One More Thing
Cold open 6 · Marellius, a few years on in Deepwater Hold, the night the fire answers him
At a Glance
- Who’s in it
- Marellius, playing his past self. The other three watch.
- When
- Deepwater Hold, a few years after Try This. Early teens. Rasha’s kitchen, evening. Long before the Academy.
- How it fires
- Top of session 6. See below
- Runs
- About five minutes
- Boxes
- Three, numbered below
- Rolls
- Three — two texture, one capability
- Reveals
- That his fire answers wanting, and that it goes exactly where he means it to
How it fires
The one thing to know before running it
It opens session 6. It was written as an interrupt for the first fireball out of Dita’s Bracelet. That fired in session 5 with no time to run this, so it opens the next night like any other cold open.
The opening
The opening line
You’re cooking.
Right away, to Marellius: DC 12, player’s choice of Perception (tasting what it is missing), Survival (working the fire and the food) or Cook’s utensils — how the dish is going. Then read box 1.
Read-aloud 1 — the kitchen
Rasha is behind you with her hands in something, telling you about a boat that came in short and a man who is going to hear about it. The pan in front of you has been wrong for a week and tonight it is nearly right — it wants one more thing, and the one more thing is heat. The hearth is giving you what a hearth gives. You can hear the fat go quiet as it cools, and you are already reaching for the bellows you know will not be enough.
What happens
Beat one — the pan, and the hearth that will not do it
The want is a cook’s want, not a hungry boy’s. He has been at this one thing for a week and it is close, and what it needs is more heat than a domestic fire has in it. That is the whole of the setup and it does not need longer.
Rasha is close and not watching. Her back is to him and she is talking about something else entirely — a short cargo, somebody who will hear about it. Give her the one line about the boat and nothing more. She turns at the end of box 3 and sees it.
Beat two — it answers
He does not decide to do it. Play it as a reflex that arrives ahead of the thought — he wants the fire up, and the fire comes up. Roll Arcana as it happens, then read the box.
Read-aloud 2 — it answers
You do not pick up the bellows. Something else happens instead, and it happens the way scratching an itch happens, before you have decided to. The fire under the pan stands up — not bigger, taller, leaning into the iron like it has been called by name — and the fat goes from quiet to loud in the space of one breath. Behind you, Rasha is still talking.
Beat three — the sliver
He wants more and more comes. In the white he sees through his own older eyes for one breath, then he is back and the fire is in his hands. Roll Intelligence before the box — it decides how much of the sliver he keeps. Then read box 3. The cold open ends on it.
Read-aloud 3 — the sliver
You want more and more comes, and it is not coming out of the grate any more, it is coming out of your hands — a column of it standing over the hearth, taller than you are. The room goes white. For one breath you are not in this kitchen: the heat is a place, and the place is home, and the hands held out in front of you are a grown man’s, broad and older and yours. Then you blink and you are a boy again, and the fire is pouring out of your palms and folding itself around the pan like a hand closing around an egg, and not one tongue of it has touched the shelf above. Behind you, Rasha has stopped talking.
Nothing burns but the food. The fire is enormous and touches only the pan. That is Sculpt Spells — he is an evocation wizard — before he has a name for it. The scene does not send him anywhere; the Academy happens later and off this page.
What’s rolled
Marellius’s player rolls all of them, on the sheet in front of them — the character they have, however young the past self is. No roll decides whether any of this happened.
| What | DC | Success carries | Failure carries |
|---|---|---|---|
| Perception, Survival or Cook’s utensils the opening line, player’s choice |
DC 12 | It is nearly right, and he can taste exactly what it is missing. The want is a craftsman’s want. If it carries: a Dream Inspiration die, handed over there and then — he is not waking up from this one. | It is wrong and he cannot say why, so he reaches for heat because heat is the only lever he has. Either way he reaches. Nothing carries on a failure here — no damage, no mark. |
| Intelligence (Arcana) beat two, as it stands up |
DC 14 | He knows in that second that it was him and not the wood, and he has known ever since. The capability roll — this is where what he is becomes something he can do. | He thinks the wood caught. He works it out weeks later, on his own, and what he kept from tonight is the fright rather than the power. |
| Intelligence beat three, before the box |
DC 13 | He keeps the sliver: the older man’s hands, and heat that felt like home. | He keeps only that something was there. He cannot say what. |
Two texture, one capability. The carry is success only.
What it reveals
His fire answers wanting. Not a word, not a gesture, not a trick he was taught — a want. He wanted the heat up and the heat came up.
And it goes exactly where he means it to. A fire the size of the hearth, and nothing in the kitchen burns but the food.
Behind the screen
The sliver is B’har. The grown man is who he was before the Cauldron remade him — see the thread page. The player is not told. Do not explain it at the table.
It is also the first thing he ever had that he could not say where it came from. He can tell you the port the pepper came through and the boat the ice came off and whose name he carries and why — see the thread page. He cannot tell you one thing about this. That is the thread running through all five of his cold opens, and it does not get stated at the table.
Still open
Decide before you run it — none of these are invented here
His exact age. Canon puts the adoption between five and thirteen and says nothing after. Early teens is the setting; a number is not needed and box 1 is where it would go.
What he is making. The pan has been wrong for a week and is nearly right, and that is all the page says. If you name it, name it in beat one.
The short cargo Rasha is talking about, and the man who is going to hear about it. One line, never followed up.
What Rasha does once she has seen it, and whether Munro is told.