Twelve Good Names

How to run it

1. The register is negotiation, not confession. Maud Crowder is not a woman with a secret who breaks in the third act. She names her price in the first five minutes and never lies to the party. If you catch yourself running her as a penitent, put a number back in her mouth.

2. The spine is a count, not a mystery. The party knows who killed Merle Sedge by the end of Scene 1, and proving it is worthless. The only live question is how many people stand up at noon, and what each of them loses by doing it.

3. Say yes to true things. The d20 gives you twenty people and exactly what each is carrying. When a player names one of those things to its owner, let it land hard.

4. The cords are not the answer, and your players will try them anyway. The wall of knotted cords looks like the off switch. It is a filing system. Let them try, and charge them a quarter hour.

5. Gil Hask is allowed to die. Crowder is a moral-gray villain and the win over her is a choice. Hask is not. If your table wants him put down at noon, give them that.

Threap, and what an oath costs there

Threap is a river town of nine hundred, built where the weir and the lock make barges pay to pass. It answers accusations by wager of law, a real historical practice.

The accused swears they did not do it, then produces oath-helpers who swear that the accused's oath is a good one. Not witnesses. Not one of them has to have been there. They swear to the worth of the man, and the number goes up with the charge. A killing takes twelve. The reeve, Orwin Fyle, investigates nothing. He counts, he is honest, and he will say so himself, which is the horror. The rule your players need shouted at them: a greater number beats a lesser number.

The strange part has five rules. Learn them and nothing here can contradict you.

1. An oath sworn in the Hall on the hall-cord binds the swearer to the words, not to the truth. The moot accepts it. That much is only law.
2. When the words are false, the deed does not go nowhere. It moves. A piece settles into whoever swore and shows up as a mark, a habit or a hunger. The Hall calls it the weight and prices it into the fee.
3. The weight divides by the number who swear. Twelve swearers carry a twelfth each. One swearer alone carries the whole thing.
4. Only an unswearing takes it back: a second oath, sworn in the same hall, in front of a greater number than heard the first one, naming the true deed aloud. Every piece then goes home to whoever did it, at once, in front of whoever is standing there.
5. The cords record. They do not hold. Burn them and no weight moves.

The villains

Maud Crowder, the Hallkeeper (Mode A, the one you can almost agree with). Sixties and small, with ink to the second knuckle. She inherited the Sworn Hall and has kept twenty people housed on it. Wants: the Hall solvent and Threap quiet, in that order. Her logic, better than you want it to be: a town this size cannot survive hanging its own warder. The tolls stop, the barges go around, and in four years there is no Threap. It can survive hanging four strangers. How she loses: not by being caught, because she has broken no law, but when enough of her own people decide the weight is worse than the wage.

Do not play her as a woman being talked into her conscience. She has one, she has already done the arithmetic with it, and she will show you her work.

Gil Hask, Warder of the Weir (Mode B, the one you are allowed to want dead). Forty, thick through the shoulders, still wearing the toll chain. Two weeks ago the lockman Merle Sedge finished a tally showing six years of shaved barge tolls, and Hask met him at the lock at night and held him under. Wants: the tally gone and a name on the charge that is not his. His logic: there isn't one worth respecting. How he loses: at noon in front of the whole room, wearing the thing he did.

The turn

The party will arrive expecting to prove they were elsewhere. There is nothing to prove. Threap does not weigh truth, and Fyle will say so kindly.

Hask did not buy an alibi. An alibi leaves the killing unanswered, and the law requires that a killing be answered by a name. Crowder sold him the better product: twelve sworn who will swear they saw four strangers at the lock that night. The party slept at the Hall two nights ago, because the Hall rents beds.

So this is not an investigation. It is a recruitment, with three hours on the clock, in a building full of people who swear for a living.

Scene 1: Your Name Is In The Book

30 min · no combat

GM setup, and the whole map. A little after nine, in the long room where the twenty sworn eat: fifty feet by twenty-five, one door at the east end with twenty pegs beside it, the cord wall down the north side, a hearth at the west. The charge goes up during breakfast, which is deliberate. They can leave, but it is on the town gate by half past nine.

What is really going on (GM). The paper carries the four characters' names, spelled the way they gave them at the desk two nights ago. The charge is the drowning of Merle Sedge, and the moot sits at noon in this room, because this is where the cord is.

Crowder comes to the table before they come to her. She does not wait to be confronted, and she opens with the offer.

The check that sets the tone. Reading her is Wisdom (Insight) DC 13. On a success, say the unsettling part plainly. She is not lying and she is not enjoying it, and she will not change her mind. On a failure they read her as a schemer and waste ten minutes hunting for an angle.

One standing failure rule, declared out loud now: a failure never closes a name. It costs a quarter hour, or it costs the room (Crowder learns what was offered and moves down her list).

Tess Sedge, the dead man's daughter, nineteen, has sat on the bench inside the Hall door every morning for two weeks. She wants what the party wants and has nothing to trade, which is why nobody has helped her. She cannot swear: Threap does not count kin.

What Tess gives them: the tally (worthless here, see Treasure), the names of all twenty sworn, and the most useful sentence in the adventure, said without knowing it: "Half of them can't sleep."

Scene 2: The Long Room

50 min · the d20 · one likely fight

The heart of the piece. Run three to five of the sworn properly; the rest are texture.

How turning a sworn works. Anyone can be asked. What moves them is the unswearing, the only thing on offer that Crowder cannot match, because it gives back what stuck. The cost is public: Threap takes a hand for proven perjury, and Fyle applies that without exception.

The arithmetic, and say it out loud early. Twelve of the twenty are Hask's. Of the other eight, Tilda Cobb cannot swear and Crowder will not, so six are available. Every name taken out of Hask's twelve counts twice, because it leaves his column and joins the party's. They win by ending the count ahead of him, and the fast road runs through his twelve.

• Charisma (Persuasion) DC 15 cold, knowing nothing about them.
• DC 13 if the party has learned what stuck to that person.
• DC 10 if a player names the thing out loud, to its owner, in front of another sworn. Naming it is the whole mechanic. Reward it every time.

Tilda Cobb keeps the cords and she is the way in. Row 15. She is not sworn, so she is not a number for either side, and she will tell the party exactly who took what, for nothing, if she is asked like a person instead of like a source.

Intelligence (Investigation) DC 13 on the wall gets rule 5 without asking her, and gets it colder. On a failure, a quarter hour and the conviction that the cords are the answer.

The mini toolkit: the twenty sworn (d20)

Roll one of the twenty sworn

d20	The twenty sworn
1	Audry Dole. Cooper's widow, sworn eleven years. Swore a twelfth of an arson. Stuck: she drifts toward any open flame, and checks her hands for burns that are not there. Costs: the Hall's roof, the only one she has.
2	Onnie Slack. Seventeen, the youngest here. Swore a twelfth of a theft. Stuck: she pockets small things without deciding to, then puts them back and cries. Costs: her brother's place in the Hall, which was the trade.
3	Ruthin Pyne. Was clerk to the reeve before he was this. Swore a twelfth of a forgery. Stuck: his signature comes out in another man's hand one time in four. Costs: the pension Fyle pays only to men of good name.
4	Juno Trask. Fishwife, loudest voice in Threap. Swore a sixth of a beating, because only six could be got that night. Stuck: a bruise along her jaw that fades and returns on the same day each month. Costs: her quay stall.
5	Colvin Vetter. Stevedore, sworn six times for the fee. Swore a twelfth of a drowning, and not Merle Sedge's. Stuck: he coughs up river water in his sleep. Costs: almost nothing, which makes him the easiest turn in the room and the first one Crowder buys straight back.
6	Meg Chandler. Candles. Seventy-one, and here longer than anyone but Crowder. Swore pieces of nine deeds. Stuck: she remembers nine nights she was not present, in order, better than her own wedding. Costs: she will not say. Ask twice and she will.
7	Ferris Ambry. Boatwright's son, nineteen, swore once and hated every day since. Swore a twelfth of a killing at the ford. Stuck: he cannot look at his reflection in water. Costs: his father's shop, which the Hall holds paper on.
8	Delia Crenn. Taught letters until a charge she could not answer. Swore a twelfth of a false witness, an oath about an oath. Stuck: she cannot say the word yes aloud, and nods instead. Costs: her name back, which is the one thing not for sale.
9	Fitch Orrell. Cheerful debt-runner, sworn nine times and counting. Stuck: he is never cold, and goes about in shirtsleeves in February. Costs: the fees, which he likes. Crowder sends him at the party first, because he is likeable and a wall.
10	Dorcas Loam. Midwife, still practising. Swore a twelfth of a smothering. Stuck: she cannot hold a newborn in her left hand, and has built a practice around working right-handed. Costs: her trade, because mothers call for her on the Hall's word.
11	Hale Kettle. Cooks for the Hall, and swore to keep the job. Swore a twelfth of a poisoning. Stuck: he tastes it in everything now, so he eats bread and drinks water. Costs: the job. He has fed these twenty for eleven years and the room is his.
12	Ivy Standish. Seamstress, keeps her own tally of what she has taken. Swore a twelfth each of two thefts and a killing. Stuck: her thread knots when she lies. Costs: less than she pretends. She decided months ago and wants asking in front of witnesses.
13	Ned Cotter. Lockman, fifty-four, the only man here who swore a whole killing alone, for a fee that cleared a debt. Stuck: all of it. Twice a week his hands do it again to whoever is nearest, and he wakes on the floor apologising. Costs: nothing that is left.
14	Gib Rusk. Carter, swore once four years ago and never again. Swore a twelfth of a killing he did not know was a killing. Stuck: he knows the dead man's name and has never said it aloud. Costs: his wife, who does not know he is sworn at all.
15	Tilda Cobb. Keeps the cords. Swore nothing, the price she set for the work and the only condition Crowder ever agreed to. Stuck: nothing. She is the one clean person here and the only one who knows who carries what. Costs: nothing to unswear. She can only tell the truth, which Threap does not count.
16	Ander Hask. The warder's own cousin, sworn to cover the warder's debts because family is what he has. Swore a twelfth of the Sedge killing, the morning after the party took a bed here. Stuck: water will not stay warm for him, and a kettle goes cold in his hands. Costs: the family, which he owns and most wants rid of. He is the best door in the room.
17	Willem Ost. Hall porter, sworn six times, and the man who opens the door for the reeve. Stuck: he counts out loud all the time and cannot stop at twelve. He goes on to thirteen every time. Costs: Crowder's protection. Four of Hask's twelve follow Willem, so he is the biggest single swing in the room.
18	Peg Cluff. Brewer. She swore once, for her son. Swore a twelfth of a killing. Stuck: her beer sours if anyone thanks her for it, so she has become famously rude. Costs: the son, who does not know she swore, and who works the weir for Hask and was on the water that night.
19	Roland Ives. Was a soldier. Sworn eleven times, and what Crowder uses when the Hall needs using. Stuck: nothing anyone can see and nothing he can name, which frightens him worse than a mark would. Costs: he is the door Crowder locks. Turn him and Scene 4 changes.
20	Maud Crowder. The Hallkeeper, sworn more times than the cords admit, because she ties the cords. Stuck: a piece of nearly everything this town has done since she took the Hall, and not one mark on her. She does not know why it does not touch her. Costs: everything, and she will not.

The fight that is a person: Ned Cotter comes apart

GM setup, before the read-aloud. This fires when the party asks Ned a direct question about what he swore, which they will. It is not a punishment for a wrong move. Know this cold: the fight is winnable without killing him, and killing him is a real loss. He is one of Hask's twelve, so a live Ned standing up at noon is worth two.

Tactics. Ned wants nothing. The deed wants a throat. It takes whoever is nearest, prefers whoever is talking, and drags a grappled character toward the water butt by the door. Run it as one fixed pattern.

The Name Underneath (the counterplay, tell the players it exists after round one). Any character can use their action to say Ned's name and one true thing about the man rather than the deed. Charisma (Persuasion) DC 13. Anything true from his row counts, and a character who has spoken with him has advantage. Success: he has no action on his next turn. Third success: the deed lets go and Ned drops prone. The fight is over. Failure: the deed answers in his voice and the speaker takes 5 (2d4) psychic damage.

Encounter budget, tool-verified. Ned alone against four 3rd-level characters is raw 700 XP, one monster, multiplier 1.0, adjusted 700 against 300 / 600 / 900 / 1,600. Medium, checked with encounter_xp.py --party 4x3 --cr 3 rather than by hand.

Scene 3: What Maud Sells

35 min · no combat

Crowder returns with a count of her own, because Fitch Orrell has been listening all morning.

The Noon Count. Put a four-box clock where the table can see it, one box per quarter hour from ten to noon, and tick it on every failure and every long conversation.

Crowder's move list (d8)

Crowder's move list (d8). Roll or pick. Each move fires once, and she never repeats one that got a flat no.

Roll Crowder's move

d8	Crowder's move list
1	The price, plainly. Twelve of hers, sworn the party's way at noon, for three hundred gold before the moot sits. She does not haggle and does not move off it.
2	The trade. One name instead of money. The party points at any row on the d20 except her own or Tilda's, and she makes that person the answer to Merle Sedge instead of them. She does it cleanly and today, and the person hangs.
3	The clock. The price halves if they take it before the next quarter hour turns, and doubles after. She does not extend it.
4	The wedge. She tells them truthfully which of the sworn they turned will fold back before noon, and offers to hold that one for free, so they believe the rest.
5	The favour. Instead of coin: an unspecified oath of their own, called in later wherever the wager of law runs. She ties it onto a cord in front of them.
6	The withdrawal. She stops selling, tells them to spend the morning as they like, and puts Roland Ives on the door. Fires when they have cost her more than they are worth.
7	The gift. She hands them Merle Sedge's tally for nothing, then points out with real courtesy that it is worth nothing in this town. She is proving she is not the obstacle.
8	The argument. Fires late, and only if somebody has treated her decently. She tells them what she has taken, why nothing has ever stuck to her, and why she thinks Threap's law beats what Threap had before it. She does not apologise. She is asking them to do the arithmetic she did.

The choice, and it is the whole adventure. Two ways to survive noon.

• Cheap: take move 2. Feed one of the twenty to the rope. It will work and nobody will ever know. Row 5 is the obvious candidate, because Colvin Vetter already carries a drowning.
• Dear: win the count. Every person who unswears loses a hand or a home or a family, in public, for four strangers who will be gone by Tuesday.

Do not put a thumb on this. Both work.

If they try to force her price: Charisma (Intimidation) DC 18. A failure costs the room: she is done talking and move 6 fires at once.

Scene 4: The Count

40 min · the fight

Noon. The long room is cleared to the walls, the reeve sits at the cord desk with a slate, and both sides stand.

How the count runs at the table. Go round and have each player say who they turned and why, with a tally where everyone can see it. Hask's coats stand first, one by one, and Fyle chalks each. Then the people the party turned stand, and each of them says aloud what they are giving up.

The moment it turns. As soon as more stand for the party than for Hask, the unswearing happens, by rule 4, and every piece goes home at once.

Then Hask fights, because he is not the sort of man who waits to be arrested. He goes for Tess Sedge, because she is the smallest thing in the room and hurting her is the only move left that feels like a win.

Encounter budget, tool-verified. Gil Hask (CR 3) with two toll-men (CR 1/8 each) is raw 750 XP, three monsters, multiplier 2.0, adjusted 1,500 against 300 / 600 / 900 / 1,600. Hard, checked with encounter_xp.py --party 4x3 --cr 3,1/8,1/8. All three are present from round one, so that figure is the whole fight and not a back half. No Tucker step is claimed, because the toll-men prepared nothing.

If the party took the cheap road, there is no unswearing and no water on Hask. The moot finds against whichever name Crowder sold, and the party is out of Threap by mid-afternoon carrying a receipt for the rest of the campaign.

Resolution branches. Count won, Hask dead: the tolls stop for a season, Crowder does not blame them and says so, and everyone who unswore has lost a hand by Friday. Count won, Hask alive: he hangs in eleven days and Ander Hask has to watch. The cheap road: everyone lives except one. They run: outlaws in three towns, and Tess Sedge is still on that bench.

When your players go off the rails

They attack Crowder in Scene 1. She has no combat statistics and needs none. She is unarmed, in a room with twenty people who eat because of her, and Roland Ives is nine feet away. Kill her and the charge stands, and they have added a murder in front of forty witnesses.

They go to the reeve. Excellent, and it costs an hour. Fyle listens, believes them personally, and explains that his belief is not a thing the law weighs. Then he gives the one useful thing he is allowed to: he will count anyone the party puts on their feet.

They start a fight in the long room before noon. Roland Ives and two hall-men break it up (use the toll-man block) and Fyle hears inside the hour. Cost them two turned names, not hit points.

They kill Hask before noon. Doable, and it does not save them. The charge is still the killing of Merle Sedge and the twelve still swear. Now Fyle has two bodies. Telegraph that before it lands.

Zone of truth. It works perfectly and it is useless, which is the beat this whole adventure is built to earn. Let Crowder answer everything honestly inside it, then have Fyle explain that the moot does not weigh truth. A caster who realises the spell was never going to work here has understood the adventure. Speak with dead fails the same way, if a scaled-up party has it: Merle Sedge tells them exactly what happened, and he is not sworn.

Detect thoughts and charm person. Both work, and both are rewards rather than blocks. The first hands them the "stuck" line for one of the twenty without a roll. The second turns one sworn, and it still costs that person a hand.

Scaling: levels 1-10, parties of 3-6

Nothing in the social spine changes. Swap the two stat blocks. Every row below was checked with encounter_xp.py against a four-character party.

Party level	Ned Cotter	Result	The count (Hask + 2 toll-men)	Result
1	CR 1	200 adj. Medium	CR 1/2 + two CR 1/8	300 adj. Hard
2	CR 2	450 adj. Medium	CR 1 + two CR 1/4	600 adj. Hard
3 (as written)	CR 3	700 adj. Medium	CR 3 + two CR 1/8	1,500 adj. Hard
4	CR 4	1,100 adj. Medium	CR 3 + two CR 1/2	1,800 adj. Hard
5	CR 6	2,300 adj. Medium	CR 5 + two CR 1/2	4,000 adj. Hard
6	CR 7	2,900 adj. Medium	CR 5 + two CR 2	5,400 adj. Hard
7	CR 8	3,900 adj. Medium	CR 6 + two CR 2	6,400 adj. Hard
8	CR 8	3,900 adj. Medium	CR 7 + two CR 2	7,600 adj. Hard
9	CR 9	5,000 adj. Medium	CR 7 + two CR 3	8,600 adj. Hard
10	CR 10	5,900 adj. Medium	CR 8 + two CR 3	10,600 adj. Hard

Party size at 3rd level. Three: run the count with one toll-man for 1,088 adjusted, Hard (thresholds 225 / 450 / 675 / 1,200). Both toll-men makes it Deadly for three. Five: as written, 1,500 adjusted, Hard (375 / 750 / 1,125 / 2,000). Six: six characters take the next multiplier down and it drops to 1,125, Medium, so add a CR 1 dock bully and a third toll-man for 1,462 adjusted, Hard (450 / 900 / 1,350 / 2,400).

Two social dials that matter more than the stat blocks. Harder: Hask buys two more of the eight overnight, so only four are free. Gentler: let Ivy Standish volunteer without a check the moment anyone speaks to her in front of a witness.

Running it in other systems

The spine is a count against a clock, so any system with a social conflict track or an escalating threat die runs it natively. Replace the persuasion ladder (15 cold, 13 informed, 10 named aloud) with three rungs of your own, far enough apart that a table feels the gap. The weight needs no mechanics at all, and both fights are optional.

Treasure and reward: weight, not loot

Merle Sedge's tally. A folded page proving six years of skimmed tolls. Worth nothing in Threap, and a great deal to the guild office downriver, which has wanted the weir off Threap for a decade.

A standing oath from the Sworn Hall. If the party won the count and Maud Crowder is still standing, she offers this without warmth and without a catch: the Hall will swear for them once, free, anywhere the wager of law runs. Taking it makes them twelve people's weight heavier. Do not warn them.

Tess Sedge. Nothing to give, and she will follow them out of town if they let her.

Appendix: stat blocks

All original, built to the LIDM threat rails.

If this was useful

I write these because 30+ years of real tables has taught me that the best session anyone runs is usually the one where nobody rolled initiative until the last twenty minutes.

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Take a free adventure. The Night Watchman is a solo adventure you can play in a browser tonight. Where the Road Ends is a free Table Keeper for a group.

Free drops land Thursdays and Saturdays.

DM cheat sheet

Auto-built from every data-dc, data-hp, stat block, preset clock and pre-loaded combatant in this file. Prints on its own sheet.