You are Tarran Vane, sworn messenger in the black-and-silver of Duke Halderic. For three days you have ridden alone, a sealed letter in your satchel — a play for peace, it is said, to Duke Oren across the river. You have carried letters before that smelled like peace and meant other things. This one smells worse than most.
Sundown, third day. The wind shifts.
You smell it long before you see it.
Decision 1 — Replay
A. Keep riding. The letter is what matters.
B. ✔ Tie your horse and go look on foot.
You leave your horse grazing downwind of the smoke, loop wide off the road, and work your way through the pines on foot. Three of them have posted one man as a lookout. He is looking the wrong way.
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 had ridden in on that spare horse had not been meant to ride out.
Their sergeant paces like a man with orders he does not enjoy.
Decision 2 — Replay
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.
Sense of Smell → Olfactory Awareness (Tarran): Skill score 12.4. Roll: 47 on d100 vs. Moirai opposed roll of 54. Success. Woodsmoke on the wind — and grease with it. A cooking fire, too close to the road, and not at an hour when honest travelers light one. A man with a wholly human nose would have ridden past.
Wilderness Camping → Read Camp (Tarran): Skill score 11.1. Roll: 47 on d100 vs. the sergeant's Conceal Camp roll of 38. Success. A cooking fire, but too big for one man's supper and set in a hollow where the smoke will pool and show. Whoever built it is not a woodsman. Three or four men, probably — they tried to hide the fire and failed. They do not expect to be here long.
Stealth → Sneak (Tarran): Skill score 13.2. Roll: 58 on d100 vs. the lookout's Light Vision roll of 49. Success. You move tree to tree. Each time his gaze sweeps your quarter, you are behind bark the same color as your cloak.
Stealth → Silent Step (Tarran): Skill score 10.5. Roll: 42 on d100 vs. the lookout's Sense of Hearing roll of 40. Narrow success. A needle cracks under your heel — tiny, almost nothing. The lookout's head half-turns. You freeze for a breath. Then another. He turns back to the road.
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: 11 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 rapier and main gauche 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.
You did not move. You gave him a breath he had not asked for — the breath of a man who had not yet murdered anyone — and you spent one sentence of it before you spent steel.
“You can still ride away alive. You haven’t murdered anyone yet.”
His hand found a buckler lying beside the fire and took it up without his eyes ever leaving yours. His duty was older than his fear, and it answered first.
“The Duke will have me hunted down and killed!”
His boots found footing and he came at you fast — buckler up, shoulder leading, the whole weight of him meant to drive you into the birch behind you.
You stepped half a pace off the line at the last instant and let your foot find his ankle as he passed. He went down hard in the pine needles — buckler skidding across the loam, sword hand flinging wide to catch himself. When he looked up at you there was rage in his eyes, and not fear.
You did not press the opening. You gave him another sentence instead.
“Perhaps, but if you stand down you will live to see a few more sunrises.”
Something in him flinched. The sentence had landed — not on his sword arm but on the softer place behind his breastplate, the place no buckler covered. For a breath he considered it. Then the oath he had sworn years ago stirred in him — older than fear, deeper than hope — and he rose, sword out, still fighting.
“I’m running out of patience,” you said, even as his sword came up.
The cut started high — a sweep at your collar that would have opened the great vein if it had landed true. Your main gauche caught it, but at the wrong angle. Steel slid along steel, and the blade turned down and inward, skipping along your own ribs.
The edge hit the steel plate sewn into your gambeson with a sound like a hammer on an anvil — enough force to bruise through three layers, not enough to part any of them.
The near-thing put steel back in him. A man who has almost killed you is harder to talk into lowering his blade.
Behind you the needles thickened with hoofbeats. The runner had seen one man against his sergeant and turned his horse. Two blades in a heartbeat, now, maybe less.
You had hoped the words would be enough. They had not been. With the runner’s hooves closing behind you, hope was a luxury you could no longer afford — and you had truly not wanted to kill him.
You committed to a feint — a low jab at his thigh that you never meant to land, pitched only to pull his sword out of the line.
His blade dropped to parry the threat that was not the threat. The high line above the gorget stood open for the half-second you needed, and your rapier found it.
The runner reached the clearing just as you withdrew the rapier. He swung down from the saddle, saw his sergeant’s body fold into the pine needles, and turned for the road — east, back the way he had come.
You shouted after him.
“The Duke will have you hanged as a deserter if you go back there!”
On the ground the sergeant coughed — once, twice, a wet rasping sound. You could not tell if it was laughter or only blood.
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.
⚔ Social Combat ⚔
Deceptions → Lie Attack (Tarran): Skill score 9.4. Attack roll: 23 + 20 circumstance = 43 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 hit 0 Quit Points instantly, their resolve collapsing on the spot.
Initiative → Act Swiftly (Tarran vs. the sergeant): Tarran: score 12.8, roll 68 = 80.8. Sergeant: score 11.2, roll 47 = 58.2. 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.
⚔ Physical & Social Combat ⚔
Initiative → Act Swiftly (Tarran vs. the sergeant): Tarran: score 12.8, roll 55 = 67.8. Sergeant: score 11.2, roll 42 = 53.2. Tarran acts first.
Talk and Fight → De-escalate (Tarran vs. the sergeant): Skill score 9.2. Roll: 32 on d100 vs. the sergeant's Social Defense.
Social Defenses (the sergeant): Skill score 10.0. Roll: 48 on d100 vs. Tarran's De-escalate. Defended.
Combat Charge → Charge Attack (the sergeant): Skill score 9.5. Roll: 48 on d100 = 57.5. Opposed by Tarran's Armorless Defense.
Armorless Defense → Evade & Trip (Tarran): Skill score 11.4 (−25 built-in penalty). Roll: 72 − 25 = 47 on d100 vs. the sergeant's Charge Attack. Narrow success.
Emotional Appeal (Tarran vs. the sergeant): Skill score 8.0. Roll: 58 on d100 vs. the sergeant's Social Defense.
Oath Minding → Oath Keeping (the sergeant): Skill score 10.5. Roll: 55 on d100 vs. Moirai target of 50. Success. +3 buff to this defense and all further rolls for or against Tarran while the oath holds.
Emotional Appeal → Discounting Defense (the sergeant): Skill score 10.0 (+3 Oath Keeping). Roll: 42 + 3 = 45 on d100 vs. Tarran's Emotional Appeal. Hit, 1d10 → 7 QP.
Emotional Appeal (Tarran vs. the sergeant): Skill score 8.0. Roll: 52 on d100 vs. the sergeant's Discounting Defense.
Medium Swords → Slash Attack (the sergeant vs. Tarran): Skill score 11.0 (+5 built-in modifier, +3 Oath Keeping buff). Roll: 55 + 5 = 60 on d100 vs. Tarran's Active Defense of 65. Hit.
GM Ruling: Two attackers against one defender is a hard problem in this system. Each incoming attack costs a defensive action, and two pressed hard enough can exhaust the defender's actions — leaving no initiative left to strike back with.
Initiative → Quick Feint (Tarran vs. the sergeant): Skill score 12.8. Roll: 68 on d100 = 80.8 vs. the sergeant's Active Defense of 61. Success — decisive. −30 to the sergeant's Active Defense against your next attack.
Medium Swords → Thrust Attack (Tarran vs. the sergeant): Skill score 13.1 (+5 built-in modifier). Roll: 62 + 5 = 67 on d100 vs. the sergeant's Active Defense of 31 (61 − 30 Quick Feint debuff). Success.
Damage: 10d8 (rapier, thrust) + 6 (Thrust Attack bonus, +1 per 2 points invested) → 5+8+3+7+2+6+4+5+3+7 = 50, +6 = 56 points. Armor mitigation: the gap above the gorget offered none. Net 56 points. Fatal.
Riding a Mount → Battle Riding (the rider): Skill score 7.5. Roll: 48 on d100. Opposed by Tarran's Dodge. The horse balks at closing on a man standing still — hooves skidding on pine-needled loam, its shoulder pulled a hand's-breadth wide of the line. The rider cannot fully commit the charge.
Armorless Defense → Dodge (Tarran): Skill score 11.4. Roll: 45 on d100 vs. the rider's Battle Riding. Narrow 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: 60 + 5 = 65 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 (rapier, 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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