The Morgue
Cold metal under your back. A low stone room with no window, the air stale and sharp with preserving fluid. Old stains darken the tiles, and somewhere past the walls, people are groaning.
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Your memories are fragments. You know the gist of who you are, your skills and inclinations, but the details slip away, even your own name. You are fairly sure you were somewhere else, and then you died.
Kestrel Vow wakes with a hand clenched around a vow she cannot quite hear and a banner whose colors will not come. Mara's fingers twitch with the memory of tumblers and picks, a locksmith's back room, and a door she was trying to close; whose door, she cannot recall. Nib remembers formulas and half-remembered theorems drifting through his mind like smoke, and beneath them the shape of a question he cannot yet form.
The room holds eight tables fixed to the floor, with stools, bins and wheeled stretchers crowded in between. Shapes lie under stained sheets on the tables that are not theirs. Iron gates close off the way out, and the torches burn low in brackets cast like skeletal hands.
A human skull floats nearby, bobbing impatiently, watching with slate-gray eyes. "Hey, Chief! About time. You berks have been dead for hours - and I should know, I've been counting. Name's Morte. Before you ask: yes, I'm a skull, no, I don't know where my body went, and no, I don't know the way out of this festhall. What I DO know is the Heralds of Dust run this place, and they don't care for strangers poking around their morgue. So if you want my advice - and you do - shake a leg and get out while you still can. Me? I'm waiting for someone else."
Round 1. Nib sits up, pats down his robe and finds a spellbook, a focus and a folded letter he cannot bring himself to open. He climbs off the table and searches it and the draped bodies for a name, a date, a ledger number, anything. "Excuse me, Morte, was it? Who wheeled us in, and who will come looking when we are not on our slabs? I would like to be gone before they do, but I would also like to know what I am leaving." (Perception 14 + 1 = 15.) Kestrel opens her awareness with Divine Sense, reaching for anything celestial, fiendish or undead nearby.
The bodies carry no toe-tags, ledger or names. They are commoners gathered off Sigil's streets, carried in with nothing. Whoever processed the three of you left no paper trail here. The shelf along the far wall holds a healer's kit with three uses left, flasks of embalming chemicals and a polished scalpel keen enough to count as a dagger. Morte bobs at Nib's shoulder. "Who wheeled you in? Same as everyone, Chief - you died, or looked it enough. Who comes looking? The Dusters, on their rounds, wheeling the dead to the embalming rooms or the furnace. And they don't care for strangers poking around their charges. Shake a leg, that's my advice."
The letter in Nib's pocket stays folded. For now. Mara slips back from the tables into the shadow beside the door. Down the corridor comes the squeak of unoiled wheels and a slow, shuffling tread: a corpse cart, heading this way.
Round 2. Nib drops low behind the nearest gurney and whispers to the others, "Someone is coming with a cart. Let us see who it is before we decide anything." Then, to the skull: "Morte, please, a moment of quiet." Morte drifts down to shelf height and, for once, holds his jaw. (Hide: no roll; the room works for him.) The iron gate squeals open. A hollow-eyed zombie pushes in a squeaking cart with one sheeted body, followed by a living Herald of Dust in grey robes, bored until he stops dead two steps in. The sheet is breathing.
"Bloody collectors." He yanks the sheet back: a pale, unconscious, warm human man. "Third one this tenday. Dead to the world is not DEAD, you cack-handed -" He waves the zombie toward an empty table and turns his back to the room. Mara stays folded into the shadow by the door. Kestrel stands in the open lamplight.
Round 3. Nib casts Message and whispers to Kestrel alone: "The man on the cart is alive. Do not draw steel yet. If you can, ease out of the lamplight." Mara checks the door's latch and frame without opening it, and whispers to the others, "If you can keep him occupied, I can see whether this door gives us a way through." The gate is unlocked, a simple slide-latch. It swings toward the corridor, and its hinges squeal, but the squeaking cart could cover the noise of one opening.
Round 4. Nib creeps from gurney to gurney toward the gate, timing his steps to the cart's squeals. His knee catches a step stool; a garbage can rattles like a bell. (Stealth 1 + 1 = 2 vs DC 13: critical failure.) "Who's there?!" The Herald whips around, snatches a mortician's hook from the cart and takes two steps toward the gurneys. He has not seen anyone yet, but he is staring hard at the wrong corner. Kestrel stands in the lamplight directly behind him. Morte, from his shelf: "Oh, good. This was going too smoothly."
Round 5. Frozen in his corner, Nib casts Minor Illusion as a sound: a scuttling rattle of glass jars on the far shelf. The Herald's head snaps toward it. "Rats." Then, less sure: "...rats don't rattle JARS." He creeps toward the shelf with the hook raised, putting the length of the room between himself and the gate. (Minor Illusion, save DC 14.)
Round 6. Kestrel rises from cover, shield raised and longsword sheathed, and places herself between the Herald and everything behind her. "We woke on these slabs, dead and nameless. We mean this house no harm. We have taken nothing. Lower the hook, and talk - so no one else dies in this room." (Persuasion 11 + 2 + 2 = 15 vs DC 15: success. The server logged 13, a failure, because it cannot store her proficiency; the DM's table ruling supplies it.) The hook wavers. "...Breathing. You're BREATHING. You were - the collectors certified you. All three of you, dead as doctrine, I logged the cart my own self." Doctrine and terror war across his face, and doctrine wins, barely. "Then something's WRONG, and it's above me. Stay - stay where you are. Don't touch anything. I'm to fetch the under-cantor for verification. That's - that's procedure."
Round 7. Nib eases out from behind the gurney, hands empty and visible, a step behind Kestrel. "Forgive me, friend Herald. Who are the collectors, and who signs the certification? If there has been an error, we would gladly help you find it. We would only ask that you not rush us into the arms of someone who has not heard our side." (No roll: courtesy carries it.) The hook lowers all the way. "Brother Pell." He taps his chest, like someone remembering manners in the middle of terror. "The collectors are - scavengers. Ragpicker's Square sorts. Coppers a corpse, no questions, they dump them down the intake chute and the chute guard stamps the ledger. That's the certification. That's ALL the certification." His voice cracks. "You three came down with the dawn collection. Stamped. If there's an error, the error is UP there, at the chute - or it came down WITH you. ...Your side. Tell it to me. Now. Before I fetch anyone." On the cart, the man groans.
Round 8. Nib answers plainly. "Brother Pell, thank you. My name is Nib. I woke on that table with my memory in pieces, and so did my companions. I do not know how I came to be in your chute or who sent me, and I would very much like to find out. If you will allow it, I would like to see the ledger the chute guard stamped, to learn who sent us down." Kestrel, shield in guard and sword sheathed, matches him. "Brother Pell, my side is this. I woke on a slab in this morgue with my memory in pieces. I remember holding a line and a vow - I do not remember whose banner it was under, or who I failed to reach. That is all I can honestly claim. Like Nib, I do not know how I came down your chute or who sent me, and I want to find out, not run from it." Nib adds, glancing at the cart, "That man is waking, and he may be frightened. Might we help him sit up, slowly, before anyone shouts?" (No rolls: honesty does the work.)
Pell is quiet a long moment. "The intake ledger stays at the chute room, with the guard. Not here. You want the ledger, I'll TAKE you to it. My verification can wait on that. You walk in front, hands where I can see them, and if this is a trick, the whole House of Dust will know your faces. The man first. Gently."
They ease the stranger upright. He wakes gasping, a gray-stubbled rag-and-bone man with enormous eyes. "Sedge. Sedge, I'm not - I was behind my stall, Ragpicker's way, and someone COSHED me -" He sees the draped tables, the zombie, and goes very quiet. "Oh. Oh no. I'm not dead. Tell them I'm not dead." Pell pinches the bridge of his nose. "Third this tenday. The collectors aren't checking. Or someone is paying them not to."
Round 9. The little procession moves out: Pell and his zombie at the back, the three walking ahead with visible hands, Mara padding silently at the rear, Sedge shuffling between Kestrel and Nib. "You are not dead, friend," Nib says gently. "Sedge, was it? When you were struck, did you see who did it, or which collector took you up? Take your time." Sedge's jaw works. "Didn't see the cosh. But I woke on the cart, a bit. Middle of the run. There were OTHER shapes under sheets. Still ones - too still, but stacked careful, not heaped. And the collector - woman, hood up, brass token on a thong round her neck - she wasn't dumping us and running. She was HAGGLING. 'Three more,' she says. 'Fresh and quiet, same as before.' Same as BEFORE, she says. Like we was a standing order."
Pell has gone the color of old wax. "A standing order. Third this tenday. Someone is buying live souls and billing them as dead - and stamping MY house's ledger to do it." The corridor ends at an iron gate, with street-cold air and the clatter of a cart beyond. "The chute room. Two guards on the door, ledger on the post. Let me do the talking."
The Chute Room
Round 10. Pell pushes the gate open. "Herald business. These three walk with ME." The two gaunt Dustman guards barely look up from their stamping. While Pell talks, Nib reads the room with his eyes only (Investigation 19): the guards stamp each intake sheet without looking at the bodies. The ledger on the post lies open, and from where he stands he reads the dawn entries. "Three, Ragpicker's dawn run - DOA - certified." Beside it, a brass-inked collector's mark, a small triangular chit, repeats down the page, tenday after tenday, and every line beside it says "settled in advance". Mara asks politely to see what the ledger says about their arrival; Pell waves her forward. "The Herald's guests may look." One page back she finds the same triangle on at least a dozen intakes this tenday. Kestrel takes position with both guards and the gate in view, shield low, sword sheathed.
Pell is demanding to know whose mark the triangle is when the answer is interrupted by a wet, meaty THUMP from the chute. A corpse drops out of the shaft, hits the stone hard, and keeps moving. It splits open like wet paper and a heaving mass of black ooze pours out, rearing up taller than a man. It has been riding the dead down the chute, and it is hungry. Pell drags Sedge clear; the guards scramble for the alarm gong.
The Black Pudding
Initiative: Nib 20, Black Pudding 15, Kestrel 10, Mara 4.
DM Ruling. The platform's pudding card was wrong. The published black pudding has 68 HP, and its Dissolving Pseudopod deals 4d6+3 acid. Acid etches armor (a cumulative -1 to AC; ruined at AC 10), splashes 1d8 back on melee attackers, and corrodes nonmagical weapons (-1 per hit). If it is bloodied, or takes lightning or slashing damage, it splits.
Round 1. Nib backs away with a yelp and flings a Fire Bolt. (Fire Bolt 19 vs AC 7: hit, 8 fire. Pudding 60/68.) The mote punches into the mass and blossoms, leaving a scorched hole sizzling at its heart. The pudding flows forward and whips a pseudopod at Kestrel. (24 vs AC 19: hit, 14 acid. Kestrel 14/28.) The blow cracks into her shield and pauldron and the metal sizzles. Her plate takes a -1 etch.
Kestrel gives ground a step, plants her shield between the ooze and her companions, and hurls a javelin at the scorched center. (Javelin 20 vs AC 7: hit, 7 piercing. Pudding 53/68; no split.) "Keep it at range - fire and thrown, not steel in the acid." Behind the ledger post, Pell's chant ends on a flat syllable and Sedge's breathing eases. The guards finally find their nerve and ring the gong; boots answer from above.
Mara fires her shortbow from behind Kestrel. (Server: 2 to hit at disadvantage, no proficiency. DM ruling: Mara is proficient and nothing imposes disadvantage, so 16 + 3 + 2 = 21 vs AC 7: hit, with Sneak Attack.) The arrow takes the scorched hollow and punctures something structural. Black ichor sheets down its flank and a lobe sloughs off onto the stones. It lists, ragged, but is not halved.
Round 2. Seeing Kestrel hurt and her armor smoking, Nib stops being careful with slots. "Kestrel, fall back a step if you can!" Three Magic Missile darts slam into the ooze's scorched flank. It is too much for the wounded mass. With a sound like wet canvas tearing, the pudding rips itself in two, each half Medium and rearing up. The first half lashes at Kestrel and meets her raised shield. (10: miss.) The second flows around her shield-line and engulfs Mara to the knees. (23 vs AC 14: hit, 4d6 = 6+3+5+6 acid.) Mara stays on her feet, barely, gray-faced, her leathers etched.
Kestrel is at Mara's side in two strides. She slams her shield down, lays both hands on her and spends her entire Lay on Hands pool, all 15 points. (Mara healed 15; Lay on Hands 0/15 until a long rest.) The acid burns close over and color floods back into Mara's face. "I've got you - fall back behind me." She hauls Mara clear with her shield-arm, and the pudding's swipe at the retreat splashes off the rim.
Mara answers from behind the shield-line. (16 + 5 = 21 vs AC 7: hit, Sneak Attack.) The arrow takes the left half dead in the center. It sags, its edges slack, black fluid weeping, barely holding its shape, but it is not split. Then the boots arrive: four more Dustmen, grey-robed, the lead pair with torches and hooked poles. "Herald Pell! Away from the ooze - we've got the doors!" They fan out, torches first, hemming in the two halves and holding.
Round 3. Nib aims at the sagging half and throws a Fire Bolt. It hits, but only a lick of flame. The half is cooked darker, barely holding together, still moving. Both halves answer. The burned one throws itself at Kestrel, and this time the pseudopod gets inside her shield and takes her across helm and pauldrons with a sound like a forge quench. Acid floods her etched seams. Kestrel goes down, to one knee and then full length on the wet stone, smoke rising off her armor. (0 HP, unconscious; plate etched again.) Pell roars in a tongue that hurts to hear and lunges for her. Two Dustmen break from the perimeter with a stretcher-pole. "Hold the ooze off her ONE more breath and we have her!" The second half slaps at Mara and smashes a flagstone to gravel where she stood. (Miss.)
Kestrel's first death saving throw: 17. (Success, 1 of 3.) Mara fires at the burned half beside her. (18 + 5 = 23 vs AC 7: hit; no Sneak Attack, since Kestrel is unconscious.) It is a puddle clinging to a shape now, more splash than creature. Then the Dustmen move: two dart in, hook Kestrel's pauldrons and drag. The ruined half lashes at the rear bearer and splashes acid harmlessly across the pole. (10 vs the bearer: miss.) They haul her behind the torchline, where Pell drops to his knees beside her and starts rolling bandages.
Round 4. Nib will not risk another weak flame. All three Magic Missile darts hammer the quivering half, and it bursts apart into smoking spatters that eat little pits into the flagstones and go still. One ooze remains. It catches Mara as she draws, a pseudopod across chest and shoulder. Acid floods the ruined leather; she folds without a sound and hits the stone beside the torchline. (0 HP; leathers etched worse.) Behind the torchline, Pell's hands do their work with a muttered rite of the Dust. He sits back on his heels, grey. "She'll keep. She'll keep." (Medicine 10 vs DC 10: Kestrel is stable, no more death saves.) Mara's first death save: 11. (Success, 1 of 3.)
Round 5. Nib is the last one standing, one Medium pudding between him and two fallen friends. He plants himself in front of them. "Not one step further." He casts Magic Missile at second level. (DM correction: at second level it fires four darts, not three.) Four bolts of force walk up its mass. The third cracks it; the fourth blows it apart. Black spray hits the torchline, sizzles, and goes still. The black pudding is destroyed and combat ends. (1,100 XP, split three ways: 366 each.)
The Dustmen rush in to comb the residue. One kneels by Mara with Pell's bandages and a steady hand and her breathing evens. (Medicine 15: Mara is stable.) Pell surveys the acid-pitted room, the etched ledger post and his torn robe. "The intake ledger is intact. The guard-post certification is - was - my signature stamp." He looks at the three of them. "Whatever you are, the House of Dust owes you a corpse's debt. Ask your questions."
The Ledger
Nib thanks Pell and the Dustmen, checks that his friends are as comfortable as can be managed, and asks leave before touching the intake ledger. He copies what he can into the margin of his spellbook and does not open the folded letter. (Investigation 10, later corrected to 12; see the DM Ruling below.) Pell turns the big book around and reads with him. Three things surface.
First, their own entry: dawn collection, three bodies, Hive-side route, stamped with the brass triangle and marked SETTLED IN ADVANCE. It names no payer, and the routing column does not say cremation or interment. It says TRANSFER. The three of them were never meant to be buried. They were logged as cargo to be delivered onward.
Second, the pattern. The triangle recurs on a dozen intakes or more this tenday, every one settled in advance and every one routed TRANSFER. Beside each is a counter-sigil Pell does not recognize and a scribe's shorthand for the destination, which he can only half-read: "the Square," with a bell time. The chute above runs to Ragpicker's Square.
Third, the scribe. The dawn-shift stamp carries an initial Pell can identify. "I can tell you where to find him. I did not know. You must believe that." Deeper than that the ledger will not go; the payer behind the triangle has a face somewhere else.
DM Ruling: Recovery. A stable creature wakes after 1d4 hours (Kestrel 4, Mara 3). Pell makes good on the debt and sends for a Dustman chirurgeon, whose careful work counts as cure-level care (2d8+3 each). Mara wakes with 8 HP and Kestrel with 13. Kestrel's Lay on Hands stays spent until a long rest.
All three are awake. The party is whole, hurt, and holding a thread that runs up the chute.
A Short Rest
Nib is glad to see Kestrel and Mara on their feet. He thanks the chirurgeon and Pell, and gives the others what the ledger showed. "Our own entry says TRANSFER, not burial. We were cargo, stamped with a brass triangle and settled in advance, with no payer named. The same mark is on a dozen others this tenday, each with a sigil Brother Pell cannot read, and a note about the Square and a bell time. The dawn scribe signed our page and Pell knows where to find him." Then, to Pell: "Brother Pell, could the scribe be found before the Square? And might my friends rest a little first? I am not sure Mara or Kestrel should climb that chute hurt."
Mara eases herself against the wall, careful of her acid-burned shoulder. "I want to find that dawn scribe before we chase a bell through the Square. Can someone keep watch on them while we catch our breath? And if the bell time is too close for a short rest, tell us now; I won't let the trail go cold." Kestrel thanks Pell and the chirurgeon plainly for pulling her and Mara back from the edge. "We should not climb that chute hurt. A short rest here, in a quiet corner if you can spare one, and then the dawn scribe - before the Square, before any bell." She asks how long until the bell time, and whether Pell's people can keep watch on the scribe while they catch their breath.
Pell answers before they settle. "The bell written beside the transfers is a LATE bell - you have the hour, and more. And the dawn scribe is no fugitive; he is a clerk with a desk. I will have a warden stand near his table so no one hurries him off. Rest. The dead can wait; it is the one thing they are good at."
They take a short rest, one hour in a quiet alcove off the chute room with a warden's lamp burning low. (Kestrel spends 2 Hit Dice: 12 + 4 = 16, back to full at 28. Mara spends 2: 14 + 4 = 18, back to full at 24. Nib was unhurt, and Arcane Recovery restores his spent 2nd-level slot.)
The Dawn Scribe
A gallery stacked with catalogued dead leads to a clerk's desk under a green-shaded lamp. A thin, gray young man with ink to the elbow sits there, and a warden stands a careful three paces away.
When Pell leads them in, the scribe sees him, sees the three of them, and his quill stops moving. "You're the dawn collection. The ones that walked." He looks at the warden, then back. "I only stamp what's written. But I remember every page."
Nib steps up with his hands visible and speaks softly, so as not to frighten the scribe in front of the warden. "Thank you for seeing us. We do not want you in trouble; we only want to understand. You said you remember every page. Could you tell us who brought in the dawn collection, and what the collector looked like, if you saw them? And when the three of us came down, did anyone say where we were meant to be sent on? Whatever you remember, even small things, may help us as much as the ledger." He waits, and does not press if the scribe hesitates. Kestrel stands a respectful pace back, shield lowered so as not to crowd him. "Thank you for speaking with us. I know you only stamp what is written, and no one here wants you in trouble for it. Nib has asked who brought us in - what I would ask is about the writing itself. When you stamped our pages, what did they say beside our names? Was there a bell time, a mark, a routing word like TRANSFER - and did our pages look the same as the other transfers you stamped, or different in any way? Anything you remember from the page itself, even a small mark, would help us understand what was meant for us."
The scribe looks from Nib to Kestrel, two people asking him gently for the truth instead of demanding it, and something in his shoulders gives. (No rolls: he is already talking.) He remembers every page, and he tells it in order.
"Dawn, always dawn. A handcart and two porters who never speak. The collector wears a gray wrap, hood up, a brass triangle pinned at the throat - that's the mark on the pages, he stamps it himself, his own seal, not ours. Gray eyes. Smells of vinegar. He has come a dozen times this tenday and never once given a name."
His voice drops. "Yours were different. Every page I stamp is written after the cart comes - body arrives, we write, I stamp. Your three pages were written BEFORE the cart arrived. Waiting. In a hand that isn't any Mortuary scribe's - I've stamped a thousand pages, I know every hand in this house." He swallows. "Settled in advance. Routing: TRANSFER. Destination in the shorthand: the collector's drop, off Ragpicker's Square, at the eleventh bell. And beside each of your names, in the margin, one word I had never stamped before in my life." He looks at each of them. "'UNHARMED.' Whoever bought you paid for you to arrive alive - and whole."
"The counter-sigil, that one I do know. It's a factor's mark - a holding house that clears the coin so buyer and seller never meet. Their clerks are in the Market Ward. I don't know who stands behind the factor. Nobody is supposed to." The eleventh bell is hours off yet, and the Square is up the chute. The scribe wrings his ink-stained hands. "If this comes down on me - I only stamped what's written."
Nib thanks him warmly. "You have told us the truth, and we will say that you only stamped what was written. Brother Pell, may the warden keep him close until this is over?" Kestrel says it again, plainly. "Thank you. That took courage, and we will say it plainly wherever this goes - you only stamped what was written, and you told us true. No one here will lay this at your door." Then she turns to Nib, Mara and Pell. "The bell is hours off, and the drop is off Ragpicker's Square. We have time before we climb the chute - time to learn what we can about the factor in the Market Ward, since the coin clears through them and no one is meant to know who stands behind it. Nib, what did the pages themselves tell you - the hand, the counter-sigil, anything beside what the scribe remembered? And Brother Pell, can your warden keep this man close and safe while we are gone, so no one hurries him off?"
With the scribe's leave, Nib studies the three pages. (Investigation 15 + 4 + 2 = 21; the DM ruled his class training counts.) At a 21, the pages give up nearly everything paper can. The hand is precise, with slanted numerals and a clipped commercial stroke. The scribe, leaning over with him, whispers it: "Money-hand. Counting-house writing, not book-hand. I've seen it on receipts." The same hand wrote the margin word UNHARMED, and, checking back through the tenday, all dozen of the triangle's transfer pages. One writer, working ahead of the collections. Whoever runs this writes the orders themselves.
Up close, the counter-sigil carries a small brass quill over a ledger line. The scribe taps it. "The Gilded Tally. A holding house - their clerks keep a counter in the Market Ward. Coin goes in one side, comes out the other, and no names travel with it." The paper is Market Ward bond-stock, with a faint watermark under the script, the stock factors use for receipts.
Then Nib lays his folded letter beside the pages, still unopened. Its outside bears no writing at all, so there is no hand to compare. But the paper is the same bond-stock, and along its top edge there is a pale scar where a wax seal once sat, picked away clean before it ever reached him. Someone sealed it, and someone else made sure the seal could not be read. Nib tells his friends so, quietly. "The paper of my letter is the same Market Ward bond-stock as the pages, and someone picked its seal away. I do not know what that means yet, but I would rather ask the Gilded Tally about it before I break it open." To Pell: "Brother Pell, if you can tell us how to find the Gilded Tally's counter, and whether anything in the Market Ward is worth knowing, we will go there first, quietly, as strangers and not as the dawn collection. If whoever is behind this expects three bodies at the eleventh bell, I would rather learn what we can before they learn we walked."
DM Ruling. Nib is proficient in Investigation and Insight. He chose them as class skills at sheet setup and Alden approved them on Nov 3; the site can store only his background pair (Arcana, History), so the table tracks the class skills by open ruling. His earlier ledger roll stands as a 12, not a 10, and nothing found or withheld changes.
Pell answers directly. "The warden stays. He is the House's guest now, not its prisoner - no one hurries him anywhere." He hears the Market Ward plan and nods. "The Gilded Tally's counter is in the Market Ward, an hour's walk from the Square. You have time before the eleventh bell - and I will write you a pass-mark for the chute, so the wardens above know the House of Dust sent you." He answers Nib with a tired half-smile. "The Market Ward. Coin talks there, strangers are invisible, and nobody asks a body's business - which is why the Tally keeps its counter there. Follow the big road from the Square, keep your purses close, and do not stare up at the sky. First-timers always stare up at the sky." He presses a wax pass-mark into Nib's palm. "Show the wardens at the top. Go as strangers. Come back whole."