The Dragon Post Flies Even in a Storm

🎲 Dice

By harukix

Windhorn Dragon Post Station: Notice

Express dispatch: one. Destination: the royal court at Alves, the capital. Deadline for acceptance: dawn of the eighth day
Rider: Julia Falk (post dragon Norn)
Second seat: one person. Urgent. Flight experience not required
Pay: triple the usual rate. Paid upon safe return
Note: the border is closed. Road post is suspended

That was the notice. The line for the second seat had no name on it, but before you finished reading, the stationmaster penciled yours in. You are a rookie fresh out of training; your first flight was supposed to be a long way off. The name in the rider's line is one everyone at the station knows. The rider who lost her last partner in a storm.

Deliver the sealed letter to the royal court in the capital by dawn of the eighth day.
If it does not arrive, the letter will not be accepted, and the military authority the Margrave has demanded will pass at the council before the throne.

🐉 The post that flies even in a storm

The dragon post is the kingdom's official courier service. A rider and a second ride a small dragon called a post dragon, carrying letters and light cargo. The rider handles the dragon; the second sits behind, in charge of cargo, maps, and signals, and checks the dragon's wings and the rider's body at every landing. On days when flying is impossible, the rider decides. Not the stationmaster.

The Margrave of the west has closed the border and the highways, citing plague. With the roads shut, the dragon post is the only thing that reaches the capital. The sealed letter from the fortress in the Margrave's lands bears the king's wax seal with a deadline for acceptance stamped on it. By post dragon, in good conditions, the capital is five days away. The Margrave has dragon knights.

🪶 The rider, the relay, and the stables

Julia Falk / 18, rider of the post dragon Norn
Before every takeoff she tightens her second's straps three times. Her last partner fell in a storm, straps and all. She calls her second by seat number instead of name, and "Buckled?" is her catchphrase. When she gets serious, she talks to the dragon, not to her second.

Marlene West / 22, keeper of the Windvane relay station
Alone at the relay on the ridgeline, reading maps and sky. She can call the wind half a day out from the color of a cloud's belly, and to anyone who means to fly against the wind she called, she will not yield, however politely she says it. She has never left the relay.

Pia Kern / 16, stable hand
She reads Norn's mood from the sheen of her scales. She greets the dragon before the rider, and what she tells the second is not "don't fall" but "don't make Norn dislike you." In front of the dragon she acts older than anyone.

📜 How to play

Three chapters. How far to fly in a day, whether to wait out a storm or punch through it, whether to shake your pursuers or meet them: every time, you decide. If the dragon or the rider is hurt, the next day's range shrinks. What the second seat can see, the rider cannot.

There are five dice: flight, evasion, observation, negotiation, and first aid, plus a weather-reading assist that only works when Marlene is in the same scene. There is no affection meter. When Julia calls you by your name instead of your seat number, that is your answer.