Murder Maker

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The Cold Ledger

A scenario by Murder Maker

  • 12 players
  • ~4h
  • Language: English
  • Murder Party
  • Survival
  • Heritage
  • Grievance
  • Politics
  • False trail
  • Murder
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The premise

Granary Nine: a seed vault buried under a glacier, ten years into a winter that has not broken. Heat is the only money — every hour of warmth is metered per person and read aloud each night at Accounting, because the ledger has never lied. Tonight the Keeper of the vault is found frozen solid: hours-deep cold in a woman seen walking twenty minutes ago. The ledger says she lived. The body says she didn't. Until dawn Accounting balances every degree in the station, nobody sleeps warm — and one week's arithmetic will not survive being read aloud.

The cast

Keeper Mahalia Voss

Victim NPC

Keeper of Granary Nine's seed stock and sole holder of the germination cipher — the protocols without which the vault is a room full of dead grain. Severe, exact, trusted absolutely and liked rarely.

Factotum Jonah Reyes

Suspect

The Keeper's dogsbody of nine years: fetcher, scribe, lamp-trimmer, the man who knows her schedule better than she does. Unfailingly useful, easy to forget.

Quartermaster Odile Brandt

Suspect

Keeper of the heat ledger and mistress of Accounting. Her voice reading the week aloud is the closest thing Granary Nine has to law. The ledger has never lied — which is another way of saying she hasn't.

Brother Pavel

Suspect

The boiler priest: keeps the geothermal tap, blesses the stoves, preaches that warmth hoarded is warmth stolen. The council tolerates his sermons because the tap has never failed on his watch.

Sela Voss-Kettle

Suspect

Greenhouse hand, married to Aron; young, quick, lately pale. Distant kin to the Keeper by a cousin's marriage — a connection Mahalia never once acknowledged.

Aron Voss-Kettle

Suspect

Sledge-dock rigger and stove-mender, married to Sela. Big hands, few words, well liked; the man you call when a seal freezes shut.

Scout Ferro Adeyemi

Witness

The station's long-range scout, just back off the ice after nineteen days — gaunt, snow-burned, and telling anyone who will listen that another station answered the radio.

Apprentice Lisbet Crane

Suspect

The Keeper's apprentice, nineteen, in the vault crew three years. The only person Mahalia ever let handle the cold-chain logs. Since the body was found she has said almost nothing.

Medic Yusuf Okar

Detective

Station medic and triage assessor: the man whose sums decide warm-row berths, and tonight, the man with the thermometer. Methodical, unhurried, immune to being shouted at.

Engineer Petra Halloran

Witness

Vault-systems engineer: purge cycles, seals, and the machines that keep the cold exactly as cold as the seed needs. Blunt, precise, currently furious about paperwork.

Councilwoman Maren Skou

Suspect

Elder of the ration council, the station's negotiator with the outside — such as the outside is. Gracious, patient, and widely assumed to be three moves ahead, which she encourages.

Trader Ansgar Vane

Suspect

The outsider: an ice-road trader wintering over at the sledge dock, waiting out the whiteout season. The only person in Granary Nine with somewhere else to be — and a sledge that carries precisely one passenger.

Griet Mummer

Suspect

Seamstress and mender, mother of two, moved to the cold rows by triage two winters ago. She has said aloud, more than once and stone-sober, that the Keeper deserved to feel the cold.

Intrigues

  • A Voice on the IceSurvival

    Nineteen days out on the ice, the scout says a radio answered. One reserve, one sledge, one seat. Believe him or bank the warmth.

  • The Cipher SuccessionHeritage

    Without the cipher, the vault is a room full of dead grain. The Keeper kept it in her head — mostly. Everyone is suddenly very kind to the apprentice.

  • The Cold RowGrievance

    Two winters ago a triage moved a family to the cold rows against the ice-wall. Tonight the woman who signed it is dead, and the mother who cursed her wants her berth back.

  • The Seed Sale and the VetoPolitics

    Somebody has been pricing the seed stock. The Keeper said no. The Keeper's no just stopped mattering.

  • The Tithe of DegreesFalse trail

    The boiler chapel's meters have run short for weeks. The Keeper had noticed. Warmth hoarded is warmth stolen — but stolen for what?

  • The Week That Doesn't Add UpMurder

    A woman seen walking twenty minutes before she was found frozen hours-deep. Either the sighting lies, or the ledger does — and the ledger has never lied.

Factions & circles

  • The Boiler CongregationFaction
  • The Ration CouncilFaction
  • The Vault CrewStaff

The Cold Ledger

Granary Nine: a seed vault buried under a glacier, ten years into a winter that has not broken. Heat is the only money — every hour of warmth is metered per person and read aloud…

Clone it — free

Cloning is free. Every name, relationship and secret is yours to edit.