Teach & Ship

Book the fifth — for the keeper: how to raise a Council game from nothing, and run it well.

The first four books are the game. This one is the craft of it — how to stand a table up in an evening, and the three small arts that make a keeper of you: writing Seals, giving grace, and wounding without cruelty.

§5.1 · Session Zero — raising a game in one sitting

Council boots in a single evening. Five moves, in order:

1. Rig the world. Agree the fiction — the setting, its peoples, what Power and Standing are made of here.
2. Seat the Council. Decide who holds the final say, and set the dial of §4.2 — narrow by default, or wide for intrigue.
3. Lay the first Ledger. Write two or three opening Works.
4. Teach the Water. Tell the crew, plainly, of Landis.
5. Promise hope. Say aloud the one creed — if it is truly yours; none is bound to a creed they do not hold. Then begin.

The creed — optional, taken at one's own good grace.

I believe in the power of words. No thing is created without them, Nor no thing that is not created can be described with them. I believe there is Grace in words, For the cutting syllable is duller than the sword. Hold Fast! Hipp Hipp Hurrah! And don't forget to: Tally Hoe! Hurumph! Hurumph! Hurumph! — L.F.

§5.2 · The first art — writing Seals

For any obstacle worth being stuck on, write three clues before play and seal them: the Nudge, the Bearing, the Answer. Write them before — never under the pressure of a stuck table, when your judgment is worst.

§5.3 · The second art — giving grace

Give it quietly. Give it toward the stuck and the hopeful. Do not tally it, do not let it be demanded. Its one hard law is that a truly aground crew always receives it.

§5.4 · The third art — the signed squall

Deliver bad news as a report on the letterhead of whoever bore it. In Council, bad news always arrives signed.

§5.5 · On hope & harm — the tone of the game

Council is built to reward hope. The game may wound — it may cost dearly, and grieve truly. But it breaks only the one who has stopped hoping.

Despair is the only door that locks from the inside.

§5.6 · What to print, what to keep

Two bundles make a Council game ready for a table:

• The Crew's Packet. This handbook, and Landis's two handouts. All a player needs. (For the Council of Un: the crew's Standing Orders for the expedition ride here too.)
• The Keeper's Papers. Sealed Seals, hidden stakes, Divine Work beats. Shown to no one until its watch turns.

The Living Ledger — a place to run Works between sessions: on paper, or (better) online at the Council website, frosted-mug.com.

Print the first. Keep the second. Run the third.