This is one unedited solo session played in Markbound. Every roll below is printed exactly as the engine produced it — action die, stat, both challenge dice, outcome — and the narration you read is the one the Narrator wrote for that result. Nothing was re-rolled to make the story nicer. Two of these turns are misses, and the saga is better for them.
Turn 1
Walk in through the open gate and call out.
Face Danger (+heart)d6 4 + 3 = 7 vs 2 / 6Strong hit
Momentum +1
You call once, and the bell stops. A woman steps out of the byre with a boar-spear held low and tired, not raised. "You're not one of them," she says, and it isn't a question — it's relief. Her name is Ulla. She has been ringing that bell for two days because she is out of other ideas.
Written to the Codex
npc Ulla
Steading-holder. Rang the bell two days. Boar-spear. Exhausted, not hostile.
Turn 2
Ask her what she's been ringing it for.
"For anyone." She sets the spear against the doorframe, and only then do you see how badly her hands are shaking. Nine households wintered here. She walks you along the fence and counts the cairns out loud, and the number she reaches is eleven. She does not explain the extra two, and you do not ask yet.
Written to the Codex
place The bell steading
Nine households. Eleven new cairns along the far fence.
Turn 3
Swear an iron vow to end what did this.
Swear an Iron Vow (+heart)d6 6 + 3 = 9 vs 4 / 8Strong hit
Momentum +2 · Spirit +1 · Vow sworn — Dangerous
You say it out loud in the rain, with your hand flat on the newest cairn, because a vow you only think is a vow you can put down later. Ulla watches you do it and doesn't interrupt. When you finish she gives you the name they used for it here, before there were eleven cairns: the Long Cold.
Written to the Codex
vow End the Long Cold
Dangerous. Sworn on the newest cairn, witnessed by Ulla. Local name given.
Turn 4
Hold the gate through the night.
Face Danger (+iron)d6 2 + 3 = 5 vs 5 / 7Miss
Health −1 · Spirit −2 · Momentum −2
You hold the gate, and it doesn't come to the gate. You hear the byre door go at the fourth hour, and by the time you're across the yard the bell rope is hanging cut and Ulla isn't in the yard any more. The tracks go north, into the spruce, and they are not the tracks of anything that walks on two legs.
Written to the Codex
threat The Long Cold
Took Ulla from the byre while the gate was watched. Tracks lead north. Not bipedal.
Turn 5
Follow the tracks north before the rain kills them.
Undertake a Journey (+wits)d6 5 + 2 = 7 vs 7 / 3Weak hit
Supply −1 · Journey progress +1
The tracks hold for four miles and then start doubling — the same set crossing itself, again and again, as if whatever made them spent a long time in one place deciding. You lose an hour reading it and you lose your last dry tinder to the rain, but you come out of the doubling with a direction and the unpleasant certainty that it was not carrying her quickly.
Turn 6
Make camp and take stock.
Supply −1 · Spirit +1
No fire. You eat cold and you sit with your back to a rock that at least cannot open behind you. Two days ago this was somebody else's disaster. You count the cairns again in your head — eleven, nine households — and finally do the arithmetic Ulla wanted you to do. Two of the dead came from outside. Two people got here before you and swore the same thing you swore.
Written to the Codex
threat The two extra cairns
Two outsiders died here before Ryn arrived. Both, per Ulla, had sworn to end this.
Turn 7
Push on and find where the tracks stop.
Undertake a Journey (+wits)d6 6 + 2 = 8 vs 1 / 4Strong hit
Momentum +1 · Journey progress +2
They stop at a shieling half-buried in the slope, roof gone, walls to shoulder height. The doorway faces downhill toward the steading — four miles of clear sightline, straight to the gate you spent the night defending. Whatever has been coming down that slope has been watching the place light its lamps every evening for two winters.
Written to the Codex
place The shieling on the slope
Ruined summer hut, four miles north. Doorway sights directly on the steading gate.
Turn 8
Go in.
Secure an Advantage (+shadow)d6 3 + 1 = 4 vs 9 / 9Miss · match
Momentum −1 · Match — twist
The floor of the shieling is not floor. You are two steps in before the crust gives and you go down into the dark under it, and the dark under it is not empty, and it is not cold. Ulla is alive down here. So are the other two, and they have been alive a great deal longer than anyone above ground would consider possible.
Written to the Codex
threat Under the shieling
Chamber below the ruin. Ulla alive. The two outsiders from the cairns: also alive. Not cold down here.
Turn 9
— end of session two —
Saved. Nine turns, two sessions, one vow still open. The whole chronicle exports as Markdown or a bound PDF, Codex and dice log included, and the Narrator picks it up exactly here next time — including the fact that two people in that chamber are supposed to be in the cairns you counted.