Postcard from The Dark Peak · #11
The Burning of the Ughill Gosava
There is a tree above Ughill. It is called a gosava, and it eats. Barkers went into that corner of the Wisewood and did not come out. A onetoe. A flock of wooltards. A lad. Someone with more ¢hits than sense wants the tree stopped, and you have agreed to stop it.
Here is the trap. You cannot kill a tree quietly. You can't lure it, poison it, or take it somewhere out of the way — it is rooted to the spot. You have to do the loud thing, on its ground, and the loud thing is fire. Fire in the Wisewood after murkfall is a bell rung for everything that hunts the murkneet, and what hunts above Ughill is the gabbleratchet pack. They come to noise and light the way flies come to meat. Light the fire and you have called them yourself.
Field notes by Pip Rippon. Up the edge path, burn the tree, off the hill — before what you called down arrives. You will not be subtle. The best you can hope for is quick.
What’s inside
- One Dark Peak location: the hill above Ughill — the edge path, the dead wood, and the gosava itself
- Three creatures from the Bestiary — the Gritstrike, the Gosava, and the Gabbleratchet pack
- One page of reusable rules (OSR-adjacent, 2d6, no prep required)
- A job that announces itself: lighting the fire forces an extra Encounter roll and adds +2 to every roll out
- A rooted enemy that only fire ends — every round you spend dousing it, it takes something back
- An edge-walker you cannot fight, lure, or turn, only time
- A pack that takes the soul, not the body: look up, or fail a Murk test badly, and there is nothing left inside to save
- A 2d6 Encounter Table — 12 results
- Four outcomes: burned it and got off clean, got off loud with something following, kept by the hill, or walked off it with your arms out
Format: A5 PDF · 15 pages · Free
The story behind it: The Burning of the Ughill Gosava, in Urban Myths and Hymns.
What’s waiting out there
What a gabbleratchet is
The pack. Bodies of a large barker, wings folded when they dive, human heads — and the expression is not. The noise arrives first: a layered whelping with a weeping under it and, under that, something like a child, from more throats than you can count. It rolls over the hill ahead of them like weather. Do not look up.
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.
