🌊 Fluid

Reading the Marks — Recap

Session 2 · recap · what actually happened

At a Glance

The recap

The night opened back in the cooper’s shop. The party searched it and found a cask in Emil’s own stock that had rotted and gone grey from the inside. They have the object. They do not know what it means. See Story Beats.
At the Long Crossing, Haxami spotted two House Sai men in the room and did not stay. He went up to them, handed them a fake merchant’s note, and walked out — carrying the ledger. They did not buy it.
The rest of the party stayed and talked to Bess. She gave them Emil: who he drank with, and the night he walked up to the corner table uninvited and Dita let him sit. She named Thor, and the table learned Thor has a feud with the Journeyman.
Marellius traded repartee with Dita. She said outright that she knew the ledger and could decode it, and tried to get it off him. He did not have it. Haxami had already left with it.
Tam never made his presence known. The letter did not land.
The party left the bar to chase Haxami down. He evaded them for a while, and it ended in an alley.
Dita and four came for the ledger in the alley — two casters and two bruisers, the two Sai men from the taproom among them. They did not get it. Dita and her crew were badly beaten. Dita got out unhurt.
One bruiser survived and was detained by the Gendarme.
The party regrouped and pooled what each of them had. They decided to go back to the Long Crossing. Session 3 opens there.

Dita never read the marks. The ledger never reached her. The party do not know the book is a map of a route — the night’s payload did not land.
No confession. The party do not know Emil bought an answer from Dita, or that she sold it one link up the chain a week before he died.
Nothing was bought from Dita after the fight. There was no “Dita, after” scene. They fought her instead, and she left the alley owing them nothing.
The theft never happened, so Bess never handed over the Cask That Never Empties.

The party still have the ledger. Session 3 runs the collect branch.
They still cannot read it, and the one person who offered to is now an enemy who lost a fight to them.
House Sai did not buy Haxami’s note. They know they were lied to, and two of the men he lied to were in the alley an hour later. Sai is looking for Haxami, not for a merchant who does not exist.
A bruiser is in Gendarme custody and can be talked to.
Thor is named, and the table knows about the feud before the Journeyman arrives.
Session 3 opens in the Long Crossing, not on the quay or at Isa’s house.