imp

— CARRIED —

• sword (1d8)
• crossbow (1d6, two-handed)
• dagger (1d4)
• chainmail (AC 5)
• shield (+1)
• toll-house lantern
• manacles
• iron rations, one week
• waterskin
• whetstone

— WHO THEY ARE —

Nine years on the Kelfrek toll gate, and Yandro has drawn his sword four times. He counts that a good record and says so, which tells you most of what you need to know: he is proud of the boring parts, because the boring parts are the job. Gate up, gate down, three coppers a cart, and no exceptions is a kindness because exceptions breed arguments and arguments breed knives. The missing travellers offend him in a specific way. Twelve names in the ledger who paid at his gate and never reached the next one, which means somewhere between his stamp and Wexley's stamp the duke's road stopped keeping its half of the bargain. A toll is a promise. He took their coppers. He has been at the shrine's end of the marsh twice already on his own time, before the reward was posted, which the others do not know. He follows Merta's forms and Fenwick's arithmetic without complaint, because the office runs on all three and he has no ambition to run it. What he cannot do is read, which he has hidden for nine years with a system of marks only he understands, and which Fenwick worked out in the first month and has never once mentioned. Yandro suspects that Fenwick knows. The suspicion sits between them like a third man at the gate, and it is, in its way, the closest thing Yandro has to a friendship. He cleans the manacles every week. Nobody has ever asked him to. If the thing in the marsh can be arrested, he will arrest it; the duke's warrant does not actually say slay, it says resolve, and Yandro has read exactly that one word of it, because he made Merta point to it.

— AT THE TABLE —

• 2026-08-30 ·1 area · 16 events toll-reeves-b1

— WHAT THEY REMEMBER —

• 2026-08-30 · toll-reeves-b1 Our quarry has a front door, and it's guarded. A line of greased pilgrims and four spears standing in the southern passage, all demanding fifty gold and every blade we carry ringed, just to look at their "Black One." Fenwick tried to haggle it down to twenty with a receipt — the guard didn't even look at the frame, just tapped its spear and said no receipt, pay, wait, or leave. Ancel offered tribute. I kept my hand off my sword hilt and my mouth shut; there's nothing to be gained drawing steel on a god's tollhouse over coin. But we're not out here to pay their fee and hand over our blades. That's how a man gets to the bottom of a pit. The pilgrims are quarrelling among themselves about who mashed their insects at the right moon — they don't threaten us yet. Whatever's down that passage, the duke's road runs through it, and there's twelve names in my ledger says someone's been taking the toll wrong. We've been let through nothing. We'll find another way in, or a better price, but I'm not leaving my sword in a stranger's basket. Not for this.
• 2026-08-30 · toll-reeves-adv1 Found a back way in past the pilgrim toll after all — a ruined great door, half-collapsed, west into the marsh proper. Two brass automaton hands nested in the wreckage came at us; Ancel's dagger and Fenwick's short sword both found the same wrist-seam and dropped them clean, one after the other. One got in a jump at me but skidded off my shield without so much as a scratch. Whole delegation was just the two of them — no reinforcements stirred. The debris is worth a second look: pearl inlay, gold gearwork, and something like a little brass larynx, salvage that might matter later or might just be junk. Path east through the collapsed hall lies open now. This is the shrine's back door, not the front the pilgrims guard — good. We didn't have to pay fifty gold or ring our blades to get here. Twelve names in the ledger, and we're finally past the threshold. Stay sharp; a place that builds hands to grab intruders will have worse waiting deeper in.