Tidewright Find /
🌊 Fluid

The Strand and the Shed

Session 1 · episode one of A Good Day to Die · prep read

At a Glance

For
Four PCs at 4th level, plus a guest fifth for the fight only (the fifth chair) · 5e (2014)
Where
The strand below the sea wall, mid-initiative. Then the shed, six days later.
Who
Emil Varga (the Ino) · Isa Varga · Speaker Miriam Dol · Otto Rask · Yargin Brightwood (guest) · two hundred mourners
Opens
On last week’s initiative order. No cold open at the top — it runs at the six-day skip instead.
The fight
Hard. Roster inherited whole from session 0. He fights like a body but gets back up; severing all three moorings is what ends it.
Purpose
Put him down · Dol gives them the fourth mooring over the body · their names go in the register · they leave with the ledger
Curtain
They come off the shingle with a dead man’s book under a coat, and they know they were seen taking it.
Behind the screen — what tonight is actually doing

Two deliveries, and they are the whole session. First, the fourth mooring: Emil was murdered, a murdered man carries a claim nobody living knows to call, and that is why a correct rite bounced. Dol hands it over on the shingle, unprompted, ten minutes after the fight. Second, the ledger, in the head of the sealed cask. Everything else is transport between the two.

Putting him down fixes nothing. The Wheel still is not taking in Onda, the offerings will still sit, and the next casting off goes the same way. That is the spine’s problem, not this arc’s. Do not let the table leave thinking they solved it by winning a fight — the stones say so without anyone speaking.

Who searched the shed. Two hired hands, not the professional: told to find the cooper’s book, went through every piece of paper, put it all back nearly right. They missed it because they were looking for paper and it is inside a barrel. They return in episode two as the quaymen, with two people who can take it. The Journeyman is not in Onda yet. The killer is not in this module at all.

The last page. Emil’s ledger ends in a question in his own hand and never in a name (the head). That question is what he was killed for, and it exits into the spine. Do not let it resolve tonight.

Do not mention the Inquisition. The man copying the register in beat 5 is not named, not spoken to, and not explained. If a player asks who he was: “you don’t know.”

General Features — the strand: light, footing, cover, the crowd

The strand is answered in full on session 0’s page: no tide, flat shingle, half cover almost anywhere near the water, shin-deep at twenty feet and over your head at forty. Three things are different now that it is a fight.

1 · Round One — 0:00 · 12 min · he gets up in the crowd and comes for them

Do not recap. Read the monologue off the sheet — it carries the round he was not given and ends with him walking at somebody — then call the first name on the list.

Tactics — he goes for whoever is being noticed

Targeting order: whoever is speaking, then the loudest, then whoever is visibly grieving. Not the nearest, not the biggest. He ignores anyone silent and still, which is why he ignores the crowd. No morale; he does not finish downed targets. A player who works this out and shuts up has solved something — let it work.

The Ino of Emil Varga — ×1, reskinned Wight, CR 3, AC 14, HP 45. Statblock and both house tweaks on the fight page.

Developments — round one

If they talk to him. He stops walking for a beat and turns his head — being addressed is being noticed, and that is the only thing left in him. Then he comes for whoever spoke. Give them the beat; it teaches his targeting better than anything else.

If they try to cut the lines. The blade goes through, there is no resistance at all, and the line is still there. Describe it exactly. That one beat teaches the mechanic.

If they hammer him. That is the fight. It should feel like it is working, because it is.

If they retreat or refuse to fight. Legitimate. He does not chase and does not touch the crowd — he goes back to the board and stands on it. Say out loud that disengaging is allowed if the table looks stuck.

If they go for a line immediately. Some table always does. It costs an action and does nothing they can see — the lines themselves cannot be cut. Do not discourage them, and do not explain why it failed. Once somebody looks at where the lines are made fast, they are on the real answer.

2 · Round Two — 0:12 · 33 min · five more come up the sand, and a stranger joins the fight

Both arrivals land on the same count, on purpose.

Read aloud 1 — the Refused, round two Out past the shore lights, where the bottom drops away, shapes are walking up the sand that are not shaped like people who ever finished walking. There are five of them. They do not look at you, and they do not look at him, and they come up out of the black water in no particular hurry at all — three of them turning for the offering stones up on the dry shingle, and two of them turning along the line of the crowd, toward something they can smell in it.
Read aloud 2 — the fifth Two hundred people have been standing at the edge of this since the lamps went out and not one of them has moved a muscle, because that is what you are taught at nine and it is the only thing anybody on this beach still knows how to do. And then, four rows back, one of them stops doing it. Somebody small comes out of that crowd at a flat run with a loaf of dead men’s bread in one fist, and the two shapes that came up the sand for it turn and follow him in.

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

Yargin Brightwood — halfling ranger, 4th level, played by a guest for one combat and gone by the end of the night. He was in the crowd the whole time and breaks formation on his own count in round two. Do not explain him further.

What the fifth chair costs in budget, and what to run if Yargin does not show — the roster.

The Refused — ×5, reskinned Shadow, CR 1/2, AC 12, HP 16. They are queueing, not attacking. Statblock, objectives and morale on the fight page.

The crowd — two hundred people, not moving

They never panic, never help and never leave. The d6 of what they do is on the fight page — roll it once during the fight and once during the check.

Developments — round two and after

If they try to restrain him. He has no immunity to grappled — the reskin is a body. Give them the scene. It settles nothing, and holding a dead man still in front of his daughter is its own kind of bad night.

If they feed the Refused deliberately. It works. But every loaf handed over is one fewer on the stones in beat 3, and a lower count is worse. Something has now learned these people will feed it.

If Yargin gives up his loaf on his first turn. Ideal. His two take it and go, the encounter drops back to where it was for four, and the guest bought the party a round with a decision instead of a die. Say so.

If they lose the fight or the check. Nobody dies on the shingle. They wake at dawn, drained, dragged clear, and the Speaker took the rite apart herself at cost. Their names are in the register anyway and Isa comes six days later regardless. Full version in Failure & Setbacks.

How the fight ends — sever all three moorings; he gets up until then

He fights like a body — 45 hp, killable, nothing to track — and then he does not stay down. The board is made fast to the pier in three places, and while any of them holds he stands back up at the end of every round. Sever all three and he is finished.

No check and no single right answer. Break the fastenings, burn them, or reach for a spell or a rite — anything inventive lands. The lines themselves cannot be cut: a blade goes through and the line is still there. Describe that exactly the first time somebody tries; it teaches the rule and points them at the pier.

The three moorings, Isa at the kin line, and what burning the pier costs them — the fight page.

Read aloud 3 — when he finally drops He goes down. Properly — no stagger, no knee, just down, and two hundred people let out a breath they have been holding since the lamps went dark.

Then the three wet lines come up taut off a board moored to nothing, and Emil Varga gets a hand under himself and stands back up in his working clothes with nothing wrong with him anywhere, and his hands are folded wrong again. Whatever you just did, you did not do it to him.
Read aloud 4 — when the last line goes The last line goes and stays gone. Emil Varga stops — not the way a man stops, the way a sound stops — and for a moment he is only a cooper in his working clothes, standing on a beach he walked past every day for thirty-one years. Then he isn’t standing there at all. Behind you the board is over in the water and somebody’s torch is the only thing on the strand making any noise.

3 · The Offering Stones — 0:45 · 20 min · the count says the fight fixed nothing

The fight is over and the strand is quiet. Do not let the table leave the beach without standing in front of the stones. There is no check to see them.

Read aloud 5 — the stones, once it is quiet Up on the dry shingle the offering stones are three deep in bread. Not tonight’s — tonight’s is at the front, still soft enough to hold a thumbprint. Behind it, rank on rank, going grey, going green, going hard as chalk. Somebody has been coming down at dawn to clear them away, and somebody has not been able to keep up.

Then: what do they make of the heap? DC 12 Intelligence (Religion) to put a number on it.

Developments — the stones

If they take an offering. Let them. It will matter later that one of them is carrying it.

If they count it themselves. Better than being told. Let a player do the arithmetic out loud in front of two hundred people who are all pretending not to listen.

If they report it to House Sai. A clerk writes it down and nothing happens. Six days later a man off the Spirit Lands packet asks the harbourmaster for the week’s papers, and the burial register is in the bundle, so their names reach him either way.

If they never look at the stones. Costs them the arc’s clearest statement that the fight fixed nothing. Have Otto say his line at their backs as they climb the steps.

4 · The Fourth Mooring — 1:05 · 15 min · Dol tells them it was murder

This is what the session is for, and it is given, not found. No search, no check, no saving it for later in the arc. Dol has just presided over a rite that bounced, she is standing over the body with the register open, ten feet from four people still breathing hard, and she wants to know why almost as badly as Isa does. That is the moment.

“Three lines, because the living hold a man three ways. But a wrong holds harder than any of them, child, and a wrong nobody names is a mooring nobody can cast off. We sent him out with one line still made fast. The sea did the only honest thing it could.” — Speaker Miriam Dol, if asked kindly

Developments — the fourth mooring

If nobody talks to her. She says it anyway, to the register, loud enough to be overheard, because she has to say it to somebody. Colder, and it lands.

If they ask what answers the claim. Spoken truth, in the open, before the people who knew him — that is what casting off a claim is. Give it now. It is the instruction for the end of the arc and it is better planted eight hours early.

If they ask whether this is why the other two failed. No, and she knows it, and it frightens her more than Emil does. Do not resolve it. The other two rites had no murder in them.

If the Speaker is dead or discredited. The residue on the board carries it instead: what is left where he lay reads, to anyone with the training, as something done to him. The fourth mooring arrives as a deduction rather than a gift — worse, and it still works.

5 · The Register — 1:20 · 10 min · their names are written down, and a stranger copies the page

Read aloud 6 — up on the sea wall The Speaker takes your names for the register, because that is the form, and writes them in a hand that does not shake. The crowd goes up off the strand in ones and twos, quiet the whole way, the way they came. And at the end of the line, where the last of the light off the cressets reaches, a man in a plain dark coat is copying the page over her shoulder into a book of his own, in a clerk’s hand, neatly, without hurrying — and by the time anybody has decided to say something about it he is not on the sea wall any more.

Then: what do you do? Nothing to roll — he is already gone. The beat is that nobody moved.

Developments — the register

If they refuse to give their names. The Speaker writes the four names off the ropewalk’s list. Refusing costs nothing, gains nothing, and is noticed.

If they go after the man in the coat. The steps come up onto a quay with three ways off it and nobody on any of them. Let them look, and let it be genuinely empty.

If somebody clocks the coat. Off-island cut, not Onda, and dry — he has been above the waterline the whole time. Anyone who has worked the Game’s side of a port reads “clerk” instantly and reads nothing else.

Six days — break, then the cold open, then the skip

6 · Isa at the Door — 1:40 · 15 min · she asks them to look at her father’s shed

Read aloud 7 — six days later Six days, and Onda has closed over it the way water closes over a dropped stone. The packets came and went. The ropewalk paid. Nobody on the quay has said the cooper’s name out loud in front of you once, and you have watched two separate conversations stop when you walked up to them. Then, on the sixth evening, there is a knock, and it is a woman in a coat taken in at the shoulders with net-mender’s hands, and she has clearly been standing outside for a while working out how to start.

Then stop, and let her stand there. Who speaks first?

Developments — the door

If they tell her about the fourth mooring. Do not stop them and do not soften it. She takes it standing, says nothing for a while, then asks the only question that matters: who. Nobody in this arc can answer that. Say so out loud — promising her an answer they cannot deliver is a real debt and should be allowed to be one.

If they lie to her, or say nothing. Allowed, and expensive. She knows the shape of being managed — the whole port has managed her for six days. She still takes them to the shed, and stands in the doorway rather than coming in.

If they ask why now. She went in yesterday to start clearing it out, could not, and noticed the chalk on the wall was not in the order he kept it.

If Isa died on the strand. Dol carries this beat instead, and it is colder: the shed is the port’s problem, not a daughter’s. See Failure & Setbacks.

7 · The Shed — 1:55 · 40 min · they search it and find the ledger. No encounter

General Features — the shed under the sea wall

Light. One shutter, salt-blinded, facing the wall. Whatever they brought is what they have.

Sound. Strangely quiet inside. They can hear feet on the quay overhead, and anyone on the quay can hear a raised voice down here. That matters at the end.

Footing. Shavings a foot deep in the corners, and one swept path from door to bench that nobody who worked here made.

Cover. Everywhere — stacked casks, a bench, a fire-hoop pot on ash, staves racked to the ceiling.

Verticality. A loft of seasoning oak, four pegs in the post. Nothing up there but wood.

Smell. Oak, pitch, char, cold ash.

Read aloud 8 — the shed, from the doorway It is a small building and a whole life. Tools on the wall in the order a man uses them, each one worn to the shape of the same hand. A bench under the shutter with the ash of a hoop-fire gone cold beneath it. Casks stacked to the roof in grades, the way a language is stacked. And down the middle of all of it, from the door to the bench, someone has walked a clean path through six days of settled dust, more than once, taking their time.

Then: what do they read off the search? DC 13 Wisdom (Perception) or Intelligence (Investigation).

It is standing where it stood in session 0, and it is the same cask Isa offered anyone who asked the morning after the strand: finished, hooped, sealed, empty. A cooper does not seal an empty cask. Emil set two flat heads a hand’s width apart, laid a packet-boat tally-book in oilcloth between them, and finished it so well the join does not show.

Three routes in. Any one is enough.

Read aloud 9 — the head comes out The head lifts out in one piece and there is another one behind it, a hand’s width in, seated as clean as the first — two lids on an empty barrel, which is a thing no cooper alive does by accident. Between them, flat, wrapped in oilcloth against the damp the way you’d wrap something for a long crossing, is a packet-boat tally-book with a spine gone soft from being opened. It is the best work in the building and it was made to be a hiding place, and the man who made it did not tell his daughter.

Then: who is holding it, and what do they do with it? Isa is standing right there.

Ask who set the fourth mark. It is not mine and it is on my casks.
Behind the screen — the last page, and the rhyme

That question is what he was killed for, and it is the only thing in this arc that reaches the man who did it. He took it to Dita Ferrante, the one person in Onda who could answer it; she passed it one link up the chain, as merchandise, without malice; a week later he was dead. The page never names anybody, here or ever — who killed Emil Varga runs at zero routes on purpose, and the question is what exits into the spine.

The rhyme with the fourth mooring is deliberate and it is only a rhyme. A fourth mark on a cooper’s casks and a fourth line on a dead man are not the same thing, and one does not explain the other. If a player draws the connection, let them be wrong in an interesting way and do not confirm it. What is true underneath is smaller and better: the wrong done to him and the question he asked are the same event, so the claim nobody could call and the mark nobody would name are the same silence from two directions.

If the party burn the book here and now — some will, and it is a legitimate ending arriving two sessions early. Do not stop them. The Journeyman still comes in episode three, because the route still exists and somebody still has to settle it. What changes is that the party have nothing to trade and nothing to read, and Dita never sees it. See Endings.

Developments — the shed

If they never open the cask. A real position — it is a dead man’s sealed best work. The Journeyman comes for it anyway, sooner and harder, and they end up defending an object they have never read. What Dol and Dita know still routes the murder to them.

If they leave the ledger with Isa. Worse for her, and she should say so herself: she is a net-mender living alone above the nets, and two men with a light have already been through her father’s building twice. She will keep it if they insist. One line from her is enough — do not make it a lecture.

If they search for who searched. Nothing in the shed names them. The quay above is a different matter, and it is where episode two starts. Let the thread be visible; do not resolve it tonight.

If they take the tools, the tin, or the trade. Isa gives freely and Onda will hear that they took. The sealing-iron is not on offer tonight — it is hers to give at the end of the arc, to whoever she trusts most, and giving it early spends the best reward in the module.

If they lose track of time. This beat can eat an hour. If forty minutes have gone and the head is still in, have Isa pick the cask up to move it out of their way and say the line about the head herself.

8 · The Curtain — 2:35 · 10 min · they are seen leaving with the ledger

Read aloud 10 — coming up off the quay You come out of the shed into a warm evening with a dead man’s book under somebody’s coat, and the port is doing what a port does at that hour — a packet working its lines, somebody’s dog, two men on the sea wall who stop talking when you come up the steps. One of them takes rather too long finding something in his coat. Neither of them looks at you, and both of them have been not-looking at you for a while now. Then one says something to the other, and they go, unhurried, in the direction of the Long Crossing, like men who have finished a shift.

Then: how long have they been up there? DC 13 Wisdom (Perception), or passive 13.

What next session inherits

The ledger, unread past the first pages. The fourth mooring, spoken. Their names in a register that has been copied once. Isa’s question, unanswered and now owed. And two men who know what the party walked out of that shed with — who come back for it in episode two, and not alone.

Failure & Setbacks

On the strand. Nobody dies on the shingle except by the party’s own hard work, and their names are in the register in every one of these.

Across the arc. The four that decide how it ends.

Information Routing

Facts the arc cannot survive the party missing, and every route to each. A row reading 1 is a defect. Bess gates nothing and carries no row alone — she is the easiest way to what she has, never the only one, and neither she nor Dita has to be earned.

The party must learn…RoutesHow
The marks are a language, and the ledger is a map of a route 3
  • Haxami reads the Game’s grammar on sight
  • Dita reads them outright, if earned
  • any packet-hand or warehouse tallyman confirms the marks route cargo; DC 12 Intelligence (Investigation) for the second system underneath
Emil was murdered, and that is why his rite failed 3
  • Dol on the shingle — a hidden claim means a hidden wrong, both halves in one conversation
  • the ledger’s last pages turn from records into questions
  • the Journeyman comes to settle the ledger, which only matters if the death was business
The Journeyman inherited the route and is in Onda 2
  • Bess, frightened: the big quiet man started coming in the week the cooper died, and she knows which nights
  • fresh casks on the quay carry the same second language in a different hand

The one this module owes the spine — deliberately

Who killed Emil Varga runs at 0 routes, on purpose. Dita passed the question one link up and does not know where it stopped; the Journeyman never opened that account; the ledger’s last page names the question, not the name. The killer is spine material. The arc ends with the party holding the question and knowing one thing about the answer: it was worth a Pact violation to keep quiet.

Scaling — formulas, written for four at 4th

Canon Touchpoints

Pacing — the clock, and what to cut

🌊 Fluid · Session 1 · episode one of A Good Day to Die · the play surface is the one-sheet