Nothing Worth Staying For

Session 0 · prep read

Before you play — or at the table, now that there is room

The scripted spine is about 45 minutes. Settle the table business on a short call beforehand and let session 0 be a short night, or do it at the table and let it fill two hours. Either is fine. Do not fill the time by reaching forward into the fight.

• The pitch. Onda, a working port in the Darktide Isles — House Sai country. The spirit world isn’t a belief here, it’s a neighbour. There is a law called the Pact that keeps the dead moving on, and an order that burns out people who break it. The campaign is about being looked at. Every session opens on a flashback from a character’s past; you ask them questions about it and use the answers.
• Lines & veils. Name yours first. Flag the two this campaign will brush: interrogation and psychological pressure, and dreams that stop being safe. Anyone can change their mind mid-campaign without explaining why.
• Characters. Level 4, 5e (2014), standard array or point buy. Everyone needs a reason to be in a Sai port — work, debt, passage, hiding, family. Thin is fine; nothing is not. Say out loud that raising the dead is a forbidden heresy, not a spell you can buy.
• Where they were raised. Worth asking, because it pays off twice tonight. Anyone raised in Sai country has seen a hundred castings off. Anyone from Kiza, Tahana Siva, the Spirit Lands or Angalo knows the Wheel and knows funerals, and has never seen a boat rite.
• Ties. Every PC names one tie to the PC on their left, then one to the PC on their right. Write them down.
• Why they’re at the casting off. Settle this now, not at the table — see The Strand. One character was asked to stand in the rite itself — which one does not matter, so let somebody volunteer. Everyone else is simply there.

Premise

Emil Varga made barrels for half the port — thirty-one years in the same shed under the sea wall, water casks for the Darktide packets. A cooper’s marks are a language: grade, contents, destination, burned into the wood, read by everyone in the trade and understood by almost no one. Somewhere in his last years, Emil’s marks became something else — a routing system. Contraband, correspondence, and quieter cargo have been moving through the archipelago in his casks, riding the packet boats, under everyone’s hands. The cooper worked out what he was carrying. Then the cooper died.

His casting off was held on a North Turn — the auspicious window, Ri’s light on the path to the Labyrinth, the day to be sent on. A good day to die, by every rule Onda keeps. One of them stood in the rite itself, and they know better than anyone in the port what happened instead: the board went out on the tide and the sea handed it straight back, and what sat up on it reeked of something an Animist would cross the street to avoid. Putting him down is where this arc opens — and once it is done, nobody in Onda explains anything to anyone.

The Fourth Mooring

A casting off frees a soul by answering its claims in public. Work, debt, kin — three lines, each called, each answered, each let go. A soul that nobody holds has nothing to stay for.

But a murdered man carries a claim nobody living knows to call: the wrong done to him in the dark. Speaker Dol called all three lines she could see and called them correctly — and you cannot cast off a line you cannot see. The board went out on the tide, reached the edge of where the living can send anything, and the sea handed it back. He was still moored. The fourth line was never let go, because his killer is the only person alive who knew it existed.

Where this lands: on the shingle, in episode one, over the body. Do not make the party go looking for it. Dol has just presided over a rite that bounced, and she wants to know why almost as badly as Isa does — she is standing right there, and the register is open in her hands. Give them the fourth mooring while they are still breathing hard, and session one closes on the answer to a question they did not know to ask.

“Three lines, because the living hold a man three ways. But a wrong holds harder than any of them, child, and a wrong nobody names is a mooring nobody can cast off. We sent him out with one line still made fast. The sea did the only honest thing it could.” — Speaker Miriam Dol, if asked kindly

What answering the claim does: spoken truth, in the open, before the people who knew him — that is what casting off a claim is. If the party finishes this arc by naming the truth of his death over his grave, the claim is answered at last. The sign is small and enormous: an åsan left on Emil’s grave is gone by morning — the first offering taken in Onda since the turn. Proof the Wheel can take here when the claims are answered. Which sharpens the spine’s question to a knife: so what claim is holding all the others?

Hooks — getting them in

• Isa Varga. She comes to the party — the only people in Onda who did right by her father, at cost. Someone has been in the shed. She has a question nobody in the port will discuss: why did he come back like that? Whatever the party earned from her on the strand, this is where it pays.
• The cask is the one they have already been shown. Not a second cask — that cask, the one Isa offered anyone who asked the morning after the strand: finished, hooped, sealed, empty, and it answered nothing. It answered nothing because the ledger is in the head. A table that asked to see it in session 0 gets to feel clever for it.
• The register. Their names are in the burial record of the strangest death in Onda’s living memory. People have started assuming they know things. Some of the people assuming are dangerous.
• The letters. Haxami’s daily correspondence arrives through Tam, same as always. A man who reads the Game’s grammar for a living will notice the port’s traffic twitching around the cooper’s death — something in the routine of the quay has gone quiet, and quiet is a tell.

Who Matters

Five people; everyone else is a prop. Tam carries the Handler’s one letter in episode two and that is the entirety of his part — nothing makes Tam the plot.

• Isa Varga — net-mender, Emil’s daughter, the arc’s conscience. What she wants is not revenge; it is for one person in this port to tell her the truth.
• Bess — keeps the Long Crossing, and has never wanted to. Surly, unhappy, and entirely innocent of what she is. She is the only living record of Emil’s last months, and nothing she has is gated — she gives it to anybody who asks.
• Dita Ferrante — see above. She survives this arc, whatever happens. She tips a side in episode three; she is never in the room when it goes wrong. Her role continues past these sessions, and nothing here is allowed to spend her.
• Speaker Miriam Dol — the fourth-mooring lore, given on the shingle in episode one to anyone who is kind about it. She has just presided over a rite that bounced, and she wants to know why almost as badly as Isa does.
• The Journeyman — the man who inherited the route. A professional. See the roster for how he fights and what actually ends him.

The Man at the Edge

Serrin is present and unaddressed all arc. He never speaks to the party.

• In every cold open, at the edge of the memory: a man in a plain dark coat, not looking at the dreamer, writing something down. Do not explain him. If a player asks who he was, the answer is “you don’t know,” and it is true. Exception: in Nonne’s cold opens the man at the edge is not the only visitor — see Cold Opens.
• Twice, in the open. Episode one: on the strand afterward, while the names go into the burial register, copying it down in a clean clerk’s hand — the third failed rite is why a man like him is in Onda at all. Episode three: at Emil’s grave, alone, leaving something small. Both times he is gone before conversation is possible.
• What he is doing here belongs to the next module and is not restated on this page — the campaign layer lives with A Few Questions and on his own page.

The Casting Off

Canon calls a funeral a celebration of renewal — a pragmatic ritual of torchlight and simple offerings. Sai country’s version of that is the casting off: you cast a man off the way you cast off a hull.

The logic. A soul lingers because something still holds it — rage, sorrow, or unfinished business. Onda calls all three claims. So the rite does not ask what a man was. It asks who still holds him, and makes them let go out loud, in front of everyone.

The form.

• He is laid on the board and moored to the shore by three lines: the work line, the debt line, and the kin line. Each is held by whoever has the strongest claim of that kind. The rope comes from the ropewalk.
• The Speaker calls each claim in turn. The holder answers it in a sentence and casts off. Work first, debt second, kin last.
• When the last line is slack, the bearers walk the board out past standing depth and give it to the Outset — the offshore current that runs away from the isles, the one the packets leave on.
• Six iron cressets stand down the water’s edge so the board can be seen going out and the bearers can find their way back in. Carrying one is paid work, and it is why the party are here.
• Plain åsan on the offering stones, up on the dry shingle. Bread and water for the passage. Nothing savoury, nothing anyone would want.

What is forbidden. All of it comes from one idea — give the party the idea, not the rules.

• No weeping. Canon calls grief a selfish indulgence. Onda’s reason: grief is a claim, and you have just been asked to let go of those.
• No praise, no stories, no music. Same reason. “He was the kind of man who—” is a claim made in public.
• Children learn to hold still from about nine. A child who cries is holding him.
• Torchlight, and a North Turn. Canon: funerals are best held on the North Turn, when Ri’s light falls on the path to the Labyrinth. This one was scheduled correctly. Everything about tonight was done correctly — make sure the party know that.

General Features

The strand below the sea wall. Answer these once.

• Light. Six iron cressets down the water’s edge, spaced so the pools of light never quite meet, plus a line of small lamps floated out on the water. Beyond the cressets it is fully dark.
• The sea. It does not rise and it does not fall. No tide: the water is where it always is and will be there in the morning. Nothing here is carried off by the sea — whatever leaves Onda, someone walks it out. Twenty feet out is shin-deep, forty feet is over your head, and past that the Outset runs.
• Footing. Wet shingle at the top, packed sand below. Nothing is difficult terrain. Going out past forty feet is swimming, and everyone here knows it.
• Sound. Two hundred people making none. You can hear the water, the torches, and one voice at a time. Anything shouted on this strand is heard by everyone on it.
• Cover. The board, the offering stones, three upturned boats, the cressets. Half cover almost anywhere near the water.
• Verticality. None. Flat strand, a low sea wall behind, stone steps up to the quay at either end.
• Smell. Pitch, wet rope, torch smoke. No incense — nothing pleasant is burned at a casting off. A character raised outside Sai country notices the absence.
• The crowd. They do not scream and they do not run. They go still and silent, because that is what they were trained to do at nine. Treat them as terrain, not a mob: hard to move through, impossible to panic, silent throughout.

1 · The Strand — 0:10 · 22 min · they meet the port before the rite. No dice

Why they’re here. Pick one per character; the first covers anyone with no better answer.

• In the rite. One of them was asked to take a part in the casting off — which one does not matter. This is the default and the best one: it puts the party at the front.
• A tie. Anyone connected to another PC can simply be standing with them. In Onda you attend; not attending is what gets noticed.
• A strange sign. A character who dreamed a funeral three nights ago is describing session i six days early. Let them.

Spend the time on people, not plot. All four are below; the man on the board is above them.

The Dead Man — Emil Varga, called Never-Weeps, cooper of Onda

• Trade. Cooper, thirty-one years in the same shed under the sea wall, making water casks for the Darktide packets — the sealed kind that has to hold for a long crossing. “You’ve drunk out of a Varga cask” is how Onda says you have been to sea.
• Not from here. He came off a boat at thirty, out of Tahana Siva, and never went back. That is why the crowd is two hundred people who worked with him and almost no kin, and it gives an outsider PC a mirror on the board.
• The death. He sat down on the step outside the shed and did not get up. Otto found him in the morning. It was not suspicious; play it as ordinary.
• The claims on him. Work — Otto Rask, thirty-one years alongside. Debt — Ma Silva, four silver. Kin — Isa. Three claims, three lines, and all three holders are on the beach.

The People on the Strand — the five NPCs, and where to meet them

Speaker Miriam Dol — called the Last Word

Description. Sixty, square, salt-stained hands, an Animist’s grey over working clothes, reading glasses on a cord she never uses.

• Mannerisms. Keeps her thumb in the register. Finishes every sentence, even interrupted ones. Never looks at the body while she calls the claims.
• Tell. Says “that’s the form” when asked why she is doing something, including the things she is doing because a factor asked her to.
• Wants. To get Emil Varga off, without being the person who says out loud that the Wheel is failing in Onda.
• Needs. Someone else to say it first.
• Has. The burial register and the names of everyone who witnessed · that this is the third casting off since the turn that has not taken · that a House Sai factor’s clerk asked her to keep it quiet · that she has been clearing the offering stones at dawn herself · a basket of plain åsan she will give away · which line is made fast to what, which she can name on sight and will shout if the party flounder.
• Standing. Toward Isa: protective, and about to fail her in public. Toward Otto Rask: fond and exasperated; he says the things she can’t. Toward House Sai: obedient, and ashamed of it. Toward the party: grateful in proportion to how gently they handle her.
• Grievance. “I have called the claims correctly three times running and buried three people who did not go, and I have been asked, politely, not to mention it.”

Isa Varga — she holds the kin line

Description. Thirty, net-mender’s hands, her father’s coat taken in at the shoulders, face held flat and losing.

• Mannerisms. Straightens things on the board that don’t need it. Starts sentences about him with “He was the kind of man who—”, which at a casting off is the wrong shape.
• Tell. She cannot be brief about him, and she knows the form requires it.
• Wants. To answer the kin claim properly and let the line go. To say one true thing about her father first.
• Needs. Permission to have loved him, from anyone, afterwards.
• Has. Every dull true fact about Emil Varga there is · his tools, his debts, the shed, and the sealed empty cask · that he went quiet in his last month, which she has not connected to anything.
• The sentence she cannot finish. He taught her to swim by walking her out past standing depth and then standing behind her, and she was never afraid because he was between her and the open water. Saying it would be a claim. She gets four words in and stops, and the beach hears her stop. Ten minutes later the party wade out past standing depth to free the debt line.
• Standing. Toward the Speaker: obedient and furious. Toward Otto Rask: her father’s oldest friend, and she cannot look at him. Toward the party: whatever they earn in the next hour, and it lasts the campaign.
• Grievance. “I am being asked to prove I have no hold on him, so that he will agree to leave me.”

Otto Rask & Ma Silva — they hold the other two lines

• Otto Rask, called Twice-Said. Ropewalk foreman, sixty-odd, deaf in one ear, says everything twice as loud as he means to. Holds the work line, and his own ropewalk made it. Has: thirty-one years of Emil’s working life, and no filter — he is the one who says “third one since the turn” in front of everybody. He is also your safety valve if the table goes quiet, and will put his shoulder to the work line if asked — it is his ropewalk’s rope. His line when the fight starts: “That’s not my rope.”
• Ma Silva. Sold Emil his lunch for twenty years. Small, dry, a basket she has nothing to do with. Holds the debt line for four silver. Has: the 4 sp she owed him · that a clerk in a good coat came to the last two rites and did not stay for either.

The work claim — the first claim, and how all three run

Run the first cast-off in full. The table has to see one done correctly, at length, before they see two done fast and one fail — otherwise the failure reads as scenery.

2 · It Fails — 0:32 · 8 min · the rite is done right and does not take

Then roll initiative, and stop. That is where this page ends — the fight is next session.

• Give them one round of nothing. Nobody moves, nobody screams. Let the silence sit until a player breaks it.
• The board is against the pier, and nobody put it there. Stove in along one side, still made fast, half out of the water where it struck. Nobody goes near it. That is where the board is when the fight starts, and it is why the work line is still something the party can get their hands on. Give the silence after it thirty seconds — it is the last quiet of the night.
• Otto says it if nobody else does. “That’s not my rope.” He made the lines that were cast off; whatever is holding the board now is not what he plaited, and he is deaf enough to say so at volume.
• What it looks like. Not a monster. A cooper in his working clothes with his hands still folded wrong, getting up off the shingle in the fourth row of his own funeral, trying hard to be noticed.
• Then roll initiative, and that is the end of the night. The Ino acts on its own count. Isa, Otto, Ma Silva and the Speaker act on initiative 10 as one block, so you only track a single NPC turn. Take everyone’s number, write it down where you will still have it in a week, and stop — do not run a round, and do not narrate what he does with the round he does not get. Everything below this line is next session.

Pacing — about 45 minutes of scripted beats, then the roll

Tonight, about 45 minutes of scripted beats:

• 0:00 Collect the cards (5) · the cold open, if you’re running one (5).
• 0:10 1 · The Strand — the rite, the people, the work claim — 22. No dice. This is where the session is won.
• 0:32 2 · It Fails — the other two claims, the board goes out, and the lines bring it back — 8.
• 0:40 He sits up. Roll initiative and stop — 2.

Next session picks up on this initiative order and runs the fight, the stones, the fourth mooring and the register — the clock for it is on session 1’s prep read.

• Running long? Compress the crowd — take the debt claim off Ma Silva in three sentences rather than playing it, and get to the board going out.
• Running short? Play the crowd. Let a PC try to comfort someone and be quietly corrected. Let them meet Ma Silva properly. Let Isa try the sentence again. Or do the table business at the table. Do not reach forward into the fight — a short session 0 is fine, and the roll is a better place to stop than anywhere inside round one.
• The one thing: you collect the cards, and the rite fails in front of them. Everything else can move.

🌊 Fluid · Session 0 · its one-sheet · the fight it stops on opens A Good Day to Die