Eight Miles Before Dark

EIGHT MILES BEFORE DARK

The Letter for Askan

Sigrun is a guide out of the jarldoms. Nikolaos is a clerk with a letter for a thane’s hall in Askan, and the thane wants it tonight. From the river landing it is eight miles of forested hills. Their food went into the river with the pack, and neither of them has eaten since the barge.

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SIGRUNSurvival Skilled, with Route Selection · Mind Remarkable · Toughness Remarkable · Base Health 8

NIKOLAOSNo skill for the ground · Mind Common · Toughness Common · Base Health 6

THE GROUNDForested hills · Encounter Step 10 · Forage 9 · Hunt 8 · two miles a Segment

A day is twelve Segments of two hours, in four quarters of three. For each quarter spent in the open, the GM makes one Encounter Check: 2d6 and the guide’s Survival against the Encounter Step. Meet or beat it and nothing finds them that quarter. Fall short and something is out there.

THE FIRST QUARTER · THE CHECK

Before they take a step, the GM rolls for the ground. Charcoal burners work these slopes, ridge paths run through them because the vales are wet, and this morning nobody is on this one.

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THE GROUNDEncounter Check6 + 5 = 11 +1 Survival, against the Encounter Step, 1012

Twelve meets ten. Nothing finds them this quarter. The next check is due in three Segments, whatever they spend them on.

The check is not a check for combat. It asks whether something out there has noticed them or crossed their line: a threat, a contact, a sign that somebody was here first.

SIGRUN 8/8 · Lingering 0NIKOLAOS 6/6 · Lingering 0THE ROAD the landing · eight miles to go

FIRST AND SECOND SEGMENTS · FOUR MILES

Two Segments of climbing, ridge to vale to ridge, with the canopy closed over them. Sigrun keeps them on the ridge paths where she can, out of the wet vales. Nothing is rolled for walking. By the end of the second, Nikolaos has stopped talking, and both of them are thinking about food.

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Two Segments in a row are free. The Rule of Two: a third Travel or Action Segment without a Rest between is forcing the march, and it is paid for in Lingering Fatigue. A Rest Segment would start the count over.

What a Rest would buy. Two hours off the march: ordinary Fatigue gone and the count of Segments started over. It moves them nowhere, and it puts nothing in the pack.

Each point of Lingering Fatigue is −1 on every die roll until it is slept off. A Sleep Segment removes one point. Rest removes none.

SIGRUN 8/8 · Lingering 0NIKOLAOS 6/6 · Lingering 0THE ROAD four miles · four to go

THIRD SEGMENT · THE FORAGE, AND ITS PRICE

They could sit down for two hours and owe nothing. But they have not eaten, and the ground will not feed them while they sit. They spend the Segment on the slope above the path instead: Sigrun sets a snare and works the hazel, and Nikolaos gathers what she points at.

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SIGRUNSurvival4 + 4 = 8 +1 Skilled +1 Mind10

THE MARKForage, on forested hills. Route Selection is not foraging, so her Acumen adds nothing.9

Ten exceeds nine. A plain success takes one benefit: Provisions, one ration found. A margin of three or better would have taken two.

And the march is forced. An Action Segment counts the same as a Travel Segment. It is their third in a row with no Rest, so it costs a point of Lingering Fatigue each. No roll.

Lingering Fatigue taken this way clears only through sleep. A fourth Segment in a row would cost two more each, a fifth three.

SIGRUN 8/8 · Lingering 1 · ◆ THE MARCH FORCEDNIKOLAOS 6/6 · Lingering 1THE ROAD four miles · a ration

THE SECOND QUARTER · THE CHECK FALLS SHORT

Three Segments, and the quarter is spent. Before they take another step, the GM rolls for the ground again. In the vale below the path, something grey moves between the trunks and is gone. Then another, further along.

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THE GROUNDEncounter Check3 + 4 = 7 +1 Survival, against the Encounter Step, 108

Eight falls short. Something is out there. The check does not say what; the ground, the hour and the story do. Here it is wolves, and they have been close for a while.

Forested hills: encounters begin close, and usually uphill or downhill of you.

SIGRUN 8/8 · Lingering 1NIKOLAOS 6/6 · Lingering 1THE ROAD four miles · ◆ WOLVES

WHERE IT LEAVES THEM

Three wolves come up out of the vale, downhill of the path, and the lead one stops at twenty paces to look at them. Sigrun has her knife out. Nikolaos has the letter inside his coat and a stick he picked up at the landing.

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THE PARTYLingering Fatigue 1: −1 on every die, the Opening Order, every Engagement Clash and every Momentum Defense, until it is slept off.

THE WOLVESThree · Opening Order 2d6 −1 · Engagement Clash +4, and +1 more against a man another wolf already has.

The Opening Order is not rolled yet. It is rolled once and holds for the fight: 2d6 and Mind, and −1 for the Rest they did not take.

How a fight runs, round by round, is on the Combat page.

SIGRUN 8/8 · Lingering 1 · knife outNIKOLAOS 6/6 · Lingering 1 · the letterTHE WOLVES three · twenty paces · downhill