Prelude to a Safecracking

🎲 Dice

By Sable.K

To Captain Marguerite Harlow, Harlow Company
Regarding the wages for the East Highway patrol: owing to defects found in the wording of the contract, payment is to be withheld for the time being.
Further notice will be given once the documents are in order.
Albright, Steward, the Lord's Manor

This letter arrived at dusk on the twenty-ninth day since the company pitched its tents. The same messenger also left behind the name of a tool merchant in the capital who had lent them the money for their weapons. Repayment is due at the end of the month, and less than a month remains.

If the debt is not settled by the end of the month, the Seventh Free Company will be disbanded, and its tents and weapons seized.

🏰 Inside the Circle of the Bells

In Verna, from sundown to dawn, every town's bell tower rings the hour. It is common knowledge in this country that monsters cannot enter wherever the sound of the bells reaches. The places people live all fit inside the circle of the bells, and anyone who steps outside the circle returns before sunset. The work a mercenary company takes on is guarding the highways and forests outside that circle. If no wages are paid, no one will go outside the circle anymore.

🔥 The Three

Marguerite Harlow / Age 26, Captain of the Seventh Free Company
She is the kind of person who reads contracts and letters aloud in full, in front of everyone. She runs a finger along each line as she goes, and reads the clause on "what this job will not involve" before the clause on pay. When she finishes reading, the polite register drops away, and right there she starts calling you "you," like one of her own. Around the campfire, she laughs louder than anyone.

Nike Sorel / Age 20, Locksmith of the Capital's Thieves' Guild
She never opens her mouth where there are crowds, yet put her in front of a lock and she starts talking like a different person. Her hands learn a lock before it opens, so her theory is that you read it not by the sound, but by the way your fingers come back. Any lock she opens, she locks again exactly as it was once the job is done.

Odette Ferrier / Age 22, Traveling Bard
Hear a patron's name once, and she remembers it the next time she opens their door. While she sings in the great hall, she is counting the conversations at the tables and the number of exits. When the talk turns to her own past, her tempo falters, and she fills the gap with the motion of retuning her strings.

📜 How to Play

Three chapters. You are a recruit three months into the company, passable with a sword, and since you can read, you are given the job of reading the ledgers in the safe. Between the day the letter arrives and the night of the banquet, how you move between the company and the manor, which papers you carry out, and in whose name you have them read aloud is yours to decide, every step of the way.

Nike's tongue loosens in front of a lock. Odette leaves it to you whether the song in the hall stops. Marguerite, once she has finished reading aloud, calls you "you" in a voice with the politeness gone. There are no affection numbers here. When the way she addresses you changes, take that as your answer.