The Strand and the Shed
Session 1 · the one-sheet
Tonight
- Finish last week’s fight. The risen cooper, then five Refused. A fifth character, Yargin, joins in round two.
- The party looks at the offering stones. Nobody has taken the bread.
- Speaker Dol tells them the fourth mooring over the body.
- Their names go in the burial register. A man in a dark coat copies the page and leaves.
- Six days later, Isa takes them to her father’s shed. It has been searched and nothing was taken.
- They find the ledger in a cask’s false head and leave with it. Two men watch from the sea wall.
Opening monologue
The opening monologue read to start the night
A week ago, if anyone had asked, you could have told them how this works. A man dies, and they lay him on a board, and three people who still have a hold on him let go out loud in front of everybody, and the sea takes him out past the last of the light. It has always worked. Nobody in these islands has ever needed a second plan.
It did not work. It was done correctly — right hour, right Speaker, right offerings, three claims called and answered and cast off in order — and then the lamps went out one at a time, and three cast-off lines came up taut off a board moored to nothing, and the sea hauled the board back and put it into the pier hard enough to break it. What was on it came down in the fourth row of the crowd.
He is getting up. Not fast — the way a man gets up off a step he has been sitting on too long, four rows deep in people who have not moved since he landed among them, his hands still folded wrong until they aren’t. Behind him three wet lines come up off the pier and follow him through the crowd like something on a lead. Nobody gets out of his way, because nobody in these islands has ever been taught what to do here. He walks out of two hundred people without looking at one of them, past a woman who has known him twenty years, and comes for whoever is making the most noise.
Nobody is going to do anything about this except you.
It did not work. It was done correctly — right hour, right Speaker, right offerings, three claims called and answered and cast off in order — and then the lamps went out one at a time, and three cast-off lines came up taut off a board moored to nothing, and the sea hauled the board back and put it into the pier hard enough to break it. What was on it came down in the fourth row of the crowd.
He is getting up. Not fast — the way a man gets up off a step he has been sitting on too long, four rows deep in people who have not moved since he landed among them, his hands still folded wrong until they aren’t. Behind him three wet lines come up off the pier and follow him through the crowd like something on a lead. Nobody gets out of his way, because nobody in these islands has ever been taught what to do here. He walks out of two hundred people without looking at one of them, past a woman who has known him twenty years, and comes for whoever is making the most noise.
Nobody is going to do anything about this except you.
Then call the first name on the list. Do not recap, and do not pause for questions.
Scenes — every scene that could fire tonight
Eight beats and a break. The possibility space, not a schedule — the clock is on the prep read. First half is one continuous fight picked up cold; second half has almost no dice in it.
| Scene | What it is | It ends when |
|---|---|---|
| 1 · Round One, Cold ~12 min | The round he was not given last week. He is not fast and he goes for whoever is being noticed. Fight him like a body — no gate, nothing to track. Do not hint at the ending. | He is dropped, or the Refused arrive. |
| 2 · Round Two ~33 min · the fight | Five Refused come up the sand, and one person in two hundred stops holding still. They are queueing, not attacking — each leaves once it has its bread. Then he drops, and does not stay down. | All three moorings go, and he is finished. |
| — the fifth chair inside beat 2 | Yargin Brightwood, halfling ranger, one fight only. Comes out of the crowd on his own count in round two with a loaf off the offering stones in his fist, and the two extra Refused are queueing for it. He can take one of the three moorings like anybody else. | He hands over the loaf, or the fight does. |
| 3 · The Offering Stones ~20 min · no check | Three rites’ worth of bread, none of it taken, going grey and green and hard as chalk. The fight fixed nothing and this is where the table is told so without anyone saying it. | The Speaker asks them, carefully, not to talk about it. |
| 4 · The Fourth Mooring ~15 min · the delivery | Given, not found. Dol over the body, ten feet from four people still breathing hard: a hidden claim means a hidden wrong, and a wrong nobody names is a mooring nobody can cast off. Do not gate this behind a check. | Somebody in earshot says the word murdered. |
| 5 · The Register ~10 min | Their names go in, Yargin’s with them, and a man in a plain dark coat copies the page over the Speaker’s shoulder in a clerk’s hand and is gone before anyone can speak to him. Do not name him. Do not mention the Inquisition. | He is not on the sea wall any more. Yargin goes up the steps. |
| — the cold open ~10 min · after the break | The six-day skip, run as a cold open rather than a scene transition. 10 — Try This is the only one written and it is the right one: a wake, a boat that did not come home, a child feeding people who have just buried somebody. | You say “six days later.” |
| 6 · Isa at the Door ~15 min | She comes to them — no hook to fish for. Someone has been in her father’s shed and took nothing, and nobody in the port will discuss why he came back like that. | She takes them to the shed. |
| 7 · The Shed ~40 min · no encounter | Thirty-one years of one man’s work, one swept path through six days of dust, and the cask that answered nothing — because the ledger is in the head. Three routes in, and one of them is just asking Isa. | The head lifts out and there is another one behind it. |
| 8 · The Curtain ~10 min | Two men on the sea wall, bad at not watching them, who leave for the Long Crossing as the party come up the steps. Being watched is free, and so is seeing them go — passive 13 buys when they arrived: before Isa knocked, so the party were followed, not found. No chase catches them. | You name whoever is carrying the ledger, say what it is, and stop. |
Running long? Cut the crowd d6 to one roll, let the first workable idea sever a mooring, and take the stones standing up in five minutes — the count is the only part that has to land. Never compress beat 4, never skip beat 5. Running short? Play the six days: conversations that stop when they walk up, Otto pressing 2 gp on them out of the ropewalk’s fund, Isa for as long as she will let them. Do not reach into episode two — the Long Crossing is a whole night and does not survive being started at the end of this one.
NPCs — one line each
- Speaker Miriam Dol (the Last Word) — has just presided over a rite that bounced and wants to know why almost as badly as Isa does; she is the one who hands over the fourth mooring, and how kindly she was handled last week decides whether it is a confidence or a lecture.
- Isa Varga — the daughter, and the arc’s conscience; she does not want revenge, she wants one person in this port to tell her the truth, and she will physically block anyone heaving her father’s board.
- Otto Rask (the Twice-Said) — deaf in one ear and past caring, he is your safety valve at the stones: “third one since the turn” if nobody else says it.
- Ma Silva — held the debt line, and noticed a clerk in a good coat (Oswin Tuck, the Kestrel’s man) at the last two rites; she is the one who says so if somebody asks who else has been on this beach lately.
- The man in the plain dark coat — copies the register in a clerk’s hand and is gone before conversation is possible; unnamed, unaddressed, unexplained, and if a player asks who he was the answer is “you don’t know.”
- The two on the sea wall — hands, not professionals; they went through the shed twice with a light and did not find it, and they are the two who come for the ledger in episode two.
Full entries — wants, needs, has, standing, grievance — on session 0’s prep read. Yargin is a PC, not an NPC — he is on the prep read in the beat he arrives in.
Monsters
One fight, and no second one tonight — the shed is signs and being watched. The Ino of Emil Varga (×1) and the Refused (×5). Statblocks, targeting, scaling and the check that ends it are on the session 1 fight page. Keep it open beside this one.
Numbers — the ones outside the fight
None of these are mid-combat. The fight’s own math — hit points, saves, damage, the three moorings — is on the session 1 fight page.
| Check / value | When |
|---|---|
| DC 12 Intelligence (Religion) | The stones, after the fight. Put a number on them — three rites’ worth, none accepted, which does not happen. Free to anyone raised in Sai country, and there is no check needed to simply see the heap |
| 31 · 3 rites | Offerings on the stones, minus whatever the Refused carried off and any loaf a PC is holding — lower is worse |
| DC 13 Perception or Investigation | The shed. Read the search: two men, unhurried, with a light, over more than one visit — which means nobody was watching the shed. On a failure they read it as a burglary that took nothing and go on assuming the port is safe |
| DC 12 Intelligence (Investigation) | The cask is short. Rings wrong; gauges a gallon and a half under its hoops. Free if they handled it in session 0 — or just ask Isa, who has it in ten seconds |
| DC 13 Dexterity (cooper’s or thieves’ tools) | Lift the head clean. On a failure it staves in: the book is unhurt, and Isa watches somebody break the last piece of work her father ever finished. Asking her to open it is free, and makes her complicit |
| DC 12 Intelligence (Investigation) | The second language under the trade marks. Free to Haxami. Reading the whole ledger needs Dita, in episode two |
| No check (the three moorings) | The rite, after he drops. Three moorings hold the board to the pier and all three have to be severed — physically or religiously, however they manage it. Anyone who went at a mooring during the fight was doing the right thing — let it count. If they get two and stall, Speaker Dol severs the last one herself, at cost |
| DC 13 Strength (Athletics) | Isa, at the kin line. She physically blocks whoever goes for the last post — that mooring and no other. Free to anyone who let her talk about him last week — one beat, not a scene |
| DC 13 Wisdom (Perception) · passive 13 | The curtain. The two on the sea wall were there before Isa knocked — they were followed, not found. There is no check to be watched; this one is only when |
| 150 gp · 2 gp | The ledger, flat, to the right buyer — and what Otto Rask presses on them the morning after, out of the ropewalk’s fund. Refusing Otto offends him |
Rewards
- The ledger — a packet-boat tally-book in oilcloth, out of the head of the sealed cask. 150 gp flat to the right buyer, considerably more as leverage, and evidence in a murder. Spending it and keeping it are different lives.
- 2 gp — pressed on them by Otto Rask the morning after, out of the ropewalk’s fund, embarrassed. Refusing it offends him.
- The Speaker’s confidence — available, and not obvious. Handled gently she gives up the factor’s clerk (Oswin Tuck), the dawn clearing, and the count. Handled sharply she thanks them for their help and says nothing else all night.
- Isa Varga’s regard — the arc’s soft currency, and it lasts the campaign. What it costs to earn tonight is telling her a true thing she has been refused by the whole port for six days.
- A loaf off the stones — still available, still a lump of bread, still going to matter that one of them is carrying it.
- Not tonight: Emil’s sealing-iron is Isa’s to give at the end of the arc, to whoever she has come to trust most — handing it over now spends the best reward in the module for nothing. The Journeyman’s 25 gp each and the packet-schedule belong to episode three.
- Yargin walks away with his name in the burial register, copied once by a man nobody could catch. That is the whole reward, and it is a live thread — pull it whenever his player wants another night.
- XP: none. Milestone — the party is 4th and stays 4th through all three episodes; 5th at the coda.