The Honest Flue Company

For 3–5 characters, levels 1–3 · 30–60 min · system-neutral · FREE — a complete sample of the line

They sweep every chimney in town, and they know what the town burns. The first reading is free.

READ-ALOUD Above the town's rooftops, one chimney does not smoke. The guildhall behind it is warm, swept twice over, and lit like a shop — because it is one. The sign by the counter reads HONEST FLUES, SWEPT DAILY, READ ON REQUEST. Drawers of ash wait in long rows; a slate rewrites itself with today's prices. Somewhere below, a fire is eating a letter — unhurried, mouthing every word. The Widow is in. She has been expecting your errand.

MAP · KEYED

d10 · Guildhall Noises

1	A drawer opens one inch, somewhere, and closes.
2	The slate rewrites itself: prices, then names.
3	A chimney up the street lets go a smoky sigh.
4	The apprentice turns a page she cannot see.
5	Sifted ash settles, in the dishes, into lines.
6	A grate two streets over snuffs; the hall tilts.
7	The Widow hums a verse nobody wrote down.
8	A quarrel drips from a cracked drawer.
9	Brushes cross the floor above, sweeping near.
10	The hall smells of the letter you came about.

d6 · If You Cheat the House

1	Pockets reek of smoke till the bill is paid.
2	The door takes longer to open than it did to shut.
3	A reading you once bought revises itself, unkindly.
4	Brushes find your boots; soot walks home with you.
5	The Widow's humming follows you two streets past.
6	Your chimney won't draw till you apologize.

WHY YOU'RE HERE

The Burned Pardon. A patron needs a document that officially burned. The slate prices it at one truth apiece — and the Company would rather own one of the party's truths than any paper in the drawer. What the smoke returns is not quite the document they described.
The Arsonist's Margin. Three fires, three readings bought the same night by the same gloved buyer. Name the pattern before the fourth fire; the Widow pays in candle-minutes — an hour of the First Fire's undivided attention.
The Friend's Collateral. A dead friend's last debt is secured with a secret the party needs this week. It trades for the answer to why the friend never once mentioned this house. The ash knows; the ash was there.

KEYED ROOMS

1 · The Sweep's Door. the counter

A brass tube: STATE YOUR BURN. Name what burned; the slate writes your drawer and the price in soot-script. False chimneys insult the house: brushes sweep you out for a season. Down the tube — pages turned by someone who cannot see them.

2 · The Grate Hall. the grates

Every flue in town breathes behind this wall. Ear to a grate: today's smoke-gossip, free and honest — the town said it aloud. The grates hear both ways; muttered schemes are priced below stairs. Loot: a grate-key cut to your own chimney.

3 · The Soot Stacks. the drawers

A hearth to a drawer, thirty years deep. Burned words live in the ash that buried them — sift your slate's drawer for a reading. An unlawful drawer looses its burnt quarrel: the last argument that hearth had, re-litigating, everyone taking sides. Loot: sweet ash from the founding drawer — one reading, free.

4 · The Reading Bench. the reading

Pay the slate's price — a truth of your own, spoken onto the dish and kept — and the burned page climbs back into the smoke, line by line, while the candle burns. Readings show what the paper wanted: wills flatter, confessions edit. No ash is read twice. One line comes from a margin, in another hand.

5 · The Burning Room. the forgetting

Things burned "unrecorded": two truths, paid ahead; the receipt reads ONLY ASH LEAVES THIS ROOM. Nothing burns unrecorded — the house owns your lost secret now, and sells it once, discreetly. Yesterday's "lost" things are today's stock.

6 · The Widow's Hearth. the archivist

The Cinder Widow: a fire shaped like a woman of settled ash. She eats paper, remembers every word, reads truly, and is forbidden to advise. For a candle-minute she names everything your party has ever burned. Lie to a hearth and your next paper is hostage — words in escrow — till you un-say it. She hums the cut verses of the town's fire-songs.

7 · The Updraft. the breath

The master flue climbs to the one silent chimney on the sky. With her leave, the draft holds like a hand: from the top, the town in soot — every hearth lit or dark, one door circled in white. Uninvited, the flue chooses: down the soot-fall to 3, hearing everything, blind to color till dawn. The draft chants your names: someone has paid to have you read.

8 · The First Fire. the question

The original hearth, banked two hundred years, never out. THE TOWN MAY ASK THE FIRE ONE QUESTION EACH GENERATION. THIS IS THE YEAR. Ask: the answer is true, complete, over by morning. Steal the year — a live coal carried out unasked — and nine hundred hearths breathe down your collar for a day and a night. The Company buys the question back at almost any price, twice.

GM NOTES

The three ledgers. Ash (what the town burned), truths (deposits on the dish), favors (seasons called in) — coin buys readings; the rest buys the house. The price engine. A reading = one truth kept; a burning = two, paid ahead; a drawer out of turn = a quarrel; the generation-question = the year. Every price is real. The twist. The Widow is the only honest party in the building: bound to read truly, forbidden to advise, fed every lie the town told itself for thirty years. Her stake: tonight someone might ask the Fire a question worth the year. The quiet clock. The question burns at midnight; unasked, it renews to no one. Stats. The Widow unfightable — scattered, she re-hearses at dusk from any grate; the apprentice 1 HD; brushes relocate, disarm, embarrass.