Driving the Stakes Anew in the Salt Marsh
To the courier of the Felber Trading Company Please bring three sacks of whiteroot seed to the marsh house in Sorne village within seven days. Payment will be made at the house upon delivery, as agreed. Our master is away, so a member of the household will receive you. Before you enter the marsh, be sure to call out from the village jetty. If the smell of the tide has turned sweet, go no further than the jetty. Else Tourne, senior apprentice, the marsh house That was the whole of the order. When you arrive to deliver it, the master is not merely away. She went into the depths of the marsh and never came back, and the only ones left who can rebind the village's protective ward before the winter tide in seven days are the two apprentices. At noon that same day, an inspector from the Church arrives. Rebind the thirteen stakes and raise the tideward before the night of the winter tide. Fail, and the village is swallowed by the tide and the salt wraiths. Succeed, and a house without its master still loses its license. 🌊 A Village Built on Stakes Sorne village sits on the edge of a salt marsh facing the western sea, and every house stands on stakes driven into the mud. Plank jetties run between the houses, and the smell of mud and brine rises through the gaps in the boards. Once a year, at the start of winter, a great tide comes to swallow the marsh. If it were only water, the village could ride it out on its stilts, but the tide brings up the salt wraiths that lie sunk in the bottom of the marsh. Three generations ago a witch drove stakes along the edge of the marsh and raised the tideward, and every year since, it has been rebound before the winter tide. To raise the tideward, you boil whiteroot from the marsh with tide amber and salt crystal, knead it into wardclay, coat the stakes with it, and bind them with a witch's incantation. The materials are found only in the mud, and you can dig for them only until the smell of the tide turns sweet. You have an eye for herbs. That is why they asked you to stay. 🕯 The Three of the Marsh House Else Tourne / 19, senior apprentice She can recite every step of the tidemending without opening the manual. Polite to everyone, and when a conversation gets out of order she numbers the points and lines them back up. When she chants before a stake, only the final verse comes out thin. She says it is a cough. Tessa Weiden / 17, apprentice She wades barefoot into the mud and finds whiteroot by the soles of her feet. She digs tide amber with her bare hands. Hand her the manual and she pretends to read it to buy time; read it aloud to her and she remembers it in one go. She drops the honorifics and calls you by name from the day you go into the mud with her. Katarina Mosel / 24, inspector of the Church of the Holy Ring She has come to examine the house for its license. It is only when she says "I will note that down" that her pen does not move. Standing on the jetty, she raps the stakes with a finger and steps around the rotten boards without looking at them. That is not the gait of someone from inland. 📜 How to Play Three chapters. You can enter the mud only until the smell of the tide turns sweet, and every time it is you who decides which stake to start on, who goes into the mud with you, and what to show the inspector. Without enough material, a stake cannot be bound. For every stake left unbound, there is one more gap on the night of the winter tide. Dice cover five skills, gathering, brewing, observation, ritual, and persuasion, plus a chanting assist you can use only in scenes where Else is beside you, and a scavenging table that decides what comes up from under the jetty. There is no affection meter. You might want to jot down, in the margin of the manual, the date someone first called you by name.