A Terrassian killing-machine hunts Gillikoi Woods by the sound a body makes, and the Resistance cell walking in tonight carries the one password its gears were wound to answer.
The Situation
The conscription sweeps turned every safe room in the city into a trap, so the Resistance moved its meeting to Gillikoi Woods, where the Red Guard will not follow after dark. Someone sold that secret. A clockwork assassin now works the woods on a wound order, and it kills by the cell's own recognition sign, three taps on a shuttered lantern, so only the right throats open. Two couriers already lie on the paths, each cut once and clean, each at the spot where it gave the tap. The cell converges on the meeting glade at moonset, four contacts on four roads, none of them warned. The Eastern Tower's glow climbs the sky as the comet nears, and where its light reaches the trees the dark that hid the Resistance stops hiding anyone.
Objectives
- Primary · Find the clockwork assassin and stop it, by recall, by wreck, or by running it down, before the cell gathers in the open glade at moonset.
- Secondary · Reach the four contacts and kill the sign on their lips before the machine reaches them first.
- Secondary · Take the order intact. The wax cylinder in its chest names who wound it and whose throats it was sent for.
The Clocks
- Main · The Cell Gathers. Six steps from full dark to moonset. Each step a contact closes on the glade and gives the three-tap sign on the path. At the sixth step every contact still alive stands together in the open, and the machine holds them in one place. Warn a contact off the sign and that step buys the machine nothing.
- Faster · The Tick. You can hear the machine work. Ticking means it moves, and a moving machine you can track. Silence means it caught a sound and closes on someone. Control the noise in the woods and you steer where it goes.
- Comet · The Light Climbs. Three steps, tied to the tower. Each step the comet lifts the Eastern Tower's glow higher, shortens the shadows, and opens a sightline from the Cliff Road watch. At the third step a Thrall, drawn off the sweeps by the blood already spilled, crosses into the trees and hunts the same paths, tireless, faster than a man.
The Quarry
- The Automatic Assassin (clockwork) · A brass killer wound to one order, sent to thin the Gillikoi cell by their own sign. Man-high, patient, past mercy and past reason.
- The loop · Wind. Move, ticking. Catch a sound, fall silent, close. Strike once, clean. Withdraw, rewind. It cannot strike twice without winding, and a machine run fully down stands open for a single beat.
- How it marks · By sound, not sight. Keyed to the three-tap lantern sign, it kills whoever gives it. The dark and the comet-light mean nothing to it. Noise is everything.
- How it falls · Silence starves it. The cold stream fouls it. The recall whistle freezes it. Pull the wax cylinder and it runs blind. Catch the dead beat and one blow ends it.
The Five Beats
- Entrance · The Red Guard will not enter Gillikoi after dark, which is why the Resistance trusts it and why a killer works it unwatched. The path in shows the first wrong thing: a courier face-down across the roots, cut once through the heart, a shuttered lantern still in his fist. From somewhere in the black, a steady ticking, then nothing.
- Discovery · The kills are not chance. Each body lies where it tapped the lantern, the wound timed to the beat. The machine does not hunt the Resistance. It hunts the sign, and the cell carries the sign toward the glade on four roads at once.
- Setback · The tower-light climbs and the cover thins. A contact taps a lantern two ridges off, the ticking turns toward it, and the party splits to chase. Whoever makes the most noise on the run becomes the thing the machine hears best.
- Climax · The glade at moonset, flooded by the comet's light, the surviving contacts in the open, the assassin winding for a clean sweep, a Thrall at the treeline, and the man who built the thing on his knees in the brush trying to recall it before anyone opens its chest. Open ground ringed by dark, a cold stream cutting the clearing, one beat where the gears run dry. The Climax Variable sets the terms.
- Resolution · The machine wrecked, recalled, or back in the trees. Which contacts walked out. Whether the wax cylinder leaves the woods in your hand or another's. Whether the builder's name goes in your pocket or up the Cliff Road. The woods keep what they took.
Leverage Points
- The recognition sign. Three taps on a shuttered lantern calls the machine straight to you, off the contacts and onto whoever signs. Bait that names the bait as next to die.
- The man who built it. The Terrassian engineer with the clockwork arm knows the recall whistle and the winding limit, and he came tonight to smash his own work before it is traced to his hand. Trade him his name for the shutdown, or corner him and watch him let the machine finish and slip the cylinder into his coat.
- Jack Winbow. He came for a runner who never walked out, and he tracks the machine by a reek of oil and blood no man would catch. As the moon climbs he holds his shape harder, and a thing that hunts by sound chooses the loudest throat in the woods, which by moonset may be his.
- The cold stream. Drive the machine through the water and the wet fouls its gears and drags its loop a beat slower. The splash is a sound, and the sound gives it your exact place.
- The wax cylinder. Pull it from the machine's chest and it runs blind, no sign keyed, no throat marked. Stopping to pull it leaves you in the open a beat the light and the Thrall will not give back, and the patron who wound it will want it returned.
The Cast
- The Man with the Clockwork Arm (Terrassia) · Built the assassin under a threat he will not name, now crawling the brush to wreck it before the Crown or the Resistance learns whose hand made it. Wants the cylinder gone and his name clear. Gives up the recall whistle if a player swears to keep him out of it; bolts and lets the machine work if a contact sees his face.
- Jack Winbow (loyal to Olivia and Eppy) · Came hunting a Resistance runner who went into the woods and did not come out, and stays to put the machine down. Tracks it by a scent the party cannot. The longer the night runs the less man he holds, and the louder he grows, and the machine listens.
- The Gillikoi Cell (the Resistance) · Four contacts on four paths, a courier, a deserter, a printer, a go-between, each walking to the glade with the same three-tap sign and no notion someone turned it against them. They scatter if warned, hold if led, and one of them carries a name the Crown would kill the rest to bury.
Climax Variable (d6)
Roll once when the first contact reaches the glade, or take the twist that pays off what the party already did.
| d6 | Twist |
|---|---|
| 1 | Moonset comes early. The contacts break the treeline together, into the open and the light, and the Gather clock jumps to its last step. |
| 2 | The comet flares. The tower-light floods the glade at once, the last shadow gone, and the Thrall hits the treeline a full step ahead of its clock. |
| 3 | The builder breaks. Cornered, he blows the recall whistle and the machine locks rigid, but only while no contact has seen his face. If one has, he runs, and the whistle goes with him. |
| 4 | The gears run dry. The machine winds past its limit and stands dead for one beat, open to a killing blow, but its key sits in its own spine, and reaching it puts you between the machine and the nearest contact. |
| 5 | The sign turns on the signer. Whoever tapped a lantern to bait the machine earlier is the throat it marks first, alone in the open while it winds toward them. |
| 6 | Jack turns. The change takes him at the worst beat, and the machine reads the wolf as the loudest threat in the glade. For one round it runs wolf against clockwork against Thrall, and the contacts can flee if someone leads them out. |
Breadcrumbs
The steady ticking the party learns to read on the way in is the same loop that fails at the glade, and a table that listened knows the dead beat is coming before the gears run dry. Beyond tonight: the wax cylinder carries a Crown seal and a maker's count, proof the Court buys Terrassian machines to do the murders the Red Guard cannot be seen to do, and proof the man with the clockwork arm has wound more than one.
The Not-Line
This quest is not a beast cornered and put down. It is a contest of noise and nerve against a machine that hunts the sound you make, while the people you came to save carry its trigger to it on their own password.