Mother Sabel, keeper of the Bridge-Chapel of St. Corin.
The job
A company of deserters has held the bridge nine days, charging a
private toll. The Houses' grain convoy comes at dusk. Clear the bridge.
The pay
120 marks, and the toll-box if you recover it.
Across the bridge
Captain Marrec Vane, "the Tollkeeper" — held this bridge for
the Houses in the war. His company was mustered out without its back-pay.
What doesn't sit right
Deserters charge what fear will pay. This company charges ten
coppers a head — the chapel's own rate, to the copper — and writes
it in a book.
A prototype: one battle, four of yours, one captain. Art is
stand-in work borrowed from an earlier project — the party and the captain
get their own faces later if this fight earns them. Sound is synthesized;
there is no music yet.
🔔 The Bell of Reckoning
The Tollkeeper's company
Your crew
The dice
No roll yet. Every strike is thrown in the open.
Rows: FRONT — full melee out, full hurt in. BACK — melee ×½ out, melee hurt ×0.6 in, bow & magic ignore rows.
Dice: d20 + bonus vs the target's Guard. A natural 20 always hits and crits (damage dice doubled); a natural 1 always misses.
ATB: bars fill; when one of yours is full the world waits for your command.
Vane: he hunts your back row — the lowest standing there, uncovered — and his bell falls on your weakest. His shieldman covers him while he stands in front. Wound his company and the reckoning turns.
The bridge is yours.
Vane is down. His company broke and ran for the tree line, and the
toll-box is heavy in your hands. The contract is fulfilled.
Guild-keeper —
The toll-box was not full of coin. It was full of paper. Every copper
the company took is entered in the ledger, in Vane's own hand, to the
name of each man it was owed to.
And under the ledger, a sealed order. The seal is the chapel's. The
handwriting is the House steward's.
The seal is real. The hand is not mine.
— Mother Sabel
That is the prototype. One battle, one contract, one letter.
The story machine — skeleton, situation, hinges — begins here.
The contract fails.
"Tell the Abbess her toll stands."
Vane lets you crawl off his bridge. In the guild ledger it is written
in red ink: BRIDGE — UNPAID.