The Journeyman

Session 3 · prep read

General Features — the taproom, then the Ferrante oyster house

Two rooms and no fork between them. The night starts where the party decided to go at the end of session 2, and it ends where Dita says it will — or, if they refuse her, where Dalton picks, which is the same place for the same reasons.

The Long Crossing

• Nearly empty, at an hour that is not the hour they came last time. Four people at the tables and the fire banked. The room that was too small for the number of people in it is not doing that today.
• The corner table has a lamp on it and one person sitting at it, and the foot of clear floor around it is still there. Nothing about the corner has changed. That is the point.
• Bess is behind the bar and she watched all of it. Four people came into her room and took something off the party in front of forty witnesses, and she was the one still standing in it afterwards. She has not stopped serving Dita.
• Emil’s cask is still behind the bar. Left against a tab before he died. She wants it out of her building.

The Ferrante oyster house, on the quay

Its floor, gantry, cover and doors are written on the fight page — read that block rather than restating it. What matters here is why it is the room.

• It is her father’s. Losam Ferrante is the wealthiest man in Onda and he got there on oysters; the house on the quay is where they come ashore. Dita has a key because of who she is. She does not explain and does not need to, and if the party do not ask whose building they are standing in, nobody tells them.
• It is indoors, and that is the point. Three of the four coming shoot or cast. On open ground this fight is unfair; behind stacked baskets and salt it is hard. If Dita picked it, that is what she picked it for.
• The loading doors stand open onto a pier. Daylight in a slot across the floor and water past it. That is where Dalton leaves by, and it is where Thor comes in.
• Nobody comes. A working quay at a working hour, people fifty feet away, and not one of them walks into a Ferrante building uninvited. Onda does what Onda does.
• Isa is not here. Last version of this night put the fight under her floor. It is not under her floor any more, and the grave is where she and the party finally speak.

1 · Back to the corner table — 0:00 · 20 min · she behaves as though the alley did not happen. No dice

• She is there, and she is not braced for them. No guards, no apology, no explanation offered and none coming. She lost, she is not embarrassed about losing, and the transaction she was in the middle of is still open as far as she is concerned.
• She does not deny any of it. If they accuse her she agrees with them, in detail, without heat. She wanted the book, she sent people, it did not work. She will not say who she sold the word to and she will say plainly that she is not going to.
• What she did do is already done. She told the chain who has the ledger and why they are in Onda, and that is why a professional is here. She will tell them that too, if they ask. It is not a confession; it is an explanation of the invoice.
• She wants the book read. Not owned — read. A room of Emil’s marks is not walking back out of her taproom unread twice, and that appetite is the most honest thing about her.
• Do not let her be killed here. If the party go for her, Bess’s room is not the place and she has not given them a reason today. If they do it anyway, they have burned the reading, the ground and the help in one move — let that be a real ending and run the night without her.
• Bess is watching and she keeps serving. She has no side in this. If the party ask her what she thinks of Dita she tells them, and it is not flattering, and she pours anyway.

2 · Her price — 0:20 · 15 min · she reads it, if they let her help. No dice

• The deal is exactly what she says it is. She reads the ledger, and in exchange the party let her help with what is coming. She means it and she will keep it. There is no double-cross written into tonight and you should not add one — she is more interesting as a person whose word is good and whose loyalty is not.
• She will not say how she helps, and if pressed she says that telling them is how it stops working. That is true. It is also convenient, and she knows it.
• She names the ground as part of it — the oyster house on the quay, the doors, the hour. She does not say it is her father’s, and the party can go a whole session without finding out. If they refuse the deal, Dalton chooses the same building, and they walk into it not knowing why it suits him.
• No check either way. There is nothing to persuade and nothing to see through. Whether they take it is a decision, made out loud, by four people who fought her last night. Let them argue about it and do not hurry them.
• If they take it, they get the reading here. The marks are a language and the ledger is a map of a route — the payload session 2 was built to deliver, arriving a session late and costing them something. Give it in full. She is good at this and she enjoys it.
• If they refuse, they never learn what it is. Not tonight and not from anybody else. The choice in beat 5 is then made about an object they cannot read, which is a harder and better version of that beat. Do not soften it later.

3 · He sends word — 0:35 · 10 min · he asks for the ledger. No dice

• Somebody ordinary brings it. A tallyman off the weigh-house with his book under his arm stops them because he was asked to and is being paid for the minute it costs him. The man who has taken over Emil’s round would like the cooper’s book back. He says it the way you would pass on a message about a delivery.
• He is not hiding and never was. He came because the four sent for the book failed in an alley, and because the word Dita passed up told the chain it was worth sending a professional. Settling an account he did not open is a job, and jobs are done in the open.
• He gives his name. Dalton, and nothing after it. The name is not the part he is withholding — who sent him is.
• What he wants is the ledger, and he says so. He does not threaten anybody, and he does not have to.
• He is the only man in Onda who knows who sent him. If the party want that, they need him alive and talking, and nothing tonight hands it to them.
• Refusing to meet him is legitimate. He comes anyway — he is collecting an object and he can find out where it is. Refusing costs them the hour, not the room.

4 · The settling — 0:45 · 45 min · four against four, then Thor

Then roll initiative — Thor is not in it yet.

• Round 1 is four PCs against four bodies. That is the hard part of the night and no encounter budget can see it. The caster opens with the Pull — he came to take a book off somebody, and that is how. The archers are on the gantry by the end of the first turn.
• He opens by putting the biggest person on the floor and standing on the prize. Shield Bash, then spears into whoever is still up. After that he fights like a man who has done it for wages his whole life — positioning, prone, the doors at your back and never at his.
• He is here for the ledger, not for bodies. He drops people and leaves them dropped. Nobody in this arc has died yet and he is not the one who changes it — if the party make it lethal, that is the party doing it.
• The one thing that can kill somebody tonight is the caster’s hold person, because paralysed next to Dalton is every hit a critical, and Marellius has 26 hit points. It lands rarely at DC 11. If it lands and the maths goes bad, that is what Dita’s first intervention is for.
• His exits are shut while Thor stands. Burning the book ends his job, and below 30 hp with it out of reach he goes — except while the other man is on his feet. If Thor drops, both come back on mid-fight, and a table that works that out has found the real lever.
• Alive and talking is a thing they have to choose. It is not the default, nothing prompts it, and the fight does not pause to offer it.

Roll Thor in now — he acts from the top of round 2.

The fifth chair — Thor, a guest PC for this fight only

Thor is a guest’s character, played for one combat and gone by the end of the night — the same arrangement as Yargin Brightwood in session 1, and it does not need explaining beyond that. Big, and built like it. He is a PC, not an NPC, and he is not one of the arc’s five people.

• He is the man who lost. Dalton put him down once, in front of people, in the trade they both work, and Thor has been looking for him since. Bess named him in session 2 and the party know about the feud, so they are holding all of it except the name. Hand the name to the guest’s player before the night starts and let them be the one to say it — in a trade where your name is the work, that is the grudge in one word.
• He arrives at the end of round 1. Not before it. Roll him in and he acts from the top of round 2. The party have one full round on their own, and it is the round the fight is decided in.
• He is not here for the ledger and does not want it.
• What he wants is a witness. He was put down in front of people, and in a trade where your name is the work, that is the injury — not the losing. Winning in an empty room is worth nothing to him, and this room is empty of everybody except the party. That is deliberate: a working quay outside, a closed building inside, and the only people who will ever be able to say what happened are the four he came in to help.
• That is what they can spend. Say they will tell it — to Dita, to the room at the Long Crossing, to whoever asks — and Thor is theirs: he fights their fight, takes hits meant for them, and will hold a door. Refuse, hedge, or promise it and then say nothing afterwards, and he was only ever pointed the same way by accident. He does not turn on them. He stops spending himself on people who will not be there when it matters.
• Make them say it out loud, in the room, with Dalton listening. It costs them nothing they need, which is the point — it is a lever they can actually pull, unlike the ledger.
• Do not let him take the fight. A guest with a grudge will hoover up the climax if allowed. Dalton is still here for the ledger, and the ledger is the party’s problem.

5 · The choice — 1:30 · 20 min · what happens to the book. No dice

Burn it · keep it · trade it · refuse all of it. Each with a material consequence and a thread left hanging — the four are written out under Endings, and trading is not a fourth option, it is a way of keeping it.

• No check, no clock, no pressure. Let them argue. This is the beat the whole arc has been walking toward and it has no dice in it at all.
• Whoever is carrying it decides, and the table should have to work out who that is. Say the name out loud.
• If they refused Dita, they are deciding about a book they cannot read. That is the harder version and it is the one they earned. Do not hand them the reading now as a consolation, and do not have anyone explain it after the fact.
• Do not tidy it. A split table that never agrees is an ending — the book goes wherever the person holding it takes it.

6 · The grave — 1:50 · 15 min · they tell Isa the truth, or they don’t

Then: what do you do? Isa is beside you, and she has been waiting to be told the truth since the night of the rite.

• The truth does not need the ledger, only the nerve. It is available in every ending, including the ones where they burned the book or never read it. Never gate this.
• If they promised Thor a witness, this is where it is paid or broken, and he is gone by morning either way.
• Emil is in the ground, and that is an anomaly. Onda does not bury its dead — they go on, out past the last of the light. He is buried because the water would not have him, and his is the only grave anybody in the port can remember being dug. Nobody has to explain that to the party; the stone does it.
• Serrin is there, alone, leaving something small. He does not speak and is gone before conversation is possible. Do not explain him — if a player asks who he was, the answer is “you don’t know,” and it is true.
• End on it. Whatever they decided about the book, the last thing in the arc is a daughter and a man who was not introduced.

Endings

• Burn it. The route through Onda breaks for a season, and breaks visibly — the Game reroutes around a port where four strangers burned an asset. Dita is safest in this ending. The Handler writes exactly one more line through Tam: “Expensive.”
• Keep it. They hold the map of an artery the Game is still using. Leverage, and a lit fuse: as long as it exists, everyone who knows it exists has a reason to visit them. The campaign’s middle arcs get a loaded gun on the mantel. Trading it is this ending, not a fourth one — to House Sai’s factors, who pay in protection and favours and will use it to own the route rather than end it, or back to the Handler by dead-drop. Either buyer pays well; either buyer now owns a piece of the party.
• Refuse all of it. Hand it to Isa, or put it down and walk away. The module still closes — Dalton still comes and is still settled one way or another — but the route survives untouched and Onda keeps not looking, which is what Onda is best at. The claim on Emil can still be answered at the grave.
• Give it to him. He takes it and goes and the route runs on. They got nothing for it, which is what separates this from trading.

If they refused Dita, every one of those is chosen blind. They are burning, keeping, trading or handing over an object whose value they have to take on faith — and nobody will ever tell them what it was. That is the cost of the alley, paid a session later, and it is the better version of this beat. Do not resolve it for them afterwards.

In every ending: the question exits into the spine, and the party ends the arc knowing Serrin’s face and not one fact about him. That is the state the next module inherits.

Pacing — the clock, and what to cut

• 0:00 — a queued cold open, then 1 · Back to the corner table — 20.
• 0:20 — 2 · Her price — 15.
• 0:35 — 3 · He sends word — 10.
• 0:45 — 4 · The settling — 45. The climax.
• 1:30 — 5 · The choice — 20. No dice. Do not hurry it.
• 1:50 — 6 · The grave — 15.
• Running long? The fight is where it goes. Let him stand on the prize sooner and let the archers give ground — the shape is his objective, not his hit points. Never compress beat 5.
• Running short? Play the port between the word and the meeting: who else has heard, what Bess has to say about Dita, whether Isa is told before rather than after, whether anybody goes to the cell.
• Running wrong? If the fight collapses early, beat 5 absorbs it — the choice does not care how the fight went, only who is holding the book. If it collapses badly, Dita’s three interventions are the dial, and if they refused her, Thor is the reason nobody died.
• The one thing: somebody decides what happens to the ledger, and somebody tells Isa the truth. Everything else can move.

🌊 Fluid · Session 3 · the prep read · the play surface is the one-sheet