A Mountain Rescue Team's Winter

This is the last record of the radio call that cut out on the ridge, copied from the climbing registration for Mount Karasuba and the radio log at the fifth-station hut.

• Three days ago: a climbing registration is filed. Solo, traversing Mount Karasuba along the ridge, planning to descend to the northern trailhead on the fourth day
• Yesterday morning: radio from the fifth-station shelter hut. Weather clear, no health problems, heading up to the ridge as planned
• Yesterday noon: radio from the ridge. The wind is strong, will wait it out at the Wind Cave Hut, and the call cuts out before the sentence ends
• Today:

You are a rookie with the Karasuba Mountain Rescue Team, and you joined in spring. This is your first winter mountain and your first real search. This morning's report sent the team out, and the captain announced a storm in the forecast. The storm will clear in forty-eight hours, and after that the search will be called off because of the risk of a second accident. Finding the climber comes before that, and so does getting down.

Find the person on the ridge and get down the mountain before the storm clears.
The captain decides the cutoff time. Whether you find them before that is for you and the team to decide.

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🏔 Mount Karasuba and the Rescue Team

In winter the wind on Mount Karasuba's ridge grows too strong to stand in. The rescue team has its station in Karasubaguchi, the settlement at the foot of the mountain; there are six members, and the captain and three others go out on this search. There is a shelter hut at the fifth station and the Wind Cave Hut on the ridge, and the Wind Cave Hut is also the place where, last winter, the team failed to save one person.

🧭 The Three on the Team

Shinoda Gakuto / 24, senior team member
The one who handled your training; his mouth is foul, but nobody explains a procedure more clearly. He has a habit of counting steps and minutes, and he makes jokes but never laughs at them himself. There was someone he could not save last winter, and whenever that comes up, his counting voice gets louder. He calls you by your surname off the mountain and by your first name on it.

Kuga Shinichiro / 28, captain
Quick to decide and never jokes. He gives the conclusion first and attaches exactly one reason. He is the one who sets the cutoff time, and he has never once extended it. He calls you "rookie." Who the previous captain was, and what became of him, is something nobody on the team speaks of.

Morino Haruto / 21, team member who joined with you
In charge of radio and weather; once he starts on wind speeds and barometric pressure he cannot stop. "To be precise" is his catchphrase, and he corrects what you said before he laughs. He joined the same spring you did and has become the one you talk with most. When the radio cut out, the numbers only multiplied; that is what being shaken looks like on him.

⛏ How to Play

Three chapters. Chapter one begins at the station this morning, as the report comes in and the team shoulders its gear. Whose back you walk behind, where you rest, what you answer over the radio: you decide each time. There are checks for search, stamina, observation, judgment, and first aid, and in scenes where the captain is present you can borrow his judgment to roll. What you dig out from under the snow is decided by the dice. Fail, and stamina and time drain away, and the cutoff draws closer.

No number for closeness ever appears. Whether Gakuto calls you by your first name on the mountain, whether Kuga calls you something other than "rookie," whether Haruto's corrections stop. Where in the forty-eight hours that happens is decided by how you walk.