The crown makes its wearer irresistibly admired, and it has never stopped doing it. A year under a hill admired by nobody has made it hungry, and the hunger has been soaking into the dead king like water into chalk. Aldric is waking because the crown cannot bear to go unwitnessed. That is the whole cosmology, and the game's thesis: vanity is a debt, and someone always collects.
+Where Vesper is: one step ahead all evening — at the door while the party is on the green, in the crypt while they are in the wood, at the throne as they come down the stair. A fast party catches him still working the sigil: a different shape of finale, the same heart.
Every map is a live Foundry scene with walls, doors and daylight/fog set; every name is a token already placed. Nudge the tokens where you want them and press play.
`, 0), page("Act I · Nettlebrook", ` - ${box("Nettlebrook is three streets, a green, a well, and a chapel the size of a shed. The reeve is waiting on the green in a velvet cap he plainly cannot afford, and he is very glad to see anyone at all carrying a weapon.")} + ${box("Read aloud — arrival: Nettlebrook is three streets, a green, a well, and a chapel the size of a shed. The reeve is waiting on the green in a velvet cap he plainly cannot afford, and he is very glad to see anyone at all carrying a weapon.")}Scene: ${sceneLink(village)} — daylight, no fog, freely walkable. Four faces to play:
Rolls that matter: a Reaction (§24) for the Pale Stranger at −1 die; Charm/Command to open the reeve's purse wider; Notice/Lore to realise the 'pilgrim' is nothing of the kind. The moment the party corners the Stranger, they whistle and run — go to Act II.
`, 100), + ${box("Read aloud — the reeve's offer: Forty gold. Half now, half when the hill is quiet again. And quietly, if you'd be so kind — Nettlebrook's a good name and I'd like to keep it.")} + ${box("Read aloud — Brother Cassian, at the chapel door: Put him back properly, that's all I ask. The boy was vain, not evil. There's a difference, and it matters.")} +Running the act. No fail state — the whistle blows whether or not the party earns a thing. Play the faces warm and let people show off: grandstanding is Vanity, and Vanity is what makes Act Four hurt. If the table stalls, move the Stranger.
+Rolls that matter: a Reaction (§24) for the Pale Stranger at −1 die; Charm/Command to open the reeve's purse wider; Notice/Lore to realise the 'pilgrim' is nothing of the kind. The moment the party corners the Stranger, they whistle and run — go to Act II.
+ ${box("Read aloud — the act break: The pilgrim stops mid-sentence and looks at you the way a man looks at a sum he has just finished adding up. Then he runs, and somewhere behind the well-house a bone whistle goes up.")}`, 100), page("Act II · The Green", ` - ${box("A whistle, then screaming. Vesper left a handful of hard men in the village to keep it frightened — and something worse on a leash. They break cover from the alleys and the well-house, and a villager is already down in the mud.")} + ${box("Read aloud — the whistle: A whistle, then screaming. Vesper left a handful of hard men in the village to keep it frightened — and something worse on a leash. They break cover from the alleys and the well-house, and a villager is already down in the mud.")}Scene: ${sceneLink(square)}. Foes: ${bandits.map(npcLink).join(" · ")} and ${npcLink(wolf1)}.
Running the fight. The bandits are debts with faces; the wolf is the fight. Keep saying audience — every window turns a maneuver into a performance and a Stumble into a story; pay Vanity for any risk taken for a bystander. Failure case: if the party is genuinely losing, a villager's roof-tile finishes the wolf and the rest break.
Take one bandit alive and they'll talk: Vesper rode for the barrow at dawn, by the forest road, 'and good luck to you on it.' Go to Act III.
`, 200), page("Act III · The Whispering Wood", ` - ${box("The barrow sits deep in the old wood, and the wood knows it. The path is there for those who can read it; off the path, the trees close ranks and things move that a year of the dead king's dreaming has made bold.")} + ${box("Read aloud — into the trees: The barrow sits deep in the old wood, and the wood knows it. The path is there for those who can read it; off the path, the trees close ranks and things move that a year of the dead king's dreaming has made bold.")}Scene: ${sceneLink(forest)} — daylight, thickets block sight and step, a path winds east to a clearing with the barrow mouth.
Running the walk. Pressure, not a maze: a failed roll never means lost forever, it means the lost hour — and the hour is real, because Vesper gets ahead and the party arrives to a door already open. Say the fork's two options plainly, then say nothing; the silence is the test.
+ ${box("Read aloud — arrival: The trees simply end. A clearing, a green hill with a stone mouth set in it, and cold air coming out of that mouth on a warm afternoon.")}The path ends at the clearing and the dark mouth of the barrow. Go to Act IV.
`, 300), page("Act IV · The Barrow of King Aldric", ` - ${box("Cold air breathes out of the hill. Somewhere below, a sorcerer is working, and a dead boy-king is beginning to remember that he was beautiful.")} + ${box("Read aloud — the mouth: Cold air breathes out of the hill. Somewhere below, a sorcerer is working, and a dead boy-king is beginning to remember that he was beautiful.")}Scene: ${sceneLink(barrow)} — rooms, doors and torchlight; token vision and fog on.
The mouth is a slab bound by a glowing arcane sigil (only Arcana, Threshold 2 — failure locks the spell and jolts everyone 2 Grit) and a mundane trapped lock beneath (only Larceny + thieves' tools — a failed roll springs a dart, a Wound). Two keys, two classes.
+If a key is down or missing (the Mage Taken Out on the green, no Rogue at the table), the other art may be attempted by a proxy at +1 Threshold using Vesper's dropped notes from a threshold corpse — slower and costlier, never a stonewall. The door never ends the adventure.
${skeletons.map(npcLink).join(" · ")} and ${ghouls.map(npcLink).join(" · ")} rise as the party crosses. The Cleric's Turn Undead sweeps the skeletons; the Ghouls' paralysing claws are the real danger, and the Warrior must hold the choke while the soft classes work.
${npcLink(vesper)} has beaten the party here and just woken ${npcLink(aldric)} by mistake. Two-sided fight:
Play Aldric slow, beautiful and sad. He does not rage; he poses, adjusting the crown between attacks. Show the spectral blade before you aim it — the first strike passes clean through a raised shield, in front of everyone — then target whoever adores him, never the frail by preference. He gets one line, early, in a voice like a portrait talking. No roll answers it:
+ ${box("Read aloud — Aldric: Have you come to look at me?")} +The fight is meant to be won, in five or six rounds. The real finale is the quarter-hour after.
Vesper's grave-loot (the Vault hoard rolled to chat), and — if they dare — The Peacock Crown: a permanent +1 die to Charm, an unrefusable Vice: Pride, and a standing Bane. Keeping it, destroying it, or reburying it beside the boy-king is the note the whole adventure has been playing toward.
+Running the choice. Put the crown in the middle of the table and stop narrating; let the silence work before you spend Cassian's plea, the reeve's forty gold or Vesper's collector on it. If anyone reaches for dice: no roll resolves this one.
+ ${box("Read aloud — the road home: The birds are back in the wood, which is how you know it's over. Or that it thinks it is. In Nettlebrook they'll tell this story wrong within a season — only you know what was offered in the dark under the hill, and what it cost to answer.")}Rewards: 2–3 Glory each. And whatever the crown costs.
`, 400) ];