Se7en Sagas

We continue to see where Durandal’s Solo Oracle System takes us. Drawing a card and interpreting the results is a nice addition to the diceless rules, just what I aimed for.

THE SITUATION

Zelik stands in the Reed-Choked Fens with Roderic. The rain falls softly. The blue-flamed lantern burns behind Roderic’s shoulder. The patrol’s horse refuses to cross something it can smell and the riders cannot. The chapel hill is ahead, hidden in mist.

Zelik thinks. That is what he does when other men would act.

He has been sent here as an expendable middleman carrying what may be a cursed relic toward an ancient and patient power that has been waiting thirty years for a debt to be honoured. Raoul sits warm and dry in his hall. The relic wants to go forward. The patrol blocks the causeway but not the marsh track.

Zelik’s Temptation whispers first, as it usually does. There is a clever path here. There is always a clever path. Find it, walk it, let Raoul’s problem eat Raoul.

But his Faith speaks underneath that. Jewish law has something precise to say about this situation. You do not complete a transgression on behalf of someone else. You do not become the instrument of another man’s broken oath. If this compact is going to be resolved, it cannot be resolved by substitution and deception. That is not honouring a debt. That is passing it forward.

Zelik makes a decision.

He is not going to the chapel to deliver the relic as Raoul intended. He is going to the chapel to tell whatever waits there the truth. The compact was broken. The ring still exists. The man who took it is still alive. A lesser substitute is being offered in bad faith. He, Zelik ben Yosef, is not party to the original transgression and will not pretend otherwise.

He turns to Roderic.

I am going to the chapel, he says. Not to deliver this relic as payment. To tell whatever holds that hill what was actually sent and why. If the compact requires the ring, then the compact requires the ring. I will not stand before something that old and offer it a lie wrapped in silver.

He watches Roderic’s face as he says it.

No Effort spent. No action attempted. This is conversation, and the oracle will colour what Roderic does with it.

DRAW:

• Answer: No — and what follows will be remembered in song and sorrow
• Difficulty Rating: 4
• Event: You save someone at great personal cost
• Descriptor: Blood pools at your feet
• Name: Odile the Penitent
• Place: The Saint’s Hollow
• Item: A stained banner carried from a distant war
• Emotion: Resigned
• Wild Card: Relic bleeds fresh blood
• Supernatural: Cursed relic hungers for fresh blood

INTERPRETING THE CARD:

The Answer is No — and what follows will be remembered in song and sorrow. Roderic does not support this plan. The Emotion is Resigned — not hostile, just spent. He has no fight left for this particular truth.

The Wild Card and the Supernatural line arrive together, the same image from two directions. The relic bleeds. I fold this into the world’s response to the moment. The Event — you save someone at great personal cost — I note in the journal as a future omen.

WHAT HAPPENED:

Roderic looks at me for a long moment. The resignation in his face is not the resignation of a man who disagrees. It is the resignation of a man who has known this moment was coming and spent years hoping it would fall on someone else.

I cannot go with you, he says simply. Raoul is still my lord. What you are choosing will undo whatever arrangement he hoped to make, and I cannot be seen to have helped that.

He holds out the herald’s horn.

Take it anyway. Whatever I cannot do, the horn can. The old agreement recognised it. If you blow it on the hill, whatever waits there will know you come under truce, not as a supplicant.

I take the horn.

At that moment the reliquary at my side shifts. Not moves — shifts, the way a sleeping thing adjusts its weight. And at the base of the silver case, where the metal meets the leather of my belt, something dark and slow begins to bead and run.

The relic is bleeding.

A thin line, dark against the silver, running toward the ground. The marsh around us goes very quiet. Somewhere on the causeway the horses make no sound at all.

Whatever is in the chapel has just noticed me.

STATE OF PLAY

• Effort Pool: 14 — unchanged, no task was attempted, no Passion recovery triggered
• Stress: clean
• Zelik has chosen honesty over delivery — his role has fundamentally shifted
• Roderic cannot follow but has given the herald’s horn
• The relic is bleeding — the chapel’s ancient tenant is aware and awake
• The Event (saving someone at great personal cost) noted as future omen
• Zelik walks toward the chapel alone, carrying a bleeding relic and a herald’s horn, with the truth as his only real offering

THE SITUATION

Zelik is alone on the marsh track. The reed beds press close on either side. The rain is soft and steady. The relic bleeds slowly against his hip. The herald’s horn is cold in his hand. The chapel hill rises ahead through the mist, a dark shape against a darker sky.

He cannot see the chapel yet but he can feel the ground changing under his feet. The marsh track is becoming something older. The reeds thin. The mud firms into something that feels like it was once a road, worn smooth by feet that stopped coming a very long time ago.

Something is watching him. Not with hostility. With patience. The patience of something that has been waiting thirty years and can wait thirty more if it needs to.

Zelik needs to reach the chapel without whatever holds this hill deciding he is a threat before he gets there. He has the horn. He could blow it now, invoking the old truce, announcing himself as something other than a supplicant or an enemy.

This is the moment.

Action: Zelik raises the herald’s horn and blows it, invoking whatever remains of the old agreement and announcing his approach under truce.

This is not routine. The horn carries the weight of a broken compact, a thirty year old debt, and an ancient power’s attention. He is not a Frank. He is not party to the original agreement. He is a Jewish wanderer blowing a dead herald’s horn at something that predates Christianity. This is a Hard action. Two cards drawn, higher Difficulty Rating chosen.

The most relevant approach is Grace 2 + Persuasion 2 = maximum 4 Effort. But Zelik is not persuading a person. He is making a formal declaration to something old. His Lore might serve him better here — Acumen 3 + Lore 3 = maximum 6. He is drawing on everything he knows about compacts, oaths, and the protocols of approaching powers that operate by ancient rules. The Insightful Distinction does not apply here. He is not observing, he is acting.

He bids 6 Effort.

Effort Pool drops from 14 to 8 if this goes badly. But the alternative is arriving unannounced at a hungry and patient ancient power’s doorstep carrying its bleeding property.

He bids 6.

DRAW — Two cards for a Hard action, choose the higher Difficulty Rating.

First Card:

• Answer: Maybe — though it will take longer than expected
• Difficulty Rating: 6
• Event: A long-sought relic is uncovered
• Descriptor: Golden light pierces through dark clouds
• Name: Lady Isolde of Rochefort
• Place: The Forgotten Tower
• Item: A gleaming holy chalice
• Emotion: Reverent
• Wild Card: Weather shifts as if answering a prayer
• Supernatural: Martyr’s presence steels your heart

Second Card:

• Answer: Maybe — but it comes at the cost of your reputation
• Difficulty Rating: 2
• Event: A relic’s power begins to awaken
• Descriptor: Moonlight glimmers on still waters
• Name: Dame Seraphine
• Place: The Wraithwood
• Item: A relic-bound tome hums faintly
• Emotion: Awestruck
• Wild Card: Messenger dove falls dead at your feet
• Supernatural: Whispering dead follow in your steps

Hard action means the higher Difficulty Rating. That is Card 6. Difficulty 6.

Zelik’s Effort of 6 meets the Difficulty exactly.

Success with a Condition.

THE ORACLE COLOURS THE RESULT

The Answer is Maybe — though it will take longer than expected. On a Success with a Condition, Maybe suggests an awkward trade-off. The horn works, the truce holds, but something is incomplete or costs him.

The Emotion is Reverent. The Descriptor gives golden light piercing dark clouds. The Wild Card — weather shifts as if answering a prayer — I fold directly into the scene. The Supernatural — martyr’s presence steels your heart — is interesting. The relic is a martyr’s bone. Something in it responds to this moment.

The condition: the truce is heard, but it is partial. The ancient power recognises the horn but not the man holding it. Zelik has bought himself passage, not welcome. He will need to establish what he is and why he is here before the patience on that hill becomes something else.

Now the Passion question. Zelik is acting entirely out of Faith here — not Christian faith, but his own. He is approaching an ancient power with honesty, refusing to be the instrument of a lie, conducting himself according to the protocols his learning tells him apply to oaths and compacts regardless of whose god is named in them. This is Jewish law and memory driving a dangerous action at real personal cost. He is alone, his Effort is low, and he has just announced himself to something that could simply consume him.

This is a genuine Passion moment inside a resolved task. He acted according to Faith under real risk. The Advantage triggers.

He takes +2 Effort.

Effort Pool: 8 + 2 = 10.

WHAT HAPPENED:

I raise the horn. My hands are steady, which surprises me. The metal is cold and old and tastes of rust and old ceremony when I put it to my lips.

I blow it once.

The sound that comes out is not quite the sound I expected. It is lower than the horn looks like it should produce, and it carries in a way that has nothing to do with wind or distance. The reeds on either side of the track go absolutely still. The rain seems to pause between one drop and the next.

Then the clouds above the chapel hill split, and a bar of gold light comes through, thin and precise, striking the wet stones of the path ahead of me. Not sunlight. The sun is nowhere near this part of the sky. Something else.

The relic at my side stops bleeding.

I stand very still and let whatever is on that hill take a long look at me. A wandering Jew in a ridiculous hat, holding a dead herald’s horn, carrying a martyr’s bone in a silver case, standing in the mud of a marsh track where nobody has walked with honest intention for thirty years.

The truce holds. I can feel it the way you feel a door that is not quite latched — it will hold as long as I do not push it wrong.

But the condition is real. The horn was recognised. I was not. Whatever waits on that hill accepted the instrument of the compact but has not yet accepted the man holding it. I have passage. I do not have welcome. The difference between those two things is everything, and I will need to explain myself before I reach the top of that hill or the patience up there will make its own decision about what I am.

The martyr’s bone in the reliquary does something I did not expect. It settles. Not like a dead thing settling. Like a witness who has just decided to pay attention.

I walk forward into the gold light.

STATE OF PLAY

• Effort Pool: 10 — 6 spent on the action, 2 recovered via Faith Passion
• Stress: clean
• The horn worked — truce holds, passage granted
• The ancient power recognised the horn but not Zelik — he must establish himself before reaching the top
• The relic has stopped bleeding and is now behaving like a witness rather than a weapon
• The chapel hill is ahead, the gold light showing the path
• The condition hanging over everything: the wrong word, the wrong step, and patience becomes something else

I’m really liking how the system goes. It’s very clean, very straightforward, very narrative-supporting, which is just what I intended, both for the solo game and for the core game.

In other news, expect the Blood of the Irminsul folk-horror adventure for Durandal; something has went wrong in a far province of the Carolingian Empire, and you and your party are sent to investigate, but when you get there, things are stranger than they should…

The great Durandal campaign is almost finished; writing is almost done, I’m reviewing things for consistency, there are a couple of mechanics that influence the ending depending on players’ choices, but you can expect a book filled with cool ideas, brimming with the style of mythic chivalry that permeates Durandal, in a campaign that will take you a couple of years to finish and that you will want to revisit, because you will not simply visit every place in a single run. The campaign will put some very serious questions on your table, and the destiny of the Empire might very well be on your hands. I’m hoping it will be available by the end of the year.

And… In Scar City, every district keeps a secret.

Best,

-Rui