Ash, Tolls & Second Ink

Eight system-neutral city NPC cards orbiting one cold fire. A district with a plot already running — the party just interrupts it.

THE ADVENTURE

Nineteen years ago the Ropewalk burned. The city rebuilt, held a memorial, moved on. Everyone in this deck, though, still draws wages from that fire: the night-sergeant whose route detours a bricked-up door, the tally-man whose second ledger proves the tariff was backdated, the pawnbroker buying burnt vellum by the ounce for a client she has never seen.

Same engine as the village deck, civic scale: every Want is a job, every job steps on a Secret, and the shared fuse is Assize week — when the city reads its charter aloud in the square, and in nineteen years nobody has checked which copy they’re reading from. Five pre-built chains (ink, reading, water, silver, seal) run straight off the cards, and the whole city keeps its truths in second copies — second ledgers, second hands, second readings. Players who notice can pull any chain they like.

WHAT'S INSIDE

• 8 city NPC cards, six elements each; every Want a job ticket with pay and terms on the card
• The second-copy rule as civic grammar — five chains (ink, reading, water, silver, seal) are theirs to pick from
• One public detonation point (the Assize memorial reading), on a removable fuse
• A free dungeon by tide: the drowned Counting-House vault, open a hand’s width at dead low water
• Optional cross-stitch entries into the City toolkit (006)
• Two-page print layout, all eight cards on a spread
• The second-copy rule as the district’s civic grammar — second ledgers, second hands, second readings. Pairs with 012 (Solo Oracle) to run it alone; cross-stitch into 006.

WHO IT'S FOR

Urban campaigns and intrigue nights; tables that treat documents as weapons; heist crews; GMs who want a district with a plot already running; solo pairing with 012.