❖ Turn 4
“Krah-Moh is my friend and companion, a child of god and no threat whatsoever, please welcome him among us with open arms, one of 13 at the meeting tonight - assisted him in escaping guards after the meeting who were about to accost him. Whats the status of everything here?”
Scene Two: The Canal Quarter — Dawn Breaking
You plant your staff and let the words come without softening them.
“His name is Krah-Moh. He came to the meeting of his own will, stayed when the others ran, and was nearly taken by the Watch for it. I told two constables he was a Magistrate’s servant and paid four gp to make them believe it. He is a child of the divine spark the same as any of us — perhaps more so, since he has less reason to believe anyone means it.”
You look at Selindi directly. “Welcome him. He cannot speak our tongue but he heard everything tonight, and he chose to stay.”
CHA task — persuade the cell to accept Krah-Moh
Heretic-Scholar [Vocation] + Congregation of the Unwashed [Affiliation] both apply
→ Positive double roll on CHA 13
Roll: 2d20 → 3 and 11 — take the 11
11 ≤ 13 — SUCCESS Quality: 11 No pair.
Selindi holds your gaze for a moment. Then she does something you did not entirely expect: she bows her head, a small and genuine motion, and says something in Low Caste Argot that means roughly welcome, stranger, you are not outside this circle. She cannot know if Krah-Moh understands the gesture. She does it anyway.
Dov — the elder brother, the one with the deeper burn scars — nods once, wary but not hostile. Pav, younger, glances at his brother first before nodding. The cell is not warm. But it is open.
Krah-Moh watches all of this without moving. Then he does something deliberate: he lowers himself onto a coil of rope near the door, settles his claws across his knees, and becomes still. Present. Waiting. One of us. You aren’t sure whether that is crab-man pragmatism or something more, and you find you don’t need to resolve it tonight.
The status report, as Selindi gives it while Pav boils something that smells like grain mash and weak tea:
Six of the eleven who fled have made it to safe houses in the canal quarter — she knows this because runners came through in the last hour. Three are unaccounted for. Two of those she’s not worried about: an old woman named Tuket who knows these streets better than the Watch, and a young ulufo who scatters like a roach when frightened and always turns up. The third is Hamech, a human dockworker of low-merchant caste who is new — this was only his second meeting, and he doesn’t know the safe house protocol yet.
“He may simply be lost,” Selindi says. “Or he may be in a Watch cell. He doesn’t know enough to hurt us badly. But he knows your face.”
She pauses. “He knows it’s a slug-man. That narrows things.”
The brothers look at each other.
Dov speaks for the first time, voice low and direct: “The pamphlets. How many did you place tonight?”
“Six,” you say.
He exhales through his nose. “Six is good. Six will move.” He doesn’t say what he means by move but you know: hands to hands, docks to ghettos, the slow underground circulation that is the only press the wretched have.
Pav sets down three clay cups and one large shell — for Krah-Moh, without comment — and pours from the pot.
“There is something else,” Selindi says. She reaches into her robe and produces a folded square of paper, water-stained at one corner. “Left at the drop point last night, before the meeting. I haven’t shown the others yet.”
She holds it out to you.
CELL STATUS
─────────────────────────────────────────
Present: Selindi (recorder, 4 languages)
Dov & Pav (ex-dockworkers)
Krah-Moh (crab-man, no Common)
Accounted: 6 safe in canal quarter houses
Missing: Tuket (likely fine)
the ulufo (likely fine)
Hamech — new, 2nd meeting, no protocol
knows your face; knows you're slug-man
Pamphlets: 6 in circulation · 6 remaining
Coin: 76 gp · HP: 4/4
─────────────────────────────────────────
The folded paper sits in Selindi’s hand, damp-edged in the thin dawn light coming off the canal. You don’t know yet who left it, or what it says.
What do you do?
◆ Vothrog HP 4/4 · Yellow City, Canal Quarter safe house · Cell intact; Hamech missing & unvetted; unknown message at the drop point
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