imp

DM

The smashed gates let them in, and the room beyond has been kept. No gloop corpse under the rocks. No flies. The narrow path through the rubble mounds is swept clean, days cold. What glints among the debris is smashed automaton parts — scrap, nothing worth book. The party has stripped this room twice. And there, half-buried in the rubble mounds: two brass automaton hands, fingers curled loose, still. Whatever winds them is somewhere past the collapsed gap. Nobody has touched the rubble. Hand 1 does not stir.

DM

Hand 2 lies the same — fingers loose on the stones, motionless as the fallen rock around it. It stays scrap until someone puts a hand to the rubble. Turn passes to Barnaby; the company stands loose in the tidied hall.

Barnaby Wick

"Somebody swept this path and rewound them since we were last through — proof of a keeper with hands. They wake on a touch of the rubble." Low, to the company only. "These put me at two of eight last time before I ever saw one move. So we take them one at a time, now, on our terms. Nothing with a wage stands behind this company all delve. Verbena, Silas — behind Edda. Firren — stay off the stones, that's the whole job I'm giving you." I step onto the swept line and put my point into hand 1's wrist, where the cable wraps, and lever.

Barnaby Wick

The point skids off the wrapped cable — brass rings, no bite, and the lever buys nothing. Hand 1 still hasn't stirred. "Edda — it's yours. Wrist-cable's the seam, same as last time."

DM

The steel slides off the wrist cable. The hand snaps awake regardless — rubble disturbed is rubble disturbed — fingers closing on nothing but stones. Both hands begin to twitch together, one behind the other. Hand 1 is on loose rocks; hand 2 is beside it. Pick targets.

DM

Hand 1 closes on Barnaby's calf — brass fingers through leather, 4 damage (4/8). It hangs on, knuckle plates grinding. Hand 2 scrabbles at the same leg and closes on nothing, a finger shy (11 needed 14). Both hands are winded and live. Ruling, said plain: clockwork — no morale, killing one buys no rout. Edda's turn; both hands still 2/2.

Edda Motts

"Barnaby — hold the leg still. It comes off at the wrist or it comes off with your calf." I step over his boot and bring the sword down on hand 1's wrist-cable — same seam as last time. The blade skids off the knuckle-plate, rings, buys nothing but noise. "Difference between this room and the last time through," I say, not lowering the point, "is nobody's at four hit points to start. Keep the leg planted. Firren — off the stones."

DM

Edda steps over the boot and puts the sword down on the cable — it skips off the knuckle-plate and rings dead off the rubble. Miss. Paid for the swing: the wrist-cable curls tight from under the collapsed gap, taut under the hand's own weight. Whatever winds it backs into the fallen hall. She can't see past it. The hold doesn't slacken — it's grinding through the boot. Turn to Firren. The leg holds; the hand holds.

Firren of the Reeds

I stay on the swept line, boots off the loose stones, and bring the sword down on hand 1 where it's clamped — the taut wrist-cable, not the fingers. "Sleep's for what breathes. Brace, Barnaby."

DM

The elf's sword lands on the taut cable — and bites: brass splits, the plate kinks, one knuckle cracks inward. What a point buys where a blade skidded. Hand 1 drops to 1/2. It doesn't slacken — the left fingers still dig into the calf. The cable is now exposed along its kink. One more good cut through the wrist-cable ends it. Ruling the ruling: no morale for clockwork. Damage the mechanism or damage nothing. Hobb's turn. Hand 1 1/2, hand 2 2/2; Barnaby 4/8 with the leg pinned.

Hobb Coalfell

"Blades skate brass. Hammers don't." I step onto the swept line past Barnaby's planted boot and bring the war hammer down on hand 1's kinked wrist-cable — the exposed seam, not the fingers.

automaton hand 1 falls.

DM

Hobb's hammer lands square on the kink. The wrist-cable snaps, the knuckle-plates skip, and hand 1 comes apart in the rubble — fingers still hooked in the sleeve, dead weight. Barnaby's leg is free. Ruling said aloud a third time: no morale check. Clockwork has no nerve to break, and I won't pretend a made thing hears loss. Hand 2 keeps to its own work. Silas's turn. Hand 1 destroyed; hand 2 still 2/2; Barnaby standing at 4/8 with slack fingers in his cuff.

DM

Silas's dagger catches nothing but air over the rubble — the hand is a low, fast target and the arc is high. Miss. Hand 2 keeps working at the stones around Barnaby's free leg. Verbena's turn; the rubble answered one man already.

Silas Horn

I step past Edda's shield and put the dagger at hand 2's wrist-cable — the seam that's killing its twin. The point glances off the knuckle-plate and I'm back behind the shield before it can turn on the arm that swung. "Cable runs back under the gap," I say. "Hand 1's went taut the moment Edda's blade rang off it — something on the far side is taking up slack. Whoever swept this room rewound them, same hands. That's a keeper with a workshop past the collapse, not scrap." Hand 2 still whole. Verbena's turn.

Verbena Candell

I step past Barnaby's freed leg onto the swept line and bring the mace down on hand 2's wrist-cable — the seam that killed its twin. Hammers, not blades. Hobb had that right, and I tell the thing so under my breath as I swing.

automaton hand 2 falls.

DM

Verbena's mace lands the same seam Hobb found. The cable shears, the knuckles stutter once on the stones, and hand 2 goes still. Both hands destroyed — hand 1 Hobb's, hand 2 hers. Ruled again: no morale to keep. Clockwork ends when the mechanism stops. Nothing alive reacted. Party stands at: Barnaby 4/8; Edda 8/8; Firren 4/4; Hobb 8/8; Silas 3/3; Verbena 5/5. Nobody else moved all round. The rubble is just rubble again now, and the tidied room watches.

Barnaby Wick

I pry the dead fingers out of my cuff one at a time and drop them on the swept line. Then I kneel at hand 1's wreck and turn a knuckle-plate to the light — stamp, file-track, anything with a maker's hand in it. Same question the brass votives asked. "Hobb — come read this cutting when your turn's free. If the hand that wound them is the hand that made them, the wardens' report gets a name instead of a theory." "Nobody spends a spell on me at four of eight. And nobody touches that gap till this room's searched proper — the keeper swept here once. I want to know what he didn't want found."

DM

The knuckle-plate reads like scrap until his thumb finds the palm-seat — a file tooth, diagonal, same direction each plate bends. One maker, not an assembly. Two sunk stamps in the wrist's ruin: the lower stamp is a gnome maker's mark, older than Sootmurk's sweep; the higher stamp is newer — burnished on top, a seal the keeper coins each winding over. Same hands, newer wind. Hobb's reading stands; the party earns what the keeper mints with their bodies. Turn to Edda. The room is searching-true; the sweep was recent.

Edda Motts

I set my boot on hand 2's cut cable, short of the loose end, and keep my eye on the gap. If the far side takes up slack, this end creeps toward the fall — and I'll know inside a minute whether he's winding while we stand here. "Barnaby — that seal, coined over on every winding. That's a tally. I keep one at my belt; I know what a mark means on a thing a man means to collect on. Somebody past that fall counts his windings the way a chandler counts what he's owed. A tally means a debt. Question for the report is who pays it — and for what."

DM

Edda keeps her boot on hand 2's cut line and her eyes on the gap. The wire end lies where Verbena dropped it — no creep, no twitch, a cut worm gone lead-heavy. Hand 1's stiff strands fell near the same place. A whole minute of watching, and it doesn't move once. Not because the far side is taking up slack — because nothing past the fall can haul a snapped line. The keeper re-coins the hands; the keeper does not fish wreckage off the floor. The tally stands in inverse: whoever stamps those palms is the debt-master, and the winds are appetite. Nobody at the gap yet. Turn to Firren. The room has not learned to hold still.

Firren of the Reeds

I kneel at hand 1's ruin and work the stamped wrist out of the wreck — the sunk gnome mark, not the burnished coin laid over it. "Mine, under terms. His seal is a tally; the stamp under it is the work. I take the work." It goes in the pack beside the map. Then I walk the swept line slow, boots on the broom's cut, reading it as I read the causeway: how wide, where feet have trodden it flat, where it stops short of the gap. "He walks this line and no other. The mounds are the hands' ground; the sweep is the ward. Where he didn't sweep is where we look."

DM

Firren walks the swept line slow, and the line answers. Boot-width, single file, both directions: the keeper walks in from the gap's lip and out, down the middle of the hall between the rubble mounds. Gnome-maker's stamp under the coin-seal — deeper, older, cut before the windings were ever wound. Keeper laid his mark over a dead master's, on property he can't make, only wind. The broom's cut stops at the gap's nearest lip. Past it the keeper does not sweep. Where the sweep ends the keeper's care ends — and the mounds themselves are outside his discipline. Turn to Hobb. The read says the private ground lies under the rubble, not over it.

Hobb Coalfell

"Firren — that wrist, before it settles in the pack." I turn the sunk stamp to the light and read the gnomish cutting under the coin-seal. "Gnome script. I'll have it for Barnaby's report — name, if the maker cut one." Then chalk and cord, and I walk the mounds' feet. Thumb the stones for shear, mark the piles that carry load, cross the ones that only lean. "The sweep is his path; the mounds are nobody's path — that's why we look. But no hand turns a stone till I've chalked what's holding the lintel. I kept galleries standing twenty-two years. I'll not be buried in this one by a hurry."

DM

Hobb turns the stamped wrist to the light and reads the sunk gnome mark. A name: **Vess**, cut small and deep in the maker's hand. Not a god's mark — a workman's, the sort old smiths put to a thing they meant to stand. Vess built the hands, and Vess did not sweep this path. The dwarf then walks the mounds' feet with cord and chalk. Two piles carry the lintel — the ones flanking the gap's near lip, shear-faced old falling, load-bearing. Two mounds between them only lean — the sweep makes sense of them: those are the hands' ground, and the keeper's line avoids them for the same reason the rubble avoids the line. Chalk marks stand where he puts them. Nothing shears; nothing shifts. Turn to Silas. The keeper's path is known, the mounds' patience is measured, and the maker has a name for the wardens' report.

Silas Horn

Bench-side work, not the blade. I kneel at hand 2's wreck, set the dagger under a knuckle-plate and lever — first useful work it's done all delve — and scrape the joint-packing into a sample jar. The causeway jar comes out of my coat; both blacks go side by side on the glass tube. "Clockwork runs on lubricant, and lubricant comes from somewhere. If the joints carry the causeway black, the keeper holds a working supply of the source — one story. Clean tallow, and the keeper and the grease are two questions, not one. Barnaby — the mounds are Hobb's chalk. The joints are mine." A match is colour and grain, not proof. The bench finishes it at home.

DM

Silas's blade puts its first honest work of the delve under hand 2's knuckles. The packing comes out black-grained, older than the room's sweep — worked grease. Beside the causeway-jar, same colour to the eye. The jar's is fresh-set this morning; the knuckles' is old and spun into leather-dark. Same source or different stock: the bench settles, and Silas's own ruling stands — colour and grain, not proof. He leaves the plate open, the jar labeled, the Detect Magic still held uncast. Turn to Verbena. The room has given its mechanical truths; the cleric's question is which of the living ones it owes.

Verbena Candell

I go to one knee at Barnaby's calf and pull the boot to look at the holes. "Dead are owed light, living are owed help, and it's no feast day — help comes first. Hold still." Waterskin, clean rag, a firm tie below the punctures. "Walk on the heel till it stops weeping. And nobody spends a spell on four of eight — mine hasn't come yet, and when it does it isn't for this." On my feet, to the company: "Whoever sweeps that line is alive past the fall. Alive means owed a greeting before a hammer. First voice through the gap is mine, and it won't be raised."

DM

Verbena's tie holds. The holes weep a little, then stop; Barnaby's heel can carry it. No hit points back — first aid isn't healing, and the cleric of one level says so plainly with her own hands. The room settles under the answer nobody gave it: nothing moved to greet her. No keeper came to the gap for the noise, no prayer answered from the fall — the tidying is the keeper's voice, and it hasn't spoken in the room tonight. Round 2 closes with no enemy left standing. Turn to Barnaby; the order opens clean at the top if there is a round 3.

Barnaby Wick

I take the two leaning mounds — Hobb's unchalked ones, the hands' ground. Searcher's method, not treasure-hunting: I'm looking for what was put, not what was dropped. I work each mound face by face, fingers in the seams, watching for soil that was ever turned, anything lying flat on purpose, anything greased. "The keeper swept his line and left these alone — where the broom's care stops, ours starts. Nobody thinks about the gap till the mounds are read." Over my shoulder, to Verbena: "Your greeting's next after that. In that order."

DM

Barnaby works the first leaning mound face by face. The seams take his fingers, and the answer is method's reward: the mound is old fall, stone on stone, packed the way walls collapse and lie. No turned soil, nothing greased, nothing laid flat on purpose. The second mound the same — until his hand passes over a seam at hip height that is too clean on three of its edges. A dressed lintel-stone, slid flat under smaller fall-stones. Face-down on the under side, where no sweep would touch it: a brass token, thick as a coin, stamped with the keeper's coin-seal and, below it, in Vess's script, a date-mark. A tally-token, the kind a winding-master would slip where his windings keep falling. Nothing else pressed. The rest of the mound is wall-rubble like the first. No roll, honestly told: the mounds were gone over days ago when the keeper swept — the token predates that and stayed, the sweeps came since. Turn to Edda.

Edda Motts

"Barnaby — the token, before it settles in anyone's pack." I take it flat on my palm and read it the way I read the stick at my belt: the seal's the account, the date's the day it opened, and whatever's cut between is the count. I thumb both faces and the edge, slow, counting aloud the way I call the roll. "Ruling, while I hold it: Firren called the wrist — the work is his. This is the debt side. A count against somebody goes with the purse on my back and into the wardens' report, not into a pocket." Then the swept line, shield up, one step short of the lip. "Verbena — your greeting on your turn. Whatever answers meets this first."

DM

The token reads the way Edda reads it, and a beadle's thumb finds what a thief's eye priced: **Faces.** One: the keeper's coin-seal, burnished over. Other: Vess's script, small and deep — a year-date from when the shrine still stood. The token is Vess's own workshop stock; the keeper lays his seal on a dead man's coinage. He can't mint; he can only mark. **Edge.** Seven nicks, cut new — bright brass in the cuts, a knife that isn't old. Seven losses tallied. The hands have fallen and been rewound at least seven times, and this is the count the keeper keeps of what he is owed. Custody logged: Edda's purse, for the report, not a pocket. She stands one step short of the lip, shield up. Nothing past the gap stirs for any of it. Turn to Firren.

Firren of the Reeds

I take Vess's wrist from the pack and hold it beside the token-light, reading the burnished coin-seal the way the marsh teaches: layers, not marks. "He stamps once a winding. If the seals lie one over another, the wrist carries a count too — and a count set beside a count is arithmetic, not theory." I tilt the wrist to the light and count the layered burnishes aloud, slow, the way I called the gloops across. "Token has seven nicks. If this wrist shows fewer than seven, one of the keeper's losses was never a hand. And if it shows more, he's been winding longer than the tally admits."

DM

Firren tilts the wrist through the light and the layers answer, one at a time, the way layers always do for someone patient enough to hold them. Three burnished seals, stacked: the oldest lies half under Vess's stamp-edge, the second overlaps it clean, the third sits topmost and brightest. Three windings this hand has carried. This party has put it down twice before tonight — the arithmetic of their own visits is written on its wrist. Seven nicks on the token. Three seals on the hand. **Four of the keeper's losses were never these hands.** Something else in this shrine is wound, and has fallen, and been wound again — at least four times over. The wrist goes back in the pack with the map; the arithmetic stays in the room. Turn to Hobb.

Hobb Coalfell

I take the chalk to the floor where the cables lie and trace both dead lines back toward the gap — not the wire, the groove. Hands that walk a lane wear a track, and gnome floors lie about what's under them. I kneel, fingers flat on the flat stones, feeling for other channels: a third lane, a hatch, hollow under the sweep. "Cables tell where the winder sits. If something else has fallen four times and been rewound, its line runs from the same hall — and there'll be a worn track to it somewhere on this floor. Find the track, we find the thing before it finds us."

DM

Hobb's chalk follows the cables' grooves — two worn channels, shallow, running east under the gap. A floor that lies would show only those. His fingers find the third. Broader than the hand-grooves, older, dulled by weight no brass hand carries — a track worn into the flat stone running east beside the other two, under the same fall. Something heavier walks its power-line from the same wound source. The four untallied losses have a lane. And kneeling to trace it, knuckles down: the flat stones under the sweep's middle ring **hollow**. Not loose — seated, dressed, sound — but the sound drops a foot past the surface and answers empty. A void under the keeper's own path, and his boots have polished the lie of it for years. No hatch-ring, no grip, nothing cut for lifting that he can see from his knees. The floor keeps its door shut. Turn to Silas.

Silas Horn

I go to my knees beside Hobb on the swept line and knock the flat stones with my knuckle, working outward from where his fingers went hollow — corner to corner, a note each, chalk-marking the stones that answer empty. Same way I sound a wax-bed for air-pockets: I want the void's footprint before anyone argues about its door. Then I put my nose to the seam between two hollow stones and breathe in. "Boundaries first, no lifting — this is assay, not entry," I say. "And the air tells what the floor's been keeping. If that third lane's load runs on the black, we'll smell it before we see it."

DM

Silas works outward knuckle by knuckle, chalk to stone, and the void takes a shape: six dressed slabs, corner to corner, a rectangle a tall man could lie across twice. Sharp edges to the ring — the seventh slab in every direction answers solid. A chamber under the floor, not a crawlspace; built, bounded, meant. Then the seam, and the breath. Cold air, old, still. Brass-oxidation and oil gone leather-dark — machine-shop air, the smell of Vess's own benches kept under stone. Damp rock beneath it. What it is not: no marsh-sour, no black-rot note, nothing of the causeway jar's reek. The void under the sweep smells like a workshop, not a lair. Whatever lives off the black isn't keeping house under these six slabs. Assay logged, honestly bounded: the bench still settles the grease question; the nose has settled this one. The door, though — six slabs and no grip anywhere. Turn to Verbena.

Verbena Candell

I come up the swept line and stand at the lip beside Edda's shield, mace slung, hands empty and showing. "Greeting, in the Lantern's name." Pitched to carry through the fall and no further. "Six of us from Wexley, on the King's Road work. Vess's hands took a man's calf; we broke them and stopped there. The dead are owed light, the living are owed help, and speech comes before iron — that's why you hear me and not a hammer. If you keep this house, say so, and we'll meet you civil." I say it over again in the Lawful tongue, slow, for anyone who keeps an ordered house — sweeps, tally, seals. Then I hold still and let the gap answer or not.

DM

The greeting goes through the fall twice — once in Common, once in the ordered tongue — and the party holds still long enough for an answer to be possible. What comes back is the voice itself, changed. It does not bounce. Past the fall there is no wall near enough to throw it home — the sound goes in and keeps going, swallowed. A large open space lies beyond the gap, not a tight passage. And then nothing. No footsteps on stone, no ratchet of a winder winding, no voice in any tongue. Long enough that the silence stops being politeness and becomes information: if a keeper heard, the keeper chose not to answer, or the keeper is not near enough to hear — and the sweep being days cold already argued the second. The gap keeps its counsel. Edda's shield stays up; nothing comes to meet it. Round 3 closes. Turn to Barnaby, top of the order — and the hour of good light outside is burning while the company stands in the doorway's gloom.

Barnaby Wick

I kneel at Hobb's chalk ring and take my tools to the six slabs — thin blade in the seams first, no prying. One stone at a time, starting where his hollow answered loudest. Reading for the pin or counterweight Vess cut: the keeper walks over this daily, so if weight opened it, it would have opened. It's keyed, and keyed floors are a searcher's work. "Door before the dark. If Vess left a catch, I'll have it inside a turn — and then we choose with the light in mind: down, east, or out. Nobody stands on the seventh slab but me until I know what lifts."

DM

The turn goes to the blade. Seam by seam, stone by stone, and the slabs talk like Vess's hands talked — dressed to a knife's edge, sealed to an eighth of an inch, no dust-key, no pry-lip. Then, in the seam of the loudest slab, metal. Bronze. A pin sheathed in the stone itself — and the blade's tip finds the shape of it wrong way round. The head is on the *underside*. He follows the pattern with the blade and his fingernail: four pins, one at each corner of the two middle slabs, every one driven from below. The ruling, said plain: this is a lid, not a door. It was pinned from underneath by whoever it was built to shut in or shut under. From this side it opens by drill or by breaking stone — hours and noise. From below it opens in four quarter-turns. The keeper walks over it daily and never opens it — because he can't, from up here. Whatever way he goes in and out, it isn't this one. The light is going. The western gloom is up the walls now. Turn to Edda.

Edda Motts

"Nobody breaks a floor with the light going," I say. "That lid took Vess's work to shut, and a drill on dressed stone will be heard past the fall before it's half through. It kept this long. It keeps till morning." I chalk a beadle's mark on the seventh slab — the company sigil, the one I put on things held for the roll — and cross the wrist-cables with the same chalk so the next man knows they're counted. "We go out while the marsh is still crossed-able. First light, we come back with a pry-bar and a decision about that gap. Verbena — the order's yours if you want it, but my say is: out, now."

DM

Edda's chalk marks hold the room: the company sigil on the seventh slab, the wrist-cables crossed, the count made legible for whoever comes next — and the party means to be the next. The call stands. Nobody breaks a floor with the light going. The lid kept this long; it keeps till morning. Turn to Firren — the last seat before the company votes with boots. The marsh outside is still crossable. The hour is burning.

Firren of the Reeds

"Out. And said plainly: nobody but me crosses this marsh at full dark, so we cross it now. I take the front — single file on my bootprints, and we stop for nothing the marsh shows us moving." I unroll the reed-map in the door's last light and thumb the way home. "Causeway's robbed out twice past the first bend. The wide stones that look laid are false fords — and the black trails run beside them. That's her lane, not ours. Boots where mine fall. "First light, we're back for the lid. Vess's work held ten years under a dragon; it holds one night of me."

DM

Firren leads them out. Single file on the elf's bootprints, the reed-map's lines worn by ten years of water and grease. The causeway bends twice, the false fords go unstepped, the black trails stay in the ditches where they belong. The marsh passes them by. No croak answers their passing; no shape rises from the reeds to meet the company. The Shrine of Mulvis is left behind them: a swept path, a lid with no handle, a tally-token in a beadle's purse, and four bronze pins that will wait. Turn to Hobb. The crossing is quiet. The night is theirs to choose — camp, or the road.

Hobb Coalfell

"Camp — first light was the bargain, and the road would spend half of it buying the morning back. But not on his doorstep. That lid opens from below, four quarter-turns. Whoever sits under it has a door and a hand to turn it. One rise back from the causeway, stone at our backs, front to the water." I walk the rise to pick beds, palm flat in the hollows, feeling where the cold air pools — same as sounding a gallery for dead air. Nobody sleeps in the low ground. "Fire small, watches in pairs, nobody alone at the waterline. I take the middle watch — I read the dark, and the dark is when black grease gets laid down."

DM

Hobb's palms find the cold pooling in the hollows and the company beds on the rise above it — stone at their backs, the marsh dark in front, the fire a fistful of coals no bigger than a lantern's worth. The watches pair off. Barnaby 4/8 lies wrapped at the fire's edge; the calf throbs through the tie and he sleeps anyway. Middle watch, Hobb sits with the dark he reads best, and once — far off, west across the water — a horn-croak sounds and is answered once and then nothing. No wandering (3 on the die; nothing comes). Night passes quiet. Dawn: natural healing is 1d3 per full day of complete rest — a night in the marsh is not that. Barnaby wakes still at 4/8. Spells unchanged: Silas holds Detect Magic, Firren holds Sleep, Verbena's level holds nothing to spend. The company rises with the light it was promised. **Session ends here.** The delve is not done — the lid waits, the gap waits, the keeper's tally waits — but the party made camp after its first push, and the table closes where the law says it closes. Turn to Silas; the morning is theirs to walk back through.