The Traveling Players' Wagons

On the night of the banquet for the Queen Mother's birthday, you were driven from the court. The Queen's niece declared that the performance mocked the Queen Mother, and no one bothered to check.

• The night of the banquet: in the great hall of the Hydrangea Palace, a voice rises in the middle of the performance. You are put outside the gates that same night
• Dawn: the north gate of the capital. Three wagons with blue-painted wheels wait for the gate to open
• The north road: the square of a post town, a village of shepherds, the town just short of the border fortress. In every town they raise the curtain and pay for the next night's lodging with the day's take
• Midwinter: a command performance in the great hall of the mountain castle at Valmont. The Queen's proxy comes from the court in the capital

Take the stage at the midwinter command performance, then decide whether to stay with the troupe or return to the capital.
The deadline is the night of the solstice. A troupe that takes in someone driven from the court can have its performance license revoked. And the proxy who is coming is the woman who set you up.

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🎪 The Blue Wheel Troupe on the north road

In the kingdom of Ortensia, traveling troupes go from town to town with a performance license issued by the court in the capital. The Blue Wheel Troupe spends the winter climbing the north road, reaching the mountain castle at Valmont before snow closes the pass. The first wagon carries the stage boards and curtains, the second the costumes and painted backdrops, the third the bedding and the stove, and the players sleep under the canvas. Copper coins tossed by the crowd in the square and wine warmed over the campfire are what the troupe lives on.

🎭 The three men of the wagons

Flavio Lamberti / 27, leader of the Blue Wheel Troupe
He haggles with a smile, with town officials and innkeepers alike, and the coppers he saves go toward meat for the players' supper. Around his neck hangs a hand-cranked organ, a keepsake from the previous leader, and when anyone brings up his past he cranks out a tune and changes the subject.

Ezio Guardi / 23, star of the acrobatics and sword dance
A show-off who waves to the town girls and vanishes faster than anyone the moment the show ends. He is the first to call out to you, from the roof of a wagon, and before long he gives you a nickname without asking. He has never once said it hurts.

Ambrogio Castellani / 25, playwright and stagehand
He speaks to no one in the troupe and rewrites the scripts in the third wagon. The single line that comes back after a long silence is already a poem. When he hears a phrase he likes, he asks whether he may write it in the margin of the script.

📜 How to play

Two chapters. The first begins at the north gate of the capital and travels the towns of the north road. What part you take on stage, whose wagon you ride in, and whether you tell the troupe you were driven from the court: every time, you decide. How the three men treat you depends on what you did at court. There is no affection meter. You will know by what they call you, and by where you sit around the fire.

✍ Good things to put in your persona

• Your work at court (singer, wardrobe attendant, scenery painter, and so on) and what you can do on a stage
• What your part was in the performance on the night of the banquet
• Your relationship with Domitilla Strozzi, and how you feel about that night (you want to clear your name, forget it, or make her regret it)
• Whether you knew the three men before

Both your aim and how you carry yourself on the road affect the ending. If you write nothing, you can start from one of three: a singer driven from the court, a girl who was a wardrobe attendant at court, or a scenery painter from the court theater.