First Chronicle Blueprint

A first chronicle is not a full campaign. It is a proof of concept: four to six sessions that demonstrate the world's pressure systems, establish what kinds of choices the campaign will produce, and leave the party with unfinished business worth returning to. This blueprint describes a starting structure; use it as a skeleton, not a script.

Chronicle Premise: The Contested Account

The city: Marwen. Run this chronicle in Marwen, the elven-governed craft city on the northern bank of the Wartna River, population roughly 28,000, ruled by House Slvanna (Chapter Sixteen, Irna). Marwen fits the premise without adjustment: Echo's Accord maintains a presence there for civic stability and records, Nyxollox is established for ordinary funerary practice, the silk and lace trade gives the city a cloth economy worth forging deeds over, and Queen Slvanna's attention is fixed on Oshala's expansion at the national level, which is exactly why a district-scale Oshalan registry has room to operate under her notice. Talbar's deal-keepers and a Themela court are both reachable from the city for the legal track in Sessions Three and Four.

Situation: An Accord archive in the Merchants' Quarter has been partially destroyed, not by accident, but by someone who needed specific records gone. A contract, a set of property deeds, and a testimony that implicated someone important have all disappeared in the fire. The fire was ruled accidental. The archivist who died in it was the only person who knew exactly what was in those records. The death-keepers are asking questions because the archivist's death has been reported as unwitnessed, she died alone, which was unusual for a woman who was meticulous about following the Order of Witness before leaving her post.

This premise engages three pressure systems immediately: Echo (records destroyed, archive compromised), Nyxollox (an unwitnessed death, potentially a soul interception), and the factional system (whoever destroyed the records has institutional protection). It produces three active factions with specific agendas and gives the party a mystery with real stakes and real answers.

Starting Factions and Clocks

The Order (Oshalan Quarter): Has an interest in the property deed records that were destroyed. Does not openly claim involvement. Front: prevent the deeds from being reconstructed. Clock: 4 ticks (1, establish cover story; 2, discredit surviving witnesses; 3, acquire the building under investigation; 4, front complete). Current tick: 1. Observable at tick 2: a key witness leaves the city unexpectedly. Marwen's Oshalan Quarter is new, small, and legally scrupulous, which is what makes it hard to move against; it is one session-scale front nested inside the Order's long clock (Chapter Six, Long Faction Clocks).

The Accord (Echo's Faith): Is aware the archive was compromised but does not yet know it was deliberate. Front: reconstruct what was in the archive. Clock: 5 ticks (1, secure alternate records; 2, interview witnesses; 3, identify the missing records; 4, reconstruct content; 5, archive restored). Current tick: 1. The keeper leading the reconstruction effort is the party's natural ally.

The Infernal Operation: The contract that was in the archive bound a mid-ranking merchant to a creditor who is not who they claimed to be. The contract's destruction does not void it, infernal contracts are cosmologically binding regardless of physical evidence, but it removes the merchant's ability to prove the terms, which the creditor is now exploiting. Front: prevent the contract terms from being recovered. Clock: 3 ticks (1, locate any copies; 2, intimidate or remove witnesses to the signing; 3, assert maximal terms). Current tick: 1.

Location Keys

Five locations carry this chronicle. Prepare them in the order the party is likely to reach them, and follow the three-locations-per-session rule from Chapter Eight rather than preparing all five at once. No maps are needed. Each key below states what is there, who is there, what can be found, and one complication.

The Burned Archive (Merchants' Quarter). A two-storey Accord records house on a corner lot off the Riverside Market approach, timber-framed in Marwen's usual manner, which is why it burned as completely as it did. The upper floor and the main reading room are gone; the ground-floor outer storage room survived because its door was shut. The lot smells of wet ash and dye runoff. Present: Accord labourers under an Accord Keeper (Chapter Thirteen) sorting salvage into crates, and, most days, an Oshalan Registrar with two Oshalan Zealots standing across the street with a clipboard and a lease inquiry. Found here: the outer storage room's intake ledgers, scorched but legible in places; the archivist's own desk drawer, which contains a Witness roll with the last three entries torn out; and the fire's actual origin point, which a Hard Perception check places at the document shelving rather than at the lamp the ruling blamed. Complication: the Accord's salvage crates are being logged by the Order as "abandoned commercial material" at the moment the party arrives, which means anything the party takes is, on paper, theft from a registry process.

The Second Archive Branch (Clothiers' District). A tidy single-room office above a finishing studio, one flight up a wooden stair that announces every visitor. Ledgers to the ceiling on three walls, a reading table, one stove, and a window onto the street that makes the room easy to watch from outside. Present: Edric Nowell, who runs it alone, and, in Session Two, Halla, an Accord scribe who is Echoless. Found here: the branch copy register, whose line 847 records that a copy of the Dresh contract was released to a requesting party, with the requesting party's address smudged; the branch's own duplicate of two of the destroyed property deeds; and Edric's private reconstruction notes, which he will not surrender until he trusts the party. Complication: Edric destroys the line 847 register entry himself, out of fear, at the end of whatever session the party first presses him hard, which means the party's evidence becomes their own testimony about a document that no longer exists.

The Counting House (Silk Gate). The creditor's front office, a narrow two-room building against the inner face of the river gate, ground-floor receiving area with a public counter and an upstairs workroom reached by a back stair. Bonded-cargo traffic passes the door all day, which means witnesses. Present: the Infernal Clerk (Chapter Thirteen) at the counter in mundane dress, two Oshalan Zealots retained as escorts in the back room, and Merrit Vale himself on the days he is in the city. Found here: the public commercial registry ledger, which the clerk cannot lawfully refuse to open, containing the text of the Dresh contract; a strongbox holding the sealed original, which is the copy with legal weight; and the operation's bonded-goods manifests, which name the Silk Gate vault. Complication: the clerk's response to force is paperwork, not violence. He declares an incident, writes an account of it in front of the gate traffic, and sends an escort for the watch, which converts the party's advantage into a charge.

Calva Dresh's Cooperage (Merchants' Quarter, riverside). A working barrel shop on the Wartna bank two streets from the Riverside Market: a yard of staves and hoop iron, a shed with three fires banked low, and a small counting room where Calva keeps her books and sleeps more nights than she admits. Present: Calva Dresh, two apprentices who are frightened of the letters that keep arriving, and, from Session Three, whoever the creditor sends to stand in the yard and be seen. Found here: three years of payment receipts in Calva's hand, which establish a pattern of performance; the creditor's letters, including the one invoking the discretionary services clause; and Calva's memory of the signing, including the fact that the archivist witnessed it. Complication: the cooperage is Calva's only remaining asset and the labour demand is designed to take it. She will not leave the building, which means any plan requiring her physical presence elsewhere is a negotiation before it is a plan.

The Silk Gate Vault (Silk Gate, bonded warehouse row). A stone-floored strongroom under a bonded warehouse that handles sealed cargo at the river gate, the only masonry building on the row in a city that builds in timber. This is what the smudged address in the copy register points to, one link above the counting house in the operation's chain. The vault is entered through the warehouse floor by a stair behind the weighing scales; a bonded cargo seal on the stair door means breaking it is a customs offence. Present: a bonded warehouse clerk who knows nothing, the operation's own Infernal Clerk when a transfer is scheduled, and hired muscle on the warehouse floor. Found here: the archivist's intercepted soul coin, held in a warded strongbox among ordinary bonded consignments because ordinary consignments do not get searched; the operation's transfer manifest, which names the next holder; and, if the party is thorough, Merrit Vale's claim-token for the Dresh contract in the same box. Complication: the coin is scheduled to move. Vessa Yarren's six-hour window is real, and the transfer manifest is what makes it real; once the coin is consigned outward the party is chasing it rather than recovering it.

Chronicle NPC Records

Four named NPCs carry this chronicle. Each has a goal, a fear, a tell, and a stat block in the Ix Adversary Catalog. The catalog is canon for every value; use these records for behaviour and the catalog for numbers.

Vessa Yarren, death-keeper of Nyxollox. Goal: establish that the archivist's death was unwitnessed and deliberate, and reopen the case before the soul is beyond recovery. Fear: the inquiry will be bureaucratically suppressed before she can act on it; she has been warned off once already. Tell: rests her hand on her badge before she says anything she knows will be inconvenient for the other person. Stat block: Ix Adversary Catalog, Chapter Thirty-Seven, Vessa Yarren (Elite).

Edric Nowell, surviving archive keeper. Goal: finish reconstructing the destroyed records and get out of this city before whoever ordered the fire decides he is also a problem. Fear: being used as a pawn by parties he cannot vet, which is now happening. Tell: answers every question with a question first; confirms nothing until he has established who is asking. Stat block: Ix Adversary Catalog, Chapter Thirty-Seven, Edric Nowell (Elite).

Calva Dresh, merchant. Goal: find out what she actually agreed to. She signed a contract three years ago under pressure and has been paying it; now the terms are changing and the original agreement is ash. Fear: that she genuinely cannot pay whatever the real terms turn out to be. Tell: talks faster when she is scared; runs her hands flat across whatever surface is near her. Stat block: Ix Adversary Catalog, Chapter Thirty-Seven, Calva Dresh (Elite).

Merrit Vale, infernal contractor's contact (the party will learn the name in Session 3). Goal: recover the destroyed contract's terms through alternate means before the merchant's debt can be contested. Fear: the operation's principals learning that the records destruction created more exposure than it covered. Tell: entirely still when not actively moving; no nervous gestures; the kind of calm that comes from practice. Stat block: Ix Adversary Catalog, Chapter Thirty-Seven, Merrit Vale (Elite), a named variant of the Infernal Clerk.

Halla, Accord scribe (Echoless). Introduced in Chapter Eleven's worked session at the second archive branch. She has no block of her own. Stat block: use Accord Keeper (Elite), Ix Adversary Catalog, Chapter Thirty-Five, as her profile, with her Witnessed Act used to place a reclassification on the record rather than to protect one. She is not a villain and does not fight.

Session Structure

Each session below gives a scene list, the checks those scenes expect, the opposition sized for a starting-tier party of four using the encounter table in Chapter Eight, two branches, and a failure state that still moves the chronicle forward. Difficulties assume characters with one or two ranks in the relevant skill.

Session 1, The Unwitnessed Death

The party arrives in the city or is already there when a death-keeper approaches them. She needs people who can go places she cannot: she believes the archivist's death was not accidental, but she has no physical evidence and the official ruling is closed. She asks for help informally, off the record, for now.

The party's objectives: find out how the archivist died, find out who was with her, find out what she was working on in the days before the fire.

Introduces: the death-keeper (NPC, ally, has information but limited institutional reach), the surviving archive keeper (NPC, frightened, has partial records), the Order's Quarter (visible in the background; their signage and registrars are present in the district where the archive stood), the merchant (NPC, desperate, knows something is wrong with their contract).

Scenes and checks.

1. Vessa's approach, at the burned archive. Social, no check required to accept the job. A character who wants to know how far she is exposed rolls Average Perception to read her, or Average Negotiation to get her to say it outright: she has been warned off once, by name, by someone senior.
2. The fire site. Hard Perception to place the origin at the document shelving rather than the lamp. Average Lore to recognise that Accord shelving of that period is fire-spaced, so a lamp fire does not spread that way. Average Streetwise with the salvage labourers produces the same conclusion from a different direction: nobody on the crew believes the ruling.
3. The outer storage room. Average Lore to work the surviving intake ledgers into a list of what the archive held. Hard Lore, or Average with Edric's help later, to identify the three specific losses: one infernal contract, a set of property deeds, one filed testimony.
4. The Order across the street. Social pressure scene. The Oshalan Registrar logs the party's presence and asks, politely, on what authority they are handling registry material. Average Negotiation or Average Deception to leave without being entered in the log. Failing the check is not a fight; it is a name written down that surfaces in Session Four.
5. The archivist's rooms or the second branch, and the merchant. Average Perception in the archivist's rooms finds the Witness roll with three entries torn out. Calva Dresh can be met here or in Session Two; she approaches the party if they have been visibly asking about the archive, because the archivist is the witness named on her contract.

Opposition. No combat is required. If the table wants a fight, the correct one is Light: four Oshalan Zealots (Minions) escorting the Registrar off the salvage lot, or six if the party has already been logged. Do not use the Registrar's Seize the Record in this session unless the party gives her a document to seize; the Order is at tick 1 and is not yet moving openly.

If the party goes to the Order first, the Registrar is courteous, produces a lease inquiry that is entirely lawful, and the Order clock advances to tick 2 off-screen: a salvage labourer who talked to the party leaves Marwen within the week. The party has lost a witness and gained a confirmation.

If the party goes to the Accord first, the Accord keeper opens the reconstruction effort to them and the Accord clock advances to tick 2. The party gains the Accord Keeper's Reconstruct Record ability as a resource for the rest of the chronicle and inherits the Accord's blind spot: the Accord still believes the fire was an accident, and says so in writing.

Failure state. The party learns nothing and the ruling stands. Vessa escalates alone: she files a formal reopening request, it is suppressed, and she is reassigned out of the district. Session Two opens with her sending the party what she gathered before she was moved, which delivers the same information one session later at the cost of the party's best institutional ally. The chronicle continues; the party now has to do the Accord's work without an Accord contact.

Session 2, Following the Records

The party has learned that the fire was not accidental. The archivist was investigating something in the days before her death. Partial records exist in a second archive branch across the city. Someone is already there asking questions.

The party's objectives: get to the second archive before the Order's agents remove or discredit what is there; find what the archivist was investigating; protect the surviving archive keeper who has figured out the same thing the party has.

Introduces: an Order registrar (NPC, not hostile yet, but tracking the same records), the infernal contractor's contact (NPC, in disguise, also pursuing the records), and the first direct evidence that the destroyed records were specifically targeted.

Scenes and checks. Chapter Eleven runs this session in full, start to finish, with table-level detail. Use it as the primary text for Session Two and this list as the index.

1. The clinic notice. Average Lore identifies the notice as ordinance boilerplate with no issuing office named, which is procedurally defective and therefore deliberate.
2. Calva at the cooperage. Average Lore identifies the invoked clause as a standard infernal performance trigger construction. Hard Streetwise places the name Merrit Vale as a factor who represents clients nobody can name.
3. The second archive branch, with Halla present. Average Perception notices Halla's stillness and her half-beat-too-smooth answer. Asking her to leave works; she returns within four hours with a regional authorisation, which is the party's window.
4. The copy register. Hard Perception recovers part of the smudged requesting-party line: a partial address in the Silk Gate district.
5. The counting house. Average Negotiation establishes grounds to review a contract as a party to the signing, if Calva is present. Hard Deception buys five minutes of access without her. The public registry ledger yields the contract text; the sealed original stays in the strongbox.

Opposition. Light at most, and it should not be combat. The counting house holds one Infernal Clerk (Elite) with two Oshalan Zealots (Minions) in the back room, which is a Light encounter the party is meant to solve socially. The Clerk's win condition is making the party liable, not defeating them.

If the party takes the strongbox, they have the sealed original and a customs offence attached to their names at the Silk Gate. The infernal clock jumps straight to tick 3: Vale asserts maximal terms immediately, because the party has proved the terms can be produced.

If the party leaves with the ledger copy only, they have text without legal weight, and Session Three's legal track opens with a Themela filing rather than a court challenge. Vale's clock advances to tick 2 instead: he moves on the witnesses, which means Edric.

Failure state. Halla reclassifies the branch records before the party reaches them, and Edric destroys the line 847 entry out of fear. The party has no register, no address, and no copy. Session Three still opens: Vessa has the holding site independently, through the death-keepers' own tracking of the interception, and the Silk Gate address arrives from her instead of from the archive. The party loses the paper trail and keeps the soul thread.

Session 3, The Contract Surface

The merchant has reached out to the party. Their infernal creditor has appeared and is asserting terms that were not in the original agreement, but the original agreement has been destroyed and the merchant cannot prove what the terms were. The death-keeper has found evidence that the archivist's soul was intercepted at death. Two threads have merged: the records destruction and the soul interception are connected through the same person, who needed the contract terms buried and the sole witness to the signing eliminated before she could file a proper death report.

The party's objectives: recover the intercepted coin from the Silk Gate vault before the transfer; protect the merchant while the contract terms are established; get Merrit Vale's name onto a document that a court will read.

This thread can surface as early as Session 2. The worked session in Chapter Eleven has the party reach the counting house and the infernal clerk inside Session Two; if that happens at your table, run Session 3 as the consequence rather than the introduction.

Scenes and checks.

1. The vault approach, under Vessa's six-hour clock. Average Streetwise or Average Lore to read the bonded warehouse's working pattern and find the window between the last weighing and the night watch. Hard Stealth to reach the stair behind the scales unseen, or Hard Deception to arrive as a consignor with business. Breaking the bonded cargo seal on the stair door requires no check and is a customs offence on the record; Average Craft or Hard Subterfuge lifts and reseats it instead.
2. The strongroom. Average Perception locates the warded strongbox among ordinary consignments, because it is the only one in the row that is warm. Hard Arcana or Hard Secret Lore opens the ward; failing it does not stop the party, it makes the opening loud. Vessa can open it herself with two rounds of uninterrupted work, which is the party's real job in this scene.
3. The recovery itself. Vessa performs the death-keeper rite over the coin as it comes out. Follow the procedure in Session Four, step by step; Session Three establishes custody, Session Four resolves the claim. Take the transfer manifest in the same action if anyone thinks to; it names the next holder and it is what Session Four's filing is built on.
4. Calva under pressure, the same night or the following morning. The creditor has put a man in her yard to be seen. Average Negotiation or Average Intimidation moves him off without an incident; Hard Leadership or Hard Charm steadies Calva enough that she will leave the yard for a filing appointment, which is the only thing that gets her in front of a court. Her Signed Under Pressure ability stands until the party produces the contract copy or a witness to the signing: until then, any check resting on her testimony alone adds 1 Bane .
5. Vale surfaces. He introduces himself properly for the first time, courteously, at a place of his choosing. This is a negotiation, not a fight. Hard Negotiation extracts the principal's existence, though not the name. Average Perception catches what he will not say: he is more worried about his own principals than about the party. Average Lore identifies his offer as a Gilded Assay construction (Chapter Four, Contract Offers, row 2), where the repayment schedule is the trap.

Opposition. Moderate: one Infernal Clerk (Elite) supervising the scheduled transfer plus one Bandit Gang group of four Minions hired as warehouse muscle, which is the Chapter Eight Moderate row of one Elite and four Minions for a party of four. Do not add the Pact Collector here; it is Session Four's escalation. If the party arrives outside the transfer window, drop the Clerk and run the four Minions alone as a Light encounter, and let the party take the coin cleanly. That is a legitimate outcome and it makes Session Four about the contract rather than the coin.

If the party recovers the coin, Vale's exposure becomes real. The infernal clock does not advance; instead the operation's principals begin cleaning up, which means Session Four opens with a Pact Collector in the city and Vale harder to reach, not easier.

If the party spends the session on Calva's legal track instead, the coin moves on schedule and the transfer manifest becomes the only thread to it. Session Four's recovery happens at the receiving holder's premises rather than at the Silk Gate, at Hard difficulty throughout, and Vessa's standing is spent getting the party through the door.

Failure state. The coin transfers and the party is seen doing the failing. Vale now knows exactly who they are. Session Four opens with the party holding one thing of real value anyway: the transfer manifest names the next holder of record, and under Chapter Four, step 5, the holder of record at judgment is who collects. A named holder is a defendant. The chronicle moves to the courts instead of the vaults, which is slower and more dangerous to the Order, not less.

Session 4, Convergence

All three factions have noticed the party. The Order is now actively trying to prevent the deed records from being reconstructed. The infernal operation is accelerating (the creditor has called in a Pact Collector to manage the contract enforcement). The Accord keeper has found enough to make a formal case but needs the party to secure the evidence before it disappears again.

The party's choices determine what gets resolved and what remains active: they can stop the Order's land grab, void the infernal contract (requires locating and recovering the intercepted soul coin from the operation that holds it), and/or give the Accord enough to formally reopen the archive case. They probably cannot do all three.

Scenes and checks.

1. The Accord's case file. The Accord Keeper needs three things secured in one day: Edric's testimony, the branch deed duplicates, and the archivist's Witness roll. Hard Negotiation or Hard Charm brings Edric to the table, at Average if the party protected him in Session Two or Three. The Keeper's Reconstruct Record adds two Boon dice to one Lore, Perception, or Streetwise check to restore what is missing; spend it here.
2. The Order's move on the building. The Registrar arrives at the burned lot with Zealots and a purchase instrument at tick 3. Average Lore identifies the procedural defect in the instrument. Hard Negotiation before a witness, with the Accord Keeper present to place a Witnessed Act on the record, stops the acquisition without violence. Striking the Registrar or an escorted Zealot in a witnessed setting advances the Order clock immediately, and against an Oshalan Inquisitor it triggers Institutional Weight.
3. The Pact Collector at the cooperage. The Collector is there to enforce, lawfully, on a schedule. Average Perception reads the Collateral Sense working and tells the party he already knows where Calva is. Hard Negotiation buys a delay of one day and no more. Physical obstruction is the Chapter Thirteen warning made real: a party that blocks collection stops being bystanders and becomes documented obstruction.
4. The claim resolution. The soul-recovery procedure, below.
5. The filing. Easy Negotiation at the Accord archive or the Talbar Registry files the contract where a court will accept it; the claim becomes public, which is the point. Hard Lore and Negotiation opens the Themela court challenge on fraud in the trigger language, which runs past the end of this chronicle by design (Chapter Four, The Difficulty Ladder).

The soul-recovery procedure. Run this with the claim rules in Chapter Four, The Mechanics of Claim, The Passage of a Soul, and Death Under a Live Claim. It is a procedure, not a check.

1. Establish which step the party is acting in. The archivist's coin was intercepted at step 2, transit to Sheol, which is theft from the route rather than collection. She is not at judgment and has not crossed. Everything the party does now is preparation for step 4, and step 4 is the only decision point.
2. Take physical custody of the intercepted coin. This is the Silk Gate vault scene from Session Three, or the receiving holder's premises if the transfer completed. No check recovers a coin; an adventure does.
3. Have a death-keeper seal the passage. Vessa's Witness the Passage protects the transit and adds two Bane dice to any further interception attempt against this death. It does not void a lawful claim. State that plainly at the table so the party does not mistake the rite for a cancel button.
4. Establish who holds the claim of record. The transfer manifest, the counting house strongbox, and Vale's claim-token all answer this. Under step 5 of the passage, the holder of record at judgment collects, and that is the current holder, not necessarily the party who wrote the contract.
5. Choose the route. Three are open and the party can attempt one. Take the claim-token: no check, an adventure; recover Vale's token before it passes to a successor, which means reaching him before his principals reassign the collection right. File and challenge: Easy Negotiation to file, then Hard Lore and Negotiation in a Themela court on demonstrable fraud in the trigger language, which requires the filed copy and runs beyond this chronicle. Make the trigger fail to fire: no check, an adventure; the cheapest option, and the claim survives dormant, which is a live thread for Sessions Five and Six.
6. Deliver the coin. With the interception broken and the passage sealed, the archivist resumes transit and reaches the river wait. The party does not attend judgment. What they have bought her is a clean crossing and a claim contested by a named holder rather than a hidden one.

Opposition. Size to the thread the party pushes, using the Chapter Eight table for four starting-tier characters.

Give every one of these an objective beyond reducing the opposition to 0 Wounds: the deed duplicates must not leave the room, Calva must not be removed from the yard, the claim-token must not reach a successor. Name two terrain features before rolling initiative.

If the party resolves the infernal thread, the Order's acquisition completes off-screen. The Accord clinic closes, Edric leaves Marwen, and the deed records the archivist died over are now the Order's, lawfully. Sessions Five and Six open on a legal counterchallenge the Accord can only win with the party's evidence.

If the party resolves the Order thread, the acquisition fails publicly and the Order's Marwen front is set back to tick 1, but the Pact Collector completes his collection. Calva works the warehouse under the labour clause, alive and reachable, and the claim on the archivist's coin passes to a successor the party has never met.

Failure state. All three fronts complete. The Order holds the lot, Vale asserts maximal terms, and the coin is consigned onward. The party still ends with a filed copy, a named holder of record, and Vessa Yarren's testimony that the death was unwitnessed, which is the exact evidentiary basis the Themela challenge in Chapter Four is built from. The chronicle becomes a legal campaign against three institutions that have all now made mistakes on paper. That is a harder first chronicle and a better second one.

Sessions 5–6 (optional extension): Each unresolved thread becomes a session of its own. The Pact Collector, the recovered soul coin, the Order's legal counterchallenge, the merchant's situation, and the questions about who ordered the archivist killed all have room to breathe in extension sessions.

Chronicle Rewards

Award XP at session end using Chapter Eight, XP and Advancement. Award coin and goods against the Starting row of the Rewards and Wealth stage table in the same chapter, which sets 200 to 600 gold flargons per session as a party total, not a per-character award and not a guarantee.

Four sessions at this rate put a party of four at roughly 80 to 105 XP each, which crosses out of the Starting stage and into Established at 76 XP. Price the Session Five and Six rewards against the Established row, not this one.

Prefer the non-coin reward wherever the coin column would push the party above the Starting band. The Accord is an institution, not a purse, and standing with it is the thing that makes Sessions Five and Six possible.

Chronicle End State

A four-session chronicle ends with the party having tangibly affected at least two of the three faction fronts. Some things are resolved; some are not. The city is different in visible ways because of what the party did. The death-keeper is now an established relationship. The Accord keeper trusts the party with information they could not have otherwise accessed. The Order has noted the party's interference. The infernal operation has a face the party can pursue.

The chronicle leaves the party with standing in the city and with specific unfinished business worth returning to. That is a first chronicle's job.