A market master lies dead over his own fee-scales, cut to the same count worked into Captain Feeney; somebody pays to call it plague by dusk, and the proof that one hand silences the city's counters burns with the body unless you carry it out of the square first.
The Situation
Yuri Szek ran the Grand Square: every stall fee, every short-weight coin, every rumor that crossed Kereskedo passed his scales. This morning his apprentice found him face-down over the fee-table, the wounds counted and even, the same tally a careful hand worked into Captain Feeney when the conspiracy cut him eighty-eight times. The Red Guard roped the counting-stall, lit plague-censers around it, and posted a dusk order: seal the square, cart the body to the lime-pit, burn the stall. Two crews already work the cordon against them. The Lich Cult wants Szek's fee-book before it goes to ash, because his ledger of short-weight Krone traces the conspiracy's silver through the market. Rozito Vallikozo wants the same book for himself, and he can stand the dead man up long enough to ask one question, for a price. The tower climbs over the rooftops while press-gangs thin the square stall by stall.
Objectives
- Primary · Prove one hand killed Yuri Szek and Captain Feeney both, match the count and name the method, and carry the proof out of the Grand Square before the dusk order seals it and the body burns.
- Secondary · Keep Bella, the one witness who saw what went into the stall, alive and clear of the press-gangs.
- Secondary · Recover the leaf torn from Szek's fee-book, the page that names whose coin moved through his scales the night he died.
The Clocks
- Main · The Dusk Order. A six-step wind toward sundown. It advances one step each scene the party works the square. At six the Red Guard seal the Grand Square, the lime-cart takes Szek, and the counting-stall burns with whatever evidence still sits in it.
- Fast · Mireva's Eye. Lady Mireva works the frightened vendors and marks who asks the wrong questions. A three-step suspicion count, one step each time the party asks in the open, flashes coin, or stands too long with a witness. At three the conspiracy marks them, and the thing that counted Szek starts counting them.
- Comet · The Press. Phase II conscription feeds the tower. On any turn a die reads 1, a Red Guard gang sweeps the square and drags a vendor or a witness off to the works. When the tower bell tolls shift-change, the square floods with conscripts and guards, cover and chaos at once.
The Five Beats
- Entrance · The Grand Square still trades because the Red Guard call it plague, not murder. A rope and a ring of smoking censers hold the curious back from the counting-stall, and the smoke is set to drive noses off a body that does not rot. The first wrong note: too much blood for a fever, swabbed thin but not gone, dried in a pattern too neat for a sick man's fall.
- Discovery · Past the rope, Szek lies over his own scales, the wounds counted and even, every cut the same depth and the same spacing. No hand keeps a count that clean. His fee-book sits open with one leaf torn out. Two carts down, Bella the sausage-seller watched the thing go in and will not say so aloud while a red coat stands near.
- Setback · The dusk order jumps forward, or Mireva marks the party, and the lime-cart starts for the body early while a press-gang takes a witness off the board. Now the evidence, the witness, and the party's own names all move at once, and there are not hands enough to hold all three.
- Climax · The proof comes due in a closing square. Wake Szek at Rozito's price for one crooked answer, or pin the method when the clockwork killer comes back for the torn leaf and the people who read it. Press-gangs work the lanes, censer-smoke fouls the air, and the Red Guard watch platform looks down on all of it.
- Resolution · Out of the square with the proof, or the witness, or the leaf, and rarely all three. The clean count names a workshop and a clockwork hand, a thread that runs to a Terrassian engineer and past him to whoever pays the bill. The Red Guard seal the square behind the party. What they could not carry burns at dusk, and the city is told a fever took the Market Master.
Leverage Points
- The plague-censers. Set by the Red Guard to sell the lie, the smoke also blinds the cordon. Walk it to reach the body unseen, but breathe it long and your own count goes hazy, and crossing the rope marks you to anyone watching.
- Szek's fee-scales. Weigh a coin and they show which Krone in the market run short and clipped, the silver-trail the killer cut Szek to bury. Use them in the open and Mireva's eye finds you, and the scales become the conspiracy's next thing to burn.
- Rozito's necromancy. He can stand the dead man up for one question, a straight line to the truth. He serves many masters, will sell the answer to a higher bidder, and wants the fee-book as his fee. The comet has the dead restless, so one corpse may not be the only thing that rises.
- Bella's memory. She saw the brass-ticking thing go into the stall and heard the counted strikes. Spend her in front of the wrong eyes and the conspiracy takes the one witness who can name the method.
- The watch platform. The Red Guard post stands over the whole square. Reach it and you read the killer's approach and the full board, but Ashford's men never leave it, and standing up there ties you to the body below.
The Cast
- Bella (Grand Square, vendor) · Selling sausages two carts from the rope, watching everyone, saying nothing while a red coat is near. Wants to keep her cart and her skin. Talks the moment the party put themselves between her and the press-gangs, goes silent the instant Mireva or a Red Guard drifts close.
- Rozito Vallikozo (market fixer, necromancer) · Already circling the counting-stall, pricing what Szek's death is worth to each of his masters. Wants the fee-book and the debts it names. Wakes the corpse for the party if they meet his price and cut him in, sells them to the Red Guard if the Court pays better.
- Lady Mireva (the Queen's spies) · Moving stall to stall in mourning black, comforting frightened vendors, marking every face that asks about wounds instead of fever. Wants names for the Queen. Folds only if the party feed her a better target than themselves, turns the killer loose on anyone she marks.
Climax Variable (d6)
Roll once when the proof comes due, or take the twist that pays off what the party already did.
| d6 | Twist |
|---|---|
| 1 | The lime-cart rolls now. The dusk order jumps to its end; advance the Dusk Order clock to six, and the body leaves this turn unless someone stops the wheels. |
| 2 | The tower bell tolls shift-change early. Conscripts and press-gangs flood the square, one turn of churn that hides the party and scatters every witness at once. |
| 3 | Rozito takes the higher bid. He wakes Szek for the Red Guard instead, and the dead man names the party to Captain Ashford unless they outbid Rozito or shut his mouth. |
| 4 | The leaf is on the killer. The clockwork came back for the one page that names the short-weight coin; the proof can be had only off the machine, mid-count. |
| 5 | Every eye the party showed Bella to is here. Spend her and she is gone to a gang and only the corpse can speak; shield her and she points the killer out of the crowd. |
| 6 | The comet pulses through the censer-smoke and the square goes to murk. The clockwork strikes in the haze and starts a fresh count on whoever stands over the body, and the sealed cordon is suddenly the safest dark in Kereskedo. |
Breadcrumbs
The torn fee-leaf names whose silver ran short through Szek's scales the night he died, and that name is who the clockwork comes back to protect at the climax; weigh the coin early and the party know the machine will return, and for whom. Beyond this quest: the wounds run too even for any blade-hand, and a single brass tooth dropped in the blood points to a Terrassian workshop and the man with the clockwork arm who builds the Court's counting killers. The same proof Olivia Faren wants for her tribunal sits in that torn leaf.
The Not-Line
This quest is not a whodunit with a hidden culprit. It is a race to prove a death the city already chose to bury, before the square seals at dusk and the body burns with the count still on it.