Nothing Worth Staying For
Session 0 · the one-sheet
Tonight
- Collect the cards before anything else. One thing each character does not talk about.
- A funeral on the Onda strand for Emil Varga, the cooper. Three claims are called: work, debt, kin.
- The board goes out and the sea sends it back. The lamps go out and the cast-off lines come up taut.
- Emil sits up on the shingle in front of two hundred people.
- Roll initiative and stop. Nobody takes a turn.
Opening monologue
The opening monologue read to start the night
It works. It has always worked. One of you has been asked to stand in it tonight, and the rest of you are here because in Onda you attend, and the whole thing will take an hour, and in the morning there will be nothing on the water and nothing on the stones and no reason to think about any of it again.
The tide is where it always is. The light is going, and you have been sent down with the fire.
Two hundred people on the shingle and not one of them is talking. Torches in iron cressets down the water’s edge, spaced so the pools of light never quite meet. On the board, an old man in his working clothes, hands folded wrong because someone else folded them for him, and three lines running off the board into the dark water. The Speaker calls the first claim, and beside you a girl of nine is being taught, very gently, how to hold still.
Then let them look at it, and play the port. Do not pause for questions on the way in.
Scenes — every scene that could fire tonight
Two beats and a curtain. The possibility space, not a schedule — the clock is on the prep read. The only die rolled tonight is initiative, and it is the last thing that happens.
| Scene | What it is | It ends when |
|---|---|---|
| 1 · The Strand ~22 min · no dice | The rite, and the people at it. Name the three lines out loud — work, debt, kin — and whose is whose. Let Isa talk about her father at length; anyone who bothers gets past her later without a roll. Close on the work claim, run in full. | Otto casts off and the Speaker calls for the debt. |
| 2 · It Fails ~8 min | The last two claims. The bearers walk the board out and give it to the Outset — it is genuinely leaving. Then the lamps go out one by one, the three lines come up taut, and the board is hauled back and strikes the pier — what was on it comes down in the fourth row of the crowd. One round of silence. | Somebody breaks the silence. Then initiative. |
| The Curtain ~2 min | He sits up. Whatever it is that is wearing Emil Varga is on its feet on the shingle in front of two hundred people, and it reeks of something an Animist would cross the street to avoid. Take initiative around the table, write it down, and put the sheet down. Do not run a round. Do not narrate what he does with the round he does not get. | You have everyone’s number and nobody has acted. |
Running long? Compress the crowd — take the debt claim off Ma Silva in three sentences instead of playing it. Running short? Play the crowd; let Isa try the sentence again; let anyone who wants to talk to the Speaker before the rite do it. Do not reach forward into the fight to fill time — a short session 0 is fine, and the roll is a better place to stop than anywhere inside round one.
Everything after the roll belongs to episode one
The fight, the offering stones, the Speaker’s reaction, and the names into the register are all the first act of A Good Day to Die — which opens mid-initiative, finishes him, and then runs the six-day skip. The roster below is kept on this page because this is where it is introduced; it is fought next session.
NPCs — one line each
- Speaker Miriam Dol (the Last Word) — sixty, an Animist’s grey over working clothes, thumb kept in the burial register; says “that’s the form” about everything, including the things a House Sai clerk asked her to do.
- Isa Varga — the dead man’s daughter, holding the kin line and her face flat and losing; she cannot be brief about him and the form requires it.
- Otto Rask (Twice-Said) — ropewalk foreman, deaf in one ear, holds the work line his own ropewalk made; he is the one who says the unsayable at volume, and he is your safety valve if the table goes quiet.
- Ma Silva — sold Emil his lunch for twenty years, holds the debt line for four silver, and noticed a clerk in a good coat at the last two rites.
- Emil Varga (Never-Weeps, the dead man) — cooper, thirty-one years under the sea wall, came off a boat from Tahana Siva at thirty; he has no Cycle, nothing to be named for, and two hundred people came anyway.
Full entries — wants, needs, has, standing, grievance — on the prep read.
Monsters — introduced tonight, fought next session
Nothing here is rolled tonight. The Ino of Emil Varga and the Refused are named because this is where they are introduced. Every statblock, rule and number is on the session 1 fight page — run them from there next session.
Numbers
Only two of these can come up tonight. The rest are here beside the roster, for next session.
| Check / value | When |
|---|---|
| DC 13 Strength (Athletics) | Tonight: get past Isa. Next session: the same roll, if she blocks the kin line |
| Initiative 10 | Tonight, on the roll: Isa, Otto, Ma Silva and the Speaker act as one block. Write it down before you stop |
| AC 13 · 15 hp · fire vuln. | Next session: the board, if they attack it instead of heaving it |
| DC 12 Intelligence (Religion) | Next session: put a number on the stones — free to anyone raised in Sai country |
| 31 · 3 rites | Next session: offerings on the stones · how many castings off they came from |
Rewards
The night stops before most of these can be handed over. Tonight banks the regard and the cards.
- Isa Varga’s regard — earned in the hour before the board goes out, and it lasts the campaign. She is holding the kin line and losing; everything they do about that is banked before the roll.
- A loaf off the stones — if anyone takes one on the way down to the shingle, let them. It will matter later that one of them is carrying it.
- Next session, once he is down: the 2 gp Otto Rask presses on them the next morning, out of the ropewalk’s fund, embarrassed — refusing it offends him. The Speaker’s confidence: handled gently she gives up the factor’s clerk (Oswin Tuck), the dawn clearing, and the count; handled sharply she thanks them for their help and says nothing. And the sealed cask — Isa will take anyone who asks to her father’s shed, gladly. It is finished, hooped, sealed and empty, and it answers nothing. Note who asked.
- No XP award needed — the party is level 4 and stays level 4 through the whole first arc.