A Few Questions

The arc and the run-sheet · Onda, House Sai · an Inquisitor who breaks the Pact to enforce it

Premise

A cooper named Emil Varga is being cast off on the strand below Onda’s sea wall, on a North Turn, in front of two hundred people. One of the party was asked to stand in the rite — which one does not matter — and the rest are there because in Onda you attend. He is laid on the board and moored to the pier by three lines — work, debt, kin — and one by one the people who hold them answer their claim and cast off, because a soul that nobody holds has nothing to stay for. Speaker Miriam Dol calls it correctly, all three go slack, and then all three come up taut again off a board that is moored to nothing. He sits up. Nobody screams, because nobody in Onda screams at a casting off.

Six days later a man off the Spirit Lands packet asks the harbourmaster for the week’s papers, and the burial register is in the bundle with every witness’s name written in a hand that does not shake. He took a room above a counting-house, and began — politely, one at a time — summoning people to answer a few questions. Nobody has been arrested. Nobody has been accused. Everyone he has spoken to has come out shaken, and none of them will say why.

Onda’s trouble is not that the Inquisitor is cruel. He is not. Onda’s trouble is that he is thorough, and that House Sai does not survive on thoroughness — it survives on nobody looking too closely at a working port. The factors want him gone by any road that doesn’t end in a second Inquisition.

Inquisitor Nahu Serrin

How he behaves in a room. Why he is like this — the girl he chose not to send on at twelve, and what it cost Kalda — is on his own page, and the order he belongs to is the Sanguine Inquisition. Neither is restated here.

• Mannerisms. Writes while you talk and does not look up. Lets a silence run three beats past comfortable. Sets his pen down deliberately before saying anything that matters.
• Tell. He thanks people. Every time, warmly, for things they did not agree to give — “Thank you, that’s very helpful” — and it lands like a door closing.
• Wants. The Pact-breaker. A confession he can file. To go home.
• Needs. To be told he is still one of the good ones by somebody who has seen what he does.
• Has. Writ authority in any House region · the arrivals ledger for the whole port · the fact that the Ino are worse here than they should be · what he saw in each PC’s memory · the technique itself (he could teach it; he will not) · the name of the person who taught it to him — sole-source, see routing.
• Standing. Toward House Sai: contemptuous, and correct — he knows they’ll trade anyone to make him leave. Toward the party: genuinely undecided, which is worse than suspicion. Being useful to him moves him further than being innocent does.
• Grievance. “I am the only person in this port doing the thing everyone here claims to believe in, and every one of them would rather I stopped.”

How to play him: never raise his voice, never threaten, never lie. His power is that he does not need to. If a scene stalls, he thanks them and ends it — an interview he cuts short should feel worse than one that runs long.

Hooks — getting them in

• In the rite. One character was asked to take a part in the casting off, and which one does not matter. Works for anybody, and it puts them at the front of the crowd, which is the fight’s hidden answer.
• A personal thread. In Onda you attend; not attending is what gets noticed. Anyone tied to another PC can simply be standing with them.
• A strange sign. The dreams have already started. A character who dreamed a funeral three nights ago, or mentions a man at the edge of a memory writing something down, is describing session i six days early — let them.

Scene Flow

Two sessions. Session 0 ships both layers — the one-sheet you run from and the prep read the night before. Session i is planned here and not yet written.

The join: session 0’s burial register is why they are all on Serrin’s list; session 0’s cards are session i’s questions. If you run only one of these, run them in order.

The Sai Friction

An Inquisition in a trade port is ruinous, so House Sai wants Serrin gone and will pay for anything that embarrasses him. This gives the party two patrons who both want to use them and neither of whom likes them — which is the easiest political situation in the world to run, because you always know what each side wants.

Let the party pick a side badly and early. There is no wrong answer in the first act, and having chosen makes the second act’s reversal land.

Haxami’s Thread

Haxami Bruja is in the isles to find an Ophidian Handler he has never met, without exposing the syndicate. Wire it in lightly: the Handler knows who the Pact-breaker is, and has been selling that knowledge. Same quarry, opposite directions. Serrin wants to file it; the Handler wants to price it; Haxami just needs to arrive first.

• Why Serrin is his nightmare. Haxami’s whole craft is controlling what people see. Serrin sees the part he can’t dress.
• Why Sai suits him. A factor shopping for dirt on an Inquisitor is exactly his kind of transaction — and it lets him work the plot hard without dropping the mask.
• The sealed note. Canon: to open it is to lose the Game. Somewhere late, opening it becomes the only way to save someone. You don’t have to build this; it already exists.

Information Routing

Facts this module cannot survive the party missing, and every route to each. A row reading 1 is a defect, not a feature.

Session Clock

Neither session is on a hard clock. Both are on a soft one, and both break the same way if you let them run long.

• Session 0. Two hours with no dice in them at all — that is where the session is won, so protect it, and let it end short rather than reaching forward into the fight to fill the time. Running long is handled in the crowd, not in the moorings: compress the debt claim and get to the board going out. The three moorings are what paces the next session.
• Session i. The ninth hour, names read one at a time. Protect the interviews; they are the session. If it runs long, the factor becomes one line on the step and her offer arrives by letter.

Encounter Budget

Four characters at 4th level — Easy 500 / Medium 1,000 / Hard 1,500 / Deadly 2,000. Nothing in this module is fought in this module. Session 0 builds one encounter and stops on initiative; it is resolved at the top of A Good Day to Die, and the numbers are kept here because this is where it is assembled. Deadly on the nose is deliberate: the party sets the pace by freeing moorings, there is a hidden mitigation (torchlight) they can find in a round, and there is a stated rule that nobody dies on the strand.

Monster Roster

All reskins — 2014 statlines, renamed, with the tweaks called out where they are used. Full blocks sit on the session 1 fight page, each beside the beat the creature enters on, and as collapsible foldouts on its one-sheet.

What makes the fight is the Ino not staying down until the rite is taken apart, and that is resolved after the fight, by severing the three moorings — not in initiative.

The Ino’s objective is not to kill anyone. Its targeting rule is one line: he goes for whoever is being noticed — speaking, then loudest, then visibly grieving, because attention is what keeps a spirit here. Ties break toward the nearest lit torch. It ignores anyone silent and still. That makes bodies, not damage, the party’s job, and it is why the crowd is completely safe.

Failure & Setbacks

If the arc goes wrong — the four that reach past both sessions:

• They attack him. He doesn’t fight. He files a report, and a second Inquisitor arrives who is nothing like as reasonable.
• They flee Onda. The writ runs in every House region. The summons finds them wherever they land.
• They ignore the whole thing. Serrin presses harder and earlier, and Sai’s offer gets large enough to be insulting.
• Serrin dies. Fine — his notes survive, Sai gets them first, and now the party is negotiating with people far worse at this.

Rewards & Advancement

• Coin. 5 sp each for the night’s torch-bearing, paid whatever happens. 2 gp each more the next morning, pressed on them by Otto Rask out of the ropewalk’s fund, badly embarrassed about the amount.
• The offer. 150 gp from Rosamund Kestrel, the Sai factor, in session i for anything that embarrasses Serrin — not evidence, embarrassment. She has room to double it and expects to. The quay calls her the Kestrel, for the way she hovers over it.
• The named thing. An åsan from the Speaker’s own basket, one each, given not taken — “for the road,” which is a slightly strange thing to say to the living. It is a lump of bread. It will matter later that they are carrying it.
• The soft reward. Isa Varga. Whatever the party earns from her in that hour lasts the whole campaign, in either direction.
• Advancement. Milestone. They stay 4th through both sessions; level at the end of the interviews.

Endings

• They take Sai’s coin. They have a patron who wants a scandal, not a criminal. Serrin finds out eventually, and is not surprised, which is worse than being angry.
• They are useful to Serrin. Useful moves him further than innocent does. He starts telling them things, which makes them accessories to the method they will later have to expose.
• They refuse both. The module still closes — every character has been interviewed, and the dreams do not stop. Both patrons read a refusal as a price not yet met, and come back higher.
• They expose the method early. Fast, and expensive: a report brings a second Inquisitor who is nothing like as reasonable, and the factors will not thank them for it.

Scaling Your Table

Formulas, not counts. Written for four at 4th.

• The Refused. #PCs − 1, floor 2, ceiling 5. They are pressure and a moral choice, not the threat — at the ceiling they start reaching the stones before anyone can stop them, which is its own answer.
• The moorings. Always three — work, debt, kin, each made fast to the pier at a different point. There is no fourth claim on that beach and no fourth line. They are not undone during the fight: he drops, does not stay down, and keeps getting up until all three are severed. At six or more PCs raise that check to DC 15 instead of adding a body.
• The Ino. Always one. At six or more PCs give him a third attack on the Multiattack rather than adding a second body — there is one dead man on that board and the scene does not survive a second.
• Fifth level or above. Leave the roster and make the moorings harder to reach instead — the seaward post out over deep water, the iron ring under the decking. A harder rite to take apart is a better problem than more hit points.
• Session i. Does not scale. One interview per character, however many there are — if the table is large, shorten each rather than dropping any. Being skipped is the one thing that breaks the session.

Canon Touchpoints

• U’Naim Ana — the Wheel, the Ino as a failed transition, and why breaking the Pact weakens Umir. The Sanguine Inquisition is Unåia’s enforcement arm. Canon calls a funeral a celebration of renewal — a pragmatic ritual of torchlight and simple offerings, and names excessive grief a selfish indulgence. Sai country’s form of that is the casting off: a soul is held by claims, so the claims are answered and let go in public. The session is what happens when it is done correctly and he stays.
• Social Customs — åsan as passage offerings, and why thirty-one of them uneaten on a public stone is not a thing that happens.
• House Sai — coin, ports, and an institutional preference for nobody looking too closely. The clerk in the good coat at the last two rites is that preference in person.
• Time in Jinjara — the North Turn, when Ri’s light falls on the path to the Labyrinth and funerals are best held. This one was scheduled right, which is the point. Later, the South Passing is your free calendar for making a night worse. It also gives you Cycles instead of years — which is where Emil Varga comes from: born around 909 AC, dead at the present day of 970, and no Cycle fell in between — so he has nothing to be named for.
• The Nine Factions — who else in Onda has a view on an Inquisitor.
• The Great Spirits — Umir, Obara, and Mother Soktu.
• Haxami Bruja — and the Ophidian’s Summons that put him here.

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