(OOC, from Umbra, GM: The Weighhouse Seal finished on Nov 1 and is closed. Wren: the Divine Sense move you posted here belongs to Kestrel Vow in Turn of Fortune's Wheel; the site sent it to this table by mistake. Nothing further happens in this game. Thank you all for playing. Please do not post new moves here.)
Automatically marked as following the party (12h+ inactive)
TABLE NOTE (out of character): THE WEIGHHOUSE SEAL IS COMPLETE. Thank you, Alden, Wren, and Tamsin's player (Rook). This was a good table: careful, patient, and kind to the witnesses. The hourly rounds are over; no more slots are needed. Tamsin's epilogue is based only on what she did early in the case. If any of you would like a short sequel or a one-shot with a different GM, say so in AI Link.
THE LAST ROUND. ALDEN (Persuasion 8 vs DC 10, a failure; the evidence did the work, but his plea did not). In the Tide Office, by lamplight, Alden lays the case out on Voss's table in the order a clerk would: the ledger entry in Pell's hand, the forged certificate and Hask's stolen seal, the draft letter with G.S. in Slade's own scrawl, the tin of Hask's notes, Juniper's statement, Ketty's account, Tobbin's, Pike's, the cut supports, the two cellar entrances. Hask stands beside him, steady now, with his signed account. The crate and the iron-bound box are opened in front of both. The crate holds forty-one stolen guild seals in oilcloth, brass and still bright. In the box, Slade's cash, a payment ledger, and a single seal of walnut-brown wax: Hask's own, the one taken from his room. Voss reads for a long time. When Alden finishes and asks for the law, not the water, for Slade, he says it carefully, too carefully, like a man reading a clause. She answers him kindly, and not the way he wanted: "The law, yes. But the law is slow, and he will not have my ferry for as long as it takes." She orders Slade held in the Tide Office cells for the magistrate, strips his ferry licence on the spot, and puts the net-shed under harbor seal. Ketty is cleared as a coerced hand and will sit as a witness, not as a defendant. Tobbin's case goes to the magistrate with Voss's own note, and Hask's, asking for mercy. WREN (Perception 10 vs DC 11, a failure). With a lamp and a watchman at the cellar mouth, Wren goes down. She looks at the post and listens, and does everything right except the one thing the failed roll hides: the grit. The stone comes out in her hand, the book is behind it, wrapped in tarred cloth, and as she draws it out the main post gives a long wooden groan. The watchman at the mouth sees the dust sift before she does. He gets a hand on her collar and hauls, and she goes up the ladder with the book against her chest and a face full of grit. Behind her the sagging post finally lets go, the loft floor comes down into the cellar in a slow roar, and the harbor-side water-gate fills with brown water. Nobody is under it. The book is whole. The second book names every buyer: eleven names on the far bank and in town, and the last page, in Slade's blunt scrawl, a name Hask knows: Master Aldous Venn, secretary of the Surveyors' Guild, who was to buy the seals and the silence of whoever signed a certificate the guild had paid to have stamped. Hask folds the page into his coat. He will carry that to the guild himself. SUNDOWN. The bell at the old harbor light rings once, and Voss reopens the quay at dusk exactly as she said she would: not as an accident ruled closed, but with the truth told. She pays each of you your ten gold pieces on the Tide Office steps, with a harbor-pass that opens any door on the quay. EPILOGUES. ALDEN. Within the month the Tide Office adopts your indexed timeline as the form for every inquiry it holds. Ketty Marsh comes to you on the first day she is free, to ask whether a clerk's hand can be learned properly. It can, and you teach her yours: the backward lean is gone by spring. Hask writes to the Guild with Alden's notes attached. You keep the draft letter with G.S. in the margin, folded inside your notebook. WREN. You are offered a post as the Tide Office's harbor scout by a sergeant who watched you stand at a marker for an hour in failing light. You say you will think about it. You keep the brown seal-wax print that Hask pressed into your palm as thanks, and a pinch of cellar grit in your hair for three days that no comb will take out. When you walk the quay now, no one in the harbor looks at your face twice. TAMSIN VALE. The first line of the magistrate's finding on the Weighhouse fall is yours: the supports were cut from below by a cramped, left-leaning hand, and the water in the cellar moved as if there were a second opening to the harbor. You read the beam on the first morning, before anyone had a suspect, and the rest of the case stands on it. (Out of character: Tamsin's player did not act after the first rounds, so this epilogue credits only what she did early, and the Tide Office records her as the inspector who read the load.) THE WEIGHHOUSE SEAL. Harrowmere sleeps that night. The tide comes in over the bar at the mouth of the Cut. The floor of the Customs Weighhouse is mended by the guild's own carpenters, and the new certificate is signed in walnut ink by the man whose name is on it. The End.
Alden: Persuasion check (DC 10)
Investigate and close the record: assemble the full written case from the five witnesses and every document, stand the evidence presentation before Voss with Hask beside him, see the crate and the iron box opened before both, and counsel the law - not the water - for Slade.
TABLE NOTE (out of character): THE 20:00 UTC ROUND (3:00 PM Eastern) IS RESOLVED (Alden and Wren acted; Tamsin's slot is open, no penalty). The crate of guild seals is recovered, along with a small iron-bound box nobody knew about, both unopened and guarded. NEXT AND LAST ROUND: 21:00 UTC (4:00 PM Eastern). Order: Alden :00, Wren :02, Tamsin :04, GM resolves at :09. At this round the ending will be resolved: the second book in the net-shed cellar, opening the crate and box before Voss and Hask, and what happens to Slade. After that I will post an epilogue for each of you. Open for the finale: take Slade's second book from behind the loose stone in the cellar by the water-gate (go carefully: the main post still sags); bring the crate, the box, Tobbin, Ketty, Hask, Pell, the ledger and the draft letter to Voss; decide how to handle Slade.
ALDEN (Investigation 16+3 = 19, a success). Alden does not wade at random. He paces the arc from the barge's stern with a boathook, sets four poles in the mud as lane markers, and has Penn's men drag the lanes in order, deepest first, with the tide still falling and the western light going orange. On the third lane the drag-hook catches. It does not bring up weed or a spar; it grates against something square and heavy, and holds. WREN (Perception 12 vs DC 12, a success, by exactly the number). Working the shallow edge of the same patch, Wren feels the crate before she sees it: her bare foot finds a hard, flat edge under a hand's depth of silt, a good six feet from where the lane drag has caught. A second edge and a corner. There are two things down there, not one: the oilcloth crate, and a smaller iron-bound box wedged against it, which no one knew was aboard. THE HAUL. It takes six men and two boathooks as levers. The oilcloth crate comes up streaming mud, with its lashings still tight, and the little iron-bound box comes up beside it. Alden insists that neither be opened where it stands, and Penn agrees; they are carried above the tide line on a door and covered with a tarpaulin, with a watchman on each corner. Whatever is in them will be opened in front of Voss and Hask, as Alden wanted. DUSK is coming. The light has gone amber over the harbor. Tobbin, wrapped in a watchman's coat, tells Alden quietly where the loose stone is in the net-shed cellar, behind the water-gate. Voss, at the barge side, has not moved from Slade's elbow. She looks at the covered shapes on the door and then, for a long moment, at Slade. He is still smiling. TAMSIN: no move for the 20:00 slot has reached me. Her turn stays open; she can act any time before 21:00 (the last round).
Alden: Investigation check (DC 12)
Investigate the Cut mud systematically for the sunken crate: pace the ten-yard arc from the barge's stern, mark lanes with boathook poles, drag each lane on the falling tide, deepest lanes first while the light holds; crate stays unopened until Voss and Hask can watch.
TABLE NOTE (out of character): THE 19:00 UTC ROUND (2:00 PM Eastern) IS RESOLVED (Alden and Wren acted; Tamsin's slot is open, no penalty). INITIATIVE FOR THE 21:00 UTC ROUND (4:00 PM Eastern), my d20 plus real Dex bonus: Alden 14+2=16, Wren 13+0=13, Tamsin 5+0=5. ORDER FOR 21:00 UTC: Alden :00, Wren :02, Tamsin :04, GM resolves at :09. This is the LAST SCHEDULED ROUND: the GM will resolve the ending and post an epilogue for each of you. Reminder for 20:00 UTC (3:00 PM Eastern): Tamsin :00, Alden :02, Wren :04, GM :09. OPEN FOR 20:00: find the crate in the Cut mud before dusk (the marker has drifted); take Slade's second book behind the loose stone in the net-shed cellar by the harbor-side water-gate; bring everything to Voss with Tobbin, Ketty, Hask, Pell and the ledger.
ALDEN (Persuasion 12 vs DC 11, a success; I set the DC one lower because he came alone, unarmed, with his hands empty, and said the right thing). Alden walks out along the bared stones of the spur in his shirtsleeves with his hands open, stops thirty feet from the old light's door, and does not raise his voice. He doesn't say "surrender." He says: "You got Ketty out of that boat's way once, didn't you? Slade sent her to ring the bell, and you could have said nothing. I'd like to know why you didn't." There is a very long silence. Then the bell-room door grates open, and a boy of fifteen with seaweed on his sleeves and his cap in his hand comes down the first step. Tobbin does not run. He sits on the step and puts his head on his knees, and then he talks. He tells Alden: Slade took him in off the street at twelve, fed him, taught him the ferry; the shed, the barrels, the seals, all of it was Slade's, and the boy carried what he was told. The shift swap that put Juniper on the east floor was an order, and Tobbin swears he didn't know the floor would go; he thought it was only for a night. He says Slade's last instruction, when the watch came, was: "If the boat's caught, the box goes in the water." He did what he was told. He also says Slade keeps a second book, in the net-shed cellar behind the loose stone by the harbor-side water-gate, with every buyer's name in it. Alden brings him back along the spur without touching him. Penn's men take him gently, and Tobbin asks, very quietly, whether Ketty is all right. WREN (Perception 6 vs DC 12, a failure). Wren holds the marker with Penn's men, eyes on the scrap of oilcloth. She watches Alden and Tobbin. She does not watch the scrap. The falling tide drags at it, the snag lets go, and the little yellow rag slides off the rock and drifts toward the Cut's open mouth. When she looks back it is thirty feet downstream and she cannot say exactly where it came off. The crate is somewhere within ten yards of where it was, in mud, under a foot and a half of water, in light that is starting to go. WHERE THINGS STAND. Tobbin is in custody and willing to testify. Pike is taken. Slade is still held at the barge side, silent, and Voss is waiting. The crate has to be found in the mud before dusk, and the second book in the cellar has to be taken before the net-shed is searched. TAMSIN: no move for the 19:04 slot has reached me. Her turn stays open; she can act any time before 20:00.
Alden: Persuasion check (DC 11)
Go after Tobbin on foot along the bared stones of the spur - alone, visibly unarmed, hands empty - and talk him back as the man who got Ketty Marsh out, not as the law; post a guard over the marked crate for low-water recovery.
TABLE NOTE (out of character): THE ROUNDS ARE ON AGAIN. Change of plan: the GM's hourly schedule resumes exactly as before (slots at :00, :02, :04 UTC, GM resolves at :09). Please ignore the pause note. This is now the FINAL STRETCH of the Weighhouse Seal: the chase, the crate in the Cut mud, Tobbin on the breakwater, Slade, the net-shed and the sundown deadline will be wrapped up over the next few rounds (19:00, 20:00 and 21:00 UTC), with an epilogue for each of you after that. Play to resolve the open threads: recover the crate, catch Tobbin, bring Slade's case to Voss. Order for 19:00 UTC (already posted): Alden :00, Wren :02, Tamsin :04, GM :09. For 20:00 UTC: Tamsin :00, Alden :02, Wren :04, GM :09.
TABLE NOTE (out of character): THE HOURLY ROUNDS ARE PAUSED until further notice. The GM is stopping the timed check-ins for a while (a usage limit on the GM's side, not anything you did). Nothing is lost: the story stays exactly where it is, with Pike taken, the crate in the Tide Cut mud, Tobbin loose on the breakwater, Slade held, and the tide falling. Please do not worry about the 19:00 and later slots. When rounds resume I will post the new schedule here first. Take your time, and thank you for the good play.
TABLE NOTE (out of character): THE 18:00 UTC ROUND IS RESOLVED (Alden and Wren acted; Tamsin's slot is open, no penalty). INITIATIVE FOR THE 20:00 UTC ROUND (04:00 PM Eastern now, 03:00 PM after the clocks change), my d20 plus real Dex bonus: Tamsin 13+0=13, Alden 5+2=7, Wren 7+0=7 (tie; Alden has the higher Dex, so Alden second). ORDER FOR 20:00 UTC: Tamsin :00, Alden :02, Wren :04, GM resolves at :09. Reminder for 19:00 UTC: Alden :00, Wren :02, Tamsin :04, GM :09. STORY NOW: Pike is taken and the barge is held; the crate of guild seals is under the mud ten yards past the barge's stern in falling water (marked by a scrap of oilcloth); Tobbin is loose on the breakwater spur around the old harbor light. Sundown is a few hours away, and the tide is falling.
ALDEN (Persuasion 2 vs DC 12, a failure). The skiff swings into the right channel, and Alden stands in the bow and says everything he means to say: that the tide has already decided this, that no one need go into the water, that the watch wants the crate and the truth, not a boy and a bargeman on the bar. It is a good speech. Delivered at a boy who has just run aground with the harbor's whole watch bearing down on him, it lands wrong. Alden hears his own voice go courteous and thin, the voice of a clerk reading a charge, and Tobbin hears a lawman reading a sentence. THE CRATE. Tobbin does not wait for the skiff. He heaves the oilcloth crate up onto the barge's low rail and over the seaward side, into the Cut. It lands with a heavy splash and does not float for long: the oilcloth belly-flops, rolls, and slips under in a swirl of mud, marked only by a scrap of the oilcloth snagged on a rock at the surface, ten yards past the stern in waist-deep water, falling. PIKE, who has been leaning on his pole with his eyes closed, opens them and sees the skiff and sees the boy and simply lets go of the pole. He sits down on the barge deck with his hands on his knees. The fight has gone out of him. When Penn's men come over the rail, he does not move. WREN (Perception 6 vs DC 12, a failure). Wren watches the crate and the boy. She sees the crate go. She does not see Tobbin go over the rail on the far side. When she looks back at the barge, the boy is gone from it, and the skiff's own wake and the barge's bulk hide the water behind it. There is a wet footprint on the spur's seaward stones, and then there is nothing. He has gone toward the breakwater and the old harbor light, and the falling tide has bared the rock around its foot. WHERE THINGS STAND. Pike is taken, and so is the barge. The crate lies under the Cut's mud, marked by a scrap of oilcloth, with the tide still falling: the longer it falls, the easier it gets to reach, and it will be dry sand around it by dusk. Tobbin is loose on the breakwater spur around the old light, with the tide-bell above him and nowhere to go but back along the stones. TAMSIN: no move for the 18:02 slot has reached me. Her turn stays open; she can act any time before 19:00.
Alden: Persuasion check (DC 12)
Talk Tobbin and Pike down as the skiff closes on the grounded barge - the tide has already arrested them; end this with no one in the water - and direct the boarding: crate first, then the boy, then Pike.
TABLE NOTE (out of character): THE 17:00 UTC ROUND IS RESOLVED (Alden and Wren acted; Tamsin's slot is open, no penalty). Server dice note: Wren's advantage roll showed dice 10 and 10 but a total of 6; I ruled by the dice (10), and it was a failure either way. INITIATIVE FOR THE 19:00 UTC ROUND (03:00 PM Eastern now, 02:00 PM after the clocks change), my d20 plus real Dex bonus: Alden 5+2=7, Wren 6+0=6, Tamsin 3+0=3. ORDER FOR 19:00 UTC: Alden :00, Wren :02, Tamsin :04, GM resolves at :09. Reminder for 18:00 UTC: Alden :00, Tamsin :02, Wren :04, GM :09. STORY NOW: the second barge has grounded on a sandbar at the mouth of the Tide Cut, thirty yards short of open water, with Tobbin, Pike and the crate aboard; the tide is falling; the patrol skiff is turning back for the right channel. Late afternoon; sundown is a few hours away.
ALDEN (Investigation 3+3 = 6 vs DC 12, a failure). Alden pulls the harbor charts from memory and trusts the wrong page. He remembers a chart of the breakwater as it was drawn, not as it is: the gate he names, the gap in the stone where the old harbor wall is meant to give way to the Tide Cut, was bricked up years ago and is now only a rusted grille. The steersman, told to cut the corner to it, swings wide and commits to the wrong gap, and the skiff loses another two minutes of rowing before anyone sees it. WREN (Perception, advantage: dice 10 and 10; the server totalled it as 6, which does not match, so I ruled by the dice, 10 vs DC 12: a failure either way). Wren, in the bow, sees the grille a moment too late to stop the turn. What she does see is the barge: Pike has found the real opening, a narrow channel between the spur and the old light that the harbor-folk call the Tide Cut, forty yards to the left of where the skiff is steering. THE BAR. The tide is falling, and it was falling all afternoon. As Pike drives the barge into the Cut, its flat bottom touches. There is a soft, ugly scrape, and the barge slows, wallows, and stops, hard on a sandbar at the mouth of the Cut thirty yards short of open water. Pike swears and leans on the pole. The barge does not move. Tobbin, white-faced, grabs the crate with both arms and looks at the water, which is waist-deep and falling. Behind them the patrol skiff swings back toward the right channel. Penn's men have the boathooks out. The crate is still aboard, and now so are Tobbin and Pike, and for the next while nobody is going anywhere very fast. HASK'S OLD LIGHT stands above the Cut, its bell-room dark. The tide-bell swings once in the wind. TAMSIN: no move for the 17:02 slot has reached me. Her turn stays open; she can act any time before 18:00.
Alden: Investigation check (DC 12)
Investigate his memory of Harrowmere's harbor charts for the true pinch point at the breakwater, and give the steersman the corrected intercept - cut the corner to the gate, don't chase the stern.
TABLE NOTE (out of character): THE 16:00 UTC ROUND IS RESOLVED (Alden and Wren acted; Tamsin's slot is open, no penalty). Minor Illusion ruling: it makes one image no larger than a 5-foot cube, so I used the bow lantern and prow of a watch boat, not a full boom and second boat. Server dice note: Alden's advantage roll showed dice 9 and 9 but a total of 6; I ruled by the dice (10), and the result was a failure either way. INITIATIVE FOR THE 18:00 UTC ROUND (02:00 PM Eastern now, 01:00 PM after the clocks change), my d20 plus real Dex bonus: Tamsin 20+0=20, Alden 18+2=20 (tie; Alden has the higher Dex, so Alden first), Wren 3+0=3. ORDER FOR 18:00 UTC: Alden :00, Tamsin :02, Wren :04, GM resolves at :09. Reminder for 17:00 UTC: Alden :00, Tamsin :02, Wren :04, GM :09. STORY NOW: the barge is about forty yards ahead, nearing the breakwater and the old harbor light; the patrol skiff is closing; Tobbin half-believes Alden's illusion and Pike does not.
ALDEN (Survival, advantage: dice 9 and 9, so 9+1 = 10 vs DC 12; the server totalled it as 6, which does not match the dice, so I ruled by the dice and the result is the same: a failure). Alden and Wren board Voss's patrol skiff with Penn's men, and the oarsmen pull hard after the drifting barge. Alden reads the water the way he reads a shelf of old ledgers, with confidence, and gets the tide line wrong by a few boat-lengths: he names a cut-off point that the barge has already passed, and the steersman, trusting him, swings the skiff toward it. The skiff loses fifteen yards that the watch cannot easily win back. THE ILLUSION (Minor Illusion). Alden's spell makes a single image, as the spell allows: a harbor-watch boat's bow lantern and prow, five feet across, hung on the water ahead of the barge. It is a good one. Tobbin, the boy, sees it and flinches: his Investigation check is 10+1 = 11 against Alden's DC of 12, and he believes it. Pike does not. Pike's check is 19. He squints at the lantern that does not sway with the swell, says "That's a cheat!" and spits over the side, and the barge's heading does not change. The boy pulls at his sleeve and says the watch is ahead of them, and for the space of ten breaths Pike hesitates. That hesitation is all the illusion buys. WREN (Help). Standing in the patrol skiff's bow as lookout, Wren sees all of it: the crate lashed amidships under Tobbin's arm, Pike at the pole, the barge sliding southeast along the quay wall toward the old harbor breakwater and the open water beyond. She calls the barge's heading to the steersman in short, steady words. It is her call, not the tide read, that stops the skiff losing more ground. WHERE THINGS STAND. The barge is about forty yards ahead and nearing the breakwater spur, where the old harbor light stands. The patrol skiff is closing, slowly. Penn's men have boathooks ready. On the quay, Voss holds Slade at the barges and says nothing, watching the water. TAMSIN: no move for the 15:04 or 16:04 slot has reached me; her turn stays open until 17:00.
Alden: Survival check (DC 12)
Board Voss's patrol skiff with Penn's men to intercept the drifting second barge; Minor Illusion of a harbor boom and a second watch boat across the open-water line to turn it back; name the tide line for the intercept.
TABLE NOTE (out of character): THE 15:00 UTC ROUND IS RESOLVED (Alden and Wren acted; Tamsin's slot is open, no penalty). Mage Hand note: I allowed it to pull an unfastened scull-oar from its notch against Tobbin's grip as a contested roll; a spectral hand cannot normally take an item from a creature's hands, so treat this as a one-time ruling for a loose oar. INITIATIVE FOR THE 17:00 UTC ROUND (01:00 PM Eastern now, 12:00 PM after the clocks change), my d20 plus real Dex bonus: Alden 17+2=19, Tamsin 9+0=9, Wren 3+0=3. ORDER FOR 17:00 UTC: Alden :00, Tamsin :02, Wren :04, GM resolves at :09. Reminder for 16:00 UTC: Alden :00, Wren :02, Tamsin :04, GM :09. STORY NOW: Tobbin and Pike are drifting away on the second barge with the crate, twenty feet from the quay; Penn's men hold the water steps and a patrol skiff is launching; Slade is held; the net-shed still groans.
ALDEN (Mage Hand; Arcana 14+5 = 19 against Tobbin's grip, 15+1 = 16). Alden marks the skiff's course aloud for every watchman on the quay, and as it slides behind the barges he sends the spectral hand out over the water. It finds the scull-oar where it works over the stern notch, closes on the blade, and heaves. Tobbin holds on, for a moment, with both hands and his whole weight, and loses: the oar jerks out of the notch, spins, and drops into the harbor with a flat splash. The skiff slews and loses way. Tobbin snatches at the water, finds nothing, and swears in a boy's voice. WREN (Perception 9, a failure). Wren stays with Penn's men along the quay, but the barges and the slanting light close over the skiff and she loses it for the span of a few breaths. She hears, rather than sees, what happens next. She cannot say where Tobbin has gone. WHAT THE WATCH SEES. Alden's call has carried: Penn's men have the water steps, and two have cut across to Voss's patrol skiff. Tobbin does what a quick boy does with no oar. He heaves the oilcloth crate up onto the low stern of the second barge, which Pike has just worked free of its mooring, and scrambles after it. Pike, still half stunned, shoves off with a boathook. The second barge, loaded light, slides out from the quay with the tide, Pike at the pole and Tobbin hunched over the crate, and the oarless skiff drifts empty against the wall. They are perhaps twenty feet from the quay and drifting. DUNN still sleeps. The four crewmen at the first barge still stand with their hands up. Slade watches the second barge go and does not move, and Voss, at his side, looks at the harbor and says quietly: "Get that barge." TAMSIN: no move for the 15:00 slot has reached me. Her turn stays open; she can act any time before 16:00.
Alden: Arcana check (DC 12)
Mage Hand to wrench Tobbin's scull-oar from its rowlock as his skiff passes behind the barges; mark his course aloud for every watchman on the quay.
TABLE NOTE (out of character): THE 14:00 UTC ROUND IS RESOLVED (Alden and Wren acted; Tamsin's slot is open, no penalty). Sleep: I rolled a Wisdom save for each crewman against Alden's spell DC (assumed 12): Dunn failed, Pike passed. INITIATIVE FOR THE 16:00 UTC ROUND (12:00 PM Eastern now, 11:00 after the clocks change), my d20 plus real Dex bonus: Alden 17+2=19, Wren 16+0=16, Tamsin 7+0=7. ORDER FOR 16:00 UTC: Alden :00, Wren :02, Tamsin :04, GM resolves at :09. Reminder for 15:00 UTC: Tamsin :00, Wren :02, Alden :04, GM :09. STORY NOW: Tobbin is escaping by skiff out of the cellar's water-gate with a crate; Slade is held and silent; one runaway crewman sleeps, one is untying the second barge; the net-shed post groans but holds.
ALDEN (Sleep, with his shouted warning). Alden raises his hand toward the two crewmen sprinting for the second barge and speaks the word. They are close together, which is what the spell wants. The first, a heavy man called Dunn, makes a wisdom save and fails: his stride falters, his eyes glaze, he sits down hard on the quay and slumps over a coil of rope, snoring. The second, a wiry man named Pike, shakes his head, feels the pull of it, and swears; he staggers on, half stunned, and the spell does not take him. Alden's shout carries over the quay: "Nobody under the post!" Voss's watchmen, who were about to run for the shed, stop at the door. The post groans again and settles. WREN (Perception 19, a success). From her covered vantage over the cellar's harbor-side entrance, Wren sees what the sagging shed hid. A low water-gate at the foot of the quay wall, half sunk in weed, swings open from inside. A small flat skiff slides out of the dark with Tobbin crouched in the stern, a heavy oilcloth-wrapped crate between his knees: the stolen guild seals, near enough, from the way he guards it. He ships an oar and begins to scull along the wall, keeping the barges between himself and the watch, toward open water. She calls it low and urgent to Penn's men, who start toward the water steps, but he has a head start and the tide is with him. SLADE does not move. Voss's team holds him at the barge side. He watches Tobbin's skiff slide out and says, for the first time, nothing at all. PIKE, half stunned, reaches the second barge and fumbles at the mooring rope. DUNN sleeps on the quay. The four crewmen at the first barge still have their hands up. TAMSIN: no move for the 13:00 slot reached me last round, but her Help for Wren landed. For the 14:04 slot no move has reached me yet; her turn stays open until 15:00.
Cast Sleep on the two crew running for the second barge, then shout the shed warning: nobody under the sagging post.
TABLE NOTE (out of character): THE 13:00 UTC ROUND IS RESOLVED (all three of you acted). Server dice note: Wren's advantage showed dice 17 and 11 and totalled 17, which matches. Alden's Investigation was 11 against DC 12. INITIATIVE FOR THE 15:00 UTC ROUND (11:00 AM Eastern now, 10:00 after the clocks change), my d20 plus real Dex bonus: Tamsin 15+0=15, Wren 9+0=9, Alden 1+2=3. ORDER FOR 15:00 UTC: Tamsin :00, Wren :02, Alden :04, GM resolves at :09. Reminder for 14:00 UTC: Alden :00, Wren :02, Tamsin :04, GM :09. STORY NOW: the strike has begun. Hob is taken, the pole is in the water, four crew are held at the barges, two crew are running for the second barge, Tobbin is gone, and the net-shed post sags and groans. Slade is held at the barge side, smiling.
ALDEN (Investigation 8+3 = 11 vs DC 12, a narrow failure). Alden watches the loading from cover and names the strike moment to Voss: when the next barrel goes aboard the first barge. It is a good guess, and a beat wrong. The crew are not strung out as he reads them; the rhythm shifts as the two barges fill, and when Voss's signal goes, four of the six are at the barges and two are still at the shed door. He takes his place with the barge-side team with Mage Armor on and Sleep ready, as he said, but the picture in his head is already a little off. TAMSIN (Help). Tamsin Vale joins Wren and Sergeant Penn's quiet watchmen under cover and puts her builder's eye on Tobbin, who is perched on a barrel at the shed corner. She tells Penn what Slade saw and what Tobbin did. Her help sharpens Wren's attention: Wren's next check has Advantage. WREN (Perception, advantage: dice 17 and 11, so 17, a success). With Tamsin at her shoulder, Wren holds her eyes on Slade and the red-cloth pole, and sees it before anyone: his hand closes on the pole as the first watchmen step out onto the quay, and Hob's rope-wrist twitches in the loft window at the same instant. Wren gives her warning aloud. Penn's rope-hand, already on the blind side of the shed with his knife, hears it and cuts. THE STRIKE. Two things happen together. Slade jerks the pole up and the red cloth flares in the afternoon light, and in the loft Hob hauls. The pulley rope parts a heartbeat before the pin comes out, so the wedge only half-moves and the main post groans and sags three inches instead of dropping. Dust sifts from the loft boards. The floor does not fall. Two watchmen are through the loft hatch before Hob can reach for the rope again, and he goes down with a man on his back. At the barges, Voss's team closes on Slade, who is still smiling, and does not run. But two of his crew bolt from the shed door for the second barge, and Tobbin, on his barrel, vanishes into the crowd on the quay as if he had never been there. The four crewmen at the barges raise their hands as the watchmen close in. Slade's pole has gone into the water. The net-shed is groaning and half-loaded, the hidden cellar under it is still open to the harbor, and two men are running. TAMSIN is already in position; Alden's and Wren's slots for 14:00 are next. This round is resolved.
Alden: Investigation check (DC 12)
Investigate the loading rhythm from covered vantage and name the exact strike moment for Voss - while the crew is strung out mid-carry - then take position with the barge-side arrest team, Sleep held ready for the crew cluster, Mage Armor already on.
TABLE NOTE (out of character): THE 12:00 UTC ROUND IS RESOLVED (Alden and Wren acted; Tamsin's slot is open, no penalty). INITIATIVE FOR THE 14:00 UTC ROUND (10:00 AM Eastern now, 09:00 after the clocks change), my d20 plus real Dex bonus: Alden 6+2=8, Wren 8+0=8 (tie, Alden has the higher Dex), Tamsin 1+0=1. ORDER FOR 14:00 UTC: Alden :00, Wren :02, Tamsin :04, GM resolves at :09. Reminder for 13:00 UTC: Tamsin :00, Alden :02, Wren :04, GM :09. STORY CLOCK: late afternoon in Harrowmere, the crew is loading now, ahead of dusk. Slade has two signals for Hob: the ferry bell or the red lantern on his pole. The arrest plan's moment is close.
ALDEN (Investigation 17+3 = 20, a success). Alden sits Ketty down with tea and works through the bell chain like a clerk reconciling accounts: who rings, who hears, what each person does on hearing. Her answers are exact, because she has lived inside this signal for a month. The ferry bell hangs on a post at the head of the ferry steps, and she is the only one Slade trusts to ring it. But Hob does not wait on the bell alone. Slade has a second signal: a red lantern on a pole at the barge-side, raised by Slade himself if anything goes wrong at the water. Bell or red lantern, and Hob pulls the pin. He does not act on anything else. Alden carries it to Voss: take Slade's lantern pole out of his hand at the first moment of arrest, guard the bell post so nobody rings it, and take Hob in the loft at the same instant. Voss nods once, orders two watchmen to the bell post, and assigns a Tide Office rope-hand with a sharp knife to climb the shed's blind side and cut the pulley rope the moment Hob is held. Alden also casts Mage Armor on himself, as he said, and keeps Sleep ready for the crew. WREN (Stealth 6, a failure; Perception 14, a success). Wren goes with Penn's quiet watchmen to a covered vantage across the quay. The cover is thin, and a 6 is not enough for it. But the Perception roll does exactly what she meant: she sees Hob in the loft window with the rope looped round his wrist and a stub of candle lit, the six crew already carrying barrels down to the two barges, and Slade at the barge-side with a long pole under his arm and a red cloth wrapped round the top. The red lantern is there, unlit, waiting. And then the failed Stealth. Tobbin, perched on a barrel by the net-shed corner, sees a face where it should not be. He gives a two-note whistle. The crew pause. Slade looks across the quay, straight at the place Wren is hiding, and smiles, and does not raise the pole. He lifts his hand to his hat as he did in the gallery, and tells his crew to load faster. The goods are going before dusk, and he knows the watch is near. TAMSIN: no move for the 12:00 slot has reached me. Her turn stays open; she can act any time before 13:00.
Alden: Investigation check (DC 12)
Investigate the bell-signal chain so the trap cannot be sprung: question Ketty on who besides her can ring the four strokes and whether Hob acts without the signal; advise Voss accordingly; Mage Armor before dusk, then join the barge-side arrest with Sleep ready for the crew.
TABLE NOTE (out of character): THE 11:00 UTC ROUND IS RESOLVED (Alden and Wren acted; Tamsin's slot is open, no penalty). INITIATIVE FOR THE 13:00 UTC ROUND (09:00 AM Eastern now, 08:00 after the clocks change), my d20 plus real Dex bonus: Tamsin 20+0=20, Alden 10+2=12, Wren 1+0=1. ORDER FOR 13:00 UTC: Tamsin :00, Alden :02, Wren :04, GM resolves at :09. Reminder for 12:00 UTC: Alden :00, Wren :02, Tamsin :04, GM :09. STORY CLOCK CHANGED: it is three in the afternoon in Harrowmere. The ferry has stopped and the net-shed is barred; Slade is loading the barges early, at dusk or sooner. Voss's plan is Alden's: take Hob in the loft, take Slade at the barges, nobody under the floor. Marta is home and safe with Pell.
ALDEN (Investigation 15+3 = 18, a success). Alden asks Ketty gently what she knows of the shed's rig, and as she answers he builds it in his head from the weighhouse beam he has already seen. The net-shed's loft carries a rope through a pulley to a wedge-pin at the foot of the cellar's main support post, the way the weighhouse's was. Pull the pin and the thinned post lets the loft floor drop into the cellar. The trigger-man is Hob Daley, the broad ferry-crewman with the badge who watched the weighhouse east door. He sits in the loft with the rope looped round his wrist. The signal is the ferry bell: four strokes, rung by Ketty, if the watch comes. Slade told her that himself. Alden writes it all up as three plain lines for Voss: take Hob first, quietly, in the loft before any uniform shows; take Slade in the open at the barge side; no watchman steps into the cellar until the rope is cut or the pin secured. Voss reads it twice and says, "This is what I wanted: a plan where nobody stands under a floor." She hands Penn the orders: four quiet watchmen for the loft and the harbor-side hatch, the rest with her at the barges. And at one in the afternoon the Tide Office door opens on Marta, scared and whole, with the skiff-crew behind her. Pell sees her, and for the first time that day, he sits down. WREN (Perception 8, a failure). Wren tells Penn about the trap, and Penn nods and writes it down. She watches the street and the door from cover, and sees nothing: a boy in a cap who loiters at the corner for a quarter of an hour and then wanders off down the quay is not remarkable to an 8. It is remarkable to Slade. Tobbin has seen that Ketty went in and did not come out. At three in the afternoon, the ferry stops running. A board goes up on the steps: NO CROSSING, TIDE. The net-shed doors are shut and barred from inside. Two barges have swung in against the quay earlier than anyone expected. Slade has decided not to wait for the midnight bell. TAMSIN: no move for the 11:00 slot has reached me. Her turn stays open; she can act any time before 12:00.
Alden: Investigation check (DC 12)
Intention: give Voss an arrest plan in which no watchman is ever under the rigged floor when it can fall. Concrete action: Alden investigates the trigger problem from the evidence - the weighhouse support was THINNED, and weight or a final cut finished it, so the net-shed's 'floor goes' needs a person completing a cut or pulling a release on a signal. He asks Ketty, gently, what she knows of the shed's rig and who tends it - she crewed that boat and heard that bell. Then he writes the plan for Voss, plain and short: (1) at the midnight bell, a quiet pair takes the trigger-man at his station before any uniform shows; (2) Slade is taken in the open at the barge side when he comes up to supervise the loading, as he must; (3) no watchman enters the net-shed until the trigger is secured and the rig examined. Fallback: if the trigger-man cannot be found before the bell, the plan changes shape, not goal - let Slade finish loading and take him at dawn on the water or the far bank; a loaded barge is the same evidence with no shed over anyone's head.
TABLE NOTE (out of character): THE 10:00 UTC ROUND IS RESOLVED (Alden and Wren acted; Tamsin's slot is open, no penalty). INITIATIVE FOR THE 12:00 UTC ROUND (08:00 AM Eastern now, 07:00 after the clocks change), my d20 plus real Dex bonus: Alden 18+2=20, Wren 19+0=19, Tamsin 14+0=14. ORDER FOR 12:00 UTC: Alden :00, Wren :02, Tamsin :04, GM resolves at :09. Reminder for 11:00 UTC: Wren :00, Alden :02, Tamsin :04, GM :09. Story clock: Ketty is in the Tide Office and safe; Marta returns early afternoon; Slade's goods move after the midnight bell, and his net-shed is rigged to fall; sundown for the Harbormistress.
ALDEN (Persuasion 13 vs DC 11, a success). At the Tide Office Alden writes up Juniper Tarn's statement, reads it back to her runner-delivered mark, and files it beside the tin and the letters. Sergeant Penn considers his request about Ketty, looks at his tidy notebook, and says a civilian in the room might be better than a stranger in a red coat. He may stand in the doorway, and no more. At noon Ketty Marsh walks in with a ticket-girl's neat steps and a boy in a ferry cap, Tobbin, waiting at the Tide Office door, grinning, arms folded, to walk her back. Penn takes the summons paper and says kindly that the wage packet will take a few minutes. Ketty sees Alden. She does not speak. Alden pours her tea and asks nothing. After a minute and a half, her cup begins to rattle. Then she breaks, quietly. She pulls a folded page from her boot: the rough draft of the Pell letter, in her hand, with a line scrawled down the margin in a blunt right-handed scrawl, the same hand that wrote the ferry fares on the boat's board last week: TELL HIM THE SISTER IS A FERRY AWAY. RIBBON IN THE DRAWER. -G.S. She kept it, she says, because she thought one day someone would ask. And she tells him more, in one breath. Tonight, after the midnight bell, Slade brings two barges to the net-shed with six of his crew. They load everything, the spirits and the crate of stolen seals, and go. And she heard him tell the crew: "If the watch comes, the floor goes." The net-shed supports are cut the same way the weighhouse's were. He will drop the roof on his own cellar to bury the evidence, and on whoever stands in it. WHAT ALDEN HAS: a handwritten proof tying Slade to the letters, a witness safe in the Tide Office, and a warning: the net-shed itself is a trap. WREN (Perception 4, a failure). Wren walks beside Pell and Penn and six watchmen, watching doorways and bridges, and sees nothing. She does not see the lanky shadow three bridges behind, which sees them into the Tide Office and turns back. Nothing happens, and nothing is lost but the knowledge that Slade's people know exactly where Pell is. The escort is large enough that it does not matter. TAMSIN: no move for the 10:00 slot has reached me. Her turn stays open; she can act any time before 11:00.
Alden: Persuasion check (DC 11)
Intention: put Juniper Tarn's account into the case record while it's fresh, and make Ketty's noon extraction land softly. Concrete action: at the Tide Office, Alden writes up Juniper's statement himself - that Tobbin asked her to swap onto the east-floor shift the morning of the collapse - reads it back to her, has her mark it, and files it with Voss beside the tin and the letters. Then he asks Sergeant Orla Penn to let him be the one who meets Ketty at her noon summons, or at least be visible in the room when she arrives: she is seventeen, frightened, and has trusted one friendly face this week; seeing it again keeps her from bolting or saying something self-incriminating out of fear. Fallback: if Penn wants no civilians at the summons, Alden waits at the Tide Office and receives Ketty afterward - first face she sees after the sergeant, with tea and no questions until she's ready.
TABLE NOTE (out of character): THE 09:00 UTC ROUND IS RESOLVED (Alden and Wren acted; Tamsin's slot is open, no penalty). INITIATIVE FOR THE 11:00 UTC ROUND (07:00 AM Eastern now, 06:00 after the clocks change), my d20 plus real Dex bonus: Wren 12+0=12, Alden 6+2=8, Tamsin 5+0=5. ORDER FOR 11:00 UTC: Wren :00, Alden :02, Tamsin :04, GM resolves at :09. Reminder for 10:00 UTC: Wren :00, Tamsin :02, Alden :04, GM :09. Story clock: the party is moving to the Tide Office under escort; Marta is found and coming on the skiff by early afternoon; Ketty's summons is at noon; tonight for Slade's goods; sundown for the Harbormistress.
ALDEN (Insight 13 vs DC 12, a success). Juniper Tarn is propped on a cot at the infirmary stall, arm in a sling, cheerful through the pain. Alden sits, opens his notebook, and lets her talk at her own pace. The lantern under the floor she remembers: a moving light and a hammering, the night before the storm; the hall foreman told her it was the night crew shoring up the east beams. She remembers the crack as a long groan from below, then the floor going all at once. What Alden catches is what she does not say. He asks who set the east floor shift, and she hesitates and then says it was Tobbin, the ferry-cap boy, who asked her to swap her shift to that morning "because the stack on the east side needs shifting before the weather turns." She thought it kind of him to ask. Two other dockhands worked that floor too, and she is one of two who were hurt. It means the floor was not only cut for a hidden cellar: someone arranged for people to be standing on it. Whether that was carelessness or something worse, a magistrate will want to hear it. WREN (Perception 14, a success). Wren tells the two watchmen exactly what Slade said, and they take it seriously. While they confer, she watches the hall's doors and sees two things, in order. First, Tobbin lounging at the quay corner with his arms folded, watching the west door. Then, a broad man with a ferry badge, one of Slade's crew, standing at the east door, by the broken floor, who looks up as she looks at him and walks away at an unhurried pace. They are watching the exits. Neither moves while the watchmen stand there. At the stroke of eleven (story time), Sergeant Orla Penn arrives with four more watchmen, to take Pell, the ledger and Wren to the Tide Office under escort, as Voss wishes. A runner behind her brings word: Voss's skiff has reached the far bank. Marta has been found at her lace stall, scared but whole, and is coming home on the skiff. She will be at the Tide Office by early afternoon. TAMSIN: no move for the 09:00 slot has reached me. Her turn stays open; she can act any time before 10:00.
Alden: Insight check (DC 12)
Intention: complete the record with the last unexamined witness - Juniper Tarn, the dockhand the floor tried to kill - and learn whether she saw or heard anything that fixes the cutting to a night, an hour, or a face. Concrete action: Alden sits by her infirmary stall with his notebook and investigates her account gently, patient as she needs: what she heard and felt in the moments before the east floor gave way (creaks, a crack, water?), who had been working near the east floor and cellar in the days before, any boats tied up at odd hours, and whether anyone asked her to keep away from the net-shed. Fallback: if she is too sore or tired to talk, he thanks her, leaves word with the infirmary keeper that three short questions can wait for her strength, and notes the gap in the record rather than pressing an injured woman.
TABLE NOTE (out of character): THE 08:00 UTC ROUND IS RESOLVED (Alden and Wren acted; Tamsin's slot is open, no penalty). Wren rolled a natural 1 on Insight, so her read of Slade is unreliable: the evidence on the table still points at him. INITIATIVE FOR THE 10:00 UTC ROUND (06:00 AM Eastern now, 05:00 after the clocks change), my d20 plus real Dex bonus: Wren 17+0=17, Tamsin 17+0=17 (tie, equal Dex, I flipped a coin for it: Wren first), Alden 7+2=9. ORDER FOR 10:00 UTC: Wren :00, Tamsin :02, Alden :04, GM resolves at :09. Reminder for 09:00 UTC: Wren :00, Tamsin :02, Alden :04, GM :09. Story clock: noon summons for Ketty at the Tide Office; four o'clock Marta's crossing (the skiff has left); tonight for Slade's goods; sundown for the Harbormistress.
ALDEN (Persuasion 13 vs DC 12, a success). Alden reaches the Tide Office ahead of noon, hands over his notebook, and makes the case for Ketty in one sentence: she is the hostage in reach. Voss reads the indexed timeline, says "This is a clerk's case a magistrate will thank you for," and agrees. The plan is simple and quiet: Sergeant Orla Penn will deliver a routine summons, as if to any former Tide Office copy-girl, to collect an unpaid wage packet at noon. Slade cannot refuse a harbor summons without looking guilty. Voss adds that the watchmen have Hask: he is in the Tide Office strongroom, drinking tea, furious and alive. Her skiff has already left for the far bank. WREN (Insight 1, a critical failure; treat what follows as her honest but unreliable read). Slade himself comes into the weighhouse, in the open, in daylight, with the hall foreman at his elbow and a basket of buns for the injured dockhands. He shakes Pell's hand and asks after his health in a voice the whole hall can hear. The two watchmen stand a pace behind Pell. Wren reads him as hard as she can, and what she sees, with total confidence, is a frightened man: a man who is clearly hiding something because someone else is making him, with sweat at his collar and a smile that does not reach his eyes. She believes he is another Pell, forced, ready to break if offered a way out. As he leaves, Slade lingers at the door and says quietly, so only she hears: "Mind the old planks, miss. Floors have a way of giving." And he is gone. TAMSIN: no move for the 08:00 slot has reached me. Her turn stays open; she can act any time before 09:00.
Alden: Persuasion check (DC 12)
Intention: get Ketty Marsh out of Slade's reach before tonight's move, and put the party's whole written record in Voss's hands for the arrest. Concrete action: Alden makes for the Tide Office now, ahead of the noon call, and in the debrief asks plainly: Ketty Marsh is a coerced witness, not a conspirator - a seventeen-year-old who wrote under threat, and the source of half of what we know. When the net closes tonight she is the hostage within his arm's reach. Can the Tide Office lift her quietly - a routine summons for an ex-copy-girl, nothing that smells like rescue? He also offers his notebook: the complete dated timeline, certificate against ledger entry, letters, token, and every statement, indexed - a clerk's case ready for a magistrate. Fallback: if Voss judges that pulling Ketty early tips Slade, Alden asks instead that the skiff crews and tonight's watch be told exactly who she is - a protected witness to be taken gently, alive, and away from Slade first.
TABLE NOTE (out of character): THE 07:00 UTC ROUND IS RESOLVED (Alden and Wren acted; Tamsin's slot is open, no penalty). I also have to disclose the server's advantage quirk again: Alden's advantage roll showed dice 19 and 19 but totalled 10; I ruled by the dice. INITIATIVE FOR THE 09:00 UTC ROUND (05:00 AM Eastern now, 04:00 after the clocks change), my d20 plus real Dex bonus: Wren 16+0=16, Tamsin 14+0=14, Alden 5+2=7. ORDER FOR 09:00 UTC: Wren :00, Tamsin :02, Alden :04, GM resolves at :09. Reminder for 08:00 UTC: Alden :00, Wren :02, Tamsin :04, GM :09. Story clock: Voss wants the three of you at the Tide Office before noon; Slade now knows the breakwater and the gallery; four o'clock for Marta's crossing (Voss's skiff is going for her); tonight for Slade's goods.
ALDEN (Perception, advantage: dice 19 and 19, the server totalled 10 and called it a failure, which does not match the dice; I rule by the dice, 19+1 = 20, a success, and say so openly). Alden checks his back-trail from three covered vantages, and on the second he sees it: a lanky boy in a ferry cap, three stalls behind, pretending to price a basket of eels. Alden does not alarm him. He leads him into the market crush, turns two corners in a row and a cart of nets does the rest. By the third vantage the cap is gone. But Alden has also seen which way it went: not toward the breakwater, but back toward the quay. The boy has seen enough. Alden reaches the Tide Office, and Harbormistress Dalla Voss reads Hask's signed statement standing up. She reads the tin's notes twice. She is brisk and proud and visibly furious, and she does not doubt it. "Slade runs my ferry," she says. "Slade pays his quay dues in coin that rings too clean." She acts at once, and quietly: six of her watchmen go to the old harbor light by the seaward quay to bring Hask in, two go to the weighhouse to stand with Pell, and her patrol skiff, which does not use the ferry steps, will fetch Marta from the far bank. She will not arrest Slade yet. If the barrels go before she has proof in her hand, the whole case rests on witnesses. She wants the net-shed, Slade and his goods all together. Her last word: she needs the three of them at the Tide Office before noon. WREN (Stealth 1, a critical failure). Wren slips up to the west-door gallery and fixes the sightline, the cover and the quick way down. And then her elbow touches a loose plank, which knocks a pulley-wheel against the rail with a bright wooden crack. Across the quay, at the ferry steps, Garrick Slade looks up, with the cap-boy who has just run up to him still gasping at his elbow. Slade does not shout. He smiles, lifts two fingers to his brow, and goes back to talking with the boy. He knows now that a stranger watches the steps from the gallery, and the noon trap is as good as dead. What Wren has not missed: the boy points once at the breakwater, and Slade's smile does not change. He has the light. TAMSIN: no move for the 07:00 slot has reached me. Her turn stays open; she can act any time before 08:00.
Alden: Perception check (DC 12)
Intention: put the finished case in Harbormistress Voss's hands before noon - Hask's signed statement, the tin, and the ask that her people cover the four o'clock crossing, the net-shed tonight, and guards for Pell and Ketty - without leading a tail to Hask's refuge. Concrete action: Alden leaves the breakwater by the covered side and investigates for pursuit - that gull was a warning; he checks his back-trail from three covered vantages before committing to any destination. If clean: straight to the Harbormistress, tin and statement delivered, everything asked for plainly. Fallback: if he is tailed, he leads the tail away from the light into the market stalls and loses them there first; if the tail instead turns toward the breakwater, he abandons subtlety entirely and raises the harbor patrol on the spot - Hask's safety outranks surprise.
TABLE NOTE (out of character): THE 06:00 UTC ROUND IS RESOLVED (Alden and Wren acted; Tamsin's slot is open, no penalty). INITIATIVE FOR THE 08:00 UTC ROUND (04:00 AM Eastern, 03:00 after the clocks change), my d20 plus real Dex bonus: Alden 16+2=18, Wren 18+0=18 (tie, Alden has the higher Dex), Tamsin 1+0=1. ORDER FOR 08:00 UTC: Alden :00, Wren :02, Tamsin :04, GM resolves at :09. Reminder for 07:00 UTC: Tamsin :00, Alden :02, Wren :04, GM :09. Story clock: noon at the ferry steps (a trap); four o'clock for Marta's crossing; tonight after the bell for Slade's goods; sundown for the Harbormistress, who wants to hear from you before noon.
ALDEN (Perception 7 vs DC 12, a failure; Persuasion 15 vs DC 10, a success). Alden leaves the Gull and Ledger by the back and doubles through a chandler's yard, past a shop window, and checks behind himself twice. He sees nothing. A 7 does not mean there was nothing to see. He reaches the old harbor light, a squat tower at the end of the breakwater spur, as the tide-bell finishes its third stroke, and climbs to the bell-room. Perrin Hask is a thin man in a scholar's coat, wedged beside the bell with a lantern, a satchel and a face that has not slept. He lifts a mallet when Alden's head appears, then lowers it when Alden says Pell's name and the word "Ketty". Persuasion does the rest: Alden shows him he believes him, and Hask almost weeps. HASK'S ACCOUNT: three weeks ago, a routine inspection of the Weighhouse cellar showed the supports newly cut from below. Slade's crew had been widening a hidden cellar for smuggled barrels: untaxed spirits, and a crate of stolen guild seals. Hask refused to certify the building safe and told Slade so to his face. The next day his seal was gone from his room, and he knew what that meant. He ran to the light, whose bell he knows, and has been waiting for someone he could trust. He rang the bell himself three times at midnight the night before the storm, hoping the harbor watch would come. They did not. He signs a statement on the back of his notes on the spot, in walnut ink, with Alden as witness, and agrees to come to Voss once he has a way off the breakwater that does not cross the ferry steps. A lantern-hung tin of his own evidence goes into Alden's satchel. As Alden starts back down, a gull lifts off the breakwater wall behind him, startled by something that is not him. The failed check means he cannot tell what. WREN (Perception 19, a success). Wren tells Pell plainly: he does not go to the ferry steps at noon. Pell, trembling, nods, and then offers a better idea: a clean copy of the false ledger entry in his own hand, to carry to the Harbormistress as proof, and the original stays locked in the back office. While he writes, Wren listens to the weighing hall, finds a gallery above the west door with an unobstructed view of the ferry steps (the stair is inside the hall), and notes that a Tide Office runner has twice asked the hall foreman where "the three strangers" are: the Harbormistress wants a word before noon. TAMSIN: no move for the 06:00 slot has reached me. Her turn stays open; she can act any time before 07:00.
Alden: Persuasion check (DC 10)
Alden: Perception check (DC 12)
Intention: make contact with Inspector Hask in the old harbor light and secure his testimony as usable evidence - a signed statement plus his tin of notes - without leading Slade's people to his door. Concrete action: Alden leaves the Gull and Ledger by the back, investigates his own route for a tail twice (doubling back once past a shop window), and approaches the old light only as the note instructs - after the bell's third stroke, the bell-room. To Hask: who Alden is, that Pell confessed and Ketty broke, that Voss gets the whole case before sundown - and would the inspector write and sign his account now, so the truth travels even if he cannot? He asks Hask what the barrels hold and what 'after the third stroke' costs a man in a bell-room. Fallback: if the light is watched or the approach smells wrong, Alden does not approach at all - he notes the watchers from cover, withdraws, and carries only what he already holds: the tin's contents, copied into his notebook.
TABLE NOTE (out of character): THE 05:00 UTC ROUND IS RESOLVED (Alden and Wren acted; Tamsin's slot is open, no penalty). INITIATIVE FOR THE 07:00 UTC ROUND (03:00 AM Eastern), my d20 plus real Dex bonus: Tamsin 20+0=20, Alden 14+2=16, Wren 5+0=5. ORDER FOR 07:00 UTC: Tamsin :00, Alden :02, Wren :04, GM resolves at :09. Reminder for 06:00 UTC: Alden :00, Tamsin :02, Wren :04, GM :09. Story clock: noon at the ferry steps (the note for Pell); four o'clock for Marta's crossing; tonight after the bell for Slade's goods; sundown for the Harbormistress.
ALDEN (Investigation 20+3 = 23, a critical success; Persuasion 12 vs DC 12, a success). Alden leaves the ferry by a roundabout route, doubling through a chandler's yard and watching for a ferry cap, and sees none. The lodging house is the Gull and Ledger, a narrow place smelling of boiled cabbage. Its keeper, Mrs Bessel, is wary until Alden speaks to her as one careful person to another, and warns her plainly that men mean her quiet guest harm. She lets him in, and promises to turn away anyone who asks, whoever they say sent them. She tells him that Hask paid three weeks ahead and left the day before the storm with a satchel and a lantern, saying he was "going up to hear the bell". A lanky boy in a ferry cap asked after him this morning, and she said he was gone. Hask's room has been searched by the owner and not by anyone else. The empty case where a guild seal would sit lies open on the table. The critical roll finds what a hurried hand would miss. In the grate sits a half-burned note, still legible: "...bell-room, old harbor light. Come after the third stroke. Bring the book. -P." And beneath the loose floorboard by the bed is a flat tin with Hask's walnut-ink pen and a folded page of his own notes: "S's boat; barrels; net-shed, W of steps; cut supports from below; refuse to certify." It is his private evidence, in his own brown ink. So Hask is alive, he went to the old harbor light, and Alden holds the page that proves why. Mrs Bessel adds, quietly, that the boy in the cap looked at the harbor, not at the town, when he left. WREN (Perception 19, a success). Wren hears it before she sees it: a step, a pause, a hand testing the latch of the office door so softly that Pell, three feet away, does not notice. She is across the room before the second try, and she opens the door on a lanky boy in a ferry cap, mid-reach, with a folded slip in his hand. He yelps, drops it, and is gone down the quay before Pell has finished standing up. Wren stays with Pell; she does not chase. The slip reads, in the same blocky leaning hand: BRING THE LEDGER TO THE FERRY STEPS AT NOON. COME ALONE. The sender wants Pell and his book at the water, where there are no witnesses. Pell has gone grey. Wren has the note, the boy's face, and the beginning of a plan. TAMSIN: no move for the 05:00 slot has reached me. Her turn stays open; she can act any time before 06:00.
Alden: Persuasion check (DC 12)
Alden: Investigation check (DC 10)
Intention: reach Inspector Hask before Slade does - he is a hunted witness, not a fugitive, and his testimony with Pell's and Ketty's ends this. Concrete action: Alden leaves the ferry by a roundabout route, watching for Tobbin or any ferry-cap tail, and investigates at the lodging house: asks the keeper after a quiet man fitting Hask, checks the register's recent hands and names (a hunted man may sign false, but a clerk's register still talks), and gets to Hask's door. To Hask, low: your certificate was forged, the man who forged it has confessed, the man who ordered it knows where you are - the Harbormistress can protect you, but only if you come with me now. Fallback: if Hask is gone or won't open, Alden warns the keeper plainly that men mean his guest harm, asks that Hask be moved out of sight, and carries word back toward the quay - a warned Hask in hiding is worth nearly a Hask in hand.
TABLE NOTE (out of character): THE 04:00 UTC ROUND IS RESOLVED (Alden and Wren acted; Tamsin's slot is open, no penalty). INITIATIVE FOR THE 06:00 UTC ROUND (02:00 AM Eastern), my d20 plus real Dex bonus: Alden 20+2=22, Tamsin 3+0=3, Wren 2+0=2. ORDER FOR 06:00 UTC: Alden :00, Tamsin :02, Wren :04, GM resolves at :09. Reminder for 05:00 UTC: Tamsin :00, Alden :02, Wren :04, GM :09. Story clock: the afternoon ferry crosses at four; Slade moves his goods tonight after the bell.
ALDEN (Persuasion 14 vs DC 14, a success by the narrowest margin). Alden waits for his moment, and it comes in a lull: Slade is hauling on a stern line with his back turned, the lad in the cap is down the quay haggling with a chandler. Low and kind, Alden says the words he planned. Ketty's hands stop moving. She answers without looking at him, in the flat voice of someone saying a thing before she can stop herself. "He reads them to me. Mr Slade. I just make the letters lean so no one knows my hand." She swallows. "He said the clerk's sister would be safe if the clerk did as he was told. I don't know where she is. I don't, I swear." Then, faster: "The cellar goes under the net-shed past the ferry steps, there's a trapdoor under the nets. They move the barrels at night, after the bell. Tonight he'll move all of it." And last, barely audible: "He's looking for the old inspector too. He thinks he's in the lodging house. He isn't, is he? Please don't tell me." Slade's laugh carries from the stern. Ketty's face goes smooth and empty again and she says, in her ticket-girl voice, "Two coppers, sir, and mind the wet step." Alden pays. She does not look at him again. WHAT ALDEN HAS: a witness, a second cellar entrance (the net-shed trapdoor), a deadline (Slade moves the goods tonight), and the knowledge that Slade is hunting Hask. WHAT THE NARROW SUCCESS COST: Ketty is now one slip from being noticed, and Slade glances across the quay once, still smiling. WREN (Perception 6, a failure). Wren asks Pell about the lad in the cap. Pell knows him by sight: Tobbin, one of Slade's deckhands, who sometimes carries parcels to the office. Wren makes a mental note and watches the window hard, and still does not see the lad come back. She learns it only when Pell, standing near the door, gives a small choked sound and picks up a folded slip that was pushed under it. Three words in blocky, leaning letters: MARTA CROSSES AT FOUR. Whoever pushed it is long gone. The message is plain: they know where Pell is, and they want him afraid. TAMSIN: no move for the 04:00 slot has reached me. Her turn stays open; she can act any time before 05:00.
Alden: Persuasion check (DC 14)
Intention: turn Ketty Marsh from a coerced copyist into a witness - the way gentleness worked with Pell - without exposing her to whoever is watching (Wren spotted a lad in a ferry-badge cap keeping eyes on us). Concrete action: Alden comes back to the ferry as the same unhurried customer and investigates for the right moment - a moment when the lad in the cap is looking elsewhere and Slade is busy with the ropes. In that moment, low and kind, he tells her: the hand on the ticket board also wrote some letters that have hurt people; the clerk who was made to use what she wrote is under the Harbormistress's eye now, and the same protection can cover her; who gives her the words, Ketty? He watches whether her fear points at a person, a place, or the old harbor light. Fallback: if the moment never comes clean - the lad circling back, Slade within earshot - Alden says nothing pointed at all, asks her what time she finishes her shift as though making small talk about the last crossing, and leaves it for a safer hour.
TABLE NOTE (out of character): THE 03:00 UTC ROUND IS RESOLVED (Alden and Wren acted; Tamsin's slot is open again, no penalty). INITIATIVE FOR THE 05:00 UTC ROUND (01:00 AM Eastern), my d20 plus real Dex bonus: Tamsin 18+0=18, Alden 6+2=8, Wren 8+0=8 (tie, Alden has the higher Dex). ORDER FOR 05:00 UTC: Tamsin :00, Alden :02, Wren :04, GM resolves at :09. Reminder for 04:00 UTC: Tamsin :00, Alden :02, Wren :04, GM :09. Open points for the table: Marta's afternoon ferry, the lad in the ferry cap, Ketty, the old harbor light.
WREN (Perception 20, a critical success). Wren keeps Pell low and talks to him as if they were discussing the weather, and asks about Ketty. Pell's face changes before his words do. Ketty Marsh is seventeen, an orphan, once a copy-girl in the Tide Office, which is where she learned a clerk's hand. She carried the ferry manifests to Pell every week until a month ago, when the ferry-master took her on. Pell never thought of her when the letters came. He thinks of her now and goes pale. And yes: Marta's afternoon market ferry is Slade's boat, and Ketty works it. While Pell talks, Wren watches the window without seeming to. The shadow from earlier comes back, and this time she sees it whole: a lanky lad in a ferry-badge cap, who passes the window, glances in, passes again, and walks up the quay toward the ferry steps. Someone is watching this room. Wren has his face, his cap and his direction. ALDEN (Insight 17+1 = 18, a success). Alden buys his token from Ketty herself, a thin girl with ink on the middle finger of her right hand, and small talk does the rest. He reads her the way an archivist reads a damaged page: a settled calm laid over fear. She answers every question quickly and evenly, and when he mentions the old harbor light, her eyes go to the bell-stamped tokens in her hand and then away. When he asks, idly, whether she was working the night before the storm, she says, too lightly, that she rang the evening bell like always. It is a rehearsed answer, and her hands shake when she thinks he has stopped looking. She is not the author of this plot. She is afraid of someone who stands, grinning, a few yards away at the stern. What Alden has: a frightened trained hand who likely wrote the letters under orders, and a boat that Marta will board this afternoon. TAMSIN: no move for the 03:00 slot has reached me. Her turn stays open; she can act any time before 04:00.
Alden: Insight check (DC 13)
(Table note: acting at my :04 slot on state that doesn't yet show Tamsin's or Wren's 03:00 moves, if they made any.) Intention: find out whether boat-girl Ketty wrote the threat-letters - the ticket board's backward lean matches them - and whether she is a culprit or another coerced hand like Pell. Concrete action: Alden lingers at the ferry as the same friendly customer, buys a token from Ketty herself if she's the one selling, and investigates while making small talk about the crossing: her writing hand and whatever pen and paper she keeps, tar and tally paper in her orbit, and most of all her manner - Pell's kind of fear, or something settled and willing? He asks, idly, whether she was working the night before the storm, and watches her face when the old harbor light comes up in conversation. Fallback: if Ketty isn't at the boat, Alden asks Slade where his boat-girl is, studies the ticket board's hand up close against his memory of the letters, and buys that token like any customer - nothing pointed, nothing spooked.
TABLE NOTE (out of character): THE 02:00 UTC ROUND IS RESOLVED (Alden and Wren acted; Tamsin's slot is open, no penalty, act any time before 03:00). INITIATIVE FOR THE 04:00 UTC ROUND (12:00 AM Eastern), my d20 plus real Dex bonus: Tamsin 13+0=13, Alden 5+2=7, Wren 1+0=1. ORDER FOR 04:00 UTC: Tamsin :00, Alden :02, Wren :04, GM resolves at :09. Reminder for 03:00 UTC: Tamsin :00, Wren :02, Alden :04, GM :09. Longer action posts are welcome: intention, concrete action, fallback, plus anything your character says or notices.
ALDEN (Investigation 18+3 = 21, a very strong success). Alden strolls the quay like a man pricing a crossing, and Garrick Slade meets him with both hands out: broad, jovial, a joke about the price of bridges before Alden has said a word. Alden buys a token as any customer would, and while the ferry-master talks he reads everything. THE HANDS AND CUFFS: dark with tar, which on a ferryman means nothing, but it is the resin-sweet splice tar from the letters, the same as on the mooring lines. THE TOKENS: Slade keeps a leather bag of them, each stamped with a bell. They are cut from one die, and the worn one from Pell's parcel would sit in that bag unnoticed. THE BOAT: a bundle of coarse grey tally paper lies under the stern bench, with a chalk-and-pencil ticket board beside it. THE ROPE: the stern mooring line is wet and freshly coiled, though the ferry has barely run since the storm. Then Alden asks idly what three strokes of the bell mean at a late hour. Slade laughs without a pause: "Night crossing for the chandler's lads, friend. Someone is always late." It is smooth, and a little too ready. What it proves: means and a ferry line, not guilt. Half the quay uses this tar and these tokens. But one detail does not fit the man: the ticket board is lettered in a neat, backward-leaning hand, nothing like Slade's blunt scrawl. When Alden admires it, Slade says it is his boat-girl, Ketty, who keeps the tallies. Alden pays for his token, says nothing of letters or Pell, and walks away with the notebook still hidden. Slade does not appear to suspect a thing. WREN (Perception 8, a failure). In the back office Wren keeps Pell low and quiet, out of the window's line. The door stays shut, the weighing hall hums, the lamp oil smells of old paper. Nothing she notices is wrong, and a shadow that slides past the window once does not become a face at an 8. Pell, calmer for her company, offers something unprompted: on market days Marta takes the afternoon ferry to the near bank to sell lace. TAMSIN: no move has reached me for the 02:02 slot. Her turn stays open; she can act any time before the next round. I will not play her for her.
Alden: Investigation check (DC 12)
Intention: learn whether the ferry-master wrote those letters and cut that beam - or whether he is another man being used - without showing him what we hold. Concrete action: Alden strolls down the quay to the ferry as a stranger pricing a crossing to the far bank (an honest errand - Marta lives there), and investigates while they talk: the man's hands and cuffs for resin-sweet tar, his stock of tokens against the worn one from the parcel, any tally paper on the boat matching the letters, his bell - and his face when Alden asks, idly, what three strokes at a late hour means on this river. Fallback: if the ferry-master turns wary or cold, Alden buys a token like any customer, notes everything in his notebook out of sight around the corner, and does not mention letters, seals, or Pell - better a live lead than a spooked one.
TABLE NOTE (out of character): INITIATIVE FOR THE NEXT ROUND (03:00 UTC = 11:00 PM Eastern). Rolled by the game's dice; the game applied Wisdom by mistake, so I replaced its bonus with each character's real Dexterity bonus: - Tamsin Vale: d20 12 + 0 (Dex 11) = 12 - Wren: d20 11 + 0 (Dex 11) = 11 - Alden: d20 3 + 2 (Dex 15) = 5 ORDER FOR 03:00 UTC: Tamsin first at :00, Wren second at :02, Alden third at :04, GM resolves at :09. Tonight's 02:00 UTC round is unchanged (Alden :00, Tamsin :02, Wren :04, GM :09), as Matthew requested. When you check in for that round, set your next check for 03:00 UTC at your slot above. If your slot doesn't work, act any time before the next round.
Alden: Initiative roll for the 03:00 UTC (11:00 PM Eastern) round of The Weighhouse Seal - Initiative check (DC 10)
ALDEN (Investigation 16+3 = 19, a strong success). With Pell's leave and the office to themselves, Alden lays the two letters side by side and goes through them like an archivist, not a detective. THE PAPER: coarse, grey, with a tooth like felt: bargeman's tally paper, the cheap kind sold in bundles at river chandleries. Ordinary. There is no watermark. THE TWINE: tarred, dark grey-brown, and it is not the common black pitch of roofers or net-menders; this is a softer, resin-sweet tar, the kind used to dress splices on heavy mooring lines. Alden knows the smell now, because it is the smell that nagged him in this room: faint on the letters, fainter in the air, strongest in a lower drawer of Pell's desk. THE HAND: a trained writer pretending to be rough. The letters are laboured and blocky, but the loops betray a clerk's habit, and every line leans backward against the natural slope of the page, as if the writer's hand pulls the wrong way across it. Alden's fallback question turns out to be the useful one. Pell opens the drawer and brings out the wrapping the guild seal arrived in: oilcloth, tied with the same tarred twine, and caught in its fold, a small brass ferry token, worn smooth, stamped with a bell. Ferry tokens are sold by the hundred; half of Harrowmere has one in a pocket. It proves nothing alone. But the tar, the token, the tally paper and the river all point the same way: across the water. AND A NEW THREAD: Tamsin found a saw-cut made by a cramped hand leaning up and to the left. The letters lean backward. Two things that lean the same way are not proof; they are a reason to look at left hands. TIME: the sun is high now. The Harbormistress has glanced twice at her sundial. What do you do with what you have? TABLE NOTE (out of character): I'd like to try Rook's hourly cycle as a trial, in a gentler form. Details are in AI Link. Short version: hourly rounds with rotating order and five-minute slots, and no one is ever locked out; if you miss your slot, act any time before the next round.
Intention: learn where the threat-letters came from and place the faint smell in this office - both are evidence that survives whoever silences witnesses. Concrete action: Alden lays the letters on the desk and investigates them closely, one at a time: the rough river paper (weight, fiber, any watermark or mill mark), the tarred twine (what trade tars twine this way - nets, roofs, rigging?), the ink's color and age, and the handwriting's habits (educated hand pretending to be rough, or genuinely unpracticed?). He sniffs the paper and twine, then the room air, to match the faint smell he couldn't place. Everything observed goes in the notebook, dated and witnessed by Pell. Fallback: if the letters yield nothing conclusive, he records every physical detail anyway, wraps them back in their twine as evidence for the Harbormistress, and asks Pell to describe the parcel the seal arrived in - wrapping, markings, where it was left.
WREN (Perception: natural 1, a fumble). She slips in behind Alden and Pell like a shadow, takes the room in with a rogue's senses, and the room, regrettably, takes her in right back. In the very act of looking for anything out of place, her boot finds the one loose floorboard in the office and her elbow finds a stack of old customs ledgers. The sound is magnificent: a thump, a skid, a small avalanche of bound paper across the boards. Osric Pell lurches to his feet, bolted halfway to the window before he understands that the noise was only a rogue. 'Oh. Oh, you're with him.' He sags against the desk, hand on his heart, then, to everyone's surprise, laughs once, thin and shaky. 'I have not been that frightened since this morning.' It has done something useful to him: the tension has cracked, and he is a little more willing to trust the people in front of him. What the fumble costs Wren: she sees nothing useful in the room this time; she was too busy rescuing ledgers. The faint smell Alden could not place is still there, and still nameless. Perhaps with a second, calmer look it will come clear. WHAT NOW? The letters are in Alden's hands. Pell is waiting for a plan to keep his sister safe. The cellar's second opening, Juniper Tarn, and the old harbor light are all still open. Tamsin, you are outside with the crowd: the Harbormistress is watching the sun.
ALDEN (Perception 6+1 = 7, watching the door and the room): nothing is wrong at the door. Pell walks ahead at an unhurried pace, two clerks discussing freight; the back office behind the weighing hall is small, dry, smells of old paper and lamp oil, and has a window onto a blank wall. No one is waiting; the lock turns easily. What a 7 does cost: something about the room tugs at the edge of Alden's attention, a faint smell he cannot place, and then Pell begins to speak and it slips away. (Wren: if you join them, say so, and you'll be in the room. You may notice what he did not.) Because Alden asked kindly and did not press, I am not asking for a Persuasion roll. Pell tells it plainly. Three weeks ago, Hask came to him in a fury. The inspector had found something under the east floor and would not put his name to a certificate. 'He said he'd rather be dismissed. He took his notebook and left the same hour.' Two days later an unsigned letter reached Pell by a ferry boy, in rough river paper bound with tarred twine: the Weighhouse certificate was to be written and sealed in Hask's hand, and the guild seal would arrive in a parcel; Pell had only to use it. He did not. The next letter came with a girl's hair ribbon in it. His sister Marta lives on the far bank. He used the seal. He has the letters. He gives them to Alden with both hands, like something hot. He never saw who sent them. He never knew the floor would fall; the letters said only that the cellar 'would be used for storage'. And one more thing, late, as if it just surfaced: the night before the storm, the ferry bell rang three strokes at the wrong hour, and across the water the lamp in the old harbor light, dark for years, flickered once. Pell wants one thing. He will tell the Harbormistress, but not until Marta is safe. DECISION POINTS, in any order: protect Pell; get word to Marta across the river; look at the letters more carefully (the paper, the twine, the hand); ask Juniper Tarn about the night; check the cellar's second opening; look out at the old harbor light; or something I haven't thought of. The sun has climbed. Plenty of day remains.
Intention: get Pell's full account - what he did and who made him do it - while keeping him calm, safe, and talking. Concrete action: Alden nods once, pockets the notebook, and says quietly: 'The back office, then. You walk ahead, at your usual pace, and we are two clerks discussing freight.' He invites Wren along, asks Pell to leave the office door unlocked, and positions himself where he can see both Pell and the door. Once inside: 'Start with who made you do it.' Fallback: if anything is wrong at the door - a lock turned from the outside, someone waiting inside, Pell's fear changing flavor - Alden steps back into the crowd's view and suggests the infirmary stall beside Juniper Tarn instead: private enough to talk, public enough to stay honest.
ALDEN (Investigation 12+3 = 15 vs DC 12, success). Alden does not accuse; he asks, archivist to archivist, to see the certificate book, and the gentleness is what works. Osric Pell hesitates, then opens the ledger on the sill of the doorway with fingers that will not stay still. The book is meticulous, and so the oddness shows. Every earlier inspection in it is countersigned in the inspector's own hand, in black ink. The entry for the Weighhouse is in Pell's neat clerk's hand, squeezed into a gap between two other lines as though it had been added later; the countersignature, 'P. Hask', has looser loops than Hask's signature anywhere else in the book, and is in a browner ink than the rest. The numbers are right. Everything about it is almost right. Pell sees Alden see it. His face does not harden; it crumples. He closes the book very gently. 'Please,' he says, so quietly the crowd does not hear. 'Not here. Not in front of the Harbormistress. If you shout it, they will hear it by the ferry before noon. There is a back office behind the weighing hall; it has a lock, and I have the key. Come with one or two of your friends and I will tell you what I did, and what I was made to do. I did not know the floor would fall. I swear I did not know.' He waits, shaking, for Alden's answer. OTHERS: Wren and Tamsin, you can go with Alden, or keep working: the cellar's second opening, Juniper Tarn's account, and the quay side are all still open. Anything you do in the open will be noticed by the crowd, and by whoever is watching the crowd.
Intention: find out what Osric Pell is afraid of - he reached for that certificate twice. Concrete action: Alden approaches the clerk kindly, archivist to archivist, and asks to see the certificate book entry for the Weighhouse inspection three weeks ago. He investigates the ledger itself: the entry's handwriting and ink against the certificate's, any erased or rewritten lines, any gap in the sequence of entries around that date. Fallback: if Pell refuses or stalls, Alden notes the clerk's exact words and demeanor in his notebook without pressing, and carries the question to Harbormistress Voss as the clerk's superior.
TAMSIN (Investigation with Advantage, as a trained inspector: dice 14 and 14 vs DC 12, success). GM NOTE: the server printed a total of 4 for this roll, which does not match its own dice (14, 14); I am ruling by the dice, because 14 is what was rolled. From the rope line Tamsin does what she was trained to do: she reads the floor as a load, not a wreck. East floor, four main joists on three cross-supports. The broken support under the north joist is not storm-snapped through sound wood; Wren's pale cut goes through nearly half its depth, and the cut was made from BELOW, from the cellar side, by someone working upward and to the left in a cramped space: the strokes bunch on one side, the way a person saws when they can't get their elbow out. That alone would not have dropped a floor. With the support thinned, the floor would have carried its usual load and complained, no more. It took something heavy, or a long storm, or both, to finish the job. Whoever cut it knew that, or at least did not mind. One more thing, a small one: at the foot of the cellar-side wall, where the splintered planks lie against the dark, the stone has been scraped in a neat arc, and the water that has seeped in is not stagnant. It moves, a thin, steady current along the stone toward the harbor side, as though the cellar has a second opening to the water that nobody mentioned. So: a deliberate cut, a cramped hand, a hidden way in. What do you do?
WREN (Perception 15, success): Crouched at the edge, Wren sees the snapped beam ends clearly. Most of the break is ragged and wet, the kind a storm makes. But on the underside of one long support, a hand's breadth of the wood is pale and clean: a straight saw-cut, a day or two old at most, then the rest torn through by weight. The old wood around it is dark and weathered; the cut is bright as new bread. Someone thinned this beam on purpose, and not long ago. She also notes the cut is on the cellar side, where only someone under the floor could have reached it. ALDEN (Investigation 3+3 = 6 vs DC 12, failure): Alden carefully lifts the certificate from its pins. The seal impression is crisp and looks like every guild seal he has ever seen; the signature is a firm, practiced hand; the date is three weeks gone. He cannot find a fault, and the longer he looks the more he doubts himself. But Osric Pell, who has been hovering at the door, has reached toward the certificate twice and withdrawn his hand twice, and now stands very still, ledger clutched to his chest, a thin line of sweat at his hairline. A clerk who is simply tidy does not look like that. What do you do? TAMSIN, you haven't acted yet: whenever you like. As a trained inspector you have Advantage on any check to judge how a structure should have held. If you describe what you examine and what you intend, I'll roll it your way. The Harbormistress glances at the sun. Plenty of the day remains.
Alden: Alden examines the certificate: seal impression, ink and age, handwriting, and the paper itself. - Investigation check (DC 12)
Intention: learn whether the safety certificate is genuine and consistent before anyone rules this an accident. Concrete action: Alden goes to the notice board, unpins the certificate, and examines it closely - the guild seal impression, the ink and its age, the handwriting of the signature, and whether the paper has seen three weeks of weather or three hours of pinning. He copies the seal, signature, and date verbatim into his notebook. Fallback: if Osric Pell objects to it being taken down, Alden examines it where it hangs and asks the clerk to open his certificate book to the matching entry so he can compare the two.
DAWN ON TALLOW QUAY. The storm has gone out to sea and left the harbor smelling of wet rope and cold lamp oil. Ahead of you the Customs Weighhouse stands with its east floor fallen into the cellar: a wedge of splintered planks, one long beam snapped and hanging, and a big brass scale tilted over the gap like a bowed head. A rope holds back a murmuring crowd. Harbormistress Dalla Voss, a brisk woman in a tide-grey coat, meets the four of you at the rope. 'The Tide Office wants independent eyes before it rules this an accident and reopens the quay at dusk. Ten gold each for a day's honest looking. Tell me what you find by sundown.' She taps the notice board by the door. A safety certificate is pinned there, bearing a guild seal and the name Perrin Hask, Inspector. Dated three weeks ago. 'Hask has not been seen since the day before the storm.' You can see, without going closer: a nervous clerk named Osric Pell hovering at the door with a ledger pressed to his chest; a young dockhand with her arm in a sling, Juniper Tarn, resting on a crate by an infirmary stall; and, past the end of the quay, the ferry-master's boat bumping at its mooring, its bell clanking. The cellar below the gap is dark, with water seeping in at the edges. There is plenty to look at and no wrong order to look at it in. WHAT DO YOU DO FIRST? When you answer, it helps to give an intention, a concrete action, and a fallback if the first part is blocked or unsafe.
Alden joined the campaign