You are Tarran Vane, a messenger in the black-and-silver of Duke Halderic, carrying a sealed letter to Duke Oren across the river. You have carried many letters. This one smells wrong.
Something off the road drew you into the pinewood. You settle in the loam behind a thick pine and look.
Three men in Halderic's livery — your livery — and a young woman tied upright to a birch. Silk riding clothes under a week of road. Sixteen years of age, perhaps.
The sergeant wears a long-service ribbon you recognize from the Duke's own sergeantry. Boiled leather over mail, sword and dagger both on the left hip — a man dressed to draw fast, not to parry. A hand-axe hangs at his belt. The younger two wear only quilted jacks — light for ambush, wrong for road-work. All three have their bows unstrung at their feet. None of them is watching outward.
Four horses picketed loose among the trees, twenty paces off: three mounts and a spare with a lady's saddle. Flanks still damp from hard riding. Whoever they meant to carry away on that spare horse, they meant to carry away alive.
Their sergeant paces like a man with orders he does not enjoy.
Choices
A. Step into the clearing. You outrank them. Demand the prisoner.
B. ✔ Lie still and listen.
You heard: “…ady Sel—” … “…before the letter…” … “…Oren…” … “…never had a…” … “…make sure the body…”
A name. Your letter. Oren's name. A body. You do not have the whole of it. You do not need the whole of it.
The letter in your satchel is not a peace letter. Whatever it truly is, the girl's death belongs to it — and you are the rider carrying it to Oren's hand.
Powers of Observation → Area Scanning (Tarran): Skill score 14.2. Roll: 52 on d100 vs. Moirai opposed roll of 37. Rousing Success. Six details, before the scene has finished settling in your eye.
Sense of Hearing → Listen Carefully (Tarran): Skill score 13.6. Roll: 82 on d100 vs. Moirai opposed roll of 41. Failure. The wind is wrong and the voices are too low. You catch fragments — not enough to damn, not enough to acquit.
Decision — Replay
The sergeant drew a knife. There was no more time to think.
Choices
A. Charge all three with your sword drawn.
B. Shoot the sergeant from cover, then deal with the others.
C. ✔ Shout “RIDERS! RIDERS FROM THE EAST!” — and move in the confusion.
Two broke for their horses — gone before the sergeant could call them back. The sergeant understood the trick as he saw it land, but a sergeant whose men have just bolted cannot count on them to return in time. He turned and lunged for Selyse.
Long enough to draw, long enough to throw, not long enough to kill anything that matters. The sergeant's back is boiled leather, stiffened and oiled — armor will mitigate most, if not all the damage on any blade that reaches it. A hatchet landing flat on that back is an insult, not a wound. A called shot to the back of the head would bypass the armor, but the head is a small target on a moving man. You will miss, or you will clip a helm-strap, and he will still be alive when he reaches her.
But the rope is not moving. The rope is wax-cord, old and dry, pulled tight against a birch that has not moved in fifty years. The knot is the size of a small apple, chest-high, just behind her left shoulder.
Selyse dropped. Wrists still bound, but the tree-bond gone. She rolled sideways in the loam. The sergeant's knife, already committed, struck the birch where she had been and stuck hard in the wood.
By the time his hand was on the hilt again, you were in the clearing with your sword drawn. He was a sergeant who had never had to draw against a man who meant to kill him. You were not such a man. After a few parried strokes, your sword found the mark — one hit, one kill. One of the runners came back when he saw only one of you, and he, too, died for it. The third drove his mount toward you meaning to run you down on his way back to the road.
The pain arrived after the moment. By the time he knew how bad it was, he was already past you and on the road again, bent low over the neck of a frightened horse, riding west as hard as the animal could run — a wounded man carrying the news of what he had seen toward your Duke.
Selyse is on her knees in the pine needles, crying without sound. You have perhaps until dawn before the Duke knows what you have done.
GM Ruling: A single-sentence shout is a Lie Attack that reaches all three listeners at once — one attack roll, three Detect Lie defenses. The sergeant is seasoned; his two swornmen are young and already nervous about whatever they have been ordered to do. +20 circumstance on the attack: their own lookout missed Tarran's approach, and these are men with reason to fear pursuit.
Deceptions → Lie Attack (Tarran): Skill score 9.4. Attack roll: 23 + 20 circumstance = 52 on d100. Vs. the sergeant's Detect Lie (55) — defended. Vs. the first swornman's Detect Lie (28) — hit, 4d10 → 9+7+6+4 = 26 QP. Vs. the second swornman's Detect Lie (31) — hit, 4d10 → 8+5+7+3 = 23 QP. Both young men's resolve collapses on the spot.
Initiative → Act Swiftly (Tarran vs. the sergeant): Tarran: score 12.8, roll 68 = 80.8. Sergeant: score 11.2, roll 47 = 58. Tarran acts first. Half a second. Enough for one throw.
GM Ruling: A rope against a tree is not a combatant — no Ranged Defense, no Act Swiftly contest. The GM applies a −30 called-shot penalty for a knot-sized target at ten paces, and no armor mitigation since rope is not armored. On a success, the hatchet parts the cord.
Axe Throwing → Hatchet Throw Attack (Tarran) — Called Shot at the rope: Skill score 10.6. Roll: 18 on d100 vs. Moirai target 20 (after −30 called-shot penalty). Success — narrow. The hatchet turns once in the air and bites through the wax-cord above her left shoulder.
Combat Charge → Charge Attack (the rider): Skill score 8.2. Roll: 44 on d100. Opposed by Tarran's Dodge.
Armorless Defense → Dodge (Tarran): Skill score 11.4. Roll: 28 on d100 vs. the rider's Charge Attack target of 52. Success. The horse's shoulder came at your chest; you pivoted off the line at the last instant, cloak snapping against its flank.
GM Ruling: A Charge Attack that fails against an evading defender grants the defender a Bonus Action — the rider has just carried himself through your Danger Zone with his back half-turned. The sword is in your hand.
Medium Swords → Slash Attack (Tarran) — Bonus Action: Skill score 13.1 (+5 built-in modifier). Roll: 34 + 5 = 39 on d100 vs. the rider's Active Defense of 72. Success. A passing cut across the meat of his right thigh as the horse carried him past you.
Damage: 10d8 (arming sword, slash) + 6 (Slash Attack bonus, +1 per 2 points invested) → 3+5+2+4+1+3+6+2+4+3 = 33, +6 = 39 points. Armor mitigation: the quilted jack at his thigh absorbed 15. Net 24 points. Deep gash from hip to knee, blood running into his boot. He kept his seat.
Your Choice
Selyse looks up. Her voice is raw: “Who are you?”
Your turn. This choice is not a die roll. It is a statement of who Tarran Vane is going to be from this moment forward.
Your Choice
She reads the letter by firelight. The color leaves her face. “My father wrote this.” Long silence. “I want to put this in Duke Oren's hand myself, in a room of witnesses. You will bring me.”
Before you can answer — hoofbeats. The wounded rider didn't ride west. He rode for the nearest Halderic outpost, two hours hence. Eight are coming up the Silver Road now.
Your turn. Three paths, three different kinds of courage.
Your Choice
You thumb the wax open and feed the parchment to the fire before she can protest. The smoke smells of pine resin and treason. You put her on your horse and take the sergeant's. Midnight: hoofbeats behind. Two scouts, closing.
Your turn. Three ways to survive the road, none of them clean.
Your Choice
You watch her ride east until she's nothing but a shape against the moon. You come back to the fire. You strip the livery off and burn it. You sit with your back to the birch she was tied to, and you wait. Before dawn, the eight riders come. The wounded one is with them, and he has told them who you are.
Your turn. You will not be riding anywhere after tonight. The only question is what you are for whatever hours remain.
One session. One table. One night.
You have just played through an encounter in Bitter Watches of the Night — skill rolls, social combat, tactical reasoning, and choices that mean something. Every rule you saw in action is part of a system that goes deeper than any one encounter.
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