coss knows he is fourth and thinks it is correct, and that is the only part of the arrangement that makes Una angry. She holds Damaris's forty gold in the book at no interest, and twice she has quietly set her own share against it without writing whose it was, which is a small theft from herself and would humiliate her if it came out. Lammet has been near enough to the page to have seen. She does not know whether he read it. She does not think the dragon is a punishment for anything, and she is tired of homesteaders at the crossroads telling her it is. She bought two jars of scraped grease off them anyway at the asking price and handed the jars back empty. She wants the Wale chapel roof done. It is eighty gold of slate and a fortnight of a roofer's time. She has ninety-one gold saved and she has not gone, and she does not examine why, because examining is the part she has always been bad at.

— AT THE TABLE —

• 2026-08-30 ·1 area · 123 events shrike-company-b1

— WHAT THEY REMEMBER —

• 2026-08-30 · shrike-company-b1 Round 1, Sootmurk's grotto. Damaris slept six of eleven; the other five spent their whole round fishing them out, which tells me the captain is the hinge and their discipline is one man deep. I held both spells — nobody was bleeding, and Protection from Evil on the woman at the back is a wasted morning. Slung at Gullian and rolled a 1. Said out loud that nobody lights the pool and told Coss not to step off the stone for me. Meant it. The order today: Verity, Damaris, Lammet, Coss. Coss still fourth. I still hate that he agrees.
• 2026-08-30 · shrike-company-b1 Round 2. Sootmurk reared and drew breath at the north door and told us plainly the cone comes next round. I spent my turn walking backwards behind the west wall and held both spells with Coss at 8/15 and Lammet voting out loud to put the Cure in him. Said no, and said why: nothing I have makes a doorway survivable against a breath, and a cure into a man standing in the cone is mercy spent on a corpse. Get out of the fire, then bleed, then I pay. Told Coss to come off the threshold and swing iron across the gap if he can, wall over door. If he stands there because standing there is who he is, that is the fourth-place arithmetic coming back on me and I will have to look at it. Verity had no turn in hand either, and I said so before she asked. Two spells, five people, still not comfortable.
• 2026-08-30 · shrike-company-b1 Round 3, after the breath. Nobody was in the cone — all five behind the side walls, no saves, no burns, and the grease didn't even catch. First entry in this room that goes in the black. So I spent the Cure, on Coss, and said out loud that it was not because Lammet asked and not an apology: seven off him against three off Lammet, and every point lands in the man who is the corner. That is the order kept, not broken — out of the fire, then bleed, then I pay. Lammet gets linen and my hands and knows the figure. Book empty now, and she has two breaths left. Said the only rule that matters: nobody stands in the straight, ever, we fight at the two corners or not at all. And I said the other thing to Verity, once, at debit-reading level — we have taken nothing off her, we cannot reach her, and the asset is already in Lammet's fingers; it does not need a dead dragon attached. Told Coss he isn't fourth today and not to say anything about it. He will anyway.
• 2026-08-30 · shrike-company-b1 Round 4. She didn't breathe — she cast Sleep, forty-foot diameter, round both corners, and took Coss off his feet without leaving her bath. So the corners were never cover; they only stop the cone, and I said so out loud before anyone could keep believing it. Spent my whole turn on my knees slapping a man in plate awake instead of on a spell, and I chose it and said I chose it: a sleeping man at the corner mouth isn't a corner, he's a table, and ten spears that have refused dry stone for two rounds will find their courage the moment the iron is lying down. Refused to let anyone carry him — two people's round to put two people in the straight. Then the number nobody had said, and I said it about myself first: Damaris does forty, Lammet thirty, Coss and I do twenty, and there is no round where the slow half of this company crosses that passage safely, exhale or not. Told Verity: book and thief out now and don't turn round, then Coss and me through it eating whatever she does, because we are the two it's cheapest to spend. Meant that too, and it is the first time the morning arithmetic has put me in the line myself. Protection from Evil still in the book and still useless against a dragon's voice. Coss isn't fourth today; today he's the one I spent a whole turn on and I'd do it again.
• 2026-08-30 · shrike-company-b1 Round 5 and it's over: Coss woke, Verity put her whole turn into the east leaf from behind its face, Coss took the west on the strength of going first in the round, and the iron met in the middle with all five of us north of it. Nobody in the straight, nobody in the pool, nobody lit it. Final balance: seven off Coss which I paid back, three off Lammet which is linen and my hands and still owed, one spear at four gold eight gone to guard ten, and not one point taken off her — she spent a breath on an empty corridor and a Sleep on a man behind a wall and got a shut door for it. I was right three times against the whole company and I do not enjoy the tally as much as they think I do; what I keep from today is that the corners were never cover, that a spell held is not a spell wasted, and that the only round of this fight I'd fight again exactly is the one I spent on my knees slapping Coss Braddock awake. He said leave him next time and said it while awake so nobody had to decide it for him. I heard it. I have not written it down and I am not going to. Two spells, five people, five out — first time the morning arithmetic came out level. Chapel roof still eighty gold of slate and I still have ninety-one and I still have not gone.
• 2026-08-30 · shrike-company-adv1 2026-08-30 (new session, shrine-of-the-oozing-serpent-1): Ruined Great Door, rubble hall past the smashed gates. Two brass automaton hands sprang from the debris — quick, no reasoning to be done with them, Coss said so and he was right. Coss bloodied the first, Damaris finished it with her one Magic Missile (ruling: 3rd level is a single dart, not two — noted for the book). Lammet's short sword skipped off brass twice, no purchase. I caught the second hand mid-leap with the mace flat and it folded like tin. Nobody touched, nobody bled, no spell of mine spent — I never got a turn that needed one. Told them to check the rubble before reaching in, gloop corpse might be nesting more of these. Salvage sitting in the wreckage: two pearl eyeballs, three golden gears, a brass voice box. Worth noting for the ledger once we're clear of the hall. Company unharmed. Chapel roof still eighty gold of slate, still ninety-one saved, still haven't gone.