The Garden of Unkept Vows

A1. A night that does not resolve

The music climbs and does not come down. Lanterns in the thorn trees make every face briefly beloved. Someone has already learned your name and used it like a toast. The air smells of crushed fruit and rain that will not finish falling.

Hospitality is the trap. Everyone is kind. Kindness here is a hook.

A jealous knife in the garden is optional and should feel like distraction, not pornography.

• DC 15 (standard) — Society to tell a real invitation from a devouring
• DC 17 (hard) — Will to leave a conversation that is completing you too fast

A2. The specific wanting

Solenne’s people have studied the PCs. Each is offered the thing they would trade dignity for: belonging, a dead voice, an audience, a rival’s surrender, proof they are not too much.

Decline it. Do not just save against it. A success that still takes the gift is Claimed.

• DC 17 (hard) — Will or Diplomacy to refuse a gift shaped like you

A3. Jaro of the Kept

His partner dissolved into the Festival. He is not anti-desire. He is anti-erasure. He wants the party to keep one vow in public — a small one — and survive the social cost.

• DC 17 (hard) — Performance or Society to keep a vow while the room tries to upgrade it

A4. Velline of the Next

Brilliant, funny, convinced that to be wanted is the only proof of being alive. She will make the party beloved for a night. The bill is whoever they stop seeing.

Let her be likable. If she is only a threat, the Next is a cartoon. She will remember the name of a hireling the party treated as furniture and use it as a toast.

Sleeping here is safe. Waking famous is the hook. Note who enjoys it.

B1. Edges of rooms

You look for a waiter and cannot remember if they had a face. The lanterns are very bright in the center of the floor.

The Unasked are being edited out of regard. Retrieving one is a rescue that looks like paying attention.

• DC 15 (standard) — Perception or Empathy lore to hold someone in the scene by naming them truly

Treasure (minor): 6 gp.

B2. A kept vow

Jaro’s vow comes due. Keeping it costs the party a pleasure the Festival had already budgeted as theirs. Breaking it erases someone Jaro still loves.

B3. Solenne’s gift

Solenne is sincere. They believe they are giving a gift. They are lonely in a way that has become weather. They will not force. They will fill every silence.

• DC 17 (hard) — Diplomacy to speak to Solenne as a person, not as climate

B4. The Next, charming

Velline has dressed the room as a gift. Every face is already turned toward you. She laughs as if you had chosen her, and the laugh is not cruel. It is hungry for confirmation.

This is not a jealous-lover fight. Velline is fighting erasure. If the table treats her as a villain who wants flesh, you have missed the Court. She wants to remain this week’s peak.

The win condition is regard without feeding. Name her, look at her, and still keep a vow. Killing her while ignoring her confirms that being unchosen is death.

If they already kept Jaro’s vow in B2, she will try to spend it: “You kept a dead person’s promise. Keep a living one.” Write down whether anyone looks at her as a person and then does not take what she is offering.

Treasure (standard): 14 gp.

C1. The still garden

For the first time in eleven years the music almost stops. A ribbon on a thorn tree waits to be untied or pulled tighter.

This is the heart. Killing Solenne without teaching the city how to want less just crowns Velline.

The ribbon is a physical win condition. Untying it in view of the floor is a withholding. Pulling it tighter is Claimed. Leaving it is how eleven years happened.

If Jaro is alive, he will stand at the edge and not ask them to stop wanting. He will ask them to keep one thing. That is enough of a speech.

C2. Solenne

Solenne stands in the still garden as if they had been waiting to be a person again and did not know the steps. The music is a held breath. The ribbon on the thorn tree has a knot you could undo with two fingers.

Do not run this as a seduction. Solenne is lonely weather that used to be someone. They will offer each PC the specific wanting from A2, this time without a middleman.

Reckoned: someone wants, and does not take, in public. The Festival learns a cadence it had forgotten — the come-down. Claimed: a PC becomes the new weather. The city will want them forever. Book 8 remembers who sat in the wanting.

If they reduce Solenne to 0 without a withholding, Velline inherits the peak by morning. That is Bloodied. The seal can still break if the Festival actually ends; it does not break if the music just changes singers.

At this band (mortal): Solenne is a person with a cult. Withholding still works.

Treasure (major): 20 gp plus a permanent item of level 1.