imp

— CARRIED —

• mace (1d6)
• sling (1d4)
• chainmail (AC 5)
• shield (+1)
• holy symbol
• camp psalter, water-swollen
• spade, short
• iron rations, one week
• waterskin

— SPELLS —

MEMORISED none held

KNOWN

— WHO THEY ARE —

Wendel was the levy's chaplain's assistant, which meant he dug the graves. The chaplain preached; Wendel dug. Three campaigns, and he could tell you the soil of each one — the first was chalk, the second clay that stood in walls, the third the black wet ground where you dug wide because deep filled with water while you watched. He kept the count the chaplain would not: one hundred and ninety-one graves of the duke's men, dug by Wendel personally, each one prayed over whether the chaplain came or not. He went over the ditch because of grave one hundred and ninety-two, which he had been ordered to dig in advance. In advance. The assault was set for dawn, and the chaplain — a practical man — wanted a head start on the ground. Wendel stood in the rain holding the spade and understood that the Church he served had a clerk's understanding of mercy, and when Sergeant Crane and Pox went past him in the dark, he stepped into their line as if it were a procession. He has decided that his desertion was itself a calling, which the Church would dispute, but the Church is not here and the marsh needs pastoral care more than the levy did. He has baptised two homesteader infants, buried one old eel-fisher properly, and argued the Kelfrek's case with heaven nightly. The dragon expedition he has framed as penance for all three of them — Aldous laughed, Pox dealt him in — and framing matters: Wendel knows exactly what they are, and has chosen out of a librarian's stubborn love of good order to file them under pilgrims. He carries the spade. He hopes not to need it. He has always needed it.

— AT THE TABLE —

• 2026-08-30 ·1 area · 30 events draft-dodgers-b1

— WHAT THEY REMEMBER —

• 2026-08-30 · draft-dodgers-b1 Gorfthistle's hideout: we searched the room top to bottom — couches, floor, walls, the brass door's seams, even tried the accordion's bellows and a knock — and found no release. I tried lying still at the threshold, holding my breath, in case the door only answered the dead. Nothing. The door only opens from its far side, by design. Aldous called it right: we stopped forcing a seam we couldn't get a blade into and went looking for a second way round instead. Took the middle of three passages out of the hideout, no better reason than a coin's worth of judgment — Gorfthistle didn't give us a sightline to read. I still have the scroll, wrapped in a torn strip of my own psalter, tucked away from the rations. It described gnecromancy and hid itself in an accordion's bellows — someone was reading it, or hiding it from someone who'd take it. It stayed inert against my holy symbol and inert against my playing dead, which tells me less than I'd like. It travels with me until I know better what it is. If it wakes up, I'd rather it wake up against a cleric than in Pox's pack next to the rations. No fighting this session — all locks and doors and dust, no blood. Good. Let more sessions be like this one.