Frontiers 1.0 · Wasteland

Enough for One¶

Three Pressure Levels4 Hours4-Player Party Size

Content used

The Wasteland Starter Set — Bearings, Trades, Roles, Stores, and gear
The d18 Ruleset — two dice summed, with the Gradient built in
Basic Combat — the optional combat module

A settlement called Coldwater has a sealed course of antibiotics and no way to move it. The man who used to run their freight stopped coming through in the spring, and nobody has heard why.

Ninebar is eight days east. There is a child there with an infection that is going to kill her in about three weeks, and Coldwater has known this for eleven days.

The crew get a cart, what Coldwater can spare to fill it, and a debt paid off at the far end. The medicine is one sealed case and it weighs nothing.

This is one Journey, written to run in 4 hours, at one of three pressures. There are no Levels in this set and nothing here is pitched against one.

What You'll Find¶

Part	Covers
1 — Running This Adventure	Tone, the pressure setting, Stores, characters, and what arriving pays
2 — Coldwater	The job, the cart, and the only place anybody explains anything
3 — The Road	How to lay the road out, and The Nail at the halfway point
4 — The Legs	Eighteen Legs to build the road from
5 — Complications	What to put on the road when it is going too well
6 — Ninebar	What is waiting, and what the course of medicine actually covers
Reference	Adversaries, where the fights are, and the cast

How Long It Takes¶

	Aim for
Coldwater	20 minutes
The road, before The Nail	70 minutes
The Nail	25 minutes
The road, after	80 minutes
Ninebar	35 minutes

The road is the adventure. Coldwater is a yard, a handshake and a loaded cart, and it should not take longer than that — everything it sets up gets paid out east of here. Legs are not all the same size. A Short runs about ten minutes, an Average about twenty, and a Long thirty to forty. One Long and four or five Averages fills a road, which comes out around two hours with The Nail in it. Drop the reserve Short Leg before you shorten Ninebar.

No characters yet?

The Pregen Chars are five starting characters for this set, one for every Role. Lay out all five and let the table take four.

Read-aloud text

Anything in a Read aloud box is written to be spoken to the crew. Everything else is yours. Paraphrase freely. This adventure assumes you set a scene in your own voice, so adapt any of it as you see fit.

1 — Running This Adventure¶

Nobody in this is a hero and nobody is going to be thanked properly.

The crew are hauling medicine to a child they have never met because Coldwater is paying and because somebody has to. That is enough. Do not have anyone make a speech about it, and do not let the adventure congratulate them.

Nobody out here is a villain. The people on this road want food, water, and to still be here next month. So does the crew. That is the whole of the conflict.
The road does not know the crew exists. Nothing scales to them, nothing is aimed at them, and nothing is impressed by them.
Say costs plainly and move on. A step is a step. Do not editorialise, and do not soften it.
The case of medicine weighs nothing and takes no Slots. It is never the problem. Everything else is.

Before You Start¶

Have this conversation before anybody builds a character. It takes five minutes and it is the difference between a good session and one that goes somewhere half the table did not agree to.

Say what the adventure is. The crew are hauling medicine to a sick child across a country that has none. At the two higher pressures they run out of food before they arrive, and what they do about that is the adventure. It can include taking food from people who need it as much as they do. At Hard it usually does.

Then pick a pressure together, out loud.

	Pick it if
Easy	The table is learning the set, or wants the road to be the enemy and nothing else
Normal	The table wants the adventure as it is written
Hard	The table has read the above and wants to find out how far they will go

The gap between them is four Stores and a smaller cart. It is a very small mechanical difference and a very large tonal one, which is worth saying out loud so nobody picks Hard thinking it means a harder fight.

Two things everybody should know before they start:

Nobody has to keep going. The Nail is halfway and turning back there costs the Journey and nothing else.
Say if something is not working. Change the pressure between Legs, take a complication off the table, or put the road somewhere lighter. None of it breaks anything.

The Pressure¶

There are no Levels here, so there is nothing to scale. What changes between the three versions of this Journey is how much the crew set out with, and that changes what they have to do to arrive.

	Legs	Count	Transport	Capacity	Starting Stores	Runs dry
Easy	6	3	Cart and animal	30	24	Never, with no margin
Normal	7	4	Large handcart	20	20	Leg 6
Hard	8	5	Small handcart	16	16	Leg 5

A crew of four spends 4 Stores a Leg. Read across the row and the whole session follows from it.

Everything this road charges is one of three things, and never a fourth:

	What it means	It comes back
Stores	The cart emptying	Only by taking, trading, or finding
⊖ Fatigue	What the walking takes	2 Stores a head, and nothing else out here
A step down a track	What going without does to a person	A Waypoint, and there is one

Price anything the crew invent against those three and say yes. A good idea costs less than a rough one, and neither of them costs nothing.

Easy has exactly enough and six Stores of headroom in the cart. One Leg spent at 2 a head to shed ⊖ Fatigue costs 8 instead of 4, which leaves them one Leg short at the far end, so even here there is something to decide. There is also an animal, and losing it out on the road takes the capacity with it.

Recommended and Hard both set out full. Nothing found on the road can be carried until the crew have eaten into what they brought, which is the first thing a table notices and the first thing that changes how they treat a wreck.

Hard runs dry with four Legs still to walk, and with the Nail's toll paid, five. The crew will take from somebody before Ninebar. The adventure does not say who.

What Running Dry Does¶

Spending 0 Stores steps every character down on a track of their choosing, and that step cannot be refused with ϟ Energy.

Every character starts at Steady and most bands run Frayed to Sound, so the first dry Leg puts one track on its floor and the third puts all three there. After that, hunger has nothing left to take. A crew four Legs into an empty cart has stopped getting worse in the way the ladder measures.

What keeps going is ⊖ Fatigue. Spending 2 Stores a head is the only thing on the road that takes it off, a dry crew cannot spend 2, and it arrives every Leg regardless.

It does not climb forever. Maximum ⊖ Fatigue is 3, or more for a character with ◬ Resolve behind them, and the point that would push them past it drops them where they stand. So a Hard run does not end in a slow grinding penalty. It ends with people falling over, one at a time, still walking east, with nobody able to spend the 2 Stores that would have picked them up.

That is what actually finishes a crew out here, and it is quieter than starving.

Do not move the difficulty

The pressure is in the Stores line and nowhere else. A weighbridge is as hard to talk past on Easy as on Hard.

What changes is whether the crew can afford the answer they would rather give.

No Leg in this adventure prints a number, because a Leg is passed or failed on the whole of it rather than on any one roll. When you do need one, take it off Setting Difficulty: 8 is the ordinary ask out here and 12 is the one that hurts. Those two carry the road. Do not reach for 16 unless the crew are trying to do something the wasteland has no reason to allow.

Characters¶

Let them build good ones. Generous Attributes, a Bearing that protects two tracks, three Skills that cover real ground. A capable crew is the right crew for this.

None of it helps with the thing that is actually happening. A crew with excellent Scores still spends 4 Stores a Leg, still cannot refuse a hunger step, and still cannot rest a State back up, because rest does nothing to the ladder. Competence changes how individual rolls land. It does not change what is in the cart.

Say that at the table before anybody rolls anything.

Pursuits. Everyone writes one, because the set asks for it and because it tells you who these people are.

No Leg here is built around one. This road is four hours long and it already has a reason to exist. If a Pursuit lands naturally on something the crew are already arguing about, take it and hand out the Mark for the crew agreeing to the detour. Do not go looking for a place to fit one.

Three Things That Come Up¶

Companions eat. Anybody the crew pick up spends 1 Store a Leg like everyone else. Tarrow in The Boy is the one this is written for, and a Recommended crew will do that arithmetic within about four seconds.

Losing the animal. Easy only, because Easy is the only pressure with one. Without it the cart is a cart nobody can pull, and capacity drops to whatever the crew can carry on their backs, which is 10. Anything above that is left in the road. This is a catastrophe rather than a setback and should be played as one.

Death. It is real in this set and it comes from ⊗ Wounds past maximum. Nothing on this road is hunting the crew and every Leg has a way through that does not involve fighting, so a death here will almost always follow a decision somebody made. Let it, and do not soften the numbers to avoid it.

If a character dies, the crew are down a Store a Leg and up whatever that person was carrying. Say both, once, and move on.

What Arriving Pays¶

The Count is the number of Legs the crew must pass. It is announced in the yard before they leave — see Before They Leave.


Met the Count	Everyone takes a Role improvement and a Band raise
One short	One of the two, the crew choosing
Two or more short	Neither, and the GM lowers one band by one step — the same band, on every character

A lowered band is a floor coming down, unless that floor already sits at Broken, in which case the ceiling does instead. Pick the track from what the road actually was: a Journey that ground everybody down physically takes it out of Body, and one that was eight days of nothing to look at takes it out of Mind. It is the only penalty in the set that reaches the whole crew at once, so name it plainly and do not apologise for it.

Coldwater's payment is separate and lands whatever happens: the cart is theirs, and a debt one of them is carrying is cleared. Say what the debt is during character creation and let a player own it.

2 — Coldwater¶

Aim for 20 minutes. The only place in this adventure where anybody explains anything, and it should still be quick.

A pump, a wall, four hundred people, and a name that was accurate once.

Coldwater sits at the western end of the valley and survives on water it does not have to fight anybody for. It is not generous and it is not cruel. It is a place that has done the arithmetic on itself and knows exactly what it can spare.

Read aloud

Coldwater is a small pumpyard, surrounded by a tall, ramshackled walls that still seems more upkept than anything inside. Two gates flank the center waterpump yard, watched by a pair of half-trained lookouts, clearly tired from the long hours at their posts. The gate you approach opens with a deafening clanking, as the hand-operated metal sheet rises to let your group enter.

Once inside, a younger fella, no more than maybe early teens, dressed in raggedy garbs made up of whatever resources were lying around, waves your cart over. They quickly guide you to what appears to be a retired dumpyard towards a back corner of the settlement, mostly cleaned out and probably burned for fuel that powers the remaining operable pumps. The kid helps out with whatever basic needs you have, cofnirms your groups name, and heads back towards the gates.

As your troupe settles itself and tie down what little traveling gear you carry, you know that soon, you'll need to find new work. You take a minute to talk and ponder over your options, when one of you spots a woman in her fifties coming out of the nearby stores building wiping her hands down the front of her coat. She catches sight of your troupe, and starts making her way over.

The Job¶

Sennet Aldarn keeps Coldwater's stores and hands out its work. Fifties, tired in a way that predates this week, and completely direct about what she is asking for.

The medicine came in a Tender's crate two months ago and nobody here can use it for anything else.
Ninebar sent word eleven days ago. A girl named Wren Alcott has an infection in her leg that is past what they can treat.
The man who ran Coldwater's freight is called Ivor Cassel. He stopped coming through in the spring. Nobody knows why and Sennet has stopped guessing.
She will not send anybody from Coldwater. She says so plainly and does not pretend it is anything other than what it is.

What she offers: the cart, what she can put in it, and a debt cleared. She will not negotiate the Stores upward, because there is nothing to negotiate with.

What Is Available Here¶

Coldwater trades, badly, and is honest about its prices. Anything on the set's gear lists at Worth 1 or 2 is here. Nothing above that.

Stores are the one thing Coldwater will not sell. What is on the cart is what there is.
The crew can trade for gear, and every trade is Worth for Worth.

Standing Here¶


Trusted or Known with Settlements	You eat here. This Leg costs no Stores off the cart, and Sennet adds 2 to what she loads
Neutral	Ordinary trade at ordinary prices
Set against, or Known with Marauders	Sennet says so to your face. Trade only at Worth 1, and she asks somebody else to sign for the cart

Standing is personal, so one character being Trusted is enough to open the store room for the crew.

Transition: East, out of the gate, on a road that has not been maintained in a decade.

3 — The Road¶

Ninety miles of shallow valley with an old road down the middle. Coldwater at the west end, Ninebar at the east, and The Nail on the only bridge left standing between them.

Before They Leave¶

Three things happen in Coldwater's yard before any of this, and they are worth doing out loud, because all three are road mechanics wearing a farewell.

The Count is announced. Three, four, or five, depending on the pressure. Say it out loud — a crew that knows it needs four out of seven can make a real decision about pace, and pace is most of what they control.
The pace is chosen. Fast, Average, or Careful. It can only be changed at The Nail.
Somebody signs for the cart. Name a character. Do not explain why. It matters at Ninebar, four hours from now.

Laying It Out¶

Deal the Legs. Do not run them in the order they are printed.

Take the Leg count off the Travel Pace row the crew chose, not off the pressure table. Between five and nine, depending on pressure and pace.
Pick one Long. That is the evening's centrepiece. Put it in the back half.
Fill with Average, four or five of them.
Put the rest in Short, and keep one in reserve to drop if the session runs late.
The Nail goes after Leg 3 on Easy and Recommended, after Leg 4 on Hard. It is a Leg and it counts.

A typical Recommended road is three Legs, The Nail, then three more.

Do not run two quiet Legs together. Two is a lull and three is a chore.

Ways Through¶

Every Leg below lists a few ways the crew might get past it. Those are examples for the GM, not a menu for the players, and none of them is the intended answer.

The crew will find their own. Give them the time to — these are scenes to play out, not obstacles to resolve, and a twenty-minute Leg is twenty minutes because most of it is people talking.

Travel Pace¶

The crew choose this in Coldwater and it is theirs to choose. It does not change the Count. It changes how many Legs they get, and therefore how much food the road eats.

	Fast	Average	Careful
Easy — 24 Stores	5 Legs	6 Legs	7 Legs
Recommended — 20 Stores	6 Legs	7 Legs	8 Legs
Hard — 16 Stores	7 Legs	8 Legs	9 Legs

Fast adds 1 ⊖ Fatigue per character per Leg and shortens the road. Careful removes 1 ⊖ Fatigue per character per Leg and lengthens it. The Count does not move, so a Fast crew is passing the same number of Legs out of fewer.

The trade is sharper than it looks. Fatigue is the thing that finishes a crew here, and Fast piles it on while Careful walks them further into an empty cart.

	Legs walked dry, at Average	At Careful
Easy	0	1
Recommended	2	3
Hard	4	5

Pace can only be changed at The Nail. Say so in Coldwater.

Passing a Leg¶

At the end of each Leg, call one of three things. This is a judgement about what happened, not a count of successful rolls.


Passed	They dealt with what was in front of them
Failed	They did not, or it cost more than it gave
Nothing	Nobody engaged and it went past them

Every Leg below carries a Passed if line. It is a guide and not a condition — a Leg can be passed on one good idea and no successful rolls, and failed with three successes and a bad decision.

Nothing is not a soft fail. Say it plainly and do not editorialise.

Which Track Steps¶

Each Leg names the track it usually draws on. That is a starting point. A character steps on the track their contribution actually drew on, so somebody who spends a Meeting holding the animal steps on Body while everybody else steps on Spirit.

When it is genuinely unclear, let the player pick.

The Nail¶

Aim for 25 minutes. Place it after Leg 3 on Easy and Recommended, after Leg 4 on Hard.

A crossing, a toll, and about ninety people who live off both.

The Nail grew on the only bridge left standing between the two ends of the valley. It does not farm and it does not make anything. It charges for the bridge and it charges for everything else, and it has been doing this long enough to be good at it.

This is a Waypoint, so it costs a Leg and it counts toward the Legs walked. It is also the only place on this road where a State goes back up.

What it costs

The toll lands on top of the 4 Stores the Leg was already going to cost. At the cpartyart rate that is 8 for the day. At the per-head rate it is 12, which on Hard is three quarters of everything the crew set out with.

Fold that in and the picture changes by pressure. At the cart rate, Recommended runs dry on Leg 5 rather than 6, and Easy loses its last Leg, so the pressure table's never holds only before the toll. Hard does not move at all, because the Nail is already its Leg 5 — a Hard crew reaches the barrier with an empty cart and cannot pay the toll from Stores at any rate. At the per-head rate the two that move slide one Leg earlier again. The figures in The Pressure are before the toll, because the crew choose which rate to pay.

Read aloud

After many days travel, a beacon of hope finally shones down into the valley below. A large, strung up by heavy metal cords, reminiscent of a time before now, draped over a majority of the ravine standing before you to a large settlement that hangs limply in the wind-tunnel of the valley, The Nail.

As your troupe slowly descends the hill, you notice the state of the bridges. Moss-covered support beams, shallows entrenched in potholes that spatter the paveway in pockets of stillwater, and plenty of abandoned vehicles, carts, and more that litter the bridge. While not the most welcome approach, you're troupe makes its way over the bridge slowly, until eventually finding way to the gate.

The man at the barrier has a ledger and a shotgun, watching from a clearly well-spent chair. He stands as he sees you all approach, with a face of tiredness, but you can't tell if it's from the time spent out here, as much as it is the news he tells you next...

What Is Here¶


The toll	2 Stores a head to cross, or 4 for the whole cart. Non-negotiable and openly extortionate
A bed and a roof	Rest, and the only reliable step back up the ladder on this road
Trade	Worth 1 to 3. Stores at a terrible rate, and they know exactly how badly the crew needs them
A Tender	Will treat one ⊗ Wound for Worth 2, and will look at the medicine if asked

Standing Here¶

The Nail deals with everybody, which is the whole of its business model, and it charges accordingly.


Known or Trusted with Convoys	The toll drops to 2 for the whole cart, and somebody will talk about the eastern road
Known or Trusted with Marauders	Nobody blinks. The Nail does not care where the crew have been, and it is the only place on this road where that is true
Trusted with Settlements	A bed indoors and a meal, so this Leg costs no Stores
Barred anywhere	The toll goes to 3 a head and the Tender will not see them

What They Learn Here¶

Two things, and neither is good news. Give them both.

Ninebar is worse off than Coldwater said. Not one sick child. Several, and it has been going on for a month.
Ivor Cassel's cart is here. It has been in a shed at the back for four months and somebody at The Nail is using it. Nobody will say where he is, and the answer is that he is dead about a day east of here.

The Turn¶

This is the last place the crew can go back. Say so plainly, once, without pressing it.

Turning around costs the Journey and costs the debt. It costs nothing else. The set is explicit that a crew who decide a road is beyond them and do not go have lost nothing, and that holds here.

Transition: East, over the bridge they paid for.

4 — The Legs¶

The Legs at a Glance¶

You deal these rather than run them in order, so this is the table to have open while you lay the road out. Five Short, eight Average, five Long.

Track matters as much as length — Laying It Out says not to run two quiet Legs together, and a road that hits the same track three times running grinds one number down while the other two sit untouched.

	Leg	Track	Time	What it is
Short	The Culvert	Body	10 min	A crossing that holds a person and not a loaded cart
	Dogs on the Ridge	Mind or Spirit	10 min	Being counted by something working out if it can take you
	Going West	Spirit	10 min	Four people walking the other way who will not ask for water
	Rain, and No Shelter	Body	10 min	Asks for nothing. The one that comes out as Nothing happened
	The Marker Stones	Mind	10 min	Longer and intact, or shorter and ending in a slide
Average	The Weighbridge	Body or Spirit	20 min	A family charging a toll on a road that was never theirs · good early
	The Cistern	Body or Mind	20 min	Water, and six miles of ground nobody has looked at
	The Hauler	Mind	20 min	Somebody else's load, and a cart already full
	The Burn	Spirit	20 min	Ardry, eighteen months on, and nobody coming back
	The Convoy	Spirit	20 min	Properly run, not hostile, not friendly, and watching
	The Boy	Spirit	20 min	Tarrow, who eats a Store a Leg like everybody else
	The Sump	Body	20 min	An hour on foot. Not an hour with a cart
	The Watchers	Mind or Spirit	20 min	Waiting for the crew to camp somewhere reachable
Long	Ivor Cassel	Mind	30–40 min	Coldwater's freight runner, and why he stopped coming · a real detour
	The Pump House	Mind	30–40 min	Six people holding the only working pump in thirty miles
	Hollis Farm	Spirit	30–40 min	Meriel Hollis, seventy, alone four years, with a working well
	The Slide	Body and Mind	30–40 min	Two hours on foot, or four building the cart a road
	The Tithe	Any	30–40 min	It knows what a cart is and what a cart means · use once

Short Legs¶

About ten minutes. One beat each. Use them for pace and drop them when running late.

The Culvert¶

Body · about 10 minutes

Read aloud

The road ahead of you dips down into what used to be a culvert, one of those concrete channels they built to run the water underneath the roadbed instead of over the top of it, and this one gave up a long while ago. What's left is a gap about forty feet across, with reinforcing bar clawing out of both of the broken faces and a drop of maybe eleven feet down into the channel bed below.

Somebody came through here before your troupe and laid a pair of steel rails over the gap, probably pulled off a gantry or a rail line somewhere nearby, and at the time it would have been a decent enough idea. That time was years ago. The rails have been sitting out in the weather long enough that you can see daylight through them in places, and the rust runs the full length of the both of them.

Your group gathers at the lip of it and has a look. The cart sits behind you, loaded and heavy, and not going anywhere on its own.

What is going on

The rails hold a person. They will hold the cart if the cart is unloaded and walked across in pieces, which takes an hour and a half.

The ravine is passable a mile north, at the cost of most of the afternoon.

Some ways through

Unload, carry it over in armfuls, load it again on the far side.
Walk the mile north and lose the time instead.
Cross with the cart loaded and find out. One roll, and a Negative Gradient puts a wheel through.

What it costs

Every option here is paid in daylight. An hour and a half unloading, most of an afternoon going round, or one roll and a wheel through the rails. The Leg costs its 4 Stores whichever they pick — what the crew are deciding is how much of the day they still own at the end of it.

Passed if the cart is on the far side and still whole.

Dogs on the Ridge¶

Mind or Spirit · about 10 minutes

Read aloud

Somewhere around mid-morning one of you catches movement along the ridge to the north, and it's the sort of thing that once you've seen it, you can't go back to not seeing it. Dogs. Four of them, gray and rangy and built out of more rib than muscle, walking the high ground at maybe two hundred yards out.

They're keeping level with your cart. Not closing the distance, not dropping back either, just matching your group step for step along the top of the ridgeline, like they have somewhere to be and it happens to be wherever it is you're going.

By early afternoon they're still up there, still holding the same two hundred yards. Whatever it is they're working out, they haven't finished working it out yet.

What is going on

They are Road Dogs, and what they are doing up there is working out how much of this crew they can take. They will follow for a day and will not commit against four people who look organised. They will commit against three, or against a crew strung out along the road, or against anybody who falls behind.

Nothing here has to become an Encounter. Whether it does is mostly about how the crew walk.

Some ways through

Close up, stay loud, and give them nothing to work with.
Put a shot into the ridge. It costs ammunition out of the Stores and they go.
Leave them something. Two Stores buys the afternoon and teaches them to follow carts.
Ignore it and let somebody drift twenty yards back.

Passed if the dogs give it up or are driven off, and nobody has been bitten.

Going West¶

Spirit · about 10 minutes

Read aloud

There's movement on the road ahead of you, coming your way, and at this distance it takes a good while before it resolves itself into people. Four of them, walking west on foot, with no cart between them and nothing pulling anything.

As the gap closes your group starts to make out more of it. A man, two women, and a child of about six being carried on somebody's hip, which is a strange thing to be looking at, because that child is plainly old enough to be walking. They have a bundle each and, going by the look of it, that is the whole sum of what they own.

Not one of them is carrying water. They slow as they come up on your troupe, and they look at your cart the way tired people look at a full cart, and nobody says a word about it.

What is going on

They left Ninebar nine days ago and they are not going back. They will not say much about why, and what they will say is that it is not the sickness, it is that Ninebar has nothing.

They want water. They will not ask for it.

Some ways through

Give them water and some Stores, and be down whatever they gave.
Give them water and nothing else, which is what most crews do.
Ask what is happening in Ninebar and get an answer worth more than the Stores.
Walk past. They expect it and it still costs the crew a step on Spirit.

Passed if the crew made a decision and held to it. Walking past counts. An hour of arguing followed by nothing does not.

Rain, and No Shelter¶

Body · about 10 minutes

Read aloud

The rain comes on a little after midday, and it hasn't got the feel of weather that's passing through on its way somewhere. It settles in over the valley, steady and gray and patient about it, and inside the hour the road under your wheels has gone soft.

Your troupe looks around for options and there are not many to find. No high ground along this stretch, nothing still standing that a person could get underneath, and anything that might once have burned as fuel has been sitting out in this for hours already.

So it comes down to two, and both of them are bad in their own way. You can keep walking in it, or you can stop in it.

What is going on

A Leg that asks for nothing. This is the one that most often comes out as Nothing happened, and that is a correct result rather than a soft failure.

A crew that pushes through gets wet and cold and arrives. A crew that stops loses the afternoon and stays dry.

Some ways through

Walk it. Somebody rolls against the cold and somebody rolls to keep the cart moving in the mud.
Stop and wait it out, and spend the time somewhere it does something.
Spend 2 Stores a head that night and take the ⊖ Fatigue off. It is the right night to do it and it costs double.

Passed if somebody found shelter or dry fuel that was not there to begin with. Nothing is the usual result and the correct one.

The Marker Stones¶

Mind · about 10 minutes

Read aloud

The road splits ahead of you, and stood at the fork is a pair of cut stones, the old kind, the sort that freight drivers used to read off to know what was waiting for them down each branch. Both of them were carved once, and carved properly, going by what's left of the work.

Somebody has been at them since with a chisel. Whatever the stones used to say, they don't say it any more, and the job was thorough enough that nobody in your group can even guess at the shape of the letters underneath.

Both branches run east into the same haze. The northern one is the narrower of the two, and that is about the only thing either stone is still willing to tell you.

What is going on

The north fork is the old freight road and it is four miles longer and intact. The south fork is shorter and ends in the slide at Hollis Ridge, which costs a day to discover and a day to come back from.

Anybody with Navigation or a road log sees it. Anybody without is guessing.

Some ways through

Read the ground. The freight road has been used and the other has not.
Take the wider one, which is the wrong one, because the slide has been widening it for six years.
Send somebody up the ridge for an hour to look.
Pick one and walk.

Passed if they end the day on the north fork, however they got there.

Average Legs¶

About twenty minutes. The default, and most of a session.

The Weighbridge¶

Body or Spirit · about 20 minutes · good early

Read aloud

The road ahead of you crosses the river on an old weighbridge, one of those flat platform scales that freight used to roll onto and sit on while somebody wrote a number down, before it went off to market. It's the only crossing for eleven miles in either direction, and that particular fact has clearly occurred to somebody else a good while before it occurred to your troupe.

There's a chain run across the deck of it. Built onto the side of the old scale house is a hut, thrown together out of salvaged doors and sheeting and whatever else came to hand, and there's smoke coming off it and a washing line strung between the posts. It has the look of somewhere people are living rather than somewhere people are hiding.

Four of them that your group can count. The one who comes out to meet the cart is a woman in her fifties, carrying a shotgun the way other folk carry a shovel, and she starts talking before she's finished crossing the distance between you. A third of whatever you're hauling, she says, and she calls it a toll.

Behind her a boy of about twelve is sat up on the scale housing, watching the whole of it. When one of you looks back at him, he doesn't look away.

What is going on

They are a family, and the woman is called Hanne Coll. They have been here eleven weeks and it is working, which is the first thing that has worked for them in a long while. They will take Stores, gear, or anything off the cart, and they will not touch the medicine, because they cannot identify it and will not carry something they cannot name.

The river fords about two hours downstream. They know that. They are counting on nobody wanting to spend two hours.

Some ways through

They will take four Stores and lift the chain. She counts it out in front of everybody and hands one back, which is either decency or good business.
The ford costs an afternoon and a wet crossing, and nobody has to give up anything.
She will come down to two for anyone who asks what they are eating. She has been waiting eleven weeks for somebody to ask.
Four people who have never had to hold this bridge against anybody who meant it.

Passed if they are across and still have the cart.

The Cistern¶

Body or Mind · about 20 minutes

Read aloud

On the hillside above the road your troupe spots a cistern, a squat concrete tank set back into the slope for catching and holding water, roofed over against the weather, with an iron hatch up top and a ladder running down the inside of it.

The hatch isn't locked. It isn't even properly shut. Somebody scratched a line of numbers into the metal at some point, pressed in deep enough that they're still perfectly legible, and none of you can make the first bit of sense out of them.

And there's water in there. Four feet of it, maybe a touch more, sat flat and still and clear enough that you can pick out the floor of the tank underneath it.

What is going on

The tank is fed by a spring that runs through six miles of ground nobody has looked at in twenty years. The water is clear and it is not clean.

There is no way to tell by looking. Medicine or Survival gets a read on it. Boiling it or running it through a charcoal filter makes it safe, and both cost fuel and an hour.

This is where ditch fever lives. See Complications before running it.

Some ways through

Filter or boil it and lose the hour.
Drink it. It is four feet of clear water and the crew are thirsty.
Test it on the animal, if there is one, and wait a day nobody has.
Fill the skins, do not drink, and decide later.

Passed if they leave with water they can drink.

The Hauler¶

Mind · about 20 minutes

Read aloud

Off the road to the south, your group makes out the shape of a freight hauler lying over on its side. A long-bed cargo truck, the kind that used to run this whole route back when there was a route worth running, and going by the rust on the underside it's been down three or four years.

The cargo doors sprung open somewhere in the fall of it and one of the axles is gone entirely, taken off by somebody who wanted it more than the rest, but a good deal of the load is still packed in there and still strapped down exactly where it sat.

Somebody has been living up in the cab. There's bedding laid out across the seats, and a fire ring set up on the ground outside it, and when one of you gets close enough to have a proper look, the ashes in that ring are still warm.

What is going on

The load is textiles and tinned goods, and most of it is still good. There is easily 8 Stores worth in there.

The man living in the cab is called Ost and he has been working this wreck for two months, a little at a time, trading it into The Nail. It is the only thing he has. He is one man and he knows exactly how that arithmetic goes.

He will not fight. He will also not leave.

Some ways through

Trade him for a share. He will deal, and he will deal hard, because it is his.
Take it. He watches, and he will describe the crew accurately to everybody at The Nail.
Offer him the road east. He has been alone for two months and Ninebar is a settlement.
Take what he is not using and leave the rest, which he will notice and will not object to.

Passed if they leave with more than they arrived with.

The cart is full

At Recommended and Hard the crew set out with a full cart. They cannot carry 8 Stores of anything until they have eaten several Legs' worth of what they brought.

This Leg is best placed at Leg 5 or later, where that has stopped being true.

What it costs

The cart is already full of food, so anything off the hauler worth keeping has to go on somebody, and a character has three ⌗ Slots. A bolt of cloth, a case of tins, a length of good strapping — all of it trades at The Nail, and all of it displaces something already in a pack.

Let them work out what comes out. Do not remind them what they put down, and do not let them tell you it went in crew storage when crew storage is the reason this Leg is difficult.

The Burn¶

Spirit · about 20 minutes

Read aloud

The road takes your troupe through what used to be a settlement. Nine or ten buildings stood on either side of you, and every single one of them has burned, though not this year and not last year either. The rain has been getting down into the shells for a long while now and there's grass coming up green through what's left of the floors.

Nobody has come back to any of it. No tracks in the ash, no sign of salvage, nothing turned over or carried off, which is its own sort of strange in a country where everything gets picked eventually.

The well is intact. Somebody laid a cover across the mouth of it before they left and then weighted that cover down with stones, and your group can stand there and work out for themselves that a person doesn't go to that trouble unless they mean to be coming back for it.

What is going on

The settlement was called Ardry and it burned about eighteen months ago. Nobody is coming back. The cover on the well was put there by whoever left last.

There is water, and there is nothing else worth having, and the place takes a toll on anybody who spends an hour in it.

The crew are eight miles from The Nail and everybody at The Nail knows what happened here. Nobody at The Nail will talk about it.

Some ways through

Take the water, put the cover back, and go.
Work the place over for an afternoon and find almost nothing.
Camp here. It is shelter and it is not restful.
Somebody works out that the burn started in four places at once.

This one arrives before they do

Whatever happens here, The Nail hears about it. A crew that took the water finds the toll higher and the Tender busy. Do not warn them — let them find out at the barrier, and let somebody at the table work out when it was decided.

Passed if they took the water and were gone before dark.

The Convoy¶

Spirit · about 20 minutes

Read aloud

There's dust on the road ahead of you, a great deal of it, far more than your cart could kick up in a week of trying, and what eventually comes out of it is a convoy running west. Six carts with an engine hauling at the front of them, which is something none of your troupe has laid eyes on in a long while, and eighteen or twenty people walking alongside at an easy, unhurried pace.

They have the settled look of a group that does this for a living and fully expects to still be doing it next year. They also saw your group a long time before your group saw them, and that becomes obvious in how little any of them bother to react.

They pull up about forty feet out. Nobody reaches for anything, nobody looks worried, and the first thing out of anybody's mouth is a question about what exactly you've got on that cart.

What is going on

A real convoy, properly run, out of the eastern settlements. They are not hostile and they are not friendly. They will trade and they will trade well, because they have surplus and they are three days from a market.

They will pay a great deal for medicine. They will not steal it and they will not make an offer twice.

They also know the eastern road, and what they know is worth having.

Some ways through

Trade Stores for gear, or gear for Stores, at genuinely fair rates.
Sell the medicine. They offer as much as the cart will hold, whatever that is, and a road home. They will not offer twice, and on a small handcart the offer is worse than it sounds and they know it.
Ask about Ninebar and get a straight answer about how bad it is.
Ask about Ivor Cassel. The convoy master knows the name and knows where the cart ended up.

Passed if they traded and still have the case. A crew that sold it has passed the Leg and lost the Journey — see If They Arrive Without It.

The Boy¶

Spirit · about 20 minutes

Read aloud

There's somebody on the road behind your group, and going by how long one of you has been half-noticing him without saying anything, he's been back there the better part of two hours. He holds the same distance the entire time, never closing it up and never letting it stretch out, and that isn't something a person does by accident.

He's young. Fifteen at the outside, and that's being generous with it.

When one of you finally turns around and waits on him, he stops about thirty feet short and will not come any nearer than that, however it's put to him. He just stands there in the road with his hands out where your troupe can see them, and tells you he can carry things.

What is going on

His name is Tarrow and he came off a farm four days north that no longer has anybody on it. He is not lying about anything and he is not telling all of it.

He eats 1 Store a Leg like everybody else, which the crew will work out immediately.

He is genuinely useful: he can push a cart, he can keep watch, and he knows the ground for twenty miles.

Some ways through

Take him on and spend the Store.
Send him back the way he came, which is nowhere.
Send him ahead to The Nail with a message and let him make his own way.
Let him follow and feed him nothing, which he will accept.

Passed if a decision about Tarrow was actually made.

The Sump¶

Body · about 20 minutes

Read aloud

The road runs down into a flat about half a mile across, and that flat has been sitting under water since the thaw came through in the spring. It isn't deep, barely over the top of a boot, but a foot down it turns to mud and it carries on like that the whole way over to the far side.

Somebody drove a line of poles in across it once, marking out where the firm ground ran underneath, and at the time that would have been a real kindness to whoever came after. About a third of them are still standing. The rest are either leaning at angles that help nobody, or gone entirely.

Your troupe stands at the edge of it with the cart loaded up behind you, and the water sits there flat and brown and doesn't offer a thing.

What is going on

A crew on foot walks it in an hour. A cart does not.

The poles mark a route that worked six years ago. Following them is a Mind problem. Getting the cart through is a Body problem, and it takes everybody.

A cart that goes in far enough has to be dug out or emptied, and either costs the rest of the day.

Some ways through

Read the poles and follow the old line.
Unload, carry the load across in stages, drag the empty cart through.
Corduroy a track with whatever is to hand, which takes hours and works.
Go round. Two days, and this is the Leg where somebody suggests it seriously.

Passed if the cart is through and still loaded.

The Watchers¶

Mind or Spirit · about 20 minutes

Read aloud

There are three people on the road behind your group, and they've been back there since yesterday afternoon. They hold at about half a mile, which is far enough out that nobody can make a face at that distance, and close enough that they're plainly not on their way to anywhere else.

Your troupe ends up testing it over the course of the day without really meaning to. When you stop, they stop. When you start up again, they wait a good ten minutes and then start up as well, and the half mile between you goes back to being exactly half a mile.

They don't call out, they don't close, and they don't turn off. Whatever they're waiting on, they've got the patience for it.

What is going on

They are waiting for the crew to camp somewhere they can be got at, or for somebody to be sent out on their own, or for the crew to leave something behind.

They are not Marauders. They are three people who have done this before and have no interest in a straight fight. If the crew make it look expensive, they go.

Some ways through

Stop somewhere with one approach and make the night look like work.
Double back and meet them, which is a conversation and might be an Encounter.
Leave something out as a payment and keep walking.
Walk through the night. It costs ⊖ Fatigue and it loses them.

Passed if the three are gone by morning and nothing went missing in the night.

Long Legs¶

Thirty to forty minutes. One of these is the evening. Put it in the back half of the road.

Ivor Cassel¶

Mind · 30–40 minutes · a real detour

Read aloud

There's a cart off the road in a stand of dead pine, sat far enough back in the trees that your troupe would have walked straight past it and never known. It's been there long enough that the wheels have settled down into the ground and the ground has started coming up around them.

The tarp is still lashed over the load and the lashings are still pulled tight. Nobody has been at this cart. Whatever he was hauling is all still sat on there under the canvas, and that fact tells your group something before anybody has said a single word about it out loud.

He's about thirty feet away from it, out in the open ground, lying where he got to before he stopped getting anywhere at all.

What is going on

Coldwater's freight runner. He came off the road in the spring with a broken axle and a broken leg and he did not get up again. Nobody found him because nobody came looking.

Finding this at all takes work. The convoy master knows roughly where. Somebody at The Nail knows exactly where and will not say for free. Without one of those, this Leg does not happen.

He was carrying a second Tender's crate for Coldwater.

What is in the crate is set in Complications. Whole course, partial, or four months in a hot shed.

Some ways through

Work the cart over properly. Two hours and everything on it is worth having.
Bury him, which costs an hour and does nothing mechanically.
Take the load and go, which is the sensible thing and will sit with somebody.
Read what happened. He lived four days out here and he wrote some of it down.

Passed if they found the crate. A detour that cost a day and gave nothing back is a Failed.

The Pump House¶

Mind · 30–40 minutes

Read aloud

At the bottom of a shallow valley your group comes up on a pump house, a squat brick building put up over a well head, and unlike near enough everything else this road has shown you, the roof on it is whole and the door is shut properly on its hinges.

Beside it there's a stock tank, and that stock tank is full right up to the lip. Standing water, out in the open, in the sun, in a valley where nothing else has any at all. Which means the pump is running, and a pump does not run itself, which means there is somebody down there running it.

There are six of them, stood out front of the building, spread wide rather than bunched up. And by the way they've placed themselves, and how little any of them is moving, your troupe understands that they have been watching you come down this valley for the last twenty minutes.

What is going on

Six people hold the only working pump in thirty miles, and they hold it because they got here first and because they have made it clear what happens to people who try to take it.

They are not cruel. They are frightened and organised, which is worse to negotiate with.

They will sell water. They will not sell much, and the price is high, and the price goes up if anybody puts a hand near a weapon.

They also have a problem: the pump is failing and none of them can fix it. They will not say so.

Some ways through

Pay the price and fill everything.
Work out that the pump is failing and offer to fix it. This is the best outcome available on this Leg and it costs an afternoon.
Take the water. Six people who will fight for it, and word reaches The Nail either way.
Camp downhill, take what leaks, and leave before morning.

Passed if they leave with full water.

Hollis Farm¶

Spirit · 30–40 minutes

Read aloud

On the slope above the road there's a farmhouse, with two outbuildings sat in behind it, and every bit of it is still standing and still under a roof. The fence runs the whole way round the property, and somebody has been out mending it, recently and properly, which is more care than your troupe has seen anybody give anything since you walked out of Coldwater.

There's a light on in the front room. Nobody comes out to meet the cart, nobody calls down the track at you, and the gate stays shut.

While your group is stood at the bottom of it working out what to do, somebody passes behind the window up there. A while later they pass it again, going back the other way.

What is going on

Meriel Hollis is about seventy and lives here alone, and has done for four years. She has a working well, a garden, and about sixty Stores worth of food that she has spent four years accumulating and cannot move.

She has no reason to open the door and she knows exactly what a crew with an empty cart looks like.

She will trade if she is convinced the crew are not going to come back. She will not be talked into charity, and she will not be intimidated, because she has been alone up here for four years and she has thought about this.

The only kindness on this road

If she opens the door, Meriel feeds them, and does not ask for anything in return. It is the one time in eight days that happens, and it is not the same as charity: a meal is hospitality, and the sixty Stores in her outbuildings are her life. A crew that takes more than she offered has done something the adventure will not punish and the table will remember.

Some ways through

Give her a reason to open the door and take the time to do it properly.
Trade something she actually needs. She needs a hand with the roof and cannot say so.
Work for it. A day of labour buys more than anything the crew are carrying.
Take it. She is one woman, and this is the Leg where a Hard crew finds that out about themselves.

Passed if they leave with food. How they came by it does not change the call.

This is the Leg for a Hard road

Meriel has enough food to finish this Journey and no way to defend it, and a crew four Legs into an empty cart will do the arithmetic without being prompted.

Play her as a person and not as a moral test. She has opinions about her roof.

The Slide¶

Body and Mind · 30–40 minutes

Read aloud

The pass at Hollis Ridge has come down. Not in one go, and not lately either, going by the state of what's sat there. This has been sliding a little at a time for years, and what lies across the road now is a couple of hundred feet of loose rock piled up at an angle your troupe could very nearly walk up.

There's a footpath worn over the top of it, thin and switching back on itself, put there by people who came through on their own two legs and had nothing much to bring with them.

And there is no cart in the world going up that. The way round is a day and a half, and every one of you can see it from right where you're standing.

What is going on

A crew on foot gets over in two hours. A cart gets over if the crew build it a road, which is four or five hours of moving rock, and it works.

The slope is live. Working it means somebody is standing under it while somebody else is on it.

Some ways through

Build the road. Hours of work, everybody involved, and a real chance somebody gets hurt.
Take the day and a half round. It costs a Leg and the Stores that go with it.
Carry the load over in relays and abandon the cart, which nobody will suggest until hour three.
Somebody works out that the slope is still moving and the crew should not be here.

What it costs

Four or five hours building a road for a cart, and nothing at the end of it but the far side. A crew that takes the day and a half instead has lost nothing this adventure cares about, and should not be told otherwise.

Passed if the cart is over the top.

The Tithe¶

Any · 30–40 minutes · use once

Read aloud

Something has been out past the firelight for three nights running now. Your troupe has heard it moving around out there, circling wide of the camp, never quite close enough for anybody to put eyes on it properly. Twice somebody has gone out to have a look, and twice they've come back having found nothing at all to look at.

Both of those mornings there have been tracks in the ground near the camp. Nobody in your group has put their own boot down beside one to compare the two, and nobody is going to, because everyone has already had a good enough look at them to decide they'd rather not know.

On the fourth night, it doesn't stay out there.

What is going on

It has worked this road longer than either settlement has stood. It knows what a cart is and what a cart means. It takes a share and it goes.

It cannot be killed on this road. At 0 ✚ HP it takes a ⊗ Wound and leaves, and comes back the next Leg at half ✚ HP keeping the Wound. It carries three and nothing in this valley has ever put that many into it.

It settles for less. If it cannot reach a person, it takes the animal, the cart, or the Stores, and it is satisfied with any of them.

The crew do not beat this. They survive it until they are somewhere it will not follow, and they decide along the way what they are willing to let it have.

Some ways through

Give it the animal and keep walking.
Give it the Stores and walk hungry the rest of the way.
Fight it, drive it off, and have it back tomorrow night with less to give it.
Reach The Nail or Ninebar. It does not come near either.

Passed if it leaves with something and everybody is still alive.

Do not put this on a Hard road before Leg 6

A Hard crew is dry from Leg 5. Taking the Stores off them at Leg 3 does not make the session harder, it ends it.

5 — Complications¶

Layer one onto a Leg that is going too easily, or onto a Leg being used a second time. Roll 1d12 or pick.

Most of these cost something small and take two minutes. The three at the bottom are not like that.

`1d12`
1	A wheel splits. An hour to bodge, or half a day to do properly. Bodged, it goes again on the next rough Leg
2	The animal goes lame. Easy only. It walks, slowly, and the day gets shorter
3	Wet Stores. A crate took water somewhere. Lose 2 Stores, discovered at the evening meal
4	Grit wind. All afternoon. Everything attempted outdoors has Disfavor
5	The road is gone. Washed out for sixty yards. An hour to pick a way round, more with the cart
6	Somebody is behind them. Half a mile back, all day, and gone by morning. Nothing comes of it
7	A body in the road. A week old, no boots, nothing left worth taking. Somebody steps on Spirit
8	Cold night, no fuel. No fire. Each character takes 1 ⊖ Fatigue unless somebody solves it
9	Smoke ahead. Directly on the route, and it is still there in the morning
10	Bad night. One character sleeps badly and starts the Leg 1 ⊖ Fatigue down. Player's choice who
11	Something worth more than the medicine. Sitting in the open, needs two people to carry, and the cart is full
12	Nothing. The road asks for nothing today. Use it, and do not apologise for it

Ditch Fever¶

The same infection Wren Alcott has. It came off the same water and it behaves like an infection, because nothing in this set is magic.

Ask first

Do not spring this on a player. Either raise it in the conversation before the session, or put a bad water source in front of the whole crew and let the dice choose.

Whoever catches it gets the largest scene in this adventure. They should have agreed to that.

Catching it. At any water source, on a failed roll or a Negative Gradient while drinking, cooking, or washing out a wound. It shows a day later.

Carrying it.

Every Leg after, that character steps down on Body. It cannot be refused with ϟ Energy.
At their Body floor it stops taking steps and takes 1 ⊖ Fatigue a Leg instead, which spending 2 Stores does not remove.
It does not kill anybody on this Journey. It kills in about two months. Wren has three weeks because she is nine.

Treating it. The Tender at The Nail will slow it for Worth 2, which buys two Legs with no step and nothing else. The only other thing on this road that touches it is the case on the cart.

Not on Easy, unless the table asks for it.

What the Case Is Worth¶

However much medicine ends up in play, it treats one fewer person than needs it. Hold that line and a second course can go on the road without defusing Ninebar.

At Ninebar there are three sick children. One infected crew member makes four people and, at most, two courses.

Ivor Cassel's Load¶

Coldwater's freight runner died about a day east of The Nail. Finding where is a Long Leg and a real detour.

He was carrying a second Tender's crate. What is left of it is the GM's dial.

	What they find
A whole course	Treats one more person. Ninebar goes from one child to two, out of three
A partial course	Enough for an adult, or a child at half strength with a real chance it fails
Ruined	Four months in a metal shed through a summer. The crate is intact and the contents are not

On Easy, give them the whole course. On Hard, give them the ruined one.

6 — Ninebar¶

Aim for 35 minutes.

Ninebar is about two hundred people on a hillside above a dry reservoir. It is poorer than Coldwater and cleaner than The Nail.

Nobody comes out to meet the cart. Somebody watches it come up the road and goes to find an adult.

Read aloud

The reservoir is the first thing your troupe sees, and it takes a moment to work out what you're even looking at, because there's no water in it and there hasn't been for a very long time. A bowl of cracked gray silt about half a mile across, with a concrete lip running the whole way round the top of it like the rim of something that got drunk dry. The settlement sits up above that on the south slope, which is the side that takes the sun.

The road up is long and it isn't steep, and somehow that's the worse of the two, because it gives everybody at the top of it plenty of time to watch you coming. Somebody does exactly that for a while, then turns and goes off to find an adult. Nobody else comes out, nobody calls down, and your group walks the last of that road in full view of a settlement that has decided to wait and see.

Wren Alcott's house is the fourth one along the row. There's a chair set outside it, and a wash line strung up, and a few things put by against the wall, and it's a house, that's all, same as the ones either side of it. The door opens before any of you reach it. The woman standing in it doesn't look at a single one of you. She looks at the cart.

What Is Actually Here¶

Wren Alcott is nine and has an infection in her leg that has been getting worse for five weeks. She is alive. She is not the only one.

There are three children in Ninebar with the same infection. It came off the same bad water and it started within a week of each other. Coldwater was told about one because one was all Ninebar thought it could ask for.

A course of antibiotics is a course. It treats one child through to the end. Split three ways it treats nobody and breeds something worse, and the Tender at Ninebar will say exactly that, in those words, without softening it.

That is the adventure. Everything before it was the price of getting here to find it out.

What the Crew Can Do About It¶

The pressure setting does not change what is in the case. It changes how many doors are still open when they arrive.


Easy	They arrive with Stores left, an animal, and standing intact. Going back to Coldwater is possible. The Nail's Tender is a day and a half behind them and can be paid
Recommended	They arrive empty. Going back is a Journey they cannot fund, and The Nail will want something they no longer have
Hard	They arrive empty, on foot, owing somebody. Whatever they did to get here is now the reason nobody east of the bridge will help them

Do not solve it for them. There is no fourth vial and no Tender arriving in the morning. If the crew find a way to get more medicine into this valley, let it work and let it take another Journey.

If They Arrive Without It¶

Sold, lost, spent on a crew member, or taken. It happens, and it is a legal outcome rather than a failure state.

Play it exactly as written above, up to the door. Wren's mother opens it, and asks, and there is nothing to hand over.

Nobody shouts. Ninebar has been disappointed by the road before.
The Journey does not count. No Role improvement and no Band raise, whatever the Count says.
Sennet still clears the debt, because she agreed to and because she is not going to argue about it in front of people.
Standing with Settlements falls by one for whoever signed for the cart in Coldwater. The manifest is a different thing from the doorway — a cart that arrives empty is answered for by the name written on it, whatever the crew would have chosen.

A crew that sold it to the Convoy walked out of here with a full cart. Let somebody at the table do that arithmetic out loud.

Who Decides¶

Ninebar does not single anybody out. The question is put to all of them at once, in a doorway, and then there is a pause while four people work out which of them is going to be the one who does it.

Let them have that pause. Do not ask who signed for the cart, do not remind them what they decided in the yard, and do not fill the silence — the crew have spent four hours and most of what they set out with getting to this door, and the one thing this adventure owes them at the end of it is the choice of who hands the case over.

Whoever does it, that is the character Ninebar remembers.

Afterward¶

Sennet clears the debt whatever happened, and does not ask for details.
Ninebar remembers the crew. Standing with Settlements rises by one for whoever handed the case over.
The other two children are still sick, and everybody in Ninebar knows which one got treated.

Hooks¶

The water is still bad. Ninebar knows roughly where it comes from and has never had anybody to send.
The Nail has Ivor Cassel's cart and has had it for four months. Coldwater does not know that yet.
Whoever the crew crossed on the way east is still there, and the road home is the same road.

Reference¶

Adversaries¶

Nothing here scales. These are the Starter Set's cards, and they are the same on the last Leg as the first.

	Band	✚ HP	Attacks at	⛊ / ⛉	Where
Road Dog	Common	4	+2	12 / 9	Dogs on the Ridge, and following any crew that strings out
Roadman	Common	5	+2	11 / 10	The Watchers, the weighbridge family if it comes to it
Marauder	Hard	8	+4	14 / 11	The pump house, if the crew take it
The Tithe	Boss	20	+6	16 / 14	Its own Leg. Carries 3 ⊗ Wounds and cannot be killed on this road

Below Boss, an adversary is out of the fight at 0 ✚ HP with no ⊗ Wound track. A Threat action landing against ⛉ Mental Defense ends a Common's part in a fight, and players forget it exists.

Where the Fights Are¶


Dogs on the Ridge	Only if the crew let somebody fall behind
The Weighbridge	Only if the crew start it. Four people who have never had to hold it
The Watchers	Only if the crew double back
The Pump House	Only if the crew take the water. Six of them, and word reaches The Nail
Hollis Farm	Only if the crew take it. One woman, seventy years old
The Tithe	It starts. It cannot be finished

Every Leg on this road has a way through that is not a fight. An Encounter costs a step whatever the outcome.

Cast¶


Sennet Aldarn	Keeps Coldwater's stores. Will not send anybody from Coldwater, and says so
Wren Alcott	Nine, in Ninebar, with an infection in her leg and about three weeks
Wren's mother	Opens the door before anybody knocks. Does not look at the crew. Looks at the cart
Ivor Cassel	Coldwater's freight runner. Went off the road in the spring. Nobody came looking
Hanne Coll	The woman at the weighbridge. Eleven weeks of a thing that is finally working
Ost	Living in the cab of a wrecked hauler and trading it into The Nail a little at a time
Tarrow	Fifteen, off a farm that has nobody on it now. Can carry things. Eats
Meriel Hollis	Seventy, alone four years, sixty Stores of food and opinions about her roof
The convoy master	Trades well and only once. Knows Ivor Cassel's name and where his cart ended up
The Nail's Tender	One ⊗ Wound for Worth 2, and will slow ditch fever for the same. Asks no questions
The Ninebar Tender	Will tell the crew what a course of antibiotics is, in plain words, without softening it

Written for the Frontiers Engine under the ORC License.