Session 4

• The party search Dalton’s body. They find his route-pay and the packet schedule. The Cold Kiss is not on him.
• Thor searches him again for it, and is angry when it is not there. Dalton killed Thor’s partner, Wat Fenner, called Low Tide, with it at Losam’s mudflat warehouse. Thor and Wat both worked the warehouse crew, and Thor walked in on the killing.
• What Thor tells them. It is an iron brand, and Dalton called it the Cold Kiss. Thor does not know what it does. He knows Wat did not stay dead: something of him is still in that cellar, and the crew stopped going down. Emil came back at his own rite, and the whole port knows it. Two men came back wrong, so Thor thinks the Cold Kiss is in Emil’s death too. It was not on Dalton, so Thor reckons it is still in the cellar.
• Dalton was never marked. His soul goes on.
• Thor asks them to go down into the cellar and bring him the Cold Kiss. He cannot go back in. It killed Wat, and he wants it at the bottom of the sea. He tells them where the warehouse is.
• Keeping it is the party’s choice. What Thor does if they keep it is not decided.
• Thor takes a room over the bar at the Long Crossing; Bess puts him up. He is there until they bring the Cold Kiss or tell him no. You voice him.
• His promise from session 3 is paid or broken here: the party tell what they saw, out loud.
• Nothing presses tonight. They rest.

No read-aloud is written for this scene yet.

• Nobody living is there. The crew stopped going in after Wat died.
• A shed on the mud just past the packet berths holds the returned casks. The cellar below it floods at high tide and drains into the pale oyster bed from The Beds at Dawn.
• The cellar holds many casks. About three in every dozen hold a soul. Grey inside means empty.
• Wat’s Ino and his two crewmen are in the cellar. Wat has the Cold Kiss in his hand. The fight, the casks and the rising water are all on the fight page.
• It ends on Wat. When he drops, the Cold Kiss falls where he was and his soul is loose for a round. Whoever holds the Cold Kiss can send him on with it, or he stays in the cellar.
• They leave with the Cold Kiss and whatever unbroken full casks they choose to carry as proof.

No read-alouds are written for this section yet.

The day after the fight, at her corner table in the Long Crossing. This only happens if the party go to her. Under the session 3 deal she owes them the reading and two bracelets for Marellius.

The reading. Run it as written on the session 2 prep read: Read aloud 3. The marks are a language and the ledger is a map of a route. The same four ports repeat. The last pages are Emil’s questions, in his own hand.

Haxami reads the second language on sight. Anyone else: DC 12 Intelligence (Investigation).

One thing is new since session 2. Every entry ships out of Onda except one, which comes in: the Cold Kiss, consigned to Dalton, charged to the account the fourth mark tallies for. Whoever the count is for sent the Cold Kiss. This is the second way to learn the Cold Kiss came from the Collector. The quay is the first. No read-aloud is written for it yet.

The confession. Read aloud 4 on the session 2 prep read. She sold Emil’s question up the chain. She does not sell the party out this time. The box says “thirty years” and she is about twenty. Reword it before you run it.

Her father. She will not let them go to Losam. Their hold over her in session 3 was telling him how she has behaved, so staying away from him is part of the deal.

The ledger. She hands it back and wants nothing for it. Selling it waits for a later session.

The bracelets. She gives Marellius both. The first is Dita’s Bracelet, holding fireball. The second, the Sweet Nothing, casts message. She tells him it is so he can reach her.

• The schedule is all in the marks. Only Haxami, on sight, or Dita can read it. To anyone else it is paper.
• It shows the next route packet due in Onda within days, at night.
• At the berth, the packet’s crew carry returned casks down to the warehouse shed and load full ones aboard. Oswin Tuck, the Sai factor’s clerk, stands on the quay with a lantern and a tally, checking them off.
• If the party move on the packet, it is a fight on the deck with Ambrose Kettle, called Tinderbox, and two deckhands. Full casks are aboard. The fight, the casks and Tuck are on the deck fight page.
• Tuck runs for the town with the tally. Caught, he gives up the tally and says Kestrel signs for the casks.
• If they only watch, they can follow Tuck to Kestrel’s counting-house. The packet sails with the full casks, and those souls go south.
• It ends on Kestrel’s name: Tuck says it, or Tuck’s door shuts at the counting-house.

No read-alouds are written for this section yet.

• Night, on the headland above the strand. Emil’s is the only grave in Onda: one stone, alone, facing the water that would not take him.
• Sai has sent men to open it, whatever happened with Tuck. If Tuck got away, they come sooner.
• They are collecting Emil. His claimed soul still lingers at the grave. They have set an empty cask on the open coffin to draw him in.
• Emil lies in the open coffin. Over his heart is the burn: a wheel with one spoke missing, healed grey. It is the face of the Cold Kiss.
• Isa is there alone, fighting them with her father’s cooper’s adze.
• Quiet Jory, Sai’s knife, leads them. The labourers run. The fight, the seal and Isa are on the grave fight page.
• Afterwards the party rebury Emil with Isa and tell her what they know.
• It ends on the åsan: it is still on the stone in the morning. The whole truth is not known yet.

No read-alouds are written for this section yet.

Grown into the cellar by the drain. Goes for whoever carries a light. Full block on the fight page.

Full block on the fight page. Specters from casks use the specter block.

The deck only. Full block on the deck fight page.

The deck only. Full block on the deck fight page.

The grave only. Full block on the grave fight page.