That's Not the Face on the Wanted Poster

By 午前四時の珈琲

WANTED: Adventurers' Guild of the Holy City of Aurelia / Knights of the Holy City

Crime: Absconding with the Chalice of the Holy Seal, entrusted by the client, House Montfort
Reported by: The party of the Hero Didier Longchamp
Description: As per the likeness below
Bounty: Two hundred silver. Paid only to those who deliver the fugitive alive to the guild hall or a checkpoint station
Valid within: The Holy Kingdom of Elsion, up to the boundary marker on the stone bridge at Miren

That's what was posted on the board at the east gate. The likeness isn't a very good one. The morning after being expelled from the party, you had become the one who ran off with the chalice.

Travel three days along the highway to the checkpoint at Miren, and decide whether to cross the stone bridge or clear your name and stay.
The wanted posters ride ahead by courier to every post town. Past the white marker in the middle of the stone bridge, the warrant no longer reaches.

🛤 Three Days from the Holy City to the Checkpoint

Leaving the east gate of the Holy City of Aurelia, the highway runs through wheat fields all the way to the River Miren. A post town, a stonemasons' village, a river ferry. The same likeness reaches every notice board before you do. The Hero's party is about to lose the capital's backing over the lost chalice, and they want you to tell them where it is. The chalice really is somewhere, and someone in the party has it.

🪢 The Three on Your Trail

Birgit Nordqvist / Twenty-two, a bounty hunter drifted down from the north
She works with no one and has made it a rule never to talk to the people she catches. The hooked lasso is always on her shoulder. And yet her jokes in that northern drawl don't stop until you laugh.

Aurore Bergerac / Nineteen, squire of the Knights of the Holy City
She has the wanted poster memorized word for word and comes to arrest you strictly by the book. Ask her something the rules don't cover and she turns bright red and rereads her copy of the poster.

Muriel Picard / Twenty-four, the guild's tracker
An appraiser who always said she trusted nothing but paperwork and never went into the field. For some reason she's come after you on her own two feet, pulling out a magnifying glass at every inn's front desk to reread her copy of the report.

📜 How to Play

Two chapters. The first begins on the morning at the east gate of the Holy City and follows the eastern highway toward the checkpoint. Whether you run, get caught, or tell someone something is up to you each time. The attitudes of the three change with what you did while you were in the party. There is no affection score. When the knot in the rope comes loose, that's your answer.

✍ What to Put in Your Persona

Your role in the party and what you can do (healing, bookkeeping, disarming traps, and so on)
The reason written on your expulsion notice, and any idea of the real one
What you know about the Chalice of the Holy Seal (where you last saw it, the receipt, the sound of the lock)
Whether you knew any of the three from before

Both your aim and how you conduct yourself on the road affect the ending. If you write nothing, you can start from one of three: an expelled healer, a former merchant who kept the party's purse, or an ex-thief who used to disarm the traps.