How this chapter fills
Complete the contract once at any level.
All entries
Guard the Caravan
Eleven wagons, one road, and a merchant who describes the cargo as "textiles" in a tone that closes the subject. Nothing has ever attacked this caravan. He pays for guards anyway, every single run.
Tax the Village
The ledger says forty. The village says twelve, and shows you the twelve with great ceremony. You write down twelve, because the ledger is in the capital and the village is right here.
Collect Bounties
Six names on the board, four of them the same man under different spellings. The clerk pays per poster, not per person, and has never once asked a follow-up question.
Raid the Treasury
Getting in is a door. Getting out is a door. The eleven minutes in between are where the wage comes from.
Sell Stolen Goods
The fence asks no questions, which is a service, and prices accordingly. You are not being robbed. You are paying for silence by weight.
Merchant Escort
He talks for the whole road. By the third hour you know his daughter's name, his supplier's markup and exactly what he thinks of the Guild. You would not trade the walk for a quiet one.
Mine the Vein
The vein was found by someone else, worked by someone else and abandoned by someone else. What is left is the awkward part near the roof that nobody tall wanted.
Plunder the Camp
They left in a hurry, which is good, and they left the pot on, which is better. Bandits keep excellent supplies and terrible watch rotas.
Smuggler's Run
The crate is not to be opened, tilted, or set down near open flame. You are told this twice, by two different people, in the same words.
Treasure Hunt
The map is authentic. The map is also four hundred years old and the coastline has moved. Both of those are true and only one of them is useful.
Gold Rush
Word gets out, the road fills, and by the time you arrive there are eleven people standing in a stream arguing about who was standing where. The gold is real. There is simply less of it than the argument suggests.
Toll Collection
A bridge, a rope, and the legal authority to be extremely inconvenient. Most travellers pay before the rope comes off the hook.
Train with Master
The master corrects your stance nine times in the first hour and then says nothing for the rest of the day. The silence is the lesson. It takes most people a week to work that out.
Arena Practice
Blunted blades, padded floor, and a crowd of four who came early for the later bouts. You will lose most of these. That is what they are for.
Dungeon Drills
Walk the corridor. Something jumps out. Walk it again. By the eleventh pass you have stopped flinching, which is the entire point and also a little sad.
Study Ancient Texts
Four hours to establish that the scroll is a grain receipt. The handwriting, though, teaches you more about the period than the archive's whole shelf of histories.
Spar the Champion
She goes at a fraction of her speed and still wins inside a minute. Afterwards she tells you exactly what you did wrong, in order, without being asked.
Survive the Trials
Three rooms, no instructions, one door at the end. The trial is not the rooms. The trial is whether you open the door before you understand them.
Mountain Climb
Up is straightforward. The lesson is on the way down, when your legs have opinions and the light does not.
Endurance Run
Twelve miles with a pack of stones and no explanation. The stones are not the important part. The no explanation is the important part.
Meditation Ritual
Sit. Do not move. The bell rings when it rings. Everyone spends the first session composing complaints they will never make.
Combat Training
The same block, four hundred times, until your arm does it while you are thinking about lunch. Nobody has found a shorter road to this, and not for want of looking.
Shadow Boxing
No opponent, no contact, no way of telling whether you are improving. The mirror is honest and slow and unbearable, in that order.
Wisdom Seeking
The sage answers every question with a better question. You leave with nothing written down and, three days later, work out what she meant.
Explore Dark Ruins
Somebody lived here and then stopped, and nobody wrote down which order those happened in. The doorways are the wrong height for anyone you have ever met.
Loot the Crypt
The families stopped visiting two centuries ago. The crypt kept the good silver anyway, out of habit, and there is nobody left to be offended.
Raid the Armory
Racked, oiled, inventoried and never once issued. Somewhere there is a quartermaster who won an argument at terrible cost.
Dragon's Hoard
Not gold. Dragons that hoard gold are a story for children. This one collects hinges, and has more of them than anyone alive.
Abandoned Mine
The props are still holding, which is the best you can say about a mine abandoned mid-shift. The tools are laid down neatly. That is the part that stays with you.
Sunken Temple
The water came in slowly enough that they had time to move the important things, and they moved the furniture. Historians have never forgiven them.
Forgotten Vault
Six locks, and the keys split between six people who did not like each other. Five have been picked. The sixth is still doing its job.
Treasure Cavern
The pile is smaller than the stories and heavier than it looks, both of which are true of every pile. You will make two trips and pretend you planned that.
Ancient Tomb
Whoever this was, they were buried with a chair, a lamp and a full set of cutlery for one. Somebody knew them well enough to know what they would want.
Pirate Shipwreck
Went down eleven yards from the beach, in daylight, in front of witnesses. The cargo survived. The reputation did not.
Witch's Stash
Labelled, dated and alphabetised. The witch was a meticulous woman and the jars are all still sealed, which is either reassuring or the exact opposite.
Relic Hunt
The relic is real, the buyer is real, and the provenance is a document three men have signed and none of them have read. You are paid for the object, not the paperwork.