The Dead Pay Half
- story-driven
- Difficulty: expert
- About 600 min
- solo
- Game Systems: Combat (New), Ambient Audio (Live), Dynamic Portraits (Live), Party Members (Live)
Every paper on the writ board in Owing prices a body twice: hauled in tied and breathing, or a tag cut off the corpse for half. Six winters ago six doors died in one night, and the magic they bleed into the ground belongs to the Receivers, by charter. Ride writs and choose what to do with the ones you catch: kill them where they kneel, cell them, hire them or let them go. Wounds are named, debts are chalked on the wall, and the Half-Price Ground fills with names you put there.
Plays in a web browser on a desktop or laptop computer.
The Dead Pay Half
Six Dead Doors
Six doorways stand in a ring round a forecourt of pale stone deep in the Six Dark, and the dead lie where the Shutting left them. Nine winters ago the Homeward Company opened those doors, one to each of six realms. Six winters ago all six died in a single night. Since the winter after, they have bled magic into the ground: grit that glints like hail that never melted, and buckles, bones and blades that come out of the dead halls strange.
A Board in Owing
That bleed belongs by charter to the Receivers, door-money from Brasslock who lost a fortune on the Homeward. Their silver built a warden-house in Owing, the mud-street town where every road in the Fray ends. One wall of its timber hall is covered in writ papers, each held by a pin: white for road nuisances, red for blood, black for gang heads. Every paper carries a painted face, the crime and two prices.
Two Prices
A target brought in tied and breathing pays double, and the warden-house gets its trial. A tag cut off the body pays half, and the gravedigger gets a name to cut. Kill them where they kneel, cell them, hire them, bed them, or cut the rope and let them go: the Tithe on the road, the Porters on the river, the Grind on the Salt, the stranded at the doors and the warden-house will each remember which.
The Top Writ
One paper hangs apart on its own nail, yellow with six winters, and nobody has cashed it. It names the woman who still holds the dead doors. Whoever reaches her decides what the crossing is for: sealed, claimed or sold.
What Awaits
- Three ways in: The Blade, The Bruiser or The Relic-runner
- A board of writ papers in white, red and black, each priced alive and dead
- A pit fight on a salt floor, a card table and the Hanged Oak
- A romance on either side of the law, each with its price
- One choice at the end the whole Fray talks about
The first pin on the board is loose, and the paper under it has a face and two prices.
Content notes
Contains: killing for pay and the killing of bound prisoners, with wounds named; captivity, gagging, humiliation and hard questioning; debt and debt-bondage; hangings and the unburied dead; desire between adults, plain-spoken and never explicit, shown in full only in mature sessions.