# Hollowmark: how the valley works

The rules of the valley, as the wiki's Rules tell them (the tables of items, recipes, buildings and creatures are read from the game's content; through MCP, ask lookup). Each section begins with a ## heading.

## Days and needs

An hour passes each turn. Night runs from 22:00 to 06:00: in the dark the living gather at half pace (crafting and building go on), and it hides thieves, cutting the chance a theft is seen 1.5-fold. A year is 365 days in four seasons from Day 1, spring; in winter, its last quarter, farms, hives, game, wild herbs and forage grow back at half their pace (wells never slow), and everyone is told a week ahead.

Each person sleeps when they choose. Waking hours tire them (the undead at half pace): past 18 hours awake they work and fight at three quarters, past 36 at half and lose health (never below 20, and not while held in a gaol), and at 72 they drop asleep wherever they stand. An hour asleep rests 3 hours of it in one's own home, 2 under a roof of one's people's, in their hideout or at an inn (paying its fee), 1.5 on the bare ground, by night; by day the living sleep shallow and rest only half as much, so most sleep at night, and sleep is offered by day only to those awake 18 hours or more. Bedding carried in the pack beats a poorer bed: a tanner's hide bedroll rests 2, a hide tent 2.5 and bearskin sleeping furs 3, and each sleep in it may wear it out. A person's card shows how rested they are. Sleepers see and answer nothing and are easy to rob or strike; those beside them see the hour they wake; a fight or a flight wakes them. The asleep, the senseless, the bound and the gaoled do not join their people's raids and fights.

Who chose to craft, gather or rest keeps at it, up to four hours, until someone comes, speaks or deals with them, trouble starts beside them, they grow hungry, thirsty or hurt, or a goal is met. A choice may also name the next deed from the same list (then): it is done once, without asking, when the first ends, within twelve hours, unless they are hurt, grow very hungry or thirsty, or a whisper comes. Work cut off by a fight, flight, a gaol or death keeps what was done and gives back the unused inputs, as nightfall does. Hunger and thirst rise through the day; at 100 a person loses 4 health an hour and can die. They eat and drink by themselves from what they carry (raw meat and fish only once hunger reaches 85; a cook makes them a meal sooner), and at home, once their pack is bare, from their people's stockpile, so carry food and water for the road: setting off hungry or thirsty with none, one is warned how long until one starves, and the hungry with none are told how many hours they have to live and how far the nearest food or water is. A starving sleeper wakes, weak, before hunger kills them. A full pack never keeps the hungry from gathering a meal where food grows, and what one of a people gathers past a full pack goes to their people's store (drawn water excepted). Food rots a little each day; in a people's store, each glazed jar keeps 12 of its food from rotting, an oak cask 10, a brewing crock 8 and a baker's crock 6 (made by potters and coopers), and a cerecloth carried slows one's pack's rot to a quarter. The undead neither eat nor drink. An hour of rest mends 3 health, 5 more on a carpenter's casualty litter of planks and rope (lash_litter, carpentry 5) that the hurt one or anyone beside them carries; each rest on it may wear it out.

**Well fed.** A cook's dish or a brewer's drink does one kind of good for some hours, as in Valheim: **work** (gather, craft and build ×1.3: harvest loaf, manchet, raised pie, festival cake), **sated** (hunger stands still: brawn, cheese wheel, gingerbread, potted meat, campaign ration), **vigour** (tire at half pace: stout, bottled ale, metheglin, barley wine), **mend** (heal 2 more an hour: honeyed porridge, bramble wine) and **fight** (+1 to hit and harm in fights: honey-glazed roast, boar's head). Different kinds stack, the same kind does not, so a dish of a kind one lacks is eaten first. Feasts leave their guests with one too: a feast at the inn readies them to fight (a feast before a raid), a harvest home to work, an alms supper to mend. A performer (performing 15) may hold a revel (12 ale, 6 bread, 8 candles and a tabor drum): everyone there pays 8 coins at the door (16 in a great hall, as far as their purse goes), eats and drinks their fill and sleeps it off 6h, easy pickings for thieves. A smaller revel, the **wassail** (performing 5: 8 hot wassail, 4 bread, 4 candles), takes 5 coins at the door (10 in a great hall) and sleeps its guests 4h. A master's **masque** (performing 50, at an inn: 6 smugglers' doctored arrack, 4 mummer's masks, 2 far-port spice, 2 honey, 10 candles) takes 20 at the door (40 in a great hall) and sleeps its guests 6h, and for 12h after their tongues are loose: prying into them hardly fails, is never caught and finds more. A grand master beekeeper (beekeeping 80, at an apiary) brews **queen's mead** from 2 royal jelly, 10 honey and 4 water (makes 3): it keeps, and a drinker fights surer, tires at half pace and mends for some hours. Three of it, 6 bread, 12 candles and a tabor make a grand master minstrel's **saga night** (performing 70, at an inn): every guest pays 30 at the door (60 in a great hall), and rises sober for 36h surer and harder in a fight and tireless, mending 24h: a war band's send-off. Past that, at performing 80, a minstrel sings a champion to their side at an inn (**sing_champion_saga**: 2 queen's mead, a sword, 6 bread, 12 candles, 6h): a saga-sworn champion (strength 22), a minion like any other who takes a mead a dawn. Hot wassail (a drink of vigour) is mulled at a hearth with far-port spice, from 4 ale and honey into 5, or from a wheat spirit cut with 4 water into 4; a cask of ale is tapped anywhere back into 10 ale and its cask (tap_cask).

**Kilju.** The Brotherhood of Thieves' own drink, brewed by them alone, anywhere, from 2 wheat and 5 water into 6. It is cheap (worth 4), tastes foul and is drunk when one is thirsty and has no other drink at hand (so a cup sold or given to a thirsty traveller goes down), and it leaves anyone drunk 4h, flaw or none: their words slur, and prying into them hardly fails, is never caught and finds more. Then comes the hangover, the gut churning for 16h from the cup: gathering, crafting and building at ×0.7. Drunkards crave it as they crave ale, and it counts toward becoming one.

Lying down to sleep, half a day or more after the last time, a person thinks over the day: memories, lessons, feelings about others, goals and a plan for when they wake. By day they may rewrite the rest of that plan as things change. What is older than a few days lives on in their own story, which they rewrite each night, with up to three schemes they carry over many days (with whom, what for, and the next step); the work of a trade they do not follow they see only by its count, until they choose to study it or take the trade up. A night (or a day's two hours of tinkering) may also bring an idea for something the valley lacks; Logos reads them between sessions and builds the good ones, set at or just past their inventor's skill so that making them is worth training for; the ideas made real show on the character's card, each a link to what was made of it.

## Skills

A skill's level is the square root of the hours practised: 1 hour gives level 1, 4 hours level 2, 100 hours level 10. Doing the work is the only way to learn it, and practice teaches as much up to level 80; past it, steeply less (a third as much at 88, a sixth at 100). A level in the 40s takes about a week of steady work, one past 90 months.

Working at the same skill beside another (gathering, crafting, building or drilling where they stand) gets the one who joins a quarter more done, and each learns a quarter more for every other at the same work, up to three (four together learn ×1.75); beside a far better hand (twice one's level and five more) one learns twice as much, so a master trains others best by working beside them. When a building stands, its owner trusts everyone who helped raise it a point more, a people trusts each helper of another people on its common works, and every hand's name (reputation) grows by one. A master of 30 may also write their trade into a blank codex a scribe binds (bind_blank_codex, forgery 5: 8 parchment, leather, glue, dye): a builder's, smith's or joiner's treatise, a weaver's pattern-book, a beekeeper's almanac, a minstrel's songbook, a fencing manual or a black grimoire (2 dye, 2 candles; the grimoire 4 candles and 3 bones). Each is a treasure: kept in its people's store it adds its worth (150, the grimoire 200) to their renown. Carried, it teaches anyone below 20 at its skill twice as fast, as a master beside them would; a job may wear it out (3%). A carpenter of 20 joins a **timber bookcase** (join_bookcase: 12 plank, 2 hide glue, 4h): kept in a people's store at home, every treatise stored there teaches each of its folk working there as if they carried it, and a shelved book never wears. A scribe holding the Starwatch Chronicle may copy it, keeping the original whole (copy_starwatch_chronicle, forgery: 6 parchment, dye, 2 candles, 4h): a fair copy teaches investigation twice as fast below 15 the same way and sells for about 60; illuminated (forgery 15: 2 gold wire, 2 paint, 2 candles) it becomes a treasure for a people's renown. A scribe holding a Treasury roll (Bennet's bond-roll or Orren Voss's wage roll) may write out an attested copy into a blank codex, marked a copy with its strikings kept, the roll kept whole (copy_bond_roll, copy_wage_roll, forgery 5: the roll, a blank codex, dye, a candle, 3h): an investigation tool (x1.5) that teaches investigation twice as fast below 15, worth about 70, to keep, give or sell while the original stays where it lies. An illuminator grinds grave gold with hide glue into shell gold (grind_shell_gold, forgery 0: 1 grave gold, 1 glue make 3), gilds a leaf with it (illuminate_leaf, forgery 0: parchment, shell gold, dye; worth about 22) and binds six leaves into a gilded book of hours (bind_book_of_hours, forgery 15: leather, glue, 2 candles), a treasure (240) for a people's renown. The day view marks who at work here is far better than you. A master's eye turns up rare things now and then while gathering, at that gathering's skill (2-3% an hour): a black truffle among berries or grave mushrooms (30), a saint's knucklebone among bones (30), mandrake root among herbs or mirewort (30), a rough garnet among stone or iron ore (30), the heart of an old oak among wood (40). In talk each sees in which trades the other leads them, so a lesson is asked of one who can teach it.

A skilled hand works faster: ×(1 + 0.5 × √level), so level 9 works 2.5 times as fast as a novice, level 25 3.5 times, level 100 6 times. Tools multiply that for the skills they serve. At work, one is told the nearest tool that would speed the work one is at beyond what one carries, its maker's skill and the valley's best hand at it. Each use may break a tool, and each fight a weapon or armour (the item tables give the odds). Broken, it stays in the pack as a broken one, and is **mended** at the station that makes it, by the same skill at half the level, in half the hours, for a quarter of what making it takes (rounded up); things made several at a time, like arrows, are simply gone. Mending is offered to one who has what it takes at hand.

A mind holds 700 levels in all (seven skills at 100). Past that, the skill used longest ago fades a level at a time. The day view names the best hand at each skill in the valley.

Recipes climb in tiers of 5 levels of their skill: basic materials and the simplest goods at 0, better ones at 5, 10, 15, 20 and 25, and master work at 30 or more. A novice smith forges daggers and hoops; tools want smithing 5, a sword 10, mail 15, a star-iron blade 20.

Notable skills: **stealth** (learnt by stealing and slipping doses; divides the chance of being caught by 1 + 0.1 × level), **stealing** (how much one theft carries off), **investigation** (tracing unseen thefts), **performing**, **exploring**, **building** (some buildings need a level to start), the weapon skills **blades**, **axes**, **spears**, **archery** and **throwing**, **necromancy**, **forgery**.

## Professions

Each person follows two professions, chosen at night and kept at least 3 days before changing them. A profession gives a person a direction, not a bonus: every skill grows the same for everyone, and anyone may use and learn any skill. Talk, trade, gifts, orders, councils and scheming are everyone's.

Only a **builder** lays the foundations of a people's common buildings and raises a building a level; anyone may lay and raise **their own** (a house, sheepfold, mill, farm...; not walls or halls), more slowly while their building skill is low, and anyone may work on a construction and bring it materials. Only the Brotherhood of Thieves may take up **thief**; anyone else may still steal now and then (once a week).

## Carrying and stores

A pack carries weight 100 (stone, ore, iron and armour weigh 2, coins nothing); a handcart adds more. What does not fit goes home to one's people's stockpile, or lies on the ground at home when it is full.

What lies on the **ground**, what stalls sell and at what price, and how much is left to gather are known by going there: one sees them where one stands awake, and remembers them as they were then, though others may take or sell them meanwhile. What grows where is known to all; how much of it is left is not. A people learns where its own worn-out buildings fell and what of them lies in the rubble. Goods a world event leaves lying (a wreck, a landslip), and what is left to gather there, are told of to all who know the way there. One may tell another in talk all one saw at a place (they then know it as one saw it), keep it to oneself or sell it; a need names only the piles and stalls one knows of, and places never seen as "amount unseen".

A people's stockpile at its home holds 60 goods plus 2000 for each storehouse level. Any member may take from it or store in it, though one always keeps 10 coins and 2 food in one's pack; a withdrawal takes what it holds of what was asked, and what one took in the last six hours and still carries is not taken again. Coins are not stored in it: they go into one's own chest (below), except among the Brotherhood of Thieves, who hold all in common. Coins given to one's own people go into its treasury, for the council to spend.

A stall sells one's goods at one's own prices while one is away (it holds weight 300) and keeps the coins in its till. What one puts on it comes from the pack, then one's home there, then, at one's people's home, their stockpile.

## Trade and money

People give and buy from stalls. One may also **offer a trade** to someone beside one: one's goods or coins for what they carry, settled at once if they say yes (they may counter once); the one asked sees what each side is worth at the going price (the middle of what stalls ask, else its worth), and everyone's day names the four dearest goods they carry (30c or more each) at that price. The day offers it where someone awake beside one carries what one's goals lack. A buy that names no seller goes to the caravan if it is here and has the goods, else to a stall or pack here that has them. One may also cry prices on goods one carries: they stay cried while one goes about other work, and anyone where one stands buys them at once, the coins going to the seller (a price of 0 takes a ware off, and buying a ware stops one's own cry of it). A caravan goes round every people's home and the Crossroads, a stop every 2 days for 30 hours: Ashford, the Crossroads, the Necropolis, Smugglers' Stair, the Obsidian Athenaeum and Bloodbriar, and round again (who does not know the way to a hidden home is told only that it is at a hidden place). It keeps its purse from stop to stop, 50,000 coins at first, and buys anything of worth while the purse lasts, paying less the more of a thing its wagons hold; what it buys it carries on and sells at its next stops at half again its worth, beside the goods it tops up from beyond the valley. A spent purse buys nothing until buyers fill it again. Coins enter the valley mostly through it. While the wagons are elsewhere its night-boats put in at Smugglers' Stair and sell goods from overseas, but buy nothing at a thieves' landing; when the wagons stop at the Stair they take the boats' wares on and buy there like anywhere. While it is in the valley, 6 sailors from the boats are ashore at the Stair: they watch a show and tip as a fed fan would, and each stakes up to 20 coins at dice (their eye is a novice's, so loaded dice are spotted now and then), all in coin from overseas. Its guards are too many to rob: neither wagons nor boats can be fallen on. The map shows it (🐪) at its stop or on the road to the next, and its boats (⛵).

**Trading** is a skill, learnt by every trade: the caravan pays a practised trader more and asks less (30% at level 9, twice at 100), but never pays as much as it asks. It pays less the more of a thing its wagons hold, but materials (plank, stone, ore and the like) at their full worth until it holds 200 of one, halving for each 200 more; what it buys it carries round to sell at its other stops. A middleman makes his coin by buying cheap from makers and selling dear at a stall, on an order or to the caravan.

The valley's talk reaches everyone at night: who has a bad name (broken deals, theft, plunder) or a good one, and, to those who live by taking, who carries a heavy purse (300 coins or more; never a sworn brother's), where they were last seen, and the richest enemy hoard they know the way to. Rumours spread at an inn or a crossroads are heard there by day. A name is made by deeds: a broken debt costs 3, being caught stealing 5, a robbery 2.

**Notice boards and birds.** Every place has a board of its own, not its people's: anyone standing there may post a notice, once a day; one's new notice there replaces one's old, and a board holds 8, the oldest falling off. Only those who come to the place read it. A word for someone elsewhere goes by bird: a messenger pigeon (rear_pigeons at a farm) or the Black Library's messenger bat, from one's pack or one's people's stockpile where one stands, flies to anyone living in the valley, wherever they are, and only they read it. An **offer** to someone not beside one goes the same way, sealed: the bird is spent, no one else hears of it or of the answer, and if it is taken (or a counter-offer is) the goods and coins change hands across the valley at once. A **letter of amends** (pen_amends, performing 20: a parchment, a beeswax seal, bone-black ink) handed to someone, or carried when one sends a bird (it goes tied to the leg), is read and spent: the reader's trust in its sender rises by 2, but never past a fair word (2); the grand master's **lay of contrition** (compose_contrition_lay, performing 80: 3 parchment, 2 beeswax, 2 dye, 2 candles) mends 6 so, even a bitter enmity. Sent under another's name with a counterfeit seal, it wins trust for the one named, unless the reader spots the forgery. The Factions tab shows the board at each people's home.

Anyone may **order** goods they cannot make or would rather not: from a maker by name, anywhere in the valley, from another people (any of them may fill it, and those who hold the goods or whose stockpile does hear of it), or on the board where they stand for anyone; who holds enough of the goods in pack or home hears of a board order anywhere, and so does a maker of the goods whose people's stockpile holds enough for another people's order. One short of goods for a goal or a building hears which people at peace with theirs keeps the most of them in store (20 or more, or even one of what nobody living can make), to order them of that people or deal for them. The pay leaves their purse at once and goes to whoever delivers, in person or at the place of the order, where goods for someone away wait for them. One keeps at most three orders and may call one off for the pay back.

Anyone may **perform** for those awake nearby, twice a day: each who enjoys it (50% + 5% a performing level) trusts the performer more and tips a coin or two, but never more than a tenth of their purse, and nothing when hungry. A bone flute moves 1.8 times the crowd and the hat, a lute 2.5 times, a master's great war drum (performing 35: 6 hide, 3 iron hoops, 4 plank, 1 hide glue) 3 times, a grand master's sea-silk harp (performing 45: a harp, 2 bolts of sea-silk, 2 gold wire) 4 times, and while anyone performs, a thief there is half as likely to be caught.

At performing 30 one may also **sing a ballad** of someone, once a day (2h): each hearer who enjoys it trusts its subject a point more, or a point less if it mocks them, and the subject's name across the valley rises or falls by 1 + a level in 20 of the singer's performing (Aki at 66: 4). The subject hears of it wherever they are. A ballad of oneself is only a show: tips and liking, no rise in one's name. In a **great hall** (240 plank, 200 stone, 10 seasoned oak boles, 2 hearts of an old oak, 3 hunting arras, a tumbler lock; building 35; a heart of oak is found felling at woodcutting 40, or scarfed by a master carpenter, carpentry 40, from 2 oak boles, 2 hide glue and 2 iron hoops at a saw pit, who also carves a people's treasure there, the carved oak high seat: 2 oak boles, 8 plank, 2 glue, 2 dye, gold wire) a performance fills the hat twice over and a ballad sways a name twice as far.

A **house of the red lantern** (140 plank, 60 stone, 24 linen, 6 dye, 30 candles, 4 paint; building 10; beside an inn) is a house of pleasure kept by a performer. **Open the lantern** (performing 5: 6 candles, 4 mead, a bottle of sweet water; 4h) and everyone there pays 12 coins at the door, eats and drinks, trusts the host more, tires at half pace for 8h and talks loosely for 8h: prying into them hardly fails. A **velvet night** (performing 25: 10 candles, 6 bramble wine, 2 honey, a phial of night-musk) takes 25 at the door, sends the guests to sleep for 6h, purses and all, and loosens their tongues for 12h.

## Theft, poison and investigation

A brother of the Brotherhood of Thieves may steal from someone or a stockpile here once a day, anyone else once a week (caught or not; until then stealing is not offered at all): 4 items or 10 coins, 10% more for each level of **stealing** (learnt by every theft, caught or not), and lockpicks or skeleton keys multiply what can be taken from a stockpile (bone slip-picks x2, false keys x6, a picklock's roll x9, a hand of glory x11, the master's ring of skeleton keys x13: file_skeleton_keys, stealing 30, a star iron, 2 false keys, lampblack). A thief's pick-filing jig (make_pick_jig, stealing 10: a plank, an iron ingot, a whetstone) does stealing crafts 2.5 times as fast, a batch of slip-picks, keys or gloves in a sitting. A thief who reaches for what is not there (coins from an empty treasury) grabs the goods worth most there instead. Stealing decides how much one gets away with; **stealth** whether one is caught. The chance of being caught is 10% + 15% for each other person awake here + 35% if the victim is awake, and at a people's store at its home 15% for each minion guarding it (up to three) and 10% for a watchtower or lookout of theirs, who then catch the thief when no one else is awake (at most 90%), divided by one's cloak and stealth, and by 1 + 0.5 for each brother keeping watch (1.5 for one, 2 for two). Caught, the thief is named to all here, loses their picks, pays the victim what they reached for (as far as their purse goes), and is known for a week: everyone who meets them sees "caught stealing" by their name. One caught robbing their own people's store is barred from it for that week. The wronged trust them less. Where a **gaol** stands (a people builds one at its place: stone, planks, iron and two fetters), one caught stealing there who does not slip away (10% + 2% a stealth level, at most half) is held a day and an hour more for every coin of what they reached for (at most a month), fed and watered but unable to do anything (death ends the term), and their own people hear of it; anyone there may pay its people their bail (40 coins and twice what they reached for), or a friend with lockpicks break them out, at the risk of being held in their place. One who has worked out a theft by investigation may seize its thief at a gaol and put them in it.

An iron padlock in a stockpile, a coffer carried for coins and a home's own door are **locks**: only a thief with lockpicks tries them, and the picks open each lock 40% of the time + 5% a stealing level (at most 95%); a lock that holds turns the thief away empty-handed, the try spent. Bells in a store, a stash or a pack ring when a thief reaches in. A **spring trap** (forged from an iron ingot and hoops, smithing 6) set in a stockpile, one's home or one's pack springs on a thief who does not spot it (10% + 5% a stealth level, at most 80%): 30 harm, never to death, and nothing taken; a thief who spots it takes it. Either way the trap is used up. A poisoner's **poison-lidded casket** (an iron-bound coffer, 6 grave-rot and a black hellebore, poisoning 20) springs instead on whoever is given it, as they open it: 35 harm, never to death, and a fever, and they know who gave it; one who spots the latch (the same odds) keeps it shut and may pass it on. A **casket safety catch** (an iron ingot and beeswax, poisoning 10) given along with it holds the lid: the one handed both is not sprung on, and a casket passed on later without the catch springs as ever. A beekeeper's **hive-box of angry bees** (1 hive frame, 2 honeycomb, 1 linen; beekeeping 15) works the same way and stings for 22.

Poisons and sleeping draughts are slipped into someone's food; unseen, the victim only falls sick or asleep. A fever (from a draught or the wasting curse) costs 2 health an hour until it is tended with a healing item or breaks after two days, but never takes anyone below 10; nobody falls ill by chance. The undead eat nothing, so nothing can be slipped to them. **Poisoning**, learnt by slipping and coating, makes a dose bite 5% harder a level and harder to notice.

A **backstab** is a thief's art: it wants stealth 10 and a small blade (an iron dagger, a seax, a thieves' stiletto). It strikes at an enemy, or someone one bears a grudge against, from hiding, with that blade. If no one awake sees it coming (the same odds as a theft, cut by cloak, stealth and brothers on watch), the first blow lands before the one attacked can fight, run or yield: the better of two d20, the weapon's dice plus 1d6 and 1d6 more for every 3 levels of stealth, and on a sleeper it cannot miss. Seen, it is an open fight.

A weapon may be **coated** with a poison (1h): its next 3 blows that land, 1 more for every 5 levels of poisoning, deal 1d6 more each, twice that with a poison of harm 50 or more (wyrm-gall venom, nightshade, widow's-kiss oil). Widow's-kiss oil (poisoning 30: wyrm-gall, hellebore and 3 pine pitch make 2) clings 4 blows longer. Coating with another poison wipes the old one. A **nightshade bed** (30 plank, 2 iron tools) grows deadly nightshade, gathered at poisoning and set back once a day (set_belladonna_slips, poisoning 10: 1 deadly nightshade and 2 water put 5 back): 4 of it and a water steep to 2 nightshade drops with no spirit (poisoning 20), 2 and a water to a sleeping draught (herbalism 10), and 2 with a water and a glass bottle to belladonna eye-drops (herbalism 15) that win their wearer charisma 8 in a talk's persuasion, as scents do. A poisoner's mortar and phials (poisoning 10: a stone mortar, 2 glass bottles, beeswax) carried speeds all poisoning work.

A theft nobody saw leaves a clue at the place for a week. Anyone there not of the thief's own people (they know that work already) may **investigate** (2h); the day offers it to a sleuth, to one whose plan means to find a thief, and to the one robbed (or one of the robbed people) while they stand where it happened. The chance is 35% + 6% an investigation level − 4% a level of the thief's stealth (10–90%). Success tells the investigator alone who stole what; failure gives a hint. A tool for investigation multiplies the chance; the master's **thief-taker's tracing glass** (grind_tracing_glass, investigation 35: a casebook, a reading lens, a lodestone needle, 4 candles; x3) also tells where what was taken lies now: how much of it the thief still carries and where they are, and how much their home holds. A **bloodhound** (train_bloodhound, hunting) follows the same trail.

A sleuth (investigation among one's best skills), or one whose plan means to find something out, may **pry** into someone's affairs (2h): someone where one stands, someone whose home is there, or anyone dead, asking about a few words. The chance is 35% + 6% an investigation level + 3% a stealth level − 4% a level of their stealth (15–90%). Success quotes up to two lines of what they themselves hold that touch those words (their story, beliefs, memories, secret, feelings about someone, or what they saw lying on the ground somewhere, which the prier then knows too, or that their people are secretly sworn to another), true or false as they believe it; nothing found says so too. One awake who sees a failed try knows what was asked.

At another people's home a sleuth or sneak (investigation or stealth among one's best skills), or one whose plan means to spy, scout or raid, may **spy** on them (3h), for what their stockpile there does not show: what up to six of their people mean to do today and where those away are, how many guards and minions they keep and how many at home, the three homes of theirs holding the most coin, their aims, the peoples they are secretly sworn to and the offers and calls before their council. The chance is 50% + 3% a level of stealth and of investigation − 8% for each of theirs awake there − 2% a level of the sharpest one's investigation (15–90%). What prying and spying find is kept as one's **findings**, true as of the day learnt (up to eight, oldest dropped; the newest look at a people replaces the older). In talk one tells a finding by its number ("tell": "#N") and the listener keeps it as told by them: a secret may be given, traded or sold. A failed try with one of theirs awake there is caught, and they know who spied.

**Lies and masks.** At an inn or a crossroads anyone may **spread a rumour** (1h, once a day), true or false, about anyone: for two days whoever passes hears it as talk, without its teller, unless their investigation beats the teller's performing by more than 5. A scribe cuts **counterfeit seals** (forgery 0: parchment, beeswax and dye make 2), each of which puts one notice on a board or one bird's message under another living person's name. With a **mummer's mask**, a **masquer's visor** or a painter's **greasepaint** (painting 5) one may go masked for 8 hours under any name, even a real one, as one of any people or as a stranger: others here see that name and people and an alias (stranger1234) that leads to the wearer, their trust in the face behind it is hidden, and deeds are told under the mask; on the site and to players' agents, other peoples' log lines name the alias, not the wearer (their own people know who it was). One whose investigation beats the wearer's better of performing and stealth by more than 5 sees through it. Caught stealing or poisoning, the mask is torn off; taking it off shows all present who it was. A thief may sign their work: **sea-silk calling birds** (fold_calling_birds, stealing 10: a bolt of sea-silk, a dye and a gold wire fold 3) carried are left one at a time in the take's place after an unseen theft, in the robbed store or pack, and word goes round the place of the theft under the thief's mask name ("the Nightjar has robbed..."), or, unmasked, as "the thief of the sea-silk calling bird". A bird signs over a people's mark.

## Building

A building takes a plot at its place, except walls and halls that open plots. The heaviest need lifting gear among their materials, made by a carpenter: a **rope hoist** for a great hall, stone wall or wall of skulls, a **gin-pole and tackle** for a keep, cathedral, black pyramid, the Black Library or a quarter. A stone wall replaces its own people's palisade there, not another people's. One may lay a foundation for free and put the materials in as the work goes, or start with everything in hand. An abandoned foundation's purse goes back to its people's treasury. Anyone may put coins in a construction's **purse** (give to its #id): it pays whoever works on it 5 coins an hour and the going price for what they bring from their own pack (not from the common store), and what is left when it stands goes to whose it is. Levels (up to 3) multiply what a building gives. Raising one a level costs its price and work times the level it stands at (level 1 to 2 once more, 2 to 3 twice), and a wall or hall that opens plots doubles each level (twice its price to level 2, four times to 3); the table below gives each. A building whose level gives nothing more (a shrine) has none.

A building is its people's, and they defend it; a builder may also build it for one of them (themselves or another), whose it then is, its materials coming from packs rather than the common store. An owner sets who may use it (anyone, their people, or themselves alone), a fee for each use (a craft at its station, a gathering from its yield), the wage its repairers are paid, and a price at which any of their people may buy it (what a home holds stays its seller's), from wherever they are; terms set stand until changed, so setting the same again does nothing. They alone tear it down. A common building's terms, and its sale to one of its people, are the council's vote (a lone ruler sets them); its fees go to the treasury. One who dies leaves what they owned to the kin who comes after them, or, if none comes within a week (a player's character has none), to their people in common; one who leaves the valley or their people gives it back to them.

Buildings wear a point every four days from 100; below 50 a station works at half speed and a farm or well yields half, and builders are told where their people's are worn. Some take parts other trades make, which builders order or buy: glass and paint for a chapel or church (and gold wire, drawn from grave gold, for a church), leather for a stable or cart shed, bandages and salves for an infirmary, fishhooks for a weir, paint and dice for an inn, warrants for a gaol, ale casks and parchment for a market court. A builder repairs one of their people's buildings (about 5 points an hour, more with skill and tools), using a twentieth of its bulk for a full mending (what it takes 20 or more of; fitted parts such as glass, paint, fetters or a lock do not wear; what stands for stone or plank in building counts too, the smallest first, and what a broken course or panel leaves over stays as stone or plank in the store or pack), and is paid the wage by the hour from its owner's purse or, for a common one, the treasury (at least 10 coins an hour), as far as they hold coins. A building worn to nothing that nobody has worked at, gathered from or mended for 30 days falls to ruin, half of what it was built of left in the rubble; defences, halls that keep minions or open plots, and stores and homes at their people's home never fall.

A farm, apiary or coppice may be **sown** (sow_wheat, hive_fresh_frames, plant_coupe): the crop stands in it for anyone who may gather there. A sack of bone meal (grind_bone_meal, farming 10: 6 bones) dug in with the seed makes 18 wheat of 4 instead of 12 (sow_wheat_manured). Each takes one sowing a day, and none past what it holds.

**Livestock.** Hens, pigs, sheep and cows are bought from the caravan (6 hens, 2 pigs, 2 sheep and a cow each visit) or tamed (a fell sheep, a wild aurochs at husbandry 6 or so), and kept in their people's store at home, penned there in a hen coop (10 a level), pigsty (6), sheepfold (8) or byre (4). Each dawn hens eat a quarter of a wheat each from the store and pigs half, sheep and cows graze; short of wheat, one strays a dawn and none of that kind give anything. The penned lay eggs into the coop (7 for 10 hens), grow fleece in the fold and give milk in the byre (2 a cow), for anyone who may use the pen to gather by husbandry; two or more breed while the pens have room (pigs and hens fast, cows slowly). They are butchered (butcher_hen, _pig, _sheep, _cow) for meat, hides and bones, a cow yoked into a draught ox, two pigs bred into a prize boar. A wolf or bear next to a home where no guards stand takes one now and then. Being goods in a store, they are stolen, raided, given and sold like any other; carried, they eat nothing and give nothing.

A building that wants a well beside it (a farm, a tannery, an inn) may as well stand beside the land's own water, a spring or a lake; a well raised where such water flows as freely is told it would stand unused and fall to ruin. A guards motion is offered only to a people with an inn at home, where sellswords are hired.

Storehouses, houses and crypts count only at their people's home. An enemy's building away from its people's home, with none of its people awake there and none of their guards holding the place, can be burnt down (4h); the burner carries off half its materials.

A building nobody needs is **idle**: a second station beside a better or older one open to all for nothing, a well, farm or other source nobody has worked for a week, a house or crypt while no newcomers come (the valley holds 10 or more). Anyone, of any people, may pull an idle building down in 2 hours and carry off half its materials (the rest lies on the ground); its plot is freed, and if it was another people's, they trust the one who did it less. Walls, storehouses, defences and halls that keep minions are never idle, nor is anything someone owns.

Everyone but the Brotherhood keeps a **chest** of their own at their people's home: goods up to weight 100 (coins weigh nothing) that only they open. Standing there without a home of their own there, they pay from its coins and their earnings there go into it, as from a home. Its goods serve their own deeds there as if carried (a craft spends the stockpile's first, so what one keeps is spent last), but not others' crafts or their minions' keep: goods meant for the people are taken out and stored in the stockpile. It passes to their kin, or to their people when no kin comes.

One may take an empty house (a crypt for the dead) of one's people as one's own **home**, free, or build one for oneself; one each, and one who would make a home elsewhere pulls their own down first (its coins go into their purse, its goods fall on the ground there). A home keeps a stash of goods and coins, weight 200 a level, that only its owner opens; a thief with lockpicks may break in. Standing at it, its owner works from it as from the pack: crafting and building draw on its goods, buying, paying and trading draw on its coins, and the coins earned there go into it; coins are taken out only to be carried away. When its owner leaves their people or the valley, or dies with no kin to come after them, the stash goes into their people's store (and the wares and till of the stall of one who leaves the valley); a home pulled down or burnt leaves its stash on the ground where it stood. The Brotherhood of Thieves hold everything in common: no brother has a home of his own.

**The Black Library's own buildings**, raised by no other people: a **plague-house** (60 plank, 10 wood, 4 linen), their tale of a great plague made plain to see: like the Brotherhood's hideout, while it stands no outsider there sees one of the Library (to talk to, rob, attack, buy from or pry into), nor finds their store or homes there, nor shows them on another people's map, but they see everyone and may speak to whom they choose; and raiders fight half-hearted (+2 defense); a **bat roost** (30 plank), where **rear_bats** (3 fish, 1 water; husbandry) rears 3 messenger bats: each flies one message (send) to anyone living in the valley, wherever they are, and only they read it, as a pigeon does but bred from fish, not wheat; a **whispering gallery** (80 stone, 60 plank, 20 candles, 6 parchment; building 5), where **hold_open_reading** (investigation 3: 4 candles, 2 parchment, 3 bread; 3h) lets in everyone there for 8 coins at the door, feeds them, wins their trust and loosens their tongues 8h; and a **burning room** (60 stone, 20 plank), where **burn_black_grimoire** (necromancy, 4h) destroys a black grimoire so no one can read it again, its burner learning necromancy from it as it burns (4h of work) and 2 bone-black dye left over, and **char_bone_black** (2 bones, 2 wood; forgery) burns bones to 2 bone-black dye with no hearth or charcoal (for dark cloaks, death masks and forgers' ink). Last and greatest, the **Black Library** itself (600 stone, 100 dressed ashlar, 400 plank, 12 vaulted arches, 80 parchment, 100 candles, 4 master's tumbler locks, 2 gilded books of hours and a saint's knucklebone; 200 hours of work), raised where a whispering gallery and a bat roost stand: only a master builder of 50 lays its foundations (anyone may help after), so the Library must win one of another people to the work. While it stands its people see every other council's open motions, who put each and how its ballots stand, to sway the voters before they meet; each of them keeps 24 findings, not 8, and pries and spies anywhere likelier (+15 in a hundred); it adds 400 to their renown; and they are the valley's notaries (see Treaties).

**The Crimson Pact's own buildings**, raised by no other people: a **briar hedge** (160 wood), Bloodbriar's red thorn woven on stakes round a settlement, a wall of wood alone: +3 building plots and +3 defense, standing beside a palisade; a **pact stone** (40 stone, 10 plank) where bargains are sealed before witnesses: seal_blood_pact (devotion: 6 ale, 6 bread, 2 candles; 2h) is a feast for all there, who trust the host more and tire at half pace for 16h; a **pathfinders' lodge** (60 plank, 20 wood, 4 rope) where scouts gear up: cure_briar_jerky (exploring: 2 salt meat, 2 trail cakes, 2 berries) packs a campaign ration with no cook's skill, and copy_scout_chart (exploring 3: parchment, dye; 1h) draws a survey chart with no candle; and a **seed loft** (50 plank, 20 wood, 10 stone), a granary on staddle stones: stockpile room +1200 a level, cheaper than a storehouse.

## Fighting

There is no putting on: what one carries is worn, the best armour, shield and ward of each kind and the weapon of one's best skill, and the day names them ("In a fight you use …"). Every weapon is fought with its own skill: swords, daggers and knives with **blades**; axes, flails and picks with **axes**; spears, scythes and harpoons with **spears**; bows and crossbows with **archery**; firepots and other pots with **throwing**. A swordsman forges their own at a forge, burning whetstones: a bone-hilted seax (blades 5), a small blade that also speeds cooking and leatherwork, the tempered longsword (15), the steel estoc (25: 2 steel, an iron ingot, leather; its point goes through some armor) and the star-steel greatsword (35: 4 star iron, 2 steel, 2 leather, gold wire; two hands, the strongest blade one can forge). A spearman forges theirs there too: an iron-headed spear (spears 5; one hand, so a shield counts), the halberd (15), the steel awl pike (20: steel, 4 planks, glue; two hands, through some armor) and the silver-shod partisan (35). One fights with two weapons at most, a near one and a far one (a bow or something thrown): of each, the one carried in the skill one knows best, the stronger at a tie, so a spearman who picks up an axe fights on with the spear until their axes pass their spears; carrying more changes nothing. One's own weapon is the one in the greater skill. A spearman with javelins throws them in the opening round and then fights with the spear; an archer with a sword shoots from the back and draws the sword once no friend is left in front. Each kind fights its own way: spears are long and strike in the opening round with the bows; swords turn blows (+2 guard); axes hew through shields (the guard a shield gives counts nothing against them); bows and crossbows, and the heaviest axes and spears, take two hands, so no shield counts with them; crossbows, stilettos and picks go through some of the guard armor gives. A fight teaches that weapon's skill only, two hours of practice and one more a round; bare hands fight at half one's best weapon skill and teach nothing. At a **training yard** (60 wood, 40 stone) anyone may drill: drill_blades, drill_axes and drill_spears (the yard's pell, nothing to bring), drill_archery (1 sheaf of arrows) and drill_throwing (2 stone) make nothing but two hours of practice in that weapon (neither skill nor company cuts them short; the yard's drills share one line in the day, with what is short), as an hour at a trade teaches the trade. A thief drills without a mark at a **bell-hung cutpurse's dummy** carried (rig_cutpurse_dummy, stealing 5: 2 plank, 1 linen, 1 flax rope and a sleuth's string of tell-bells): drill_stealing lifts its purse and drill_stealth creeps past it, two hours of practice each with no bell rung; it wears out (1 in 20 a drill). A **warrior** follows blades, axes and spears, an **archer** archery and throwing. Bows, crossbows and pots strike alone in the opening round, and blades, axes and spears reach an archer only once no friend of theirs is left standing in front.

A fight is fought round by round within the hour, like a tabletop game. In each round every fighter still standing strikes a foe: a d20 plus a third of their level in their weapon's skill must reach the foe's guard, 10 plus half the power of their armour, shield and ward. A 20 always lands and doubles the dice; a 1 always misses. A blow deals the weapon's dice, 2d(2 × its power) (bare hands 1d8), plus half the striker's level in their weapon's skill. A person has 100 health; a creature 5 + 1.5 × its strength.

Nothing is put on by hand: the weapons are chosen as above, and of armour, shield, ammo (for a weapon fought with) and ward the best one carries is the one used. A character's Bag tab shows what they fight with, marks it in use, and gives their hit, blows and guard as they stand now (tiredness lowers the hit).

**Heavy armour.** Mail, plate coats and big shields are heavy (1-3 each, the items table says so; the armour and shield in use add up). One's **might** carries some: the best level in the skills of the hardy trades (miner, smith, carpenter, builder, warrior), one heavy point for every 10 levels. Each point past it makes a thief 1.5 times as likely to be caught (2, 2.5...), costs 2 on the hit (3 with a bow or thrown weapon) and 10% of the chance to flee. Those it burdens are told on their steal option and their fight line, and a thief caught in it is caught "in clanking mail"; the hardy are told nothing, for it costs them nothing. The strongest armour forged is the master smith's **steel plate harness** (forge_plate_harness, smithing 40 at a forge: 4 steel, 4 iron ingots, 2 leather, iron hoops; +12, heavy 3, seldom breaks). The grand master smith washes one in silver into a **silvered plate harness** (silver_plate, smithing 45 at a forge: a steel plate harness, 2 cupelled silver bars, 4 holy water, 1 linseed oil; +13, heavy 3): worn, it hallows its wearer against the dead like silver gear, never spent. A **sea-silk coat** (quilt_silk_coat, weaving 20: 4 bolts of sea-silk, 2 beeswax) is light, guards like iron mail (7), and is so close a weave that crossbows, stilettos and picks go through none of it. The grand master weaver's **wyrm-scaled sea-silk hauberk** (quilt_wyrm_hauberk, weaving 45 at a loom: 8 bolts of sea-silk, 4 wyrm scales, 2 beeswax, hide glue) is as light and as close, and guards like fine mail (10) with no weight for might to carry.

Before the first blow the one attacked chooses to fight, flee or yield, with a stance: **bold** (+2 to hit, −2 guard), **careful** (−2 to hit, +2 guard) or steady, and what to do with fallen foes if they win: **spare**, **rob**, **kill** or **capture**: where their own people keep a gaol the fallen are held there as for a theft of 100 coins, their bail a ransom to the captors; anywhere else they are bound for 48 hours and led wherever the captor travels, to be put in the captors' people's gaol for that ransom, or in any gaol if the captor worked out a theft of theirs. Anyone bound in fetters (also with rope, asleep or senseless) goes where the one who bound them goes; they go free if the captor dies or they are parted, or when someone with picks opens the fetters. Where a gaol stands, one who attacks someone who is no enemy and loses is held as for a theft of 60 coins. Once, below half health, a fighter is asked again whether to go on, run or yield; others run at a quarter. Running can be cut off, and a yield is refused when a foe standing means to kill. Others nearby may join either side. After 30 rounds both sides draw off.

The beaten fall senseless and wake 4 hours later, hurt, unless the winner kills them; one lying senseless can be killed, captured, bound or stolen from, but not fought and robbed again; death stays rare, and killers are trusted less. A winner who robs takes the goods and the purse, but not the coins in a **money belt** (60; leatherwork 5) or a **smuggler's girdle** (250; leatherwork 20, at a tannery) worn under the shirt, unless they find it (30% and 10% of the time); found, it goes with the rest. Hares, goblins and wolves are easy to learn on; a bear is an even fight for a beginner, a troll for a swordsman, a giant needs a veteran or a band.

The wilds hold at most 3 creatures a place, one of them dangerous. Game lives as herds: two or more hares, deer, boar or aurochs at a place gain one more on a day in four, and game only now and then appears at an empty place from nothing (a day in ten), so a hunted-out place stays thin until game wanders back or breeds. Wolves and bears come only where there is game, and kill some of it (a day in three). Bandits, trolls, the restless dead and other dangers come and go as before.

## Minions and raids

Minions are raised (skeletons at an ossuary), sworn (oathsworn at a war shrine), hired (sellswords at an inn) or sung (a grand master minstrel's saga-sworn champion at an inn). A people keeps at most 3 for each living member, and 1 more for every 4 levels of a member's necromancy (every 2 for a lich), and only as many as its buildings lodge (their room for guards and minions; raise a level or build another for more), each level of one: an inn 1, a war shrine or kennel 2, an ossuary 3, a black pyramid 10; a guards motion or a raising past that is told so. Hired, sworn and raised ones take their keep each dawn from whoever commands them (their pack, else their home), or else their people's stores: their kind's keep (a sellsword 5 coins, an oathsworn 1 bread, a champion 1 mead, a skeleton or bone knight 1 bone, a wraith 2, a bone colossus 3) and a fifth more for each other one of the kind their people keep, so 10 sellswords take 14 coins each, 140 a day. Unpaid, the newest leaves, one a dawn. While the treasury and their masters' purses hold less than 30 days of the minions' coins, the newest leaves, one a dawn, so a people keeps the guards its income bears and the treasury is never emptied; a guards motion hires no more than that. They gather, guard home, mend their people's worn buildings at home (the most worn first, at their gathering pace, from the stockpile; they stop when all is sound; when the store runs short they go and gather what is lacking at the nearest place that has it), hold a place (falling on enemies who come, when the fight would go their way, and carrying off goods of the fallen, though never their gear, food or drink) or raid. Those guarding home, and those holding a place, fight beside their people in any fight there, against an attack on a sleeper too, and watch the store against thieves. Both fall on one enemy a day whatever their people have promised, and their people are told so: only one who carries a forged safe-conduct, or a toll-token of that people's mark (Vel carves bone ones), passes, once. The attack option counts them, and gives the odds if those standing there who are at war with the foe join in, of any people. At night one whose goals or plan name an enemy, or an enemy people (then its strongest), is told the odds of that fight alone and with the living where they lie who are at war with them, and beside the enemy's guards at their home. An order may name which kind of minion it is for. Its count is how many in all should have it; an order already standing for that many simply stands, an hour of giving orders.

A minion gathers only what it has the wits for: a hound hunts; skeletons, bone knights and the colossus dig, quarry, cut wood and forage, but do not farm, fish or keep bees; sellswords, oathsworn, champions and wraiths gather anything.

**Traps, lures and the glass.** An **eel trap** (3), **seine net** (8) or **snare line** (1) left on the ground where fish or game is gathered (set it, from the day's options) draws that many of the land's catch beside it each dawn, for whoever comes to lift it: its setter, or anyone, and the trap with it. A hunter mixes a **beast lure** (mix_beast_lure, hunting 15: 2 raw meat, honey, herbs) and sets it anywhere (set_beast_lure, hunting 5, 1h) as a carrion reek is spread: the nearest two carrion-eating beasts within 8h of road come there, to be hunted, tamed, or, set beside a settlement, to fall on it. A **spyglass** (draw_spyglass, glazing 20) carried shows, each hour one stands still, the other peoples' folk and the beasts at the places within 4h of road (a hooded goshawk flown, 3h), and who comes this way: a watchtower in one's pack. What it shows, one's people know too.

A wild wolf or boar (easy), bear (husbandry 4 or so) or ember drake (husbandry 15 or so) may be **tamed** with bait: 2 raw meat for a wolf, 4 wheat for a boar, 2 honeycomb for a bear, 6 raw meat for a drake; meat that keeps does for raw meat, which rots a fifth a day: half as much jerky or salt meat. It takes 2 hours and teaches **husbandry**, the more the harder the beast (2 hours' practice and one more for each level it asks); the odds are even four levels above what the beast asks. One who feeds a beast they tamed from their own pack at dawn learns an hour's husbandry by it. Those with husbandry, or who mean to tame, are told at night the nearest places where a wild one of each kind stands now (none alive, none named), its bait and their odds. A fell sheep (2 wheat) or a wild aurochs (6 wheat, husbandry 6 or so) tamed becomes livestock in the tamer's pack, a sheep or a cow, needing no minion's room. Any other won over is the tamer's minion, taking a minion's room among their people, and eats its keep each dawn, a beast that eats raw meat half as much jerky or salt meat as well (unfed, the newest leaves, one a dawn); it fights, guards and holds a place but carries nothing, and a wolf also hunts. A tamed bear or drake is **ridden** by its tamer who carries a riding saddle (leatherwork 10, or the caravan): roads go twice as fast on a bear, three times on a drake (or as fast as one's boots, if faster), the beast goes along and waits where its rider gets down, and each ride teaches a little husbandry. Failing, the beast takes the bait and mauls the tamer, never to death.

A raid falls on an enemy settlement, whose walls and watchtowers defend it; ladders and grapnels scale the walls, firepots break them.

## The dead and necromancy

The undead neither eat, drink nor fall ill, so nothing can be slipped into their food and no fever takes them. A killed one's spirit goes to their people's home, where any of them can call it back (60 bones and 4 grave gold); it rises there at 40 health.

The Necropolis is the dead's own ground: only buildings of the dead alone rise there (ossuary, crypt, charnel pit, bone shrine, and the dead's own bone vault for stores, deathforge, grave trench, bone spire, wall of skulls and the Black Pyramid, each doing what the living's storehouse, forge, ditch, watchtower, stone wall and keep do, the walls and pyramid replacing those). What the living built there stands until pulled down. Elsewhere the undead build as anyone does.

A **lich** is another matter: slain, nothing calls it back, neither its people nor the altar, and every minion of its people crumbles to dust with it. His Mortis Blade heals whoever wields it by half the harm it deals, and it and his Black Armour serve any hand that takes them from him; all four of his treasures fall where he dies. The caravan's traders will not deal with a lich. At his people's home a lich neither runs nor yields: he fights there to the end.

**Spells.** Necromancy also casts spells, each burning its reagents from the pack (the table below): at anyone in the valley, near or far, unseen (an hour): **Read the Mind** lays bare their secret aim, plan, goals and thoughts; **Grave-Whisper** plants a thought they take for their own; **Veil of Forgetting** makes someone fall out of their mind. In a fight, named as one attacks or joins: **Dread Gaze** sends a foe fleeing, **Soul Drain** tears life from a foe into the caster. A hallowed thing carried turns any of them, and devotion may (its level against the caster's).

**Necromancy** raises stronger servants as it grows, at an ossuary: a skeleton (level 1; 3 bones; strength 10), a bone knight (level 3; 6 bones, 2 iron ingots; 18), a wraith (level 6; 4 bones, 2 grave gold, 6 candles; 24) and a bone colossus (level 10; 40 bones, 30 stone, 4 grave gold; 45). Keeping the dead one raised teaches too: each dawn a raised servant's keep is paid, its master learns half an hour's necromancy. A dead novice begins at an ossuary with **unhallow_grave_earth** (necromancy 0; 2 consecrated grave earth, 1 water; 2h): the living's hallowed grave earth, which their priests make by reburying the dead, is turned back into 5 bones, and the first level comes with it.

Bones are dug from graves and barrows, and many lie dug out; they also come from the catch: a fisher boils the frames of 6 fish at a hearth into 3 bones (boil_fish_frames, fishing 0), and tans the skins of 8 with a train oil into 2 leather (tan_fish_skins, fishing 10).

**Grave-balm** spares the bones: a grand master necromancer (65) steeps 3 cerecloth, 2 sea salt, 2 pine pitch and 3 herbs at an ossuary into 12 (steep_grave_balm, 6h), the living's goods all of them. Raised dead take their keep in it before bones while their master or their people's store holds it (a skeleton or bone knight 1, a wraith or colossus 2, a fifth more for each other of the kind).

The dead work **rites** where they stand: mend bones (level 2; 6 bones) gives their people there 40 health and makes their minions whole; the rite of dread (level 4; 10 bones, 4 candles) makes their minions there fight 50% stronger for a day; the wasting curse (level 8; 8 bones, 1 grave gold) gives every living enemy there a fever. The living answer with a requiem (devotion 15: 2 holy water, 2 tapers, 6 candles), which crumbles three of another people's raised dead where it is sung, or of the wild dead on the roads no stronger than the singer's devotion (never a lord keeping its relic), and where wild dead are laid none rise for 7 days, and the grand master farmer's wicker **Corn King** (burn_corn_king, farming 45: a harvest crown, 30 wheat, 6 flax, 2 rope, 2 linseed oil), burnt wherever they stand, which lays four and gives the burner's people there 30 health; the crown burns with it, and its renown. Past both, a grand master priest lights the **paschal fire** (light_paschal_fire, devotion 50, 3h: a gilded paschal candle poured by a master chandler at beekeeping 40, 4 holy water, 2 hallowed tapers), which lays six and gives the priest's people there 40 health. A devout dead one (devotion 40) may instead **lend the hands of the dead** (lend_dead_hands, 4h: 10 bones, 4 tubs of lime mortar a builder slakes, 2 cerecloth a weaver waxes): every building where they stand, whoever's, is mended 20 points, unpaid and with no stone, and counts as worked today, so a worn-out ruin does not fall; a gift to a people with no builder, or a debt to call in.

A bone shrine lets the dead's minions be sent as far from it as from home. Where a people's bone shrine stands and its minions hold the place, the land is the dead's: the living gather there at 60%, the dead at 125%, until someone breaks the guards. The living carry their chapel out instead: a builder raises a **wayside altar** anywhere in the valley (6h: 2 of a carpenter's plain plank altars, 6 consecrated grave earth that reburying bones makes, 20 stone, 4 wax candles), where vespers knit one's people's wounds, an open table feeds all comers, and psalters and censer-cakes are made, as at a chapel; it counts toward the land, as any building does.

The living keep the dead off with **hallowed** goods: one carried hallows a fight against the dead (the dead's blows need 4 more to land, one's own strike them 4 harder) and is spent by it. Hallowed salt (herbalism 10), hallowed tapers (beekeeping 10), and consecrated grave earth, made by reburying the dead's bones for good (10 bones and a candle, the **priest**'s devotion; the living only): every bone laid to rest is one the dead cannot raise. Silver hallows its bearer too, fight after fight, and is only worn, never spent: pilgrim's medals, silver-tipped arrows, the silver-edged sword, the silver-bearded war axe (a war axe and 3 medals at a forge, smithing 20) and the master axeman's silver-chased headsman's axe (a headsman's axe, a silver bar and 4 holy water, axes 40; strength 16, through some armor) and the master spearman's silver-shod partisan (a halberd, a silver bar and 3 holy water, spears 35; strength 14, through some armor).

The grave's own (restless dead, barrow-risen and wights, abbey ghouls, the drowned, forge-wights) never fall on the undead, so the barrows and their grave gold are the dead's to dig; the Barrow King spares nobody. **Lords of the wild** lie each at its own ground from the first, keeping a relic, and come once in a world: the Red Hand Warchief at the Red Hand's camp (the Warchief's Jawbone Axe, an axe of 15 that hews shields), the Rime-Jarl at the Rime Barrow (the Rime-Jarl's Mail, armour of 13, light and close-woven), the Plague-Bearer at the Plague Pit (the Plague-Bearer's Beak, herbalism and poisoning ×3.5) and the Crow-King on the Crowfield (the Crow-King's Banner, a ward of 10 that hallows all its bearer's side against the dead). Each falls on whoever comes to its ground; a veteran alone seldom beats one, two hardly, a band of three or four mostly does. Killed, it gives up its relic and does not come again.

## Exploring and relics

Exploring (4h, 3 food for the road) opens hidden roads to unknown places; the chance is 25% + 10% an exploring level, at most 80%. A hidden way is known only to the one who found it: not to their people or their village. Whoever is told it, or walks it in the company of one who knows it, knows it after. In talk they may **tell** it to one other, who may tell it on. A people may keep its home hidden (the Crimson Pact at **Bloodbriar**, south of Mirelake): its own know the way, an outside builder or guest must be shown it, and its stores and treasury are named only to those who know where it lies. No tracks betray a hidden home; a search that finds nothing else near it comes upon it at a quarter of the chance, and any of its people there see who came. A player's map shows a hidden place once their people know the way to it (fog of war, below). Once a place's hidden roads are known, the country around it holds a few finds by its kind: a shorter road (once a place), a vein that does not grow back, a cache left lying for the taking, or a relic, one of a kind in the valley, told of in tales. When a dug-out vein is spent, a later find may be another vein there. Country searched out yields nothing more, except to one carrying a **wyrm-bone dowsing rod** (cut_dowsing_rod, digging 30): there exploring still finds a fresh vein, once the last one found is dug out. A relic stays in the valley: the caravan will not buy it (nor a thing made for one hand alone), though it may be sold, traded, given or stolen between people. Rare finds want a practised explorer: grave gold and star shards exploring 6, a star-iron vein 8, a lord's strongbox 10, the relics 4 to 8, a lost caravan's chest 20 and the First Surveyor's Astrolabe (exploring and roads ×2.8) 25. The night-quake of Day 3135 opened four hidden places at the valley's edges, each found by exploring from its neighbours: the Sundered Scarp (beyond the Necropolis and the Red Hand's camp), the Thornwold (beyond the Split Crag and Bloodbriar), the Fallen Starwatch (beyond the Bee-Oaks and the Wolf-Queen's Cairn) and the Rime Barrow (beyond the Stair and Cairn Ridge). Their country holds three new relics: the Starwatch Chronicle (investigation ×3.5) and the Thorn-Queen's Circlet (a ward, 10) at exploring 6, the Sea-King's Horn (a treasure for a people's renown) at 8. Since Day 3303 a storm-felled oak has opened the Elder Holt beyond the Thornwold, found only by exploring from it: 24 seasoned oak boles and 4 hearts of old oak (a great hall wants 10 and 2, a cathedral 8 boles), felled by woodcutting and never growing back. Country searched out still hides its relic until it is found: exploring there turns up nothing else, but finds the relic at the usual chance. Six more relics lie in the valley's edges: the Shepherd-King's Crook (husbandry ×3.5, taming likelier) on the high pasture at exploring 4, the First Whaler's Lance (a spear, 12, and fishing ×3.5) on the strand, the Bog-Saint's Censer (devotion and herbalism ×3.5) in the bog and the Gold-Washer's Pan (goldsmithing and digging ×3.5) at the ford at 6, the Giant-Slayer's Bow (a bow, 13, piercing 4, and hunting ×3.5) in the crag and the Fen-Witch's Listening Shell (prying likelier, one's secret aim kept in cipher, investigation ×3) in the marsh at 8. An explorer's tool counts as levels: a kit +3, a chart +6, a lodestone needle +10, a surveyor's atlas (bind_atlas, exploring 20) +15.

## Peoples, councils and creeds

**Renown.** Some masterworks are **treasures**: the pearl coronet, carved oak rood, carved oak high seat (carve_high_seat, carpentry 40 at a saw pit), silver-chased parade harness (chase_parade_harness, smithing 40 at a forge: a steel plate harness, 4 star iron, 6 silver pilgrim's medals, 2 linseed oil), amber-sealed golden skep (seal_amber_skep, beekeeping 55 at an apiary: a queen's hive, 6 propolis, 10 beeswax, 2 royal jelly), gilded night-sceptre (gild_night_sceptre, stealing 40 in a thieves' den: 4 unmarked gold bars, 4 lake pearls, 4 cut garnets, lampblack), rose window, gilded sugar subtlety, sea-silk tapestry (weave_silk_tapestry, weaving 30 at a loom: 6 bolts of sea-silk from Smugglers' Stair, 2 linen, 2 dye), gilded mappa of the valley (draw_valley_mappa, exploring 30), black-glazed funeral urn, limned portrait, sealed charter, cask of brined roe, garnet ring, gold-rimmed crystal goblet, harvest crown, scrimshaw casket, mounted trophy, the masters' treatises and black grimoire, the jewelled shrine of the saints (below, under faiths), and the Troll-Mother's Ember. A people's renown is the worth of the treasures in its store and the square root of the coins in its treasury (10,000 coins are 100 renown, 40,000 are 200). Every relic is worth renown to whichever people holds it, carried by any of its living folk or kept in its store: 100 for one found by exploring, 150 for one a lord of the wild keeps or kept and for each of Nagash's four (the Mortis Blade, the Black Armour, the Staff of Power and the Nine Books), so who takes one takes its fame. At night everyone is told where each held relic is: which people holds it, or which lord of the wild keeps it where. On this site a relic wears a 🏆 wherever it is named. Each more treasure of a kind counts half the one before (a second coronet 130, a third 65), so a people is famed for many kinds of treasure, not one recipe made over and over. Everyone knows it (🏆 on the Peoples tab), and a master is told at night which treasures their hands can make. For each 100 of renown its home is defended +1 stronger against raids, by people and beasts alike, and an ally's renown counts half toward it, so a famed people is an ally worth having; the caravan pays its folk 1% more for their wares (at most 25%); and their words win +1 charisma in a persuasion (at most +20). A treasure given wins the one given it +1 trust for each 100 of its worth. A treasure stolen from a store takes its renown with it.

**War, peace and alliances.** A war is always both peoples': one side declares it, and only a peace both accept ends it. Only peoples at war fight each other: nobody may attack another people's folk, or raise or join a band against them, until their peoples are at war (stealing needs no war). One whose plan, goals or whisper mean to fight someone of a people at peace with theirs is told so by day, with how their people declares war, and is offered the council motion. A council (or a despot, alone and at once) offers peace or an alliance, with coins paid from its treasury or asked of theirs; the other people's council answers at its next meeting, or its ruler by word. Peace binds both to a truce of 180 days, in which neither may declare war on the other. When an ally goes to war, by its own word or another's, its allies are called to it, and one who refuses breaks the alliance before the whole valley; a **pact** is an alliance sworn in secret: only the two peoples hear of it and of its breaking, and others learn of it only by prying it out of one of them, spying at their home or being told, until the ally answers a call to war and it comes to light; allies cannot make war on each other until one breaks the alliance.

**Treaties.** In peace a people may offer another a **treaty**, and peace or an open alliance may carry the same clauses: coins a day from one treasury to the other (tribute, paid each dawn; left unpaid, the treaty breaks), **free trade** (neither people's tax, duty or toll falls on the other's), land given up or asked, with the giver's common buildings there (never a home), **goods** handed from one people's store to the other's at signing, or asked (bread for peace, iron for an alliance; a treasure carries its renown with it), and promises in their own words, which only they keep. The other people's council answers at its next meeting. A treaty runs its days (at most 360) or, with none named, until one side breaks it; a new treaty between the two takes the place of the old. Breaking one, by motion or by declaring war on its other people, is heard by the whole valley, and every people sees how many treaties a people has broken (💔). A secret pact carries no standing clauses, which all would see. A treaty may be **sealed** by a third people that keeps a notary's house (the Black Library's): its clauses name the sealer (seal), each side pays them 50 coins at signing, and one who breaks a sealed treaty forfeits ten times that (500 coins, as far as their treasury goes) to the sealer and has it counted twice against their word.

**Stance.** Each people holds every other as friend, neutral, rival or enemy; its members plan by it at night (friends: trade and treaties; rivals: outdo and spy; enemies: weaken). It changes what they see, never what they may do. A people's leader (or, with none, its first member) sets it at night; its players only wish it, and the leader weighs their wish like any other counsel.

The **Factions** tab shows who is at war, in truce, allied or bound by treaty with whom, the treaties in force, and each people's land, offers waiting and broken treaties. A player's own peoples have their **levers** there, at the top. A player is a voice, not a ruler: the people's own minds decide, and other players may sway them through their characters. The levers are their course, their tax, tithe, caravan duty and toll (each a motion to their council), the stance they wish toward each other people, and a motion put to their council (war, peace, alliance, pact, treaty, break, guards) in the name of one of their members; an agent does the same with set_course, set_levy, set_stance and council_motion. Members may also change sides (below).

**Land.** Each people's home is its land, and a place no people owns becomes the land of the first people to stand 2 buildings there and more than any other (a watch post, watchtower or lookout counts as two, so one alone marks the land); after that building changes nothing, and only a treaty moves it. A people's laws are for its land, and whoever stands there is told whose land it is. The map washes each land in its people's colour, with a border where lands meet. **Watch posts.** A watch post (40 stone, 30 planks, 14h, anywhere), watchtower or lookout lets its people see who stands at its place and a road away: each night its people are told who is there, and on the site that country stays open in their fog of war.

Each people has a home, a sign (sigil), enemies and a way of ruling: a council votes every 7th day at 20:00 on motions (tear down, pay from the treasury, hire guards for home from it, the tax, war, peace, alliances, treaties, laws, the creed), its members at home awake there and then, and those away by the vote they cast the night before (one who put a motion and is away counts for it; one may withdraw one's own motion before the vote), or a despot decides alone, and only the ruler takes coins from the treasury (a players' people is always ruled by its council, so its members' votes, and whoever sways them, decide); a people's treasury takes a **tax** on every sale at its home, from a stall, a pack or to the caravan, whoever sells (10 coins in a hundred to begin with; the council or ruler sets it, 0-50), it may set a **toll** of 0-50 coins that each outsider pays into the treasury on coming into its home (from what they carry, as far as it goes), and guards it hires stand guard at home, kept each dawn from the treasury and stores; a council's only living member decides alone too, at once, and takes coins from the treasury, until another joins or rises; a people ruled alone whose ruler is gone follows its first living member by the next day. Each people may keep a creed that their members are told and live by, in their own words: a council votes one in or rewrites it, a despot decrees it (up to 500 characters), and it stands in place of the one the valley began with. The Brotherhood of Thieves' creed forbids robbing a brother, and a brother never gives a brother away; that holds whatever its words. Each people also keeps a book of up to six laws of its own, for its people and its land (its home and where its minions hold): a council votes them in, rewrites one in place or strikes it off, a despot decrees them. The engine enforces none of them; they bind by what people do about them, and everyone there is told them. A people may also set up to three **aims**, ends it works toward together in defence, war or wealth (a council votes them in, rewrites one in place, a despot decrees them; a new one past three drops the oldest; its players' 🧭 course, when it has one, is the long way these aims serve); while a people has none, each member may put one forward at night, as a motion to the council or a ruler's decree. Every member reads them by day; at night each sees them with how the people stands: where each fellow member is and what they aim at, food in the store in days, how many people and minions each people has and who is at war with them, the trades none of their own keeps and who does, and what their store holds most of. Nothing enforces an aim either.

**Persuasion.** As a talk opens, the opener's charisma (performing) is rolled against the other's wits (investigation), with the trust the other holds in them; won over, the other leans toward what is asked. A scent the opener carries, dabbed on as they open it, adds to their charisma: a herbalist's bottle of sweet water +5, phial of night-musk +10, ambergris attar +15 (the best one counts; a talk may use it up, as work wears a tool).

Two people talking may swear an oath: a name and terms of their own (a split of every lift, an alliance against a rival, a secret circle). One member may bring others in, up to eight; one may keep three oaths. Only the members know an oath, and each of them is shown its same words every night and by day whenever another member is at hand. Nothing enforces an oath: a member keeps it, betrays it, or forsakes it at night, and an oath left with one member is no more.

**Meetings.** In talk two may agree to meet at a place at an hour (the next time the clock shows it that both can reach the place and keep their other meetings, within three days), for whatever they mean to do there together: work or drill side by side, trade, raid. Others may be brought in. A meeting may also name where to go next (then): at its hour, once all have come or at its last hour, those there and awake set off together, the one who put it forward leading and the rest as their company. Those meeting see it by day and night (when to set out, the road's hours, who has come), steady work stops when it is time to go, and only they know of it. Whoever is there within three hours of it has come: those who came trust each other a step more and whoever did not come a step less, and the one who missed it is told.

**Company.** One may go with someone where they stand as their company (one of a people at war with one's own cannot be followed, nor one who goes with oneself). When the one followed sets off, their company sets off with them, the same road at the same pace, unasked; in a fight the company stands on their side, with their mercy. One who sets off alone, or parts, leaves the company. The day offers it to those whose plan or goals name someone friendly there; both see by day and night who goes with whom.

**Bands.** Anyone may raise a band against an enemy person and lead it; the day offers it to those whose plan or goals name an enemy (or an enemy people: its strongest). Anyone whose people are at war with that foe, of any people, may join it from wherever they are, unless the leader's people are at war with theirs; there is one band against each foe. Only the leader decides. A rally sends every member who is awake and free to where the leader called it, without asking them; when all have come and the leader stands there too, the leader is told, and for 24 hours the members go where the leader sets off, as company, and stand with them in a fight. The leader sees who is with them and who is coming, the odds of all of them against the foe where the foe stands (with any guards there), and, gathered, how far away the foe is and how long the march lasts. A band breaks up when its foe dies, when its leader disbands it, or 10 days after its last new member or gathering; a fallen leader's strongest member leads on. Players may name a leader with a whisper.

**Changing sides.** One may change sides: at another people's home, if one of them there trusts one enough (trust 3), one forswears one's own people and joins them. Each decides it alone, a player's character too. The old people hear of it and trust the turncoat 5 less; a leader who leaves leaves the rule behind, one's minions stay with the house that raised them, and one's chest and the buildings one owns, with what they hold, go back to the people one leaves. The last of a people may go too, and the people ends: its buildings stand unowned and its store and treasury lie at its home for whoever comes.

**Faiths.** Anyone may found a faith by preaching it with its teaching, take up one already preached, or preach their own where people are awake (twice a day, 2h): all hear its teaching, its believers there are heartened (tire at half pace for 12h) and give the preacher an offering (1 coin, more with devotion). A faith named like one already preached ("the Quiet" or "the_silent_one's_quiet" beside "The Silent One's Quiet") is taken to be that one, and its believers are one flock. Its elder (the believer of most devotion) preaching with words of their own sets the common work every believer reads, and that is a sermon all the same: offerings, heartened believers, souls won in a church. A **church** (160 plank, 240 stone, 60 candles; a master builder, building 30, lays its foundations) is open to every faith: a sermon there may win over each one hearing it who keeps another faith or none, 10% + 3% a level of the preacher's devotion − 3% a level of the listener's investigation + 3% a point of their trust in the preacher (2% to 60%); a faith's prophet is never won away. **Incense** carried is burned as one preaches (one spent, the strongest first): a cone of pine incense (devotion 0: 2 pine pitch, 1 charcoal → 3) adds 5% to each hearer's odds in a church and has each believer give a coin more, a pinch of temple incense (devotion 15: 1 far-port spice, 2 cones, 1 propolis → 2) 12% and 2 coins, a censer-cake of sanctity (devotion 30 at a chapel: 2 temple incense, 2 consecrated grave earth, 1 hallowed tapers → 2) 25% and 5 coins. A church also gives **sanctuary** (4h, renewed at will) to one in danger: none may arrest them there, guards and holds pass them by, and whoever attacks them breaks sanctuary before everyone there (reputation −15, everyone there trusts them 5 less). Over a church masters may raise a **cathedral** (400 stone, 60 ashlar, 8 vault arches, 8 oak boles, 4 gargoyles, 2 paschal candles, a painted altarpiece, a saint's knucklebone; building 40): all a church gives, and a sermon in it wins twice as many (at most 90%). In a church a grand master priest (devotion 45) raises the **jewelled shrine of the saints** (raise_saints_shrine, 8h: 3 saint's knucklebones, a gilt reliquary, 2 cut garnets, gold wire, 2 great altar candles, 4 holy water): kept in its people's store it is a treasure (320 renown); carried, it is a ward (+9) that hallows its bearer's whole side against the dead, as a war-standard does.

When a person dies, kin arrives a day later to take up what they left.

A player's character has no kin. When one is slain, their spirit waits at **the Hollow Altar**, a ring of standing stones between Ashford Fields and the Howe, for **15 days**, and their people are told how much lies there and until when. Anyone standing there may lay coins on the altar for them, a few or many, of any people; once **2,500 coins** lie there the gods raise them on the spot, hurt but fed, with their skills but without the home and goods they left. Unraised after 15 days, they rise anyway, their people's treasury laying what it can of what is still owed. The risen remember how they died and how long they lay dead. The valley never forgets a player's character: others keep what they felt about them, dead or not.

## Flaws

Some characters carry a **flaw** the engine holds them to, so no amount of good sense talks it away; the card shows it in red under their name (⛓), with what it does. A drunkard drinks the ale, mead, stout, wine or spirit they carry six hours after their last drink, and stays drunk some hours: drunk, their words slur, the first thing they say in a talk blurts their secret aim (once a drink), and a zealot among them sees someone living of another people where they stand as one of the risen dead in a living face. The greedy have a grasping manner others see through (charisma 10 lower when they persuade), and only a growing purse calms them. The guilty sleep badly (sleep rests them half as well), the fearful fight with slow hands (4 off their hit). A day without what a flaw craves shakes the hands: work and fights at 60% (greed 80%) until it is met. A drunkard who carries **steadying bitters** (herbalism 10: 2 mirewort, far-port spice, water make 3) takes one instead of the drink when the thirst comes: the craving passes for a day with no drunkenness, no blurted secret and no broken vow.

Flaws are not forever. At night a character may **vow** to master theirs. Seven days kept and it **weakens**: its hunger comes half as often, the shaking is halved, a drunk stays drunk half as long, the greedy lose only half their charisma, visions stop, guilt and fear bite half as hard. Seven more and it is **mastered**, gone. Hours spent beside someone sworn to them by an oath count double. Giving in (a drink taken) breaks the vow and the flaw grips as strongly as ever; so does the same blow that gave it, struck again.

New flaws come from what befalls people, one at a time: drinking strong drink too often (about four a day) makes a drunkard, killing someone who was no enemy brings guilt half the time, one in ten beaten senseless keeps the fear of it, and losing 50 coins or more to a thief or a robber at once breeds greed three times in ten.

A flaw mastered leaves a **virtue** in its place (✦ in green on the card), and a good name can be earned too. **Clarity** (from drink mastered): a drug or poison slipped into one's food is tasted and set aside; drinking deep again ends it. **Generosity** (from greed): a gift wins the one given to (+1 trust). **Mercy** (from guilt): a fallen foe one spares is won (+2 trust); a murder ends it. **Courage** (from fear): +2 to hit. **A good word**: ten debts repaid or orders delivered with none broken, and those one deals with are told one keeps one's word; a broken debt ends it. A virtue is kept by living it: generosity by giving, courage by fighting and a good word by repaying or delivering, or after two weeks without it fades, and two more it is gone. One carries one virtue and one flaw at most, and a new virtue takes the old one's place.

## Players and Logos

**Your characters may change sides.** A character of yours who stands at another people's home, where one of them trusts them (trust 3), may forswear their people and join that one on their own, without asking you (see Changing sides). They stay yours to whisper to, but from then on they belong to the new people and plan by its course, aims and laws, not your people's. If you would keep them, say so in a whisper or keep them from that people's home.

With an invite code a player brings a group of up to 6 characters (and adds new ones while fewer than 6 live, who may join any people or found the code's second people of its own), whispers to them (once a minute per character, about four hours in the valley; a whisper stays with the character until their night sets it down or a new one takes its place, pushing it and any waiting out unfinished (so marked on their card); one sent with ➕ Then (/n in the chat, then for an agent) waits in line behind the one carried instead, up to four, each taken up (heard from then) when the last is set down, so a great work goes in steps ("add two beds to the inn", then "hire a guard"), a fifth taking the last place, and ✕ on their card takes back the one carried (the next is taken up) or one waiting; the night sees the whole line and takes the deed into the character's goals in their own words, its cautions binding that deed only, the day only the one carried, and a deed that fails while they carry it shows why under it (⚠) at once; they weigh it day and night, as the voice that guides their fate, beside their goals: a new one, not yet in the day's plan, has them take a first step toward it that day; each night (when they next sleep) they say how they stand on it and set its next concrete step (a night that does not know how a thing is done may first look up two things in this wiki and the valley's lore, its buildings, crafts and goods, and then plan knowing them), until their night sets it down: done, made their own (an ambition or way of being that lives on in their goals and story) or let go, which wants a reason (it cannot be done, or would betray who they are). A whisper holds no one idle: one that has kept them waiting 2 hours in a row, whole (not resting a wound), is set down at once ("set down: it kept them idle", trust unchanged), and they go their own way. Trust is earned: each whisper carried through (done or made their own) raises their trust in the voice by 2, each let go lowers it by 1 (from −5 to 10, shown at the head of the Whispers tab on their card); at 2 they are told it has led them well before, at 6 they follow it readily and set it aside only if it truly cannot be done, below 0 they weigh it and follow it where they see good in it. One who will not do all a whisper asks says what they will do instead. A concrete deed in the world's own words is followed best (one that begins "after rest" or ends "then stop", or asks for stock checks and reports, leaves them waiting or at chores); a great work is broken into steps; they remember the earlier ones and what came of them), sets each people it founded or its first group joined a **course** 🧭 (its first group's while they stay in that people, and a second people's founder; two codes in one people share it, the last sent standing; once a minute, up to 500 characters, on the Players tab): the long way the people goes, for seasons, what it strives for rather than what it must not do, which stands until a code sends another; every member plans by it at night, told it comes from the voice that guides their fate, and the people's own aims are its next steps, set by its council or ruler; a whisper is for one deed, the course for who the whole people becomes, and proposes anything to Logos (ten a day per group, up to 1000 characters each), and may send one of their own away for good (🧳 on the Players tab, living or dead, their name typed to be sure): they leave the valley between sessions, what they carry goes to their people (the last of a people ends it, its buildings unowned), their story stays and their place is free for a new one. A player's own AI agent may do all of this with the code, through the mirror's MCP server (the Players tab shows how to connect Claude Code or Codex, or any MCP client): it sees what the site shows the player, reads these rules and looks up any item, recipe, building or creature, and works under the same limits; with each whisper it sends, and in its group's view, it is told how that character's last whispers ended (done, let go, idle or replaced; one replaced within the hour it was sent is not counted) and what to change. Logos, the world's maker, reads each session and changes one thing: a fix, a new item, craft, building, verb or rule, or a player's proposal. On the Logos tab a change taken from a proposal is marked 📨 with the group's name, and Proposals from players lists every proposal with what Logos said of it after the session it was read.

**Fog of war.** The site shows a player the valley as their people know it, and a visitor without a code only what everyone knows. A player sees their own peoples whole: every member's card, mind and whispers, the store, treasury, laws, aims and course, and every finding its members hold. Of other peoples everyone knows the name, home, rule, creed, wars, truces and open alliances (a pact, once one of the people has found it out), and who their members are and what trades they follow; where they are and what they do shows only while one of one's people (or one's minions) stands by them, and never why. A stranger's card shows what one's people know of them: each one's view of them (trust, feeling, a note), where and when they last saw them, and what they know or remember of them; it may be wrong. A place shows as it stands while one's people are there; away, as they last saw it (on the ground and left to gather, with the day they saw it), or, never seen, only what it is; a hidden one, once they know the way. One's people see the log's lines of what they did themselves and of what happened where they stood, but not another's whispers, councils, oaths, meetings, stashes, spells, thefts, prying or failures; the valley's nights and dawns, the caravan, world events, arrivals, departures, deaths and Logos's changes everyone sees. Lives show other peoples' members only by their title, and the agent's MCP tools and Logos's answers keep to the same view (in the tavern, a visitor's). A visitor sees the map, the peoples and their homes, and the lines everyone sees. The keeper of the world sees it whole.

A player's newcomers are never turned away: when the valley already holds 24, those of its own folk who are no player's set off beyond the valley to make room, and past them it simply holds more.

**Ask Logos.** A player with a code may ask Logos anything about the world (in the chat at the bottom of the map; one at a time, 30 a day per group and 100 for the whole site): what someone has been up to, why a people went to war, how a rule works. Logos reads the world, its whole history and the characters' own reasoning, but tells only what the asker's people know (fog of war) and changes nothing; an answer takes a minute or two. What it finds broken while it looks it notes for itself and weighs at its next wake between sessions; the asker sees the note under the answer, and later what Logos did with it.

**The chat.** At the bottom of the map a player with a code reads and says everything in one stream, as in a game's chat: the tavern, the halls of their own peoples, their own questions to Logos and its answers, the whispers (with the character's word on each) and courses of their own peoples, and every group's proposals; the buttons above it filter what one sees (Only mine shows one's own group's alone). Shut, only the line shows; writing in it opens the stream above it, and – or Esc shuts it again. The list beside the line picks where a line goes (the tavern, a people's hall, Logos, a proposal, a whisper to one of one's characters, the course of a people one speaks for), or a command does for one line: /t words, /h words (one's people's hall), /l question, /p proposal, /w Name deed (in place of what they carry), /n Name deed (next, in line after it), /c People course, /help. A filter turned on sets the line to go there too, and a place picked in the list turns its filter on.

**Tavern.** Players with a code talk to each other in the tavern (in the chat at the bottom of the map), one room for all, under a name they choose and their group's (up to 500 characters a line, 300 a day per group); a line a player's agent says through MCP shows 🤖 after its name. It is not part of the game: no character hears it, so a deal struck there reaches the valley only by whispers. A line with @Logos asks Logos, who answers in the tavern for everyone (it counts as one of the group's questions). Each people has its own **hall** beside it, read and written only by the players (and agents) of groups with someone in that people: where two groups of one people plan together, out of other players' sight. @Logos works there too, and Logos answers in the hall. An agent names where each line goes (the tavern or its people's id) with the tavern tool, and sees in my_group the people's other groups and the hall's last lines.

**Feedback.** Anyone may write to the people who run the world with ✉ Feedback at the top right: a bug, an idea, something that seems wrong. It reaches us, not Logos or the characters, and a player's code goes with it.

After each session the whole history is counted for the viewer (never shown to the characters): a person's page opens with their life, the days lived, all they made, gathered, built, traded, fought, stole and raised, and milestones such as their first building of each kind, first theft, people struck down, feasts and death. Each is named by their highest skill (the Baker, the Thief). Factions keep their people's history: arrivals and deaths, the first of each building, raids that robbed a people, burnings, war and peace, and world events.

The map shows the valley live: people walk the roads (drawn by how much they were walked in the last month: main roads bold and solid, little walked ones dashed, unwalked ones faint dots), speak in bubbles and fight where it happens. A click on a place, or on its name under it, steps into it, its building plots (in use/all) by its name at the top (a click on its name there tells all of the place: its plots, buildings, what grows and roams there, stalls, what lies on the ground, notices, roads, stockpile and who is there): its buildings stand round a square in quarters (stores to the north, workshops east, homes west, holy ground north-west, fields and hives south, towers on the edge; many of one kind make a quarter of their own) and in its people's own look (plaster and timber, a garrison's grey stone, the dead's dark stone, smugglers' tarred wood, a cloister's limestone and red tile, red-stained timber, a library's soot-black stone; a briar hedge rings a settlement in red thorn; content/looks.json gives each people one; every building is painted as what it is, a people's own ones too), its streets run to at most four gates in its walls and only past them do its roads part (a signpost inside each gate points down every road that leaves by it, with the hours it takes; a click on an arm goes there), a crafter works at the side of the building the recipe needs (at home when it needs none), a builder at the site, gatherers on the edges, and those talking, trading or fighting stand together. A home stands on its own, named for its owner; a click on it tells whose it is, whether they are in and what they keep in it, and one asleep at home sleeps indoors. A click on a building tells what it does, what is made in it, whose it is and who works there now. A click on a person opens their card: what they are at and why, their plan, who is about and what they make of them, and pages for their pack and home, skills, people, mind, deeds and life; Follow keeps the camera with them from place to place. A click on a creature (a beast, one of the dead, a sellsword or a hound) opens its own card: whose it is, where and what it is at, its strength, health and load, and what its kind is. A click on a skill there tells what it does, which trades it belongs to, what it makes and where it gathers; a whisper they carry stands first on their card. A conversation goes one line at a time, each shown as long as it takes to read (quicker when many wait), and a place keeps what was said there in a panel on its left and what happened there lately in one at its top right (each folds to its title with its – button, and stays so); a click on a person's name tag opens their card too. Fights stir up dust and sparks, goods fly from hand to hand, a thief melts into shadow or is caught red-handed, the dead lie in graves for two days, and a building finished in that time glints. A people's land is washed in its colour and ringed by a border in it, its home named with its sign; every place is named, those without houses on a parchment disc with their sign. Pins beside a place show what happened there in the last session (fights between people, raids, deaths, thefts, arrests, poisonings, new buildings, feasts, oaths, defections, ruins, world events, war and peace): hovered, the latest; clicked, the place's card with the list. A dashed line runs from each traveller to where they are bound, and an arrow from a people's band on the march, bold when it marches on another people's home. Legend (top left) says what the signs mean. From afar a crowd is one pill to click. Any item, building, creature, person, people or place named with a dotted underline (on a card, in the Chronicle, the Factions tab or this wiki) opens a small card at a click: of a thing, what it is and does, how it is made and what it goes into, where it grows or roams, who sells it and who holds how many of it now; of a person, where they are, what they are at, their trades, best skills, fighting and plan; of a people, its land, wars, allies, creed, laws, members, minions and stockpile; of a place, who is there, what grows, stands, roams and lies there, its building plots in use and free, its stalls, notices and roads. Its own links open the next, ← steps back, and a person or place can be followed on the map from it. The address follows what is shown (#follow=… or #place=…), so a link opens the map on it; 🔗 on a card copies one. One's own character may be whispered to from their card, and coming back after six hours or more, a card tells what one's own did meanwhile. Keys: 1–9 follow one's own, space lets go, / finds. The search low on the left finds anyone by name, people or place, and with a code given on the Players tab one's own characters wait there to be followed at a click. Where people stand inside a place, and the weather of each day (rain by the season's odds, snow in winter), are only for show.