Reading the Marks

Session 2 · prep read

General Features — the Long Crossing: one room, until the last beat

• One room, all night, until the door opens. The taproom is the whole session and everything the party need is in here. The alley in beat 6 is the only other ground, and they only reach it by choosing to follow.
• It is full, and it is ordinary. Forty-odd people who came to drink and are not going anywhere. They are not a crowd to be worked, and they are why nobody crosses this room quickly — which is how four people get back out of the door with the book.
• The bar is Bess’s ground. She has poured here for years, she reads the room faster than the party do, and she is the only one still willing to say the cooper’s name out loud.
• The corner table is Dita’s ground, and it is closed. It is the one part of this room the party cannot simply walk up to.
• The door is the clock. Nothing on this page escalates until it opens in beat 6, and that happens when you say it does. What changes before then is social and only goes one way: what the room sees them do is seen.

1 · Bess pours — 0:00 · 30 min · she tells them about Emil, and names the big quiet man. No dice

The monologue ends inside the room, with Bess asking what they are drinking. Start there — no second box, no scene-setting, and no recap of last night.

• She knew him. Who he drank with, what went quiet in his last months, and the night Emil Varga walked over to the corner table uninvited and Dita let him sit. She offers this freely to anyone who asks about the cooper — she is the only person in Onda who still will.
• She is not a puzzle. Nothing in this beat is gated. She is short with everybody and gives it all up anyway — she has been waiting since the funeral for somebody to ask, and the party are the first.
• Why the room looked up. Not the table — the man. Thirty-one years a cooper, called Never-Weeps, and he never asked anybody for anything in his life. Then he walked over without being asked over, and she let him stay. That is what Bess found strange, and she says so.
• She knows exactly what that table is. Everybody does. Let her say “Emil went to Dita” as flatly as she would report a man going to a moneylender. What she cannot tell them is what he asked — that is the only part that has to stay hidden, and she must not guess at it.
• The two men, and the one at the end of her bar. Two in the collecting trade — the kind that gets sent to collect — and one put the other down in front of people. The one who lost is Thor, he has been drinking here since the week the cooper died, and he is waiting for the man who did it: the Journeyman, which is the only name she has for him. She does not tell it as a mystery. She tells it because there is a man in her bar waiting to kill somebody and she would like him gone.

• And the big quiet man. Somebody big started coming in the week the cooper died, sits where he can watch the door, drinks slowly and does not talk to anybody. She knows which nights. She gives it up like the rest of it — no price, no check, no gate — because she has been waiting for somebody to ask and nobody has. She is not guessing — she knows who he is and what he is waiting for.
• He is Thor, and this is the only time the party see him before he comes through the warehouse doors in session 3. He is not the man who killed Emil and he is not connected to the route — he is waiting for somebody, and he has been waiting since the week the cooper died. Bess has this right. What nobody in Onda has is the Journeyman’s name — the man gives it himself in session 3, and not before.
• What they leave beat 1 holding. A man is in Onda to settle a killing, he is at the end of that bar, and it has nothing to do with the ledger. In session 3 both men come through the same door. Do not let it read as a threat to the party — Thor is not interested in them.

2 · Tam’s letter — inside beat 1 · 5 min · the Handler says he has noticed them

Tam brings Haxami the daily letter and goes. He is not the plot — he does not know what he is carrying, is not asked, and is not in danger. Play it as an interruption of no importance and let the table decide otherwise.

• One line, no signature, no seal. It is in the Handler’s channel because that channel is trusted, and that is the entirety of how it got here.
• Do not explain it, and do not let it be chased tonight. There is nothing at the other end of it in this session. It is the arc telling the party they have been noticed.
• If they show it to Bess, she does not recognise the hand and says so — and it frightens her a little, early. That is allowed.

3 · The corner table — 0:35 · 10 min · she wants the book, and that is the way in

• There is no gate here and nothing to earn. Dita cannot let a book of Emil’s marks walk back out of her taproom unread. Put it on the table and she takes it.
• She is meeting the book first and the party second, and she does not pretend otherwise. Anyone paying attention should come away understanding that they are a delivery.
• Do not warn the table about her. She is courteous and genuinely good at what she does, and nothing here should read as a threat. What she is comes out in beat 5, and by then it has already happened.

4 · Dita reads the marks — 0:45 · 15 min · the ledger is a map of a route

Then: what do they ask her next? The second language is free to Haxami, and DC 12 Intelligence (Investigation) to anyone who wants to see it for themselves.

• The marks are a language, and the ledger is a map of a route. That is the fact this beat exists to deliver, and it has three routes — she is the easiest, not the only one.
• Haxami reads the Game’s grammar on sight and does not need her for this part. If he is at the table, let him get there first and let Dita be impressed — it costs her nothing and it is the best thing that can happen to that table.
• The last pages turn from records into questions — a man asking, in his own hand. She sees it, and it is the moment she stops reading like a professional.
• She does not know who killed him, and nothing in this beat may imply she could find out. See the guard on beat 6.

5 · The confession — 1:00 · 20 min · she sold the question that got him killed, and has just done it again

Then say nothing. Let the table answer her — she has finished, and she is not going to fill the silence.

• She passed his question one link up, as merchandise, without malice. A week later he was dead. She has known that since the funeral and has said it to nobody.
• She sent word during the reading. Not after it, and not because of anything the party did — a book of Emil’s marks is worth something to somebody, and passing it on is what she is. She says “I did what I do” in the past tense about the cooper while it is already true in the present tense about them.
• Do not let her admit it and do not let her be caught. Nothing here tells the party. They find out when the door opens, and what they are left holding is that she told them exactly what she was and they heard it as a confession.
• She is gone before beat 6. She finishes, she leaves, and she is not in the room when it goes wrong. Let somebody notice the empty corner table.
• She does not know where it stopped. This is the guard the whole arc rests on — “who killed Emil Varga” runs at zero routes on purpose, and Dita is the reason it can. Do not let her guess, narrow it, or offer to find out.
• This is where the night’s job gets done. The party leave knowing it was murder, because a woman told them she sold the question that got him killed.
• Do not make her repent. She survives this arc, she sells them the ground in session 3, and nothing here is allowed to spend her.

6 · The ledger is taken — 1:20 · 30 min · she throws it to them across the room, and it goes up the alley

Then: Dita throws it. No check. The book is in her hands because the party put it there.

She does not stand and she does not explain. The ledger goes thirty feet over the heads of people who do not look up and lands in the caster’s hand, and all four are moving for the door on the same turn. They do not stop to fight in a full taproom. She is still sitting at her table when they are gone, and she watches the party decide what to do about it.

The quaymen are the two off the sea wall at the end of session 1, and they have known who has the book since that night — they followed the party home. The party never saw them and do not know they were followed. What they never had was a way to take it off four armed people in a full room. They were sent for a cooper’s book, they went through the workshop under Isa’s house and found nothing, and they have been on the party since the strand. Dita read it and passed word up, an hour ago, from the corner table, and what came back was the two who could do it.

• Do not roll initiative in the taproom. The throw is one motion and the door is closing behind them before anybody has drawn anything. If the party want a fight they have to go out into the alley for it.
• The alley is a delaying action, and it can fail. One caster goes up it with the book. The other three stand in the gap and cost the party rounds — three of them, which is what the runner needs to reach the stair. Statblocks, the alley and the Pull are on the fight page.
• Break the gap and the book stays in Onda. The runner drops it at the foot of the stair and runs. Hold three rounds and it is out of the port. Do not fudge it in either direction — and do not warn them off the chase, because there is something in the alley worth having however it goes.
• What is worth having is a quayman. Wage men: first one down and the other folds, and a man who folds can be held and talked to. He knows the next link up. Nothing prompts this — if the party kill everything in the alley, they killed the only thing that was on offer.
• Dita does not leave. She did it in front of them, she does not help, and she does not defend it. She passes things on for money and she has just done it with an object instead of a question. Do not have her apologise — she comes back in beat 7 as though nothing happened, because to her nothing did.
• Bess is not. It is her taproom, her tables and her regulars, and four people have just walked into it and walked back out. Whatever this costs, she is the one still standing in it when the party leave.
• Then she gives them the cask. Emil left it against a tab not long before he died and never came back for it, and she has been looking at it behind her own bar ever since. She is not being kind. She is tired of looking at it, she has just watched four strangers walk through her room, and she is done holding a dead man’s property. It goes across the bar and she does not stay to watch them take it. Her line is short and it should sound like being thrown out.
• The Cask That Never Empties — Alchemy Jug (2014 DMG, uncommon), two uses per dawn, a gallon each. The players’ text is on the items page. A small sealed cask, a foot across, hooped in Marta Ferrante’s iron and stamped with Emil’s mark. A man whose casks never leaked made one that never empties, and it is the only joke he ever told. In a port the fresh water and the beer are worth more than the DMG assumes — that is the point of giving it here, and it is a bigger gift than it looks.
• The caster escapes either way. With the book or without it, they leave the moment they are able and the party should not be able to keep one. Nobody has decided who sent them, and the arc keeps who killed Emil at zero routes — winning the alley buys the ledger, not an interrogation.
• Which session 3 they get is decided here. Hold the book and he comes to collect it. Lose it and he comes to find them, and the night is a negotiation instead. They held it, and the find-them branch was cut once they did.

7 · Dita, after — 1:50 · 15 min · she offers to help, for money. No dice

She finds them when it is over — in the alley, on the stair, or back inside — and offers to sell them the next thing, in the same voice she used an hour ago. She does not apologise and she is not embarrassed. It is business, and she is good at it, and she enjoys it.

• What is for sale depends on the alley. If the book went out of the port she sells where it is going and who to ask. If the party broke the gap and kept it she sells what is coming instead: that a professional is being sent, roughly when, and that he is not the sort who fails twice.
• She does not ask for the ledger again. She knows exactly how far that goodwill went. Asking would be bad business and she is never bad at business.
• Price is hers to name — coin, or a favour, or something they would rather not give. Let them refuse. Refusing costs them what she knows and nothing else; she will be at that table next week either way.
• This scene never happened. The party fought her in the alley and left without buying anything, so session 3 does not stand on it. She makes the offer again there instead, at a price they can afford — see her price.

The Long Crossing

The arc’s information engine is a taproom, and it is one step: the party carry the ledger to the only person who can read it. Bess is not a gate — she is the last living record of Emil’s months, and she gives everything she has to anybody who asks. She is not pleasant about it. Dita is not a gate either. She wants the book, and what it costs to hand it to her is not paid tonight.

• Bess pours, and has for years, and would rather not. Surly, unhappy, permanently smoking, and the only person in Onda still willing to say the cooper’s name out loud. She has two things and gives both freely, to anybody who asks. She knew him: who he drank with, what went quiet in his last months, and the night Emil Varga walked over to the corner table uninvited and Dita let him sit — she knows what that table is, everybody does, and she does not know what he asked. And the big quiet man started coming in the week the cooper died, and she knows which nights — and that he is Thor, and that he is waiting for the man who put him down. She has been waiting for somebody to ask. Nothing she has is gated, priced or rolled for. She is not nice and she is not a puzzle.
• Dita Ferrante is the corner table. She reads the marks — it is what her table is — and when Emil finally brought his question to the one person in Onda who could answer it, she did what she does with information: passed it along, as merchandise, without malice. A week later he was dead. She knows what the marks mean and she knows exactly what her passing-it-on cost, and she says both out loud to the party without visibly weighing the risk — which is its own answer about how she sees it.
• She does not need persuading and she does not need earning. Put the book on her table and she takes it, because a room of Emil’s marks is not walking back out of her taproom unread. She reads it, and she tells them plainly what she did to the cooper — “I did what I do” — and she is not sorry, because in her own accounting there is nothing to be sorry for.
• And she has already done the same to them. Word went out while she was still reading. She does not admit it, she is not caught, and she is gone before the door opens. Do not have her repent and do not spend her — she survives this arc, and she sells them the ground in session 3 just as readily.

Pacing — the clock, and what to cut

• 0:00 — a queued cold open, then 1 · Bess pours — 30, with Tam’s letter inside it.
• 0:35 — 3 · The corner table — 10.
• 0:45 — 4 · Dita reads the marks — 15.
• 1:00 — 5 · The confession — 20. Do not compress this one.
• 1:20 — 6 · The ledger is taken — 30.
• 1:50 — 7 · Dita, after — 15. She closes the night, not the fight.

• Running long? This is 2 hours of talking and one fight, so the risk is the opposite of session 1’s — the room, not the clock. Cut beat 1 to fifteen minutes and let Bess volunteer the corner table early. Never compress beat 6.
• Running short? The room is full of people who drank with a dead cooper. Let the party work it, and let Bess be busy.
• The one thing: they leave knowing it was murder. Everything else can move.

🌊 Fluid · Session 2 · the prep read · the play surface is the one-sheet