COMBATANTS:

4 Guard and 1 Wolf (the gaol mastiff, chained near the stair landing). XP: 150 per character (Guard 25 each, Wolf 50).

TACTICS. Two Guards are in the corridor, two are at the stair landing with the wolf. The wolf is chained and cannot reach past the landing unless a character moves into its ten-foot radius; use it to punish anyone who runs for the stair without dealing with the corridor first. The Guards are tired, underpaid, and reluctant. They will shout for help on the first round and one will flee up the stair on the second if two of his fellows are down. That fleeing guard brings reinforcements in four rounds, so the party has a ticking clock.

HALVARD'S WHEREABOUTS. Halvard Bren is not here. He is upstairs in his counting-house annex drinking tea and waiting for the water to do his work for him. If the party asks a captured guard where the Warden is, the guard will say, honestly, 'Up the hill. Where he always is.'

PRISONER'S STARTING KIT. Neither character begins with a weapon. The Fighter's pry bar was confiscated (it is in the evidence locker in Scene 3 and can be recovered), and the Cleric's holy symbol was taken and hung on a nail by the guardroom door. Until the party arms itself, treat improvised weapons as 1d4 bludgeoning plus Strength. The Cleric cannot cast spells with a material or somatic component until the holy symbol is reclaimed — this is a deliberate, one-scene pressure, and it should push the fighters into the corridor fast.

TREASURE. On the guardroom table: 12 gp in mixed coin, a ring of iron keys, a jack of cheap ale, and a Potion of Healing hidden behind a loose brick below the duty roster (DC 12 Intelligence (Investigation) to notice the disturbed mortar). The guard's halberds, a light crossbow with 12 bolts, a shortsword, and two sets of leather-and-chain kit are all available to be looted.

THE DROWNING ROOM. Water is rising about an inch per ten minutes of real time. After twenty minutes in-game, the floor of the overflow cells floods to knee depth and any character still inside the cells must make a DC 10 Constitution saving throw every ten minutes or gain one level of Exhaustion. This is the pacing device for the whole scene. Do not soften it; the party should feel the town closing its throat around them.

VOICE. The guards call the Fighter 'the bank man' and the Cleric 'the bounty'. One of them, a young man named Coll, has a sister who works in the counting-house. Let the party hear that. Act I is more interesting if the men they kill had names on a duty roster.

COMBATANTS:

6 Giant Rat and 1 Swarm of Rats. XP: 200 per character (Giant Rat 25 each, Swarm of Rats 50).

TACTICS. The giant rats attack from the water in two waves of three, using the channel walls for cover and retreating into the water when badly hurt — do not run them as fearless. The Swarm of Rats does not appear until round three, when the fighting has churned the water and blood has spread; it pours out of a collapsed side channel and goes for whoever is standing in the deepest water. Standing water is difficult terrain for Medium characters, so movement costs double, and ranged weapon attacks into the water are at disadvantage.

ENVIRONMENTAL PRESSURE. The cistern has two hazards. First, the ceiling drips a fine mineral dust that makes surfaces slick: any character who moves more than their speed in one turn must make a DC 12 Dexterity saving throw or fall Prone. Second, the water is cold: at the end of the scene, any character who was submerged must make a DC 10 Constitution saving throw or gain one level of Exhaustion, which lasts until the party takes a short rest somewhere dry.

THE CLERIC'S MOMENT. This is the scene where the Cleric reclaims their identity. If they took their holy symbol back in Scene 1, they can turn undead-adjacent vermin narratively, bless the party before the swarm arrives, and heal the Fighter out of a bad rat-bite round. If they did not, the scene is brutal — and that is the point. Do not fudge it.

TREASURE. Wedged in the silt beneath the third channel grating: a rusted strongbox containing 60 gp in older Crown coin, a Potion of Climbing, and a folded tally stick. XP is not awarded for treasure, but the tally stick is worth more than the gold.

THE LEDGER SCRAP. The tally stick is carved with a running account in a cipher — short vertical strokes in groups of nine, each group topped by a small circle with a dot in its center. A character who successfully reads it (see checks) learns it is a record of monthly payments out of Stonebarrow, labeled in plain dwarven numerals as 'tithes' but totalling roughly six times what the vale could plausibly owe the Crown.

COMBATANTS:

2 Spy (Halvard's 'clerks', who are in fact quietly armed and very good at their jobs) and 1 Animated Armor with 3 Flying Sword in the sealed vault. XP: 275 per character (Spy 200 each is far too high for this scene — use 2 Spy as non-combat infiltrators; combat XP in this scene is 1 Animated Armor at 200 plus 3 Flying Sword at 25 each, for 275 per character).

IMPORTANT BALANCE NOTE:

If the party fights the two Spies outright on top of the vault guardians, the scene will be lethal for two 2nd-level characters. Run the Spies as social obstacles first. They are Halvard's auditors: polite, unarmed-looking, and equipped with a whistle. Give the party every chance to bluff, bribe, or ambush them. If a Spy reaches a window and blows the whistle, 2 Guard arrive in three rounds.

TACTICS. The Animated Armor stands motionless in the vault until the vault door opens or until a character touches the coffer's scorched plate. It fights in the doorway to hold the choke point and does not pursue beyond the vault's threshold. The 3 Flying Sword fight as a swarm of blades, harrying spellcasters and cutting at anyone who tries to carry the coffer out. Describe them as ceremonial swords mounted above a merchant's strongbox — because that is exactly what they were, in the capital, before someone sent them here.

THE COFFER. The iron coffer is empty of gold. Its interior plate is scorched in a perfect circle the size of a coin, and etched around the burn is a faint spiraling cipher. The party's heist was never about the money. Inside the coffer's false bottom (DC 14 Intelligence (Investigation)) is a folded writ of Crown authority made out in Halvard's name, granting him 'discretionary collection authority over the Marrow Vale tithe for a term of six years.' Six years is exactly the length of the shortfall on the tally stick from Scene 2.

THE FIGHTER'S PRY BAR. The pry bar used in the original robbery is here, logged as evidence on the front table, tagged in Halvard's handwriting. Let the Fighter take it back with some ceremony.

TREASURE. In the vault: 150 gp in mixed coin and trade bars; 3 unset gemstones worth 25 gp each (bloodstone, moss agate, and one flawed garnet); a Wand of Secrets on the records-room shelf; 2 Potion of Healing in the clerk's desk; the coffer's false-bottom writ; and Halvard's private letter-case.

TIME PRESSURE. The annex is a working office. If the party spends more than twenty minutes searching, a runner arrives from the Keep with a sealed message. He is a Commoner (no XP; do not turn him into a fight) and he will flee screaming if threatened — and if he escapes he tells the town that the bank man and the bounty are out of their cells.

COMBATANTS:

4 Bandit and 1 Bandit Captain. XP: 550 per character (Bandit 25 each, Bandit Captain 450). This is the act's biggest fight and it is a hard one for two characters. Run it fairly, but let the environment matter.

THE CAPTAIN. The Bandit Captain is a professional named Rusk Halloran, down from the capital with six years of garrison service and a signed contract. He talks the entire fight. He is not loyal to Halvard, only paid by him, and will surrender if reduced below a third of his hit points — at which point he will happily sell Halvard out and complain about the terms of his contract, which he produces from inside his coat.

TACTICS. Two Bandit hold the front behind the cart, using it for three-quarters cover, and shoot crossbows. Two Bandit come up behind the party from the slate cut. The Bandit Captain works the middle, using his Parry against the Fighter and targeting the Cleric with his first attacks to break concentration on any ongoing spell. If the party pushes toward the drop-off on the left, the Captain orders his men to shove — any character fighting within five feet of the ledge can be forced off with a contested Athletics check, a forty-foot fall, and 4d6 bludgeoning damage.

MERCY AND CONSEQUENCE. If the party spares the Bandit Captain, he hands over his contract: a bond payable by 'the office of the Warden of Stonebarrow' — not the Crown, and not the King — with the burned coin pressed into the wax seal. He knows nothing about the Auditor except that the money came through three hands and that the man who paid him wore gloves in summer.

TREASURE. The Bandit Captain carries a Weapon +1 (a well-kept shortsword with capital-made hilt work), 80 gp in advance payment, the signed contract, and a hand-drawn map of the King's road marking three other ambush sites — all of which suggests Halvard has been doing this for a long time. The four Bandit carry 40 gp between them, a light crossbow each, and a case of twenty bolts.

AFTER THE FIGHT. Let the party take a short rest here if they have earned it. The ledge, the cart, and the rain make a defensible camp, and the Cleric will need the spell slots. Use the respite to let them read the contract and realize, together, that this is not about a bank robbery anymore.

COMBATANTS:

3 Thug and 2 Guard, defending the ground floor and stair. XP: 350 per character (Thug 100 each, Guard 25 each).

HALVARD BREN IS NOT A MONSTER. He is the act's villain and he has a character sheet forthcoming in the subscriber build. Do not give him an SRD stat block, do not run him as a Guard, Thug, Bandit Captain, or any other creature entry, and do not describe him using another creature's name. Run him narratively: he fights only if cornered with no exit, he spends his hired men as currency, he keeps a hand crossbow and a knife he is competent but unhurried with, and he talks the entire time. If you need to resolve an action he takes, describe what happens cinematically and call for an opposed check from the character trying to stop him.

HALVARD'S TACTICS. He opens by offering a deal — the party walks away with the coffer, the gold, and a signed pardon, and nobody follows him. He means roughly one third of that offer. If refused, he has the 3 Thug hold the stair while the 2 Guard haul the trunks out the side door, and he retreats up the internal stair to a rooftop ladder and a waiting horse the moment the fight turns.

He will not die easily: he has already laid a rope across the stairwell and cut a hole in the first-floor boards, and he will use both. If the party kills him here, that is a legitimate outcome, but a living Halvard who escapes to the capital with his ledgers half-burned is the stronger Act I ending, and the campaign's later acts are built on the version where he gets away.

IF HALVARD ESCAPES. He takes one trunk, the letter-case, and a burned coin. He leaves behind the second trunk, the ground-floor records, and — crucially — a single letter he did not have time to burn, still smoking in the grate. Let the party see the smoke and snatch it. That letter is the act's payoff.

THE LETTER. Signed only 'A.', it reads: 'Your discretion in the matter of the Marrow Vale is noted and approved. The shortfall has been absorbed. Send the coffer's seal and the two witnesses are to be closed as accounts. Do not write to me again. You will be contacted before the next quarter, as always. — A.' It is sealed with a copper coin burned through the middle.

TREASURE. In the second trunk and the toll house strongroom: 300 gp, a Potion of Greater Healing, a pair of Goggles of Night, a Cloak of Protection in a merchant's oilskin, a sealed writ of passage bearing the burned coin, three years of tithe ledgers documenting the shortfall, and the smoked letter from 'A.' Subscribers receive additional currency and item tables for the road out of the vale.

CLOSING THE ACT. Whether Halvard is dead or fled, the party ends Scene 5 with the coffer's sigil, the ledgers, the writ, and the letter. They are wanted in Stonebarrow. The King still has not heard their side of anything. The road south runs to the capital, and somewhere up that road is a person who signs their name with a burned coin and thinks of people as accounts.