Cold Opens

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.

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. Open: who finds him, where, and what state he is in. 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.

Marellius finds his fire magic

He comes into his fire magic, and that is what sends him off to magic school. The scene is the finding; the Academy is the consequence. The school is the Academy of Tenai Kata in Toh’Zorah (🔒 canon). Open: how old he is, whether anyone in Deepwater Hold sees it happen, and who arranges the going. He is a Fire Genasi and already knows it — canon is explicit that what he is was never the blank.

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.

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, unreconciled — this scene is where that seam gets decided, or deliberately not.

Scouts in the village — Seeran scouts pass through, and the boy watches from the trees

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 Plant Your Feet; his player plays him. Captured 2026-09-08. Open: who leads the patrol, what the villagers actually say, and the ages (Nonne young, Haxami young; flavour, not maths). 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.

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. 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. Open: what he studies, and the ship’s name. Supersedes the thread page’s candidate C (the bite).

A younger Trill disrupts a ceremony involving a very young Nonne, who does not recognise them

Nonne’s wild magic — how he came to be infused with it at a young age without knowing it. Trill optionally in the scene: they are very old, and could have seen a great many things. The infusion comes first; cold open 2 is where it wakes. Many years in the past, which would make the shore the second time they met. Trill’s age is not recorded in canon.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 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, and whether Nonne reads her doubt. Toh’Ehn is Haxami’s old ground — the municipal offices — which this scene may use or leave alone. 🔒 canon: the voyage.

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.

The blowgun — Trill and Toto Tousa in the Juhasa Jungle

A super brief adventure in which Trill acquires their blowgun. Toto Tousa is with them. Open: what the adventure is, and how the two of them come to be in the Juhasa together. 🔒 canon has Toto (Tomasi Tousa) as a patrol corporal who lost a leg to a sand worm, a tinker now apprenticed to the Artificer’s Guild. Trill’s canon stops at the southern fire; this is the first thing after it.

The crossing — Trill goes to Toh’Angalo with the Shield and Coin

Trill heads over to Toh’Angalo, the mine-city, with the party from the Order of the Shield and Coin. May be the second half of 14 or its own cold open — Jack’s call. Open: how Trill falls in with the Order. 🔒 canon has the Order contracted to House Angalo and led by Munder, and Toh’Angalo as the House’s subterranean capital.

The celebration — Trill and the Shield and Coin after the gnolls

Trill celebrates with the Shield and Coin after a victory, killing some gnolls. That victory gives them enough wealth to buy passage to Onda. Coincidentally, Toto’s cousin is in Onda. All of that is still to build: who the cousin is, and the fight itself, which happens before the scene. 🔒 canon has Trill “looking for a purpose in Onda”; this settles how they got there, not the why.

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.

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.

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.

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. Open here: whether this and cold open 5 are one cold open or two, since the shipping family are also the answer to who finds him. The pepper is his heat as signature, not his magic — cold open 6 is still where the fire is found.

Plant Your Feet — Haxami puts his sergeant on the ground, and is made a scout for it

A few years into House Seera’s militia, Sergeant Remper has been teaching the blade wrong all season and picks Haxami out to demonstrate on. Haxami does it the way the old hunters do, puts him in the dirt in front of the line, and the next morning his name is on the board under scouts, in Remper’s hand. Marellius’s player plays Remper, their character in another campaign. Four read-alouds, two checks. Written 2026-09-07. 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: his age, the captain’s name, what Remper carries over from the other game, and whether he comes back.