Postcard from The Dark Peak · #10
The Cuckoo's Cave
A morivarid column moves through the gulch below Kinder Scout. Not every murkneet, but often enough that someone named the cave for it: the place you go when the swarm is between you and anywhere else. The floor is worn smooth. It has been smooth for longer than you have been alive.
You are not retrieving anything. You are not killing anything. You are waiting — that is the entire job — until the swarm has moved through. The gorse will hurt you on the way up and the morivarids will try to hurt you before you reach the entrance. Once you are in, you are in. Four dyapnids are already in there with you, spaced too deliberately to be wild. And after four Encounter rolls, a murk wraith stands in the mouth of the cave and asks you one question.
Field notes by Pip Rippon. Survive five Encounter rolls without leaving. People find that harder than it sounds.
What’s inside
- One Dark Peak location: the gulch below Kinder Scout and the Cuckoo's Cave sixty feet up the south wall
- Three creatures from the Bestiary — the Morivarid, the Dyapnid, and the Murk Wraith
- One page of reusable rules (OSR-adjacent, 2d6, no prep required)
- A siege scenario, not a journey: two zones, and the whole job is holding position for five Encounter rolls
- Dyapnids that read the dark-matter signature of genuine fear — physical stillness only gets you part of the way
- A wraith with one question and 1 HP, which is not the same as being safe to answer
- A 2d6 Encounter Table — 12 results
- Four outcomes: walked out clean, downed on the smooth floor, broke cover too early, or answered the question
Format: A5 PDF · 14 pages · Free
The story behind it: The Middlewood Cuckoo, in Urban Myths and Hymns.
What’s waiting out there
What a dyapnid is
A beetle the length of a forearm, chitin shell, mandibles that reduce bone to fragments in under a minute. Domesticated by the Xin, once, and then at some point not. The hive response triggers on fast movement, then fear-smell, then the dark-matter signature of fear itself. Standing still lowers your risk. Running confirms what they have already decided about you.
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.
