🌊 Fluid

The Journeyman

Session 3 · the one-sheet

Before you run it

This night forks once, and the party choose it. Dita offers to read the ledger in exchange for helping them with the man who is coming for it. Take the deal and she names the ground — her father’s oyster house on the quay — and she is in the building; refuse it and the fight is the same fight with nobody helping. They still cannot read the book — that is what session 2 cost them, and it is what she is selling. What happened is on the recap.

Tonight

A cold open. The man at the edge of the room again.
The party walk back into the Long Crossing. Dita is at the corner table.
She offers to read the ledger. Her price is that they let her help with the fight that is coming.
Someone inherited Emil’s route and has been in Onda long enough to find out who has the book. He sends word.
The party take the deal or refuse it. Either way they go to the Ferrante oyster house on the quay.
The fight with Dalton, two archers and a caster. Thor comes through the doors at the end of round 1.
The party decide what to do with the ledger: burn it, keep it, trade it, or refuse.
They speak the truth over Emil’s grave, if they are willing to.

Opening monologue

The opening monologue read to start the night

You still cannot read it. That is the thing that will not stop being true. You have had a dead man’s book for two days now, out of the head of a sealed cask in his own basement, and you have looked at every page of it more times than you can count, and it is a cooper’s ledger: staves and hoops and gallons, thirty-one years of them, in a careful hand. There is a second set of marks under the trade ones. You know they are there. That is the whole of what you know.

And you have made it worse since. There was a woman who could read it and you did not let her, and then there were four people in an alley who wanted it enough to try, and you won that, and it has bought you nothing at all. Two of them were House Sai men who were told a lie to their faces and did not believe it. One of them is in a cell. The other two got up and walked away, and one of those was her.

So you are going back. Past the boats and the boys mending net and the whole port not looking at you, up the step and in through the door of the Long Crossing at an hour when it is nearly empty, because the only person in this town who can tell you what you are carrying tried to take it off you last night and is going to be sitting at the same table she has always sat at, as though none of it happened. Bess sees you come in. She does not say anything. She looks, once, at the corner — and the corner already knows you are there.

Scenes — every scene that could fire tonight

A negotiation, then the climax, then the choice after it. The fight happens either way; what the party decide is whether anybody is helping them in 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 again. Do not explain him.	You name the day.
1 · Back to the corner table ~20 min · no dice	Dita is where she has always been and behaves as though the alley did not happen. No apology, no embarrassment. She wants the book read as much as they want it read, and she says so.	She has made the offer.
2 · Her price ~20 min · no dice	She reads it, and in exchange they let her help with what is coming. The party have to decide out loud whether they will be helped by the woman who sold Emil and jumped them.	They take the deal or refuse it.
3 · He sends word ~15 min	Someone inherited the route. A tallyman off the weigh-house brings the message, paid for the minute it costs him. Dalton would like the cooper’s book back.	They know he is in Onda and what he wants.
4 · The settling ~45 min · the fight	The Ferrante oyster house on the quay. Dalton, two archers on the gantry and a caster who can pull the book out of somebody’s hands. Round 1 is four against four; Thor comes through the loading doors at the end of it.	He has the ledger, or he leaves without it. Or nobody swings and he walks.
5 · The choice ~20 min · no dice	Burn it · keep it · trade it · refuse all of it. Each with a material consequence and a thread left hanging — see Endings.	They decide, or refuse to.
6 · The grave ~15 min · the curtain	The truth spoken over Emil, if they have the nerve. Serrin is there, alone, leaving something small, and gone before conversation is possible.	You stop.

NPCs — one line each

Dita Ferrante — holds the corner table and reads the marks. She lost the alley and it has not changed her: she is not sorry, does not pretend to be, and offers the same merchandise at a new price. Going back to her is a decision the table has to make out loud.
Dalton, the Journeyman — the man who inherited the route. A professional settling an account he did not open. He gives his name and nothing after it, and he is here for the ledger, not for bodies. Statblock and tactics on the fight page.
Thor the fifth chair — a PC, not an NPC. A guest’s character for this fight only, and the man Dalton put down once in front of people. He comes in at the end of round 1. While he is standing, Dalton’s morale clauses do not fire — and what he wants is a witness. See the fifth chair.
Bess — keeps the Long Crossing, and watched four people take something off the party in her taproom. She is still the only person in the port who will say the cooper’s name out loud. She still has Emil’s cask behind the bar.
Isa Varga — the arc’s conscience. What she wants is not revenge; it is for one person in this port to tell her the truth. The grave is where she can finally be told.
The man at the edge — in the cold open, and at Emil’s grave, alone, leaving something small, gone before conversation is possible.

Monsters

Dalton, two archers and a caster — four bodies. 2,450 raw, 4,900 adjusted, 196% of Deadly for four at 4th plus Thor. He is a Gladiator now rather than a Veteran, because a CR 3 boss could not threaten this party and the last two fights showed it. The caster carries the Pull from the alley and can take the book off whoever is holding it. Round 1 is four PCs against four bodies — no budget model sees that, and it is the hard part. All of it, plus Dita’s three interventions if they took her deal, is on the fight page. Keep that page open beside this one.

Numbers — outside the fight there are none

Every number tonight belongs to the fight and is on the fight page — Shield Bash’s DC 15, the Pull’s DC 13, his floor of 30 hp, the crew’s morale, and what a stack of crates takes to bring down.

Three things are decided without a roll. Never gate any of them:

Dita’s deal. There is no check to persuade her and no check for her to deceive them. She means the offer, and she will keep it. Whether they take it is a decision, not a roll.
Buying Thor. What he wants is said, not rolled — they promise to tell what they saw, out loud, in the room.
Telling Isa the truth. It does not need the ledger, only the nerve. Never gate this.

Rewards

No XP — the party finish the arc at 4th, the level they started it. 5th at the coda, whichever coda they chose.

The reading, at last — if they take her deal. The marks are a language and the ledger is a map of a route. This was session 2’s payload and they walked out of the taproom without it; tonight it costs them something to get.
Who sent him, if they keep Dalton alive and talking. The only route to it in the whole arc, it is not offered, and nothing in the fight pauses to suggest it.
The ledger, or the end of it. Burned, kept, traded or refused — each closes a different door, and Endings has what each one costs.
Isa knows. If they tell her, she has what she has wanted since the night of the rite: one person in this port who would say it out loud. It needs the nerve, not the book.
Thor keeps his word or they keep theirs. If they promised to tell what they saw, tonight is when it is paid or broken, and he is gone by morning either way.
His route-pay, if they put him down and take it — 25 gp each in mixed coin and a packet-schedule worth more than the money to anybody who moves cargo. In the branch where nobody fights him, it walks away with him.
Emil’s sealing-iron — the brand he marked thirty-one years of casks with, offered by Isa to whoever she has come to trust most. Anything sealed with this mark reads as the cooper’s work to everyone in the trade. The Game knows the mark is dead. This is the arc’s named reward and it is given here.
The Cask That Never Empties — Alchemy Jug (2014 DMG, uncommon), two uses per dawn. Bess still has it behind the bar; Emil left it against a tab not long before he died and she is tired of looking at it. It did not get handed over in session 2, so it is available tonight when they walk back in. The text is on the items page.
What they do not get: a name for the killer, a thank-you from Onda, or any sign the Wheel has started taking again. The port does not explain itself at the end either.