The Escort

Boisverne is a warm timber town of half-framed houses, where the smell of fresh-cut wood mixes with the smell of hot bread. It lives on lumber, on trade, and on the convoys that roll down to the capital. Here, at the edge of the great forest of Cendrelac, a nervous merchant is looking for strong arms to escort his caravan to Hautecombe.

The work is simple, the road is well travelled, six days at most. Yet the merchant pays twice the going rate, keeps glancing over his shoulder, and wants nobody near his bales of cloth. Among his people travels a silent churchman who watches a great deal more than he speaks.

"You walk ahead, you search nothing, and you ask no questions about my cargo. That is the price, and it is a good one."

The old king is dead with no acknowledged heir. The great Houses are manoeuvring, the Conclave draws near, and the roads are safe for no one. The heroes think they are signing an ordinary guard contract. They are picking up the first thread of a much longer story.

Act I of The Oath of Cendrelac: an opening adventure built to launch a campaign and bind a party together. A living starting town, a road full of encounters, an ambush that changes the tone, and a closing scene that opens the way forward. What the caravan is really carrying, the booklet tells the gamemaster alone.