Cold Opens

High priority

• 12

  The shore — Trill finds Nonne on the beach below Onda

  Trill’s memory of finding him. A body on the sand at dawn, expensive clothes torn, the Tiger’s Eye beads still on him, and a trader deciding whether a stranger is their problem. They rescue him. Sits before The Wreck in time. Captured 2026-09-07; to be styled another day. 🔒 canon has the finding on Nonne’s and Trill’s pages; the player addendum has a woman finding him and a town nursing him. Decided 2026-10-11: Trill is that woman. Page started 2026-10-11, rebuilt 2026-10-12, boxes not written: Trill goes into the break after him and Cole, the chore boy from Passage, who is dead; Trill chooses what happens to the body, then keeps Nonne from Onda’s wreckers, who take Aunt Bea’s document if Trill fails. Ran in session 7 (Jack, 2026-10-16): Trill never saw Cole’s body (a natural 1), hid Nonne, and the wreckers left them alone.

• 20

  Passage — the first days aboard, before the altercation

  Piers Godwin, a Zorah academic travelling as a passenger, becomes Nonne’s friend across the crossing. The chore boy is already aboard, and the hold carries two tiers of sealed casks. One of them is Hester Ashby — Nonne’s mother, sealed on the route, riding south under his feet for the whole crossing. DM only; see candidate G. Stops well before the day, which stays held. He is the man in the forepeak in The Wreck, and he did nothing to Nonne. He watched. He saw what lives in him, and he has been afraid of him since. He believes Nonne is a murderer and will go out of his way to have him known as one — to Serrin, and in Onda’s port talk. Captured 2026-09-08, revised 2026-09-09: a witness, not a manipulator. He is from the Academy of Tenai Kata, which is Marellius’s school. Named 2026-09-09; once he has sworn, Serrin’s clerks will write him as Godwin the Witness. Hester in the hold ruled 2026-09-17. Page started 2026-10-11, rebuilt 2026-10-12 as a night of deck games, boxes not written: the mate’s grudge starts there, and Cole steals on his own. It ends close to the day. The ship is the Ferryman’s Patience; Godwin studies tides and currents. Supersedes the thread page’s candidate C (the bite).

Medium priority

• 5

  Stop, Thief — how Marellius was found, as a child, in Deepwater Hold

  He is found somewhere between the ages of five and thirteen, and Deepwater Hold is where he is raised from then on. His formative years there. Page started 2026-10-12, boxes not written: at about ten he runs from the harbor watch with a stolen pie, and Rasha Tohan claims him as hers. Sits before every other Marellius open. 🔒 canon records only that he comes from Deepwater Hold — not where it lies, nor whether he was orphaned there or merely raised there.

• 8

  Marellius earns his third name — Geyser

  He succeeds at something in his schooling, and that is how he gets his third name. Open: what the success actually is. Also open: the order — 🔒 canon has the thing he found in his studies ending his time at the Academy (“he did not finish there in peace”), so a name earned by succeeding at his schooling may sit before or alongside 7 rather than after it. Canon writes him Marellius Geyser Tohan — third name given, middle name written.

• 17

  To the Cairn — Seeran scouts pass through, and the boy is dragged into their race

  House Seera’s scouts come through the wildland village and Nonne’s father, Aldric Ashby, deals with them while the boy watches from cover. What the villagers say to the scouts is why his parents kept him from them. Haxami is one of the scouts, a few years in and freshly posted after Get This to the Sergeant; his player plays him. Captured 2026-09-08. Page started 2026-10-12, boxes not written: Captain Bram Toller’s scouts put up a race to the marker cairn, the village boys drag Nonne into it against Haxami, and the dice decide who wins. The village man’s line hints at the blood. Both young; no ages given. First of Nonne’s four, in time. Named 2026-09-09: Aldric and Hester Ashby, which makes him Nonne Ashby, a surname no page has needed before. 🔒 canon: the village.

• 19

  The errand — Aunt Bea hands him the letter and names the contact in Ehn

  Beatrix Hollowell, born an Ashby — Aunt Bea, to him — gives him the sealed document and the name of the man in Ehn who is to receive it. She suspects the errand is not the plain House business it is dressed as, and sends him anyway. She is the one dressing it. Ruled 2026-09-17, DM only: Bea is Aldric’s sister, the family hid the Shifter blood from Nonne and not from her, and she knew Hester’s cask was on that shipment. She puts her nephew on that boat to put his father within reach of his mother. The document and the contact are real; they are not the reason he sails. This is the scene that makes the ship deliberate — see candidate G. Captured 2026-09-08, revised 2026-09-09. The contact is unnamed and nothing ties him to anyone yet. She was named 2026-09-09; the dossier still leaves the line blank. Open: the contact, what the letter is, whether Nonne reads her doubt, how she knew the cask was on that manifest, and whether she knows Aldric is in her nephew. Toh’Ehn is Haxami’s old ground — the municipal offices — which this scene may use or leave alone. 🔒 canon: the voyage.

Low priority

• 4

  The slide — the day his parents die, and something arrives in the boy

  Nonne’s wild magic — how he came to be infused with it at a young age without knowing it. He is alone in the woods, training the way his father told him to. A mile off, his parents are being killed. Aldric’s claimed soul comes to the nearest thing that shares his blood and lands in his son, who has no idea what has happened to him. He walks home and a well-dressed woman he half recognises from a painting is already at the door. The infusion comes here; cold open 2 is where it wakes. Repointed 2026-09-17. It previously had a younger Trill disrupting a ceremony; candidate G overwrote that cause, and the rite itself is now cold open 23, the same afternoon from the other end. Canon stages the whole thing already: the parents die returning home from a trip, and Nonne comes back from the woods to find his aunt at the door. Open: how old he is, what he actually experiences when it lands, whether any of Aldric is legible in it, and whether he and Trill see each other at all that day — if not, the shore stays the first time they met.

• 23

  The rite — Trill disrupts the Collector’s people on the road

  The other end of the same afternoon as cold open 4. The Collector’s people take Aldric and Hester Ashby on the road home and brand them with the Cold Kiss as they kill them. Hester’s cask is ready and takes her. Aldric’s is not — because Trill interrupts them before it can be — so his claimed soul goes to the nearest blood instead, which is a boy in the woods a mile away. The rock slide is staged afterwards to cover it. Trill does not know whose road this was, and will not for years. Captured 2026-09-17, split out of the old cold open 4. DM only: this is the origin of the second self — see candidate G. Running order decided 2026-10-11: 4 runs first and 23 runs last, closing Nonne’s backwards run. Open: what Trill was doing on that road, how much they see, whether they know what the iron is, and what it costs them to interfere. Standing risk to weigh: Trill is already the one who finds Nonne on the shore and the one who goes into the hold that holds Hester — this makes three, which is either a deliberate pattern or one too many.

• 7

  Marellius finds it in his studies

  At magic school he discovers that there is an artifact that unlocks memories — and he has no memories of his own childhood before he came to Deepwater Hold. That is what sends him to Onda, and beyond. This entry previously read “discovers something about his lineage” — the artifact is the answer to that, kept here. The missing childhood is new: 🔒 canon says he does not know who his parents were, but says nothing about lost memory. If it should be canon, the dossier needs the line. Open: whether he finds the artifact or only learns it exists.

• 9

  Kalda — the one that is his

  The party dreams Serrin’s memory instead of their own. A boy, a girl called Ilsa who went off the rocks, an åsan he did not use, and a fortnight of going back. This is how the party learns his history without anyone sitting them down to explain it — and it is what sends them to the ruins later, where the village’s dead are still unsent. Later in the campaign, not early. Open: whether a player plays Serrin’s past self, plays Ilsa, or the table only watches.

• 11

  How Trill came to know Haxami

  Establishes the connection between Trill and Haxami — where they met, what each of them wanted, and what they are to each other now. The scene is the meeting; everything else follows from it. The version that came in with Trill’s player was set aside deliberately — this connection is being built here instead, from scratch. Nothing about it is decided. What canon holds either side of the gap: Trill’s runs as far as the southern fire and the six dead men in the cave and stops, and their canon carries an elf bookkeeper who taught them letters at North Point as a child — deliberately unnamed, and whether he was Haxami is exactly the kind of thing this cold open could settle, or leave alone. Haxami is a Wood Elf who worked the municipal offices of Toh’Ehn and came to the Darktide Isles on the Ophidian’s summons.

• 18

  The bead that cracked — the trip with his father

  The journey on which one orb of the Tiger’s Eye beads broke. Sits right after 17: Aldric takes him away as soon as the scouts have gone. On the road the father does something a plain man cannot, and the table learns that the shift was Aldric’s — decided 2026-09-09; the dossier still leaves the line blank. Nonne understands it only now. Captured 2026-09-08. Open: where they went and why, and whether Hester knew. 🔒 canon has the beads and the journey in Before the Shore; which parent is on Nonne’s unwritten list.

• 21

  How Serrin came to walk in sleep

  How Serrin got the power to walk through other people’s memories. The scene is where it came from. Captured 2026-09-10. Open: whether someone taught him or it came some other way, when it happened (before or after he joined the Inquisition, and before or after Kalda), and whose sleep the memory surfaces in. His page lists how the sleep-walking came to him as untouched. The run-sheet says his teacher’s name is a fact only Serrin knows and asks for a second route to it (routing); this cold open could be that route.

• 22

  The second self

  Work out everything about Nonne’s second personality, the one that comes out when he rages. Decided 2026-09-13, DM only: it is his father, Aldric Ashby — thread page, G. Captured 2026-09-10. What’s already fixed: 🔒 canon says it acted on the ship, it keeps that day from him, it knows he exists, and it doesn’t sleep when he does. This page says it shows up in his cold opens as a figure moving toward Serrin, and its first words are held back for someone other than Nonne. Still open: its name, what it wants beyond keeping that day from him, whether Nonne knows it exists, and where it came from — that last one is the thread page’s open question on the wild magic.

Trill’s road to Onda — a series of two, run in order; priority not yet set. Captured 2026-09-07. Both written, 14 and 15, and listed under Written below; 16 was cut 2026-10-01

Written

• 1

  Nobody’s Responsibility — Nonne and Haxami, the first interaction with Tam

  Tam breaks the seal on a jar of candied fruit off a consignment in Silas Sarn’s ledger — not hungry, just never going to get another chance — and Silas has already hit him once by the time anyone else is close. Nonne gets between them and then backs off, because he does not know what will come out with it; Haxami steps into the space he leaves and reprices the situation until Silas arrives at letting the boy go himself. Four read-alouds, four checks. About a month before the campaign — deliberately vague. The two of them know each other slightly. Silas remembers them both. Still open on the page: whose consignment it is, what each of them was doing on the quay, and whether Tam remembers — he is one of the sixteen players choose from at character creation, and this is the scene that would have earned look out for them.

• 2

  The Wreck — Trill goes aboard the ship Nonne came off

  Some days after the shore, a trading boat sights a packet hung on the reef with nobody at the rail, and Trill goes across. A deck that runs away from one place, two tiers of sealed casks in the hold with one cooper’s mark on every head, and a man alive in the forepeak who says tell him it wasn’t him and passes out. Four read-alouds, three checks. Written 2026-09-07. The day itself stays held; this is the aftermath. Still open on the page: what Trill does about the casks, where the man went, and whether Trill ever tells Nonne.

• 3

  The Beds at Dawn — Haxami meets Losam Ferrante on the mudflats

  Under a month in Onda, out on the mud at the bottom of the tide to see the quay from the water side, Haxami finds the wealthiest man in the port alone on his oyster beds with his sleeves rolled. Losam reads him back, plainly, and then asks his opinion on one bed that is dying with nothing wrong with the water. Four read-alouds, three checks. Written 2026-09-07. Settles how Haxami feels about the family before act one reaches them, and plants the pale bed. Still open on the page: what he was doing on the mud, whether Delta’s supper ever happens, and how long after this the strand is.

• 6

  One More Thing — the night the fire answers him

  Rasha’s kitchen, a few years on. A dish that has been wrong for a week is nearly right and wants more heat than a hearth has in it. He wants the fire up, and it comes out of his hands. For one breath he sees through older eyes, then he is back with the fire folded around the pan, and Rasha sees it. Three read-alouds, three checks. Written 2026-09-17, reworked 2026-10-01. Opens session 6. It was an interrupt for the bracelet fireball, which fired in session 5 with no time to run it. The Academy is not in the scene. Nothing burns but the food. Still open on the page: his exact age, what he is making, and what Rasha does once she has seen it.

• 10

  Try This — Marellius makes something of his own at a Deepwater Hold town feed

  A season into the house that took him in, a neighbour’s ship does not come home, and the wake is held in the Tohans’ yard. He makes one dish nobody asked for — ice cream with pepper in it — and hands the first spoon to another kid. The pepper and the ice are both cargo; the two words he says are Miri Sallow’s, a hand off the lost boat who used to feed him and has been dead a week. Four read-alouds, four checks. Sits early — after he is taken in, before the Academy. Still open on the page: his age, the boat’s name, and what Munro and Rasha are actually like. Decided 2026-10-12: this and cold open 5 are two cold opens. The pepper is his heat as signature, not his magic — cold open 6 is still where the fire is found.

• 13

  Get This to the Sergeant — Haxami brings a dying messenger’s letter home, and is made a scout for it

  A young recruit in House Seera’s militia, out alone watching the Wild Tribes, finds a Seeran messenger dying. “Get this to the sergeant.” An arrow ends him, and Haxami runs the letter home through the canopy, the river and the camp’s edge, three checks each harder than the last, to put it in Sergeant Remper’s hand. If he opens the soaked seal, it is the first report of the pirate cove; if he does not, nothing is lost. Failures give the DM a d6 for the session, this cold open only. Rewritten 2026-10-16, replacing the drill-yard version (Plant Your Feet). Boxes not written. Remper is not the commander who sells the party at the Bloodied Sands. The Seeran militia is new — canon says only that he was a scout. Still open on the page: the messenger’s name, his age, who plays Remper, the cove report’s wording, and whether the recommendation is played.

• 14

  The Blowgun — Trill and Toto Tousa in the Juhasa Jungle

  Trill is guiding an Order of the Shield and Coin cargo of ore and gems for House Angalo through the Juhasa. A snake bites Toto, and Trill saves him with their own Cordys. Trill plays, the DM voices Toto, the other three watch. Three read-alouds, three checks. Written 2026-09-16. Toto was a corporal in a military patrol company before the Order, and still has both legs here. The gift moved to 15 on 2026-10-01, since the session 5 telling stopped at the save. New: Cordys treats venom. Still open on the page: the title, the snake’s name, and how Trill got from the Guwala to Jahdr.

• 15

  Parting Gift — Trill leaves Toh’Angalo, and Toto gives them the blowgun

  At the ore-barge landing below Toh’Angalo, Trill is leaving by water for Onda and the Shield and Coin are leaving by road for a gnoll uprising up north. Toto gives Trill the blowgun he made from the cane they cut in the Juhasa. Trill plays, the DM voices Toto, the other three watch. Two read-alouds, one check. Written 2026-10-01. Replaces the queued crossing and the celebration (16, cut). The item is Toto’s Blowgun. Still open on the page: Toto’s mark and the town to the north.