Reading the Marks — the fight
They pull the ledger off the party in the bar and run for the stair — and whether it leaves the port decides what session 3 is. It did not leave
At a glance
- Who
- Two casters and two quaymen. Four characters at 4th level.
- How long
- ~30 minutes. The theft is one roll; the alley is the fight.
- How it ends
- The book leaves Onda, or it does not. The party decide what else they take off the alley.
- The one rule
- The gap decides it. Break the three in the alley and the book stays in Onda. They hold for three rounds and it is gone.
This page holds the statblocks, the Pull, the alley and the scaling. The read-alouds and the Developments are on session 2’s prep read.
The shape of it — three phases, one of them a fight
1 · The handover, in the bar. No initiative, and no check. Four come in the street door and Dita throws them the ledger from the corner table. All four are moving for the door on the same turn.
2 · The alley. One caster goes up the alley with the book. The other caster and both quaymen stand in the gap and hold it. This is the fight.
3 · The stair. The runner is up it and out of the port at the end of round three. Everything the party do in the alley is aimed at that.
The roster
The casters have no names yet, and nobody has decided who sent them. Run them as the casters until that is written.
The casters (×2)
Medium humanoid — Cult Fanatic (2014 MM), run as printed · reskinned arcane: the spiritual weapon is a floating boat-hook, the inflict wounds a grip that closes
Spellcasting. 4th-level caster, DC 11, +3 to hit. Hold person and spiritual weapon are the two that matter — both are how the alley costs the party rounds.
Actions
Multiattack. Two dagger attacks: +4 to hit, 4 (1d4 + 2) piercing damage.
The Pull. House action — in the alley only. One object a creature is holding, within 30 ft. The holder makes a DC 13 Dexterity save. On a fail the object tears loose and lands in the caster’s hand. On a success it hits the floor between them, and the room is a scramble.
Quaymen (×2)
Medium humanoid — Thug (2014 MM), run as printed · no house tweaks
Pack Tactics. Advantage on an attack roll against a creature if at least one of their allies is within 5 ft of it and not incapacitated.
Actions
Multiattack. Two mace attacks: +4 to hit, 5 (1d6 + 2) bludgeoning damage.
- The quaymen are the two off the sea wall at the end of session 1. They have known who has the book ever since — they followed the party home from the strand and were never seen doing it. What they did not have was anyone who could take it off four armed people in a full room. They have that now, and Dita is what turned it into tonight.
- Nobody here is trying to win. The casters came to take an object and go. The quaymen are paid to make that work. Every one of them is counting rounds, not bodies.
- Three rounds is the job. That is how long the runner needs, and it is all any of them is being paid for. At the end of round three whoever is still standing disengages and scatters — up the stair, over the crates, into the dark. They do not fight to the last, and if the gap goes before then they have failed.
- Morale splits. The caster runs and is hard to hold. The quaymen are wage men: first one down and the other folds, and a quayman who folds can be taken.
Scaling
The alley is the fight, and it is three bodies — one caster and two quaymen. 650 raw, ×2 for three, 1,300 adjusted against four at 4th: Medium 1,000, Hard 1,500. A hard Medium, and it plays softer than the number because they are disengaging rather than committing.
The bar is not a fight and is not budgeted. All four are in the room for one action.
Harder, if you want it. Swap the Cult Fanatic for an Illusionist (Volo’s, CR 3) — invisibility and mirror image make the delay far more expensive, and the alley goes to 1,800 adjusted, past Hard. That is the dial. Do not add bodies; a wider alley is a worse alley.
More or fewer characters. Quaymen at #PCs − 2, floor 1, ceiling 3. The casters are always two, because one of them has to leave.
Environment
Two rooms, and the party choose to enter the second one. Nothing forces them out of the door after the handover.
The taproom — where it is taken
- Light. Lamps and the fire. Nothing that happens in here is unseen.
- Footing. Boards, tables and benches, packed. Nobody crosses this room quickly — which is the point, and it is why the four of them get out of the door.
- The corner table is empty. Dita left before they arrived, which is the tell — let the party work out why, and do not say it for them.
- Bess cannot leave. It is her taproom, and she is the one still standing in it when everyone else has gone out the door.
The alley — where it is fought
- Two abreast and no more. Ten feet wall to wall, and stacked crates take half of that. The party cannot bring four people to bear, and that is the entire delaying action — the casters do not need to beat anyone, only to stand in a gap.
- One lamp bracket at the tavern end. Everything past twenty feet is dim, and the runner is in it almost immediately.
- A stone stair at the far end, up to the next street. That is where the runner is going and it is sixty feet away.
- The crates come down if anyone thinks of it — AC 13 · 15 hp, and a stack across the alley is a wall for whoever drops it. Either side can do this, and the casters will if the party press.
Environment prompt — the alley
Generate an image that is a D&D battle map in 16-bit pixel art, in the style of Chrono Trigger. Overhead view of a narrow harbour alley at night. Wet cobbles, a gutter down the middle, stacked crates and barrels along one wall, a tavern door at the near end, a stone stair rising at the far end. One lamp bracket. No people.
How it ends — the gap holds, or it does not
The three in the gap are the whole fight. They are counting rounds, not bodies, and the runner needs three of them to reach the stair. Break the gap inside that and the party take the runner at the foot of it. Do not fudge it in either direction.
- The gap breaks — the book stays in Onda. The runner drops it and runs. The party hold the ledger walking into session 3, and the man who comes for it comes to collect.
- The gap holds three rounds — the book leaves. The runner is up the stair and out of the port, and session 3 is a negotiation instead: the chain has the book and the party are the loose end. This did not happen, and the branch has been cut.
- The caster escapes either way. Held, maybe, for a round — but they leave the moment they are able, with the book or without it. Nobody has decided who sent them, and the arc keeps who killed Emil at zero routes. What winning the alley buys is the ledger, not an interrogation.
What the party can take off the alley, in either branch:
- A quayman. First one down and the other folds, and a man who folds in an alley can be held and talked to. He knows who paid — not the name at the top, but the next link, and that is what session 3 is walking toward. One survived and the Gendarme took him, so the next link is in a cell rather than in the party’s hands.
- Nothing prompts it. The fight does not pause to offer a prisoner and no NPC suggests one. If the party kill everything in the alley they have lost the only thing that was on the table.
- Nobody in this arc has died yet. That is still true walking into this alley. Let the table be the ones who change it, if they do.
Which session 3 they get was decided here. The party kept the ledger, so he comes to collect — and the find-them branch has been cut out of session 3 rather than left sitting there unrunnable. What actually happened is on the recap.