Postcard from The Dark Peak · #9
The Don Head Relay
Go up to the Don Head before the murk gets thick. Find the relay node — it pulses. Pour the flask on it. Get out before the Mentiloth work out what happened. Simple jobs. You know how they go.
Here is what the briefing left out: the Mentiloth aren't guarding the node because they were told to. They built it. They wove the network before most of Hellsborough was a plan, and they remember every junction in it. When one burns, they don't check with anyone — they already know. And the moment the silk ignites, every Encounter roll for the rest of the murkneet gets worse.
Field notes by Pip Rippon. Six Encounter rolls to reach the source, burn the node, and get back to the drove road. Think about nothing on the way.
What’s inside
- One Dark Peak location: the high moor above Langsett — the drove road, the relay margin, and the Don Head
- Three creatures from the Bestiary — the Mentiloth, the Xin, and the Don Bog Beast
- One page of reusable rules (OSR-adjacent, 2d6, no prep required)
- A sabotage clock: destroying the node forces an Encounter roll and adds +2 to every roll after it — the silk burns as a signal
- Creatures that punish the instinctive response: the Mentiloth are drawn to thought, and the bog beast is triggered by running
- A warden you outlast rather than fight — one wrong look at the Xin and it reads your purpose
- A 2d6 Encounter Table — 12 results
- Three outcomes: node burned and paid, taken by the bog, or walked off the moor with no memory of why you climbed it
Format: A5 PDF · 15 pages · Free
The story behind it: The Don Head Relay, in Urban Myths and Hymns.
What’s waiting out there
What a mentiloth is
Horse-sized, moth-bodied, wings cross-hatched with dark venation. It flickers through positions — there, then three feet left, then not-there — and your lamplight doesn't fill the space it just left. Don't track where it was. Watch where the air moves. They never travel alone: when they appear, there are three, and only one attacks at a time.
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.
