Home · Database · Expeditions · The Cold Beacon

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Expeditions

The Cold Beacon

A signal tower with its beacon unlit and its door swinging. The garrison of three is simply… not here. Their supper is still on the table.

Entity ID
beacon
Choices offered
3
Safest option
Light the beacon yourselves — 55% base
Riskiest option
Eat their supper and stay the night — 32% base
Can end the run early
No
Energy to mount a ranging
25 (three scenes per run)

Every choice, and exactly what it pays

The odds words are contracts, not atmosphere: safe is 85%, even is 55%, risky is 32%, and every one of those numbers is fixed and tested. Fortune then bends the roll by +4% per point, clamped at ±3 points, so a good early call buys slack later and two disasters make the rest of the road meaner. Nothing here is ever certain: the check is clamped to the 5%–95% band whatever your fortune.

The Cold Beacon: the three roads out, with base odds and both outcomes.
ChoiceOddsBase chanceOn successOn failure
Light the beacon yourselveseven55%Food +30, Renown +3, Fortune +1Renown -2, Fortune -1
Track the garrisoneven55%Iron +50, Renown +3, Fortune +1Fortune -1
Eat their supper and stay the nightrisky32%Food +50Food -30, Renown -1, Fortune -1

What the chronicle records

Light the beacon yourselves (even, 55%)

Success: The next tower answers, and a grateful serjeant arrives by noon with the missing three — lost chasing a 'ghost' that was a goat. → Food +30, Renown +3, Fortune +1

Failure: You light it during a muster drill. The column that answers is not amused, though the goat is. → Renown -2, Fortune -1

Track the garrison (even, 55%)

Success: You find all three treed by boars, two days hungry and loud with gratitude. Their captain pays the finder's fee without blinking. → Iron +50, Renown +3, Fortune +1

Failure: The trail dies at a stream. You leave a note and the nagging feeling of a story without an ending. → Fortune -1

Eat their supper and stay the night (risky, 32%)

Success: Dry beds, hot stew, and the garrison returns at dawn too embarrassed about the goat to begrudge you any of it. → Food +50

Failure: They return at midnight, weapons first. Explaining takes till morning and costs you the wine you were saving. → Food -30, Renown -1, Fortune -1

Fortune, at this scene

The Cold Beacon: the real chance of each choice once fortune is counted.
ChoiceFortune −3Fortune −1Fortune 0Fortune +1Fortune +3
Light the beacon yourselves43%51%55%59%67%
Track the garrison43%51%55%59%67%
Eat their supper and stay the night20%28%32%36%44%

A ranging draws three scenes from the sixteen, deterministically from its seed, so this encounter can appear at any of the three stops. Guide: Mysteries of the Realm. Index: all 16 encounters · the whole database.

Other encounters: The Flooded Ford · A Watchfire Where None Should Be · The Barrow Door Stands Open · A Caravan in the Ditch · The Hermit's Toll · Wolves on the Kill · The Walking Septon · The Abandoned Quarry · An Uninvited Feast · The Smugglers' Cache · A Singer with a Broken Lute · The Feral Orchard · The Mist That Doesn't Lift · The Toll That Isn't · The Night Something Fell

Every figure above is generated from the shipped game code — the same constants and formulas the running game uses — and regenerated whenever the balance changes. Nothing on this page is hand-typed.

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