Postcard from The Dark Peak · #14
Sod's Law
Every other job in this series, the price is something that happens to you on the way. This time the price is the job.
The milting are owed ground. Not by you, exactly — by somebody you owed, who's gone now, and the debt came down to you with the rest of what they left. The milting don't want a field and they don't want ¢hits. They want the ground from under where you sleep. A tin of it. Bedsod, they call it.
So you've had the board up and the spoon out, and the tin is in your inside pocket. Cross Rod Moor before murkrise to a ruined farmstead where an elder grows out of the old kitchen hearth, tip the bedsod into its roots, and say the words. The moor is peewhit ground and the peewhits come down at you. A vixen is screaming on her den in the roots and will not move. And seven milting stand in a ring at ten paces, and when you arrive, they start to talk.
Let them talk. Just don't agree to anything.
Field notes by Pip Rippon. You brought a tin. You're giving them a tin.
What’s inside
- One Dark Peak location: Hollow Meadows at the top of the Rivelin, out across Rod Moor to a ruined farmstead
- Three creatures from the Bestiary — the Peewhit, the Sly, and the Milting
- One page of reusable rules (OSR-adjacent, 2d6, no prep required)
- The first Offering scenario: you can turn back at any point, and the scenario keeps offering you the chance
- Birds that stoop out of the murk and hold a grudge for the next two rolls
- A fox on your side, for as long as you leave her alone
- The Talk, and Concessions: every extra thing you agree to makes the offering easier, and they will come back to collect
- A 2d6 Encounter Table — 12 results
- Outcomes for success, a price higher than you brought, rejection, turning back, and saying yes to all of it
- A page at the back on Foked, the full solo game the Postcard Adventures grow into
Format: A5 PDF · 17 pages · Free
The story behind it: Sod's Law, in Urban Myths and Hymns.
What’s waiting out there
What the milting are
Small, old, older than the idea of old. Skin so thin over the nose and ears that the light comes through it, teeth like grains of rice, and fingernails that remember being talons. They guard the Hinge, keep a calendar nobody else is allowed to read, and have never once been known to cancel a debt. You don't fight them. Lift a hand to one and all seven stop talking and leave, and the debt is still owed, and now they know what you're like.
"I's milting, murker. We've 'ad this ground afore. We'll 'ave it again."
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.
