Postcard from The Dark Peak · #13
Say Number 13
Every other job in this series, you go out empty and the danger sits between you and the thing you were sent to fetch. This time the danger is in your own coat, ringing, and it has been since before the scenario started.
It is a cup of murk-salt — fresh, still warm, wrapped in oilcloth. What an ullagnaw leaves on the brick when something drives it off its den. It rings, faint, on and off, and every ring tells the whole underside of the city where you are. A woman at number thirteen wants it at her door before murkrise, while there is still a ring left in it. Her man went into the Rivelin culverts and came out with nothing in him, and this cup is the nearest thing to his voice anyone will ever hand her.
The hivemind has decided there are netherlanders in the city, so every exacid in the district is checking coats — and you are a netherlander with a regulated substance in yours. There is a gambrel working the Owlerton roofs. And on her road, gratings every few yards, an ullagnaw under all of it. Count the doors. Do not say the number out loud. Not to check. Not to a child on a step.
Field notes by Pip Rippon. Six Encounter rolls to get the cup into her hands while it still rings.
What’s inside
- One Hellsborough location: the Rivelin outflow, the Holme Lane crossing and checkpoint, and a counted terrace street above a culverted beck
- Three creatures from the Bestiary — the Exacid, the Gambrel, and the Ullagnaw
- One page of reusable rules (OSR-adjacent, 2d6, no prep required)
- The Ring: a d6 you roll before every Encounter roll — the salt gives your position away, and the iron nails in your other pocket only dampen it
- A checkpoint you talk, slip, or go around — each route changes what meets you in Owlerton
- A counted road where saying "thirteen" out loud doubles the drain for the rest of the scenario
- A 2d6 Encounter Table — 12 results, low rolls are the dangerous ones
- Three delivery grades — Success, Partial, Failure — plus what it costs you even when you win
Format: A5 PDF · 17 pages · Free
The story behind it: Say Number 13, in Urban Myths and Hymns.
What’s waiting out there
What an ullagnaw is
There is no body. There is a thickening under the road that answers sound, and until you make a sound it is only dark. It keeps to the resonant places — culverts, tiled outflows, long drains where a dropped ¢hit rings for a full second before it dies. It does not take your body. It takes the soul-weight the nascenti read and the hivemind files, slowly, and what goes does not come back.
What you need
Two six-sided dice, something to write with, and one evening. No GM, no group, no preparation. It’s a solo tabletop RPG scenario: one location in Hellsborough and The Dark Peak, a handful of creatures from the Bestiary, and a very bad night.
Never played a solo RPG before? The first Postcard Adventure, Something in the Hole, has a complete example game you can follow once and have it.
When you want more
Every Postcard Adventure uses the same three stats, Grit, Wit and Murk. Foked is what they grow into: the full solo ruleset, where your stats are your flesh and your character carries every scar into the next job. The core rules are free.
