Reading the Marks
Session 2 · the one-sheet
Before you run it
This night has been played. The alley kept the ledger in Onda, the party never let Dita read it, and they fought her instead of buying from her. What actually happened is on the recap, and session 3 was rewritten around it. The rest of this page is the prep as it was written.
Tonight
- A cold open in the taproom of the Long Crossing. A man at the edge of the room writes something down.
- Bess talks about Emil: who he drank with, and the night he walked up to the corner table uninvited and Dita let him sit.
- Tam brings Haxami a letter. It reads: “Ask better questions than the cooper did.”
- Bess names the big quiet man: Thor, drinking there since the week Emil died, waiting for the Journeyman to walk in.
- Dita reads the ledger. It is a map of a route.
- Dita admits she sold Emil’s question one link up the chain. He was dead a week later.
- Four people come through the door. One of them pulls the ledger out of the party’s hands and they all walk out with it.
- Three of them hold the alley while the fourth runs. Break the gap in three rounds and the book stays in Onda.
- A quayman can be taken alive, in either case. Nothing prompts it.
Opening monologue
The opening monologue read to start the night
You have a dead man’s book. That is all it is — a cooper’s ledger, thirty-one years of staves and hoops and gallons in a careful hand, the most ordinary object anybody ever went to the trouble of hiding inside a barrel. You have had it since last night, out of the head of a sealed cask in a dead man’s basement, and you have read every page of it twice. There is nothing in it.
And Onda has got quieter, not louder. Conversations stop when you walk up to them. Nobody has explained anything to anybody since the night on the strand and nobody is going to, and the one person in this port who can tell you what is actually written in that book keeps a table at the back of a taproom that nobody gets to sit at.
The Long Crossing is doing what it does at this hour, which is everything at once — a room too small for the number of people in it, somebody’s dog under a bench, and a woman behind the bar who has not stopped moving since you came in and has still found time to look at each of you once. It is loud the way a full room is loud, which means nobody in it is listening to anybody who is not at their own table. There is one table in the corner with a lamp on it and one person sitting at it, and there is a foot of clear floor all the way around it that nobody in a room this full is standing in. The woman behind the bar wants to know what you are drinking.
And Onda has got quieter, not louder. Conversations stop when you walk up to them. Nobody has explained anything to anybody since the night on the strand and nobody is going to, and the one person in this port who can tell you what is actually written in that book keeps a table at the back of a taproom that nobody gets to sit at.
The Long Crossing is doing what it does at this hour, which is everything at once — a room too small for the number of people in it, somebody’s dog under a bench, and a woman behind the bar who has not stopped moving since you came in and has still found time to look at each of you once. It is loud the way a full room is loud, which means nobody in it is listening to anybody who is not at their own table. There is one table in the corner with a lamp on it and one person sitting at it, and there is a foot of clear floor all the way around it that nobody in a room this full is standing in. The woman behind the bar wants to know what you are drinking.
Scenes — every scene that could fire tonight
One room all night, and no second location. The party carry the ledger to the one person who can read it. Read-alouds and Developments are on the prep read.
| Scene | What it is | It ends when |
|---|---|---|
| The room cold open | A queued cold open, and the man at the edge writing something down. Do not explain him. | You say the Long Crossing’s name. |
| 1 · Bess pours ~30 min · no dice | She knew him: who he drank with, what went quiet in his last months, and the night Emil walked up to the corner table uninvited and Dita let him sit. She knows what the table is; she does not know what he asked. | They know Emil bought an answer, and who from. |
| 2 · Tam’s letter ~5 min · inside beat 1 | The daily letter, same as always, except this one is a single line: “Ask better questions than the cooper did.” No ceremony. Nothing here makes Tam the plot. | Haxami has read it. |
| 3 · The corner table ~10 min · no gate | Dita wants the book, and that is the whole way in — a room of Emil’s marks is not walking 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. | She starts reading. |
| 4 · Dita reads the marks ~15 min | The marks are a language and the ledger is a map of a route. This is what her table is. | They know what they are holding. |
| 5 · The confession ~20 min | She took his question and passed it one link up, as merchandise, without malice. A week later he was dead. She has already done the same thing with theirs. | She has said it out loud. |
| 6 · The ledger is taken ~30 min · the fight | Four come in and Dita throws them the book — no check, the party put it in her hands. Three hold the alley while the fourth runs for the stair. She does not leave the room, and she does not explain. | The gap breaks and the book stays, or it holds three rounds and the book goes. |
| 7 · Dita, after ~15 min · no dice | She offers to sell them the next thing in the same voice she used an hour ago. No apology, no embarrassment. If the book left the port she sells where it went; if they kept it she sells what is coming. She does not ask for the ledger again. | She names a price, and they buy it or they do not. |
NPCs — one line each
- Bess — keeps the Long Crossing. Surly, unhappy, cigarette on the go, and entirely innocent of what she is: the only living record of Emil’s last months. She gives everything she has freely, to anybody who asks.
- Dita — holds the corner table and reads the marks. Courteous, genuinely good at it, and the reason the fight happens. She passes things on for money and does not think of it as betrayal; she did it to Emil a week before he died and she does it to the party while they watch her read. She is gone before the door opens.
- Tam — carries the Handler’s one letter because his channel is trusted, and that is the entirety of his part.
- The man at the edge — in the cold open only, unaddressed. If a player asks who he was, the answer is “you don’t know,” and it is true.
Monsters
Two casters and two quaymen. The quaymen are the two off the sea wall at the end of session 1; the casters are new, and are what the sea wall never had. One caster runs for the stair with the book; the other three hold the alley behind them. All of it is on the session 2 fight page — both statblocks, the Pull, the alley, the scaling and how the beat resolves. Keep that page open beside this one.
Numbers — there are only three
Two hours of talking and one fight, and almost none of it is rolled.
| Check / value | When |
|---|---|
| DC 12 Intelligence (Investigation) | The second language under the trade marks. Free to Haxami, who reads the Game’s grammar on sight. Dita reads them outright if the table is open — and any packet-hand or warehouse tallyman confirms the marks route cargo |
| Passive 13 | The quaymen, when they come in. Nobody recognises them — the party never saw the two on the sea wall, so these are four strangers, not two familiar ones. Nobody rolls to notice they are here either; they are not hiding. The two casters are strangers to everyone |
| DC 13 Dexterity save | The Pull, in the alley only — nothing is pulled out of anybody’s hands in the bar. If a PC gets the ledger back off the runner, a caster can take it the same way |
No check for the rest of it. Everything Bess knows about Emil she gives to anyone who sits down and listens. There is no vouch and nothing to earn — Dita wants the book, and carrying it in is the way to her. The fight’s own numbers are on the session 2 fight page.
Rewards
No coin and no XP — the party is 4th and stays 4th through the arc. Tonight banks what they know, plus one object.
- The reading. The marks are a language and the ledger is a map of a route. This is the payload, it is free, and it is the reason the night happened. The party did not get it — the book never reached the corner table. Dita offers it again in session 3, and it is not free there.
- They know it was murder — and they know it from the woman who sold the question that caused it. It is not evidence and it is not a name. Nobody in Onda can be pointed at tomorrow morning.
- The ledger, if they broke the gap. Otherwise it is out of the port tonight. Either way the man who inherited the route comes in session 3. They broke the gap, so he comes to collect.
- A quayman, if they took one alive. He knows the next link up the chain, not the name at the top. Nothing in the alley prompts this — the party have to reach for it. The caster is not takeable in either branch. One survived and the Gendarme took him, so he is in a cell rather than in the party’s hands.
- Bess. She is the only person in the port still willing to say the cooper’s name out loud, and after tonight she will keep talking to them. Worth more than coin in a town that has stopped answering questions.
- The Cask That Never Empties — Alchemy Jug (2014 DMG, uncommon), two uses per dawn. Bess hands it over after the theft: Emil left it against a tab not long before he died and she is tired of looking at it. Not a kindness — she wants it out of her bar. The text to hand the player is on the items page.
- And a debt they do not know they have taken on: a full taproom watched four people walk in and take something off them, and Onda still has the party in episode three.