From the campaign archives · Marktag, 5th of Pflugzeit, 2007 IC
A whispered promise of gems brings the Nordost Kin to an abandoned market; an ancestral fraud brings the Bitterbrows to the same doorstep. Three buildings decide their first battle, and Mjølnir pays for the watchtower with a hand.
Victory to the Nordost Kin on the reported positions: Baldur held the watchtower to the end, Torgrim occupied the merchant’s shop, and Biorn and Ragnar overcame Flint at the rear ruin. The exact finishing turn and whether either warband voluntarily routed were not recorded.
Before the first blow
Once, the market had supplied a wealthy neighbourhood. Carved lintels still advertised silks, spices and discreet credit; beneath them, weeds grew through the sockets where brass doorplates had been prised away. The canal that had carried deliveries was choked with a collapsed crossing. Most counters had been stripped long ago, but the gem merchant’s shop stood curiously unpicked beneath its broken upper windows. Around it, a watchtower and a rear ruin offered command of the approaches. Holding those three buildings would secure the market, but the untouched cellar suggested a danger that had outlasted the disaster.
From their perspective
The informant had identified the gem merchant’s basement but would not explain why its contents remained untouched. He said only that most people kept away. Agnar had spent the road south learning what a family could afford to fear. A cellar of unclaimed valuables might buy walls, a roof, perhaps even land. Despite the warning, he brought his kin to the market. The dwarfs approaching the same shop threatened their chance of securing it.
From their perspective
The merchant’s great-great-grandfather had tricked an ancestor of Jorgrim Bitterbrow. Humans might regard that as history; the Bitterbrows regarded it as an unpaid account. If the present merchant could be found, he would hear the particulars. If he could not, there were other ways to settle a debt. Grakki welcomed the prospect of searching a forgotten market. Gammling said a merchant’s promises were worthless even before the roof fell in. Neither had expected Ostlanders to stand between the clan and its reckoning.
An account of blood & wyrdstone
The two companies sighted each other across the old market and recognised that they were converging on the same shop. Agnar pointed towards the watchtower. Mjølnir and Baldur broke away through the stalls, climbed the narrow stair and emerged among the roof battlements. Baldur tested the room for his great blade and clipped a stone ornament off the parapet. Mjølnir warned him to save his blows for the approaching dwarfs.
Below, the Bitterbrows entered the collapsed canal. Grakki went eagerly, describing it as a promising shortcut; Gammling called it a ditch and condemned the generation that had built it. Then Skalle raised his hands. Green light filled his eyes, and something beneath the drowned masonry answered. Vines lashed out of the water, winding round boots and knees. The dwarfs argued as they struggled to free themselves, their advance nearly halted beneath the ruined crossing.
The reprieve bought Torgrim his opening. He sprinted into the merchant’s shop, found the stairs and took a second-floor window above the street. From there he rained arrows upon the dwarfs. One struck a shutter, another vanished into canal mud, and the others lodged in the surrounding woodwork. Not one wounded an enemy. Torgrim stayed at his window all the same, holding the building while his kin fought to secure the approaches.
The vines could delay the Bitterbrows, but could not stop them. Jorgrim and Gammling forced their way through and rushed the watchtower. The old clansman complained about every stair without noticeably slowing on any of them. At the battlements Mjølnir met him hammer-first, driving him back a pace and cracking stone where his head had been. Gammling recovered and pressed forward again, fighting with a veteran’s patience despite his anger.
A cramped exchange against the parapet ended with Mjølnir down and out of the fight. The wound would cost him a hand. Baldur’s next swing had none of the careless enthusiasm of his first: he caught Gammling and put the old dwarf out of action in turn. Then he turned on Jorgrim. The lord slipped one broad stroke, then another, while Baldur’s blade struck the battlements. Neither could finish the other.
At the canal’s broken lip, Agnar, Biorn and Ragnar charged the advancing Norri, Orri and Grakki head-on. Agnar took the first clash on his shield but lost his footing on the broken ground. Orri pressed him hard before the elder recovered. Grakki came out of the water grinning, his eagerness undiminished by the crossing. Ragnar swung into the knot of dwarfs with enough force to make the old market stalls shudder.
Norri proved difficult to hit. The slayer kept his balance on the treacherous ground, twisted between blows and left Ragnar striking empty air. Biorn’s first attempt to catch him failed, plunging his face into the canal water. Eventually Biorn closed bodily and wrangled Norri down. For one brief moment the slayer had nowhere left to slip. Ragnar put him out of action.
Beside them, Orri kept coming at Agnar with a beardling’s determination not to be treated as one. He nearly forced the elder back into the water; Agnar steadied himself against a broken mooring stone and put Orri out of action. Grakki tried to turn Biorn’s exposed flank, finding one last opportunity where a more cautious dwarf might have seen a warning. Biorn met him and brought him down. The canal had been crossed, but its far bank belonged to the kin.
Skalle worked behind them, calling strength into weary limbs and summoning squirrels among the wrecked stalls. Tiny claws scratched through the debris as his kin renewed their efforts. One creature paused on a shattered weighing scale. The priest was so intent upon his prayers that he did not see the danger leaving the tower.
Jorgrim had heard his kin fighting below. With another of Baldur’s swings passing behind him, he broke away and ran down to reinforce the struggle for the merchant’s house. Baldur reached the stair, looked back across the battlements, and chose the objective over pursuit. Jorgrim found Skalle before he could reach the other fighting. The summoned creatures offered no protection: the furious lord put the priest out of action, cutting short his prayer.
In the rear ruin, Flint made himself a final, stubborn obstacle. Biorn charged him and found that a beardling behind a good stretch of broken wall could be very difficult to shift. Flint held bravely, turning the confined approach against the more experienced fighter. Then Ragnar charged in as well. There was room to keep Biorn at bay, or room to avoid an ogre, but not both. Ragnar put Flint out of action, and the rear position was lost to the Bitterbrows.
When the fighting ended, Baldur still stood on the watchtower amid the damaged stonework, determined to remain until he was relieved. Torgrim remained in the merchant’s shop, counting what arrows he could still see. Biorn and Ragnar had broken the defence of the rear ruin. The kin had won the ground, but the cellar door below the shop remained closed.
When the fighting ends
The old market had changed hands without becoming any less abandoned. Mjølnir’s wound made the cost plain; Baldur’s revenge could not restore what Gammling had taken. Later, a dispatch leaf found by the kin and a boatman’s testimony bought by the Bitterbrows suggested the same unwelcome truth: the merchant had moved his gems before the disaster. He had complained that something beneath the cellar was knocking back when he counted them. Each warband now possessed a cryptic delivery mark, but neither had recovered a single stone. The campaign archivist has set their separate accounts beside one another below; the rivals themselves have shared nothing.
From their perspective
Agnar counted his people before he counted buildings. Once relieved at his window, Torgrim found a dispatch leaf tucked inside the shop’s false-bottomed cash drawer. Its date preceded the disaster. ‘Remove every gem. The knocking beneath the cellar has begun to answer the tally. Keep the destination under the five seals.’ An impression of the merchant’s routing plate lay beneath it, with instructions governing the spacing and order of its marks. Agnar folded it away. They had found a possible route to the treasure, not the treasure itself. He left the cellar unopened that night.
From their perspective
Jorgrim had put the meddling priest down, but not recovered the buildings or settled the older wrong. Back beyond the fighting, he questioned an old canal boatman who recognised the merchant’s name. Before the disaster, the man had ferried sealed gem coffers out of the market: the merchant had paid double and said the cellar was answering his counting. The boatman still carried a brass routing token in lieu of the rest of his fee. Jorgrim obtained a rubbing and the old man’s recollection of its five-seal instructions, which governed the spacing and order of the marks. The debtor had left a trail. Jorgrim intended to follow it until he found the merchant or something he could claim against the debt.
An unfinished account
Seven emblems surround five empty sockets on the merchant’s routing plate. Only five belong to this consignment; two are decoys. Use each chosen seal once and read the sockets in numbered order. The surviving accounts describe relationships, not a complete route: every condition must hold at once. Either warband’s evidence is sufficient; the second account offers another reading of the same marks.
The rubbing labels seven emblems: Bell — toll; Boat — passage; Key — threshold; Candle — vigil; Anchor — mooring; Crown — authority; Moon — night. In the margin: ‘Neither vigil nor authority travels with this cargo. Leave exactly one mark between the toll and the later passage. The threshold touches the mooring, but never the toll. Night falls after the threshold and before the passage. The mooring is at neither end.’ Beneath it: ‘All gem coffers dispatched before the falling star. I will not count them over that knocking again.’
The brass token bears seven named emblems. Candle and Crown are crossed out. The boatman recalls: ‘The Boat lies two sockets after the Bell. Key and Anchor sit side by side; Key and Bell do not. Moon is later than Key but earlier than Boat. Do not put Anchor in the first or last socket. Five marks, no repeats. Let no clerk speak the address aloud.’ He swears the coffers travelled before the disaster, not in the looting afterwards.
Someone worked the puzzle before you and left their reasoning in soot along the edge of the plate. Rub the lines back one at a time; each gives away a little more.
Vigil and authority mean Candle and Crown. Set those aside. ‘Touches’ means immediately beside, in either direction; ‘after’ need not mean immediately after.
Bell and Boat must occupy sockets 1 and 3, 2 and 4, or 3 and 5. Test each pair against the requirement that Key comes before Moon, and Moon before Boat.
Bell in socket 1 leaves too little room before Boat for Key and Moon. Bell in socket 2 leaves only socket 1 for Key, which would touch Bell. Therefore Bell is in socket 3 and Boat in socket 5.
With Bell in 3, Key cannot occupy 2 or 4. Put Key in 1, Anchor beside it in 2, and Moon in the remaining socket.
Nothing further survives in the margin.
The seals align. Beneath the merchant’s cipher, the address reads: ‘Drowned Bell counting-house. Third arch below the old towpath. Deliver the gem coffers to the keeper who casts no reflection. Do not answer if the stones begin to count.’
The dispatch predates the disaster. It suggests the merchant moved the gems out of fear of the answering knocks beneath his shop, not because he foresaw the city’s destruction. Whether the warning described a haunting, a trick or a guilty man’s fancy is still unknown.
A possible next expedition: seek the Drowned Bell and search the third arch. The Nordost could follow the promise of missing gems; the Bitterbrows could trace the consignment to the debtor or claim it against the old fraud. Neither has yet followed the route, and nothing proves the coffers are still there.
The final reckoning
Victory
Ostlanders, kept by Niklas
Held the watchtower through Baldur’s defence, occupied the gem merchant’s shop through Torgrim, and overcame Flint’s rear-ruin defence through Biorn and Ragnar. Skalle’s entangling vines delayed the canal crossing, and the kin’s coordinated fighting put five Bitterbrows out of action.
Experience: 24
Finest moment: Led the charge at the canal and recovered his footing under pressure to put Orri out of action.
Darkest moment: Orri nearly drove him back into the canal; despite the victory, his kin suffered injuries and recovered no gems.
Put out of action:
Experience: 13
Finest moment: Reached the roof battlements with Baldur and met the dwarf assault with a hammer blow that drove Gammling back.
Darkest moment: Gammling put him out of action in the cramped tower fight, inflicting the wound that cost him a hand.
Taken out by: Gammling Gubbsson
Experience: 15
Finest moment: Wrangled Norri down for Ragnar, put Grakki out of action himself, and carried the attack onward to Flint’s ruin.
Darkest moment: His first grab at Norri failed and left him with a mouthful of canal water; Flint held off his solo charge until Ragnar arrived.
Put out of action:
Experience: 3
Finest moment: Avenged Mjølnir by taking Gammling out of action, then chose discipline over pursuit and held the watchtower to the end.
Darkest moment: Could not land a blow on Jorgrim, who escaped downstairs while Baldur remained to defend the tower.
Put out of action:
Experience: 13
Finest moment: Called drowned vines around the crossing dwarfs, nearly stopping their advance, then summoned squirrels and strengthened his fighting kin.
Darkest moment: Concentrated on his prayers and failed to see Jorgrim leave the tower; the dwarf lord reached him and put him out of action.
Taken out by: Jorgrim Bitterbrow
Experience: 2
Finest moment: Sprinted into the merchant’s shop, claimed a second-floor window and occupied the building while the others fought outside.
Darkest moment: His elevated shooting position gave him a clear view of the fighting, but none of his arrows wounded an enemy.
Experience: 4
Finest moment: Put Norri out of action once Biorn pinned him, then joined the assault on the rear ruin and took Flint out as well.
Darkest moment: Could not hit Norri until Biorn pinned the slayer, leaving him dependent on his kinsman’s support.
Put out of action:
Defeat
Dwarf Treasure Hunters
Forced the canal despite Skalle’s vines, stormed the watchtower, and made the kin fight for every approach. Gammling put Mjølnir out of action, Jorgrim evaded Baldur and silenced Skalle, and Flint held the rear ruin against Biorn until Ragnar joined the assault.
Finest moment: Dodged Baldur’s great blade repeatedly, broke away to reinforce his kin and put Skalle out of action.
Darkest moment: His time in the tower left the canal fight beyond his help; striking down the priest could not recover the lost objectives or settle the grudge.
Put out of action:
Finest moment: Repeatedly evaded the kin’s attacks, slipping between blows and denying Ragnar a clean strike.
Darkest moment: Biorn closed bodily and wrangled him down, allowing Ragnar to put him out of action.
Taken out by: Ragnar
Finest moment: Kept his adventurous spirit through the grasping vines and pressed an opening against Biorn rather than surrendering the initiative.
Darkest moment: Skalle’s vines nearly halted him in the canal; after crossing, his attack on Biorn’s flank ended with him out of action.
Taken out by: Biorn Nordost
Finest moment: Rushed the tower with Jorgrim and put Mjølnir out of action, bringing his experience to bear in the cramped fighting.
Darkest moment: Baldur avenged Mjølnir and put him out of action before he could help Jorgrim secure the tower.
Put out of action:
Taken out by: Baldur Nordost
Finest moment: Defended the rear ruin bravely against Biorn’s charge, making excellent use of the narrow approach and broken wall.
Darkest moment: His position could contain one attacker, not Biorn and an ogre together; Ragnar’s additional charge put him out of action.
Taken out by: Ragnar
Finest moment: Met Agnar head-on at the canal and almost drove the Nordost elder back into the water.
Darkest moment: Could not turn his early pressure into a finish; Agnar found firm footing and put him out of action.
Taken out by: Agnar Nordost