Part I · Play
Exploring
Somebody built this place to keep people out, and something else has moved in since.
A site’s somewhere the crew goes into and has to find its way through, like the vaults under a burned library, or a smugglers’ cave with the tide coming in. You build it like a scene with a few more pieces, and it’s one scene from the moment you go in to the moment you come out, because it’s one place with one problem in it.
Building a Site
- A Challenge for how well the place keeps people out: 3 for a cellar, 4 for most, and 5 for a vault built by people who knew what they were doing. You roll against it to Study the place, find a trap or force a way through. Anything living down there has its own.
- What they came for. A stake at the site’s Challenge, with its tags in the way spread through the place, like Warded Door and Locked Cage.
- The places. Three to seven of them, each with a sentence, two ground tags and one thing in it: a threat, a trap, a clue, a choice or something worth taking. Draw them as boxes with lines between, and that’s your map.
- The alarm. The site’s scene clock, with one sentence for what happens when it runs out, like the Keeper wakes or the tide comes in. Start it at a d6 if the place is on guard, a d8 for most, and a d10 if it’s asleep.
- A secret. One hidden tag that changes how the place works, like a second way in or what the guardian wants.
- The way out, and what’s waiting there if the alarm’s run out.
Going In
Exploring’s mostly the conversation. Say where they are, what they can see and what’s in the way, then ask what they do. When they move on, describe the next place. Roll when something pushes back, and go into rounds when timing matters, like a fight or a trap going off under someone’s feet. When it’s dealt with, go back to the conversation.
Draw the map as they go. Rough boxes are fine, and you’ll only want the grid for a fight, if you use one at all.
The alarm
The alarm is how much the place knows about you. It works like any scene clock: it steps down at the end of every round, and outside rounds whenever the crew wastes time. In a site it also steps down for noise, like a forced door or a trap going off.
- Keep it quiet. The alarm’s an event, so you can work it: hide the body, or close the door the way you found it. Beat its die and it steps back up one.
- The GM can aim at it. A telegraph at the alarm steps it down if it lands. “Break that ward badly and it screams. A d6 at the alarm.”
- Past d2, the place knows you’re here. Play the sentence you wrote for it.
Traps
A trap’s a hidden tag on a place until somebody finds it.
- Walk into one nobody’s found and the GM telegraphs it there and then: what it does, at whom, and its die. Whoever set it off can answer it with their action, or let it ride and roll their defence against it. Either way it’s loud, so the alarm steps down.
- Find it first and it’s a stake. Disarm it against the site’s Challenge, or go round it. Once you know where it is, stepping over it doesn’t need a roll.
- Some traps run on a clock, like a room filling with water. That’s an event, so play it in rounds.
Study does most of the work
Study a place against the site’s Challenge and win, and you get what Study always gives you: a hidden tag (the trap on the stair) or a straight answer (what’s behind that door?). A Scholar can introduce a truth instead, like the draught that means there’s another way out. If you’re an Elementalist, one of your dice can be your area (it takes one of your splits), and you Study the whole room at once.
One scene, until you come out
Aura fills when you go in, and not again until you come out. Your Confidence starts on d6 when you go in, and it swings all the way through. Come back another day and it’s a new scene with full Aura, but the place has had a day too. Start the alarm a size smaller than last time, because whatever lives there knows somebody’s been in.
What’s in this place?
When a place needs something in it, roll a d8.
| d8 | What’s in it |
|---|---|
| 1 | Something asleep. While it sleeps it’s helpless, and that’s an opening. A fight wakes it. |
| 2 | A trap nobody’s found. A d8 at whoever goes in first. |
| 3 | Someone who got here first and never got out. Whatever they carried is still on them. |
| 4 | A way on that costs something: a squeeze, a drop, or a door that only opens from the other side. |
| 5 | A clue to the secret. |
| 6 | Something worth taking that’s heavy or loud to move. |
| 7 | Two ways on, and one of them’s wrong. |
| 8 | Nothing. It’s swept clean, and something comes through here often. |
ExampleThe vaults under the library
Vesk, Isolde and Bram are going down into the vaults under the burned library of Isolde’s order, after the catalogue of everything it held. The GM’s built the site at Challenge 4, a d8. The catalogue is the stake, with Warded Door and Locked Cage in the way. The alarm’s a d8, and when it runs out, the Keeper wakes. There are four places, the stair, the scriptorium, the bone room and the archive, and the secret is that the fire started down here.
The stair. Vesk goes first, and she Studies the stair before anyone puts a foot on it. Her Study’s just the action, 1 step. Her first Title fits finding a trap, but it isn’t on her Study, so she brings it in for 1 Aura. She’s got time, so the GM gives her two actions, and the same set action twice adds 1. That’s 3 steps, a d6. She rolls 5, and the site’s d8 comes up 2. She asks for a hidden tag and gets Pressure Plate on the Fifth Step. Now that they know it’s there, nothing’s pushing back, so they step over it without a roll.
The scriptorium is ash and fallen shelves, and they’re through it in a sentence. In the bone room, a moor cat’s asleep on a heap of old bones. It’s helpless while it sleeps, so one win from Bram would end it, but a fight’s loud, so they creep past.
The archive. The door’s warded with the order’s own sigils. Isolde’s Ward is her first Title and her chalk and salt, 3 steps with the action. The sigils are written in the order’s old script, so she brings in read the order’s old script for 1 Aura. Nobody’s hurrying her either, so it’s two actions on her Ward, and that adds 1. She’s on 5 steps, a d10. Before she rolls, the GM telegraphs: “Break that badly and it screams. A d6 at the alarm.” Isolde splits it into a d6 for the ward and a d4 to answer the scream. The d6 rolls 6 against the door’s 5, and Warded Door is gone. It’s a top face too, so the Aura she spent comes straight back. The d4 rolls 3 against the scream’s 6, so it lands. The alarm steps down to a d6, and somewhere below them, something turns over in its sleep.
The catalogue’s in an iron cage. Vesk’s Locks is her first Title, pick a mechanical lock, know how a lock’s built and her picks, 5 steps with the action, a d10. She rolls 6, and so does the cage. A tie goes to the defender, so she pays 1 Aura to win it, and the catalogue’s theirs. Now they’ve got to carry it back up past the moor cat with the alarm at a d6.