Postcard from The Dark Peak · #4
The Wadsley Cache
Someone buried something on Wadsley Common. You know what it is, more or less. You have been paid to retrieve it. You have until the rooters find it first.
The common sits in three zones — the ridge, the open moor, the bog — and something has been running along the top of the eastern wall all murkneet. The smeln camp is cold. The scrufftails are not gone. And the rooters are still working the diggings at the northern end, where the cache is, doing the unhurried arithmetic that ends in a charge.
Field notes by Pip Rippon. Move to the bog, lift the bundle, get back to the ridge — before the sixth Encounter roll, or it's theirs.
What’s inside
- One Dark Peak location: Wadsley Common after murkfall — the ridge, the moor, and the bog
- Three creatures from the Bestiary — the Scrufftail, the Smeln, and the Rooter
- One page of reusable rules (OSR-adjacent, 2d6, no prep required)
- A 2d6 Encounter Table — 12 results, including a scrufftail sitting on the marker stone with something in its mouth
- A hard clock: six Encounter rolls to get in, get the bundle, and get out
- Three outcomes: bundle delivered, cache lost to the rooters, or face down in the peat
- Pip Rippon's field notes throughout
Format: A5 PDF · 15 pages · Free
The story behind it: The Wadsley Cache, in Urban Myths and Hymns.
What’s waiting out there
What a rooter is
A pig. A Dark Peak pig. This is a meaningful distinction. Low-slung and dense, all the weight forward, the eyes flat and black and working through its options. One of those options is you. It does not charge out of anger — it charges out of assessment. The processing takes about four seconds. You will know when it is done. And if you already have the bundle when it appears, it wants the bundle.
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.
