The last woman who remembers how the city's wards actually work has spent twenty-seven years cutting the proof into her cell wall, and the dawn muster means to clear her block before the party can get her, or her wall, out.
The Situation
Word reached Eppy Flinder three nights ago: the Dungeons' long block goes up for muster at dawn, cleared to make room for conscription refusers the Tower needs worked faster than the courts can process them. One name on that clearance list belongs to Mother Yaru, locked away twenty-seven years for reasons the current Court never bothered to write down twice. Eppy remembers her from before the Queen's court closed its fist on the old ward-craft, and swears the ochre still failing on half the city's doorframes would hold if anyone alive still knew how to cut it right. Istvan the Jailer has run a food-and-favors route into that block for a decade and takes coin from anyone patient enough to find him sober. Ashford's inventory detail comes for the cleared names at first light, and after that the block empties for good.
Objectives
- Primary · Get Mother Yaru out of the Dungeons and clear of the castle grounds before the dawn detail collects the clearance list.
- Secondary · Copy the ward-ciphers she has scratched into her cell wall over twenty-seven years before you go.
- Secondary · Leave Istvan bought, not burned. He is worth more scared and loyal than dead or reporting to Ashford.
The Clocks
- Main · The Clearance Muster. Six turns until Ashford's dawn detail reaches the long block and marches every cleared name out. At six, Yaru goes with the rest.
- Fast · The Thrall's Circuit. The block's new night-watch Thrall walks the corridor every second turn, faster on any noise. Three passes without notice and it stops walking past the cell and starts opening doors.
- Comet · The Failing Ward. The old drain grate under the block still opens to red ochre, but the ward on it thins with every other ward in the city as the comet climbs. It opens clean twice. A third time, something the ward used to keep out gets a vote on who comes through.
The Five Beats
- Entrance · Nobody breaks into a prison, so the long block keeps no real watch beyond Istvan and, since last week, the Thrall. The old drain grate under the Cliff Road switchback has fed the block's forgotten prisoners for years and still opens to the right coin or the right ochre mark. First wrong sign: fresh shackles laid out in a row that was empty last month, and a clearance list nailed to the block door in ink still tacky.
- Discovery · Ward-signs cover Yaru's cell wall floor to ceiling, scratched into the stone with a spoon handle, a fork tine, a fingernail, one of them fresher than the rest and different: not a ward to open, a ward to close fast. She knows a muster by the sound of shackles laid out down the corridor, and she has decided what she wants carried out first: the wall, not herself, if it comes to a choice.
- Setback · The Thrall crosses a scent it does not like, or Istvan, three turns from the end of his shift and suddenly less brave than his price suggested, threatens to call the change of watch early unless he is paid again. Either way the party loses time, loses quiet, or loses Istvan's cooperation right when they need it most.
- Climax · Ashford's detail reaches the block gate as the party reaches Yaru's corridor. She is frail, chained too long to move fast, and someone has to carry her weight while the Thrall closes from the drain end and the detail closes from the gate end. One working lantern, standing water underfoot, iron bars on both sides. No clean line out.
- Resolution · Yaru reaches the Bastion or she does not, and either way the wall goes with her or it does not. What she knows about cutting a ward that actually holds becomes real work for Eppy and whoever the party trusts with it next. Istvan pockets his coin and starts sleeping worse, waiting for the day someone asks him about the missing name on his own clearance list.
Leverage Points
- Istvan's decade of side coin. Opens the block quietly, but he remembers faces, and faces are a debt he can sell to Ashford on a worse night.
- The drain grate's failing ward. A way in and out that skips the gate entirely, good for two uses before the ochre gives out and stops choosing sides.
- The clearance list itself. One line struck or altered clears Yaru from the muster on paper, but the ink has to match, and Ashford's clerks check twice this close to a deadline.
- Yaru's wall. Copying it costs turns the party may not have. Leaving it costs the Crown never learning what it lost, and the party never learning what she knew.
- The Thrall's one order. It hunts warm blood off the docket and nothing else. Bleed somewhere else in the block and it follows the wrong scent for exactly as long as that scent stays interesting.
The Cast
- Istvan the Jailer (Crown, corrupt but functional) · Running his usual route on his usual coin until the clearance list changes his math. Wants to finish his shift with his pocket full and his neck unnoticed. Flips loyal and useful if paid past his fear; flips scared and dangerous if pressed past his price.
- Mother Yaru (unaffiliated, Old World) · Waiting, the way she has waited for twenty-seven years, except now she listens for shackles instead of footsteps. Wants her wall remembered more than she wants her own rescue. Cooperates the moment someone reaches for a copy of the wall before they reach for her.
- The Block Thrall (the Queen's Court) · Walks the corridor on Ashford's new standing order, tireless, incurious about anything that is not warm and off the list. Wants nothing it can be argued out of. Only stops for a wound, a locked door, or a better scent.
Climax Variable (d6)
Roll when Ashford's detail reaches the block gate, or choose the twist that pays off what the party already did.
| d6 | Twist |
|---|---|
| 1 | The detail is running early tonight. Drop the Clearance Muster clock to three, whatever it currently reads. |
| 2 | The Thrall crosses fresh blood from anyone hurt earlier. The Circuit clock ends now, and it comes straight down the corridor. |
| 3 | If Istvan was paid well and treated square, he stalls the detail at the gate with a forged tally, buying the party two full turns. If he was threatened or shorted, he bolts the block door from outside instead, and the drain grate is the only way out left. |
| 4 | The drain grate's ward gives out on this use instead of the next. Whatever it kept out gets its vote now, in the corridor, at the worst possible moment. |
| 5 | If the party copied the wall in the cell, the rubbing smears crossing the standing water and needs a dry hand and a spare turn to save. If they did not copy it, Yaru stops walking and will not take another step toward the drain without it. |
| 6 | Ashford himself walks the gate tonight, checking the clearance list by hand. He reads names slowly and looks at faces. A struck line does not fool him unless the ink had time to dry. |
Breadcrumbs
The fresh cipher on Yaru's wall, the one cut for closing instead of opening, is the same quick-ward the party can scratch onto the drain grate's frame in the climax to buy one turn against whatever the ward lets through behind them. Beyond this quest: Yaru mentions, almost in passing, that the ward-craft she learned as a girl was taught to her by someone who is, as far as the Crown's own records show, still very much alive.
The Not-Line
This quest is not a clean rescue. It is a bribe running out, a muster closing in, and a choice about whether the woman or her wall gets carried out first, if only one of them can.