By The Intrepid in TTRPG — 09 Nov 2026

Vests in the Crown

An eight-encounter scenario for THE ROUSE

The Premise

Thirteen days ago the Home Office made ectoplasm treasure. Tomorrow at 10 a.m. a coroner decides whether a mother's freezer is full of Crown property or full of her son.

The Treasure (Designation) (Revenant Exudate) Order folds the substance into ordinary treasure procedure. Whoever finds it must report it to the coroner within fourteen days. It vests in the Crown. The finder receives a reward at whatever value the Valuation Committee sets. The Committee's exudate valuer is on secondment from the Shop.

Jean Harrow, 58, lives in a Stonebridge tower block scheduled for demolition. Her son Darren, Royal Signals, died in the woods at Shackingham in 1998. The coroner returned an open verdict. Since then, on some nights, Jean produces exudate in her sleep: grey, cold, smelling of deodorant and gun oil. For five years she has bottled it in jam jars and kept it in a chest freezer in his room. Thirty-one jars, each labelled with the date and with whatever he said that night.

She did not report it. On day twelve, a valuer named Gareth Pymm reported it for her, naming himself as the finder. The treasure inquest is tomorrow morning. The coroner is Dr Aldous Pell, the same man who recorded Darren's open verdict.

The three claims

Claim	What it is tonight	Who is reaching
The body	Thirty-one jars. And Darren's grave at Kensal Green, which is lighter than it should be.	Jean, the Families, the Unit
The story	The verdict: treasure, human remains, or open.	Pell, the Shop, the Families, the press
The thing that came through	Jar 31 has a Royal Signals field-telephone handset frozen inside it. It still has a line.	The Unit, the Shop, the void current

The legal question is the setting's question. Treasure says the dead are a phenomenon. Human remains says they are somebody. Pell has to write one of those words in the record, and the party decides what is on his desk when he does.

Calendar. Run this at any Misery count before 7:7. The Order is a draft of 7:7: revenance turned into procedure. If the verdict is treasure, the premise has taken one step toward becoming infrastructure.

Who Sent You

Give the party one patron and let a second approach them before midnight. Or let each PC roll and keep the contradictions. Named figures from the wider setting, such as Wran, Croome, Stallo and Maur, never appear. They show up as signatures, memos, boot prints and letters.

D6	Patron	Wants	Pays	Does not say
1	The Shop, through Gareth Pymm, Exudate Desk	All 31 jars intact at the inquest, ruled treasure, with Pymm as finder. Jar 31 delivered separately.	10% of the reward, estimated at 400s	Pymm found nothing. He bought Jean's name.
2	R Unit's last handler, Mr Lomax	No inquest. The jars contained tonight under an older, quieter Act.	Pension rights, the oath, silence	The Unit issued that handset. Lomax wants it more than the jars.
3	The Shackingham Families, through Noreen, the network's sibyl	A verdict of human remains, as precedent that the dead are somebody	A sofa, a leak, their dignity	One of them sold Jean's name to the Shop.
4	The press, through Phil Mardle, a night-desk reporter	Jean on the record before 10 a.m., whatever the verdict	200s and the protection of print	His editor takes a Shop retainer.
5	The void current, through Tash, nineteen, with a shovel	Jar 31 only. They want apports, not spirits.	A map to a dig and a charm that works	Tash's maps came from a dead man whose name she does not know.
6	Jean herself	To keep him	Darren's room to sleep in, his medals, tea	Some nights she wants it to stop. She has not admitted that even to herself.

Every patron believes it is protecting something. The Shop calls the Order a fair market where there was none. The Unit calls it a breach in a wall it held for fifty years. The Families call it theft. The void current calls it the state catching up to what they already knew. Play each at its strongest.

The Night

The party will not reach every door. The night runs from 8 p.m. at the freezer (1) to 10 a.m. at the inquest (8). Encounters 2 to 6 can be taken in any order, and each costs three hours including night buses and minicabs. A fight or a fumble adds an hour. Encounter 7 happens at 3 a.m. whether or not anyone is there. Most parties reach three of the five optional doors, sometimes four.

Wherever the party does not go, that faction acts unopposed.

#	Where	Faction	Claim	If nobody goes
2	The valuation room, Park Royal	The Shop	Story, thing	Pymm's valuation reaches Pell at 9 a.m. unchallenged. Exhibit for treasure.
3	The launderette, Willesden	R Unit	Thing	Lomax's asset takes the jars from the court van at 9:30, in daylight, on the High Road.
4	Kensal Green Cemetery	The void current	Body	Tash opens Darren's grave by 5 a.m. The Unit receipt inside goes to the press, then to whoever outbids them.
5	The church hall	The Families	Story	The Families arrive at court unprepared. The leak sells the party's plans to Pymm.
6	The coroner's archive	The file	Story	Pell reads the 1998 file alone overnight and it convinces him. Exhibit for open.
7	Jean's flat, 3 a.m. (fixed)	Darren	All three	Two lads break in. Jar 31 goes to Kensal Green. Jean channels alone, and nobody records what Darren says.

Violence makes bodies

Kill someone tonight and you create a body. Bodies go to the coroner, and it is the same coroner. Every death the party causes is on Pell's list by morning, and each one pushes the verdict one step toward open. In this scenario Pell would rather not decide anything at all.

A fight in public (on a walkway, on the High Road, in court) is a public mess: every faction reaction roll afterward is at −2, and the press has it by breakfast. Wounded people who survive remember faces, and some of them will be in the gallery at 10 a.m.

Encounters 1 to 4

1. The Freezer

Eleventh floor. A chest freezer humming in a bedroom kept exactly as a nineteen-year-old left it.

Jean makes tea and talks about Darren in the present tense. The jars are labelled in biro: a date, and what he said that night. Cold. Tell Nan. Stand to. Jar 31, the newest, is cloudy, with something dark and angular set into it. Pymm's business card sits on the mantelpiece beside the demolition notice.

Exhibit. Jean's labels. Read aloud in court, they lean toward human remains.
Read apport (jar 31). The handset made its last call from Shackingham on the night he died.
The choice. Take the jars, leave them with Jean, or split them. Each has a cost later. Jean will not survive their being taken by force (HP 4), and the neighbours will call the police.

2. The Valuation Room

Park Royal. A Tower of Excellence on a short lease. Strip lights, a bid board, and a man asleep in a chair with his eyes open.

Gareth Pymm is finishing the valuation report. The bid board shows live prices per gram from three bidders; one bid is initialled W. Jar 31 has a separate bid at ten times the rest. The man in the chair is a ruined operative, kept as proof of concept. He still has one scroll, Last word, and if freed he will use it on Pymm.

Exhibit. The valuation report leans toward treasure. Pymm's own notes show he got Jean's name from a paid source, not by finding anything. Presented in court, they void his claim to be finder. If the verdict is still treasure, the reward goes to Jean as true finder: money for her son, at the Shop's price.
Danger. Shop floor (HP 16). A failed Presence test here is a bid on you.

3. The Launderette

Willesden High Road, open all night. Driers turning with nothing in them. A door marked PRIVATE leads upstairs.

Mr Lomax, R Unit's last handler, is sixty-eight, with a pension in the post and a manner like a closed file. He offers the party an oath: seal the jars tonight under the Official Secrets Act and there will be no inquest. The price is the handset. He says Darren took an oath, and that the Unit owes him the courtesy of taking it seriously.

Exhibit. A Unit memo from 1971, signed by Croome, On Exudate as Stored Service. It is evidence the state treated the dead as labour. It leans toward whichever verdict the side presenting it argues for.
Danger. One Unit asset in the back room. Lomax will not fight himself. He will remember who did.

4. Kensal Green

Torchlight between Victorian angels. Shovels, and a radio playing a football phone-in.

Tash and four kids with shovels and charms are working from a hand-drawn map in a dead man's handwriting. Their dowsing charm pulls toward Darren's grave. When the coffin comes up it is light: sandbags, and a typed receipt on Unit letterhead, Remains retained for study, 1998. Shell casings lie around the plot that were not fired here, along with the old boot prints of someone who stood at this grave long before tonight.

Exhibit. The receipt. It proves the jars are the only remains Jean has. It leans hard toward human remains, and it ruins Lomax.
Danger. Void cell (HP 14). They are people, not spirits. Kill one and Tash's crew becomes a vendetta.

Encounters 5 to 8

5. The Church Hall

Urns of tea, a banner, eleven parents and a photocopier at midnight.

The Shackingham Families meet when their shifts allow. Noreen chairs. On the wall hangs the network's founding letter, signed by a mother whose name they say carefully. They want a verdict of human remains: one line in one record saying their children were somebody.

One of them, Clive, sold Jean's name to Pymm for 300s to clear his son's funeral debt. Finding him takes a Presence DR12 test, or one honest question in front of everyone.

Exhibit. Their written testimonies lean toward human remains.
Danger. Nothing with HP. The danger is hiring them. Pay the Families and they become paid witnesses, and Pell will know.

6. The File

The coroner's archive after hours. Grey shelving, a kettle, and Ray at the desk.

Ray, the coroner's officer, is a retired detective sergeant who keeps the keys and dislikes being slighted. A bribe works, and so does a good story. The 1998 file on Darren is thin where it should be thick, and it does not want to be read.

Danger. The file is an Inquiry (HP 14). Reading it is the fight. Each failed Presence test writes a new paragraph into the file, about the reader.
If the party wins. The missing page: a duty roster for the night he died, with Darren's name on a list that officially did not exist. It leans toward human remains, because it shows the state had an interest in how he died.
If the file wins. It convinces whoever finished reading it. Exhibit for open.

7. Three in the Morning

Jean's flat, fixed at 3 a.m. The freezer is open. Jean is asleep in Darren's chair, and something grey is leaving her mouth.

Jean is a channel who never agreed to be one. At the same moment, two lads on the walkway, paid by Tash and told it's drugs, are at the door. If Tash is no longer sending anyone, whoever now wants jar 31 most sends someone instead, or nobody comes. The channelling happens regardless. A Channel PC can share the load (Become the bottle) and learn one true thing.

What Darren says (D6):

Number, rank and name, nothing else. He is on strength.
"Mum. Turn the freezer off."
The name of who was with him in the woods.
A call sign and a time. Jar 31 rings.
He asks who the strangers in his room are.
Nothing. The exudate settles into the shape of a door.

Exhibit. A recording. Results 1 and 4 lean toward treasure: they sound like a roster, not a person. Results 2, 3 and 5 lean toward human remains. Result 6 leans toward open, and it makes the asport possible (see The Verdict).
Danger. Two lads (HP D6, knife D4), barely adults. Hurting them on the walkway is a public mess.

8. The Treasure Inquest

Ten o'clock. A small courtroom with wood panelling, strip lights and a royal crest that needs dusting.

Dr Aldous Pell is the only authority in this scenario who appears in person. Everyone who survived the night is in the gallery: Pymm in a good coat, Lomax at the back, Tash in a borrowed suit, the Families, Mardle with a notebook. Jean is there, with the jars or without them.

Pell hears exhibits and witnesses, then rules. See The Verdict.

The Verdict

Pell rules for whichever word has the most weight on his desk. Ties go to open, because Pell has done that before and nobody stopped him.

Keep the leans behind the screen. Players should know what an exhibit plausibly proves, not what it scores.

Exhibits

Exhibit	Found at	Leans toward
Valuation report	2, or arrives by itself if nobody went	Treasure
Pymm's notes	2	No lean. Voids Pymm as finder; Jean becomes finder.
Jean's labels	1	Human remains
Croome's memo	3	Whichever side presents it
The Unit receipt	4	Human remains, counts double
Families' testimonies	5	Human remains (open, if the Families were paid)
The missing roster page	6, if the party won	Human remains
The file itself	6, if the file won or nobody went	Open
The 3 a.m. recording	7	Depends on what Darren said
Each death the party caused	anywhere	Open

Testimony

Any PC may give evidence. Test Presence DR12 (a Brief tests at DR8 in an official building). On a success, add one lean of the witness's choosing. On a failure, the record gains a paragraph about the witness. After the third failed test in the room, the Inquiry wakes in the courtroom (HP 14) and fights. That is the climax, under the royal crest, in front of everyone.

Jean can be called. If she is, roll again on the encounter 7 table: she may channel on the stand.

The handset

If jar 31 is opened in court and the handset answered, a revenance event fills the room. Whoever holds the receiver can Sound the Rouse on Darren alone, with no scroll required. He stands in the court as a Named Roused. Pell adjourns at once, and the verdict is open whatever is on his desk. What Darren does next is a reaction roll, and nobody has orders.

The fourth answer

If Darren said nothing and became a door at 3 a.m., or if anyone present has Deport the cloth or a Channel's shroud, Jean can send the jars out of the world. She has to choose it. The party can offer, explain or hand her the means. They cannot do it for her.

If she does, there is nothing to rule on. The inquest is adjourned with no verdict. No faction's claim succeeds, and Jean loses the only remains she had. It is the one ending where nobody owns him.

Aftermath

No ending satisfies all three claims. Afterward, each PC says which claim they kept and which two they lost, as the setting's improvement rule requires.

Verdict	The body	The story	What comes next
Treasure	The jars go to a Tower of Excellence.	The dead are an asset in law.	Every channel in England now produces Crown property. At the next dawn, roll the Calendar die twice. If Jean was ruled finder, she is paid for her son.
Human remains	The jars go home to Jean.	The dead are somebody, in one record.	The Home Office "reviews" the Order. Lomax switches to an older Act. The Shop drops Jean and bids on the next channel.
Open	The jars stay in the coroner's mortuary freezer.	Nothing is decided.	Ray starts getting offers. The next job is a break-in at a mortuary.
No verdict (asport)	Gone.	There is nothing to rule on.	Jean is lighter and emptier. The Order stands, unused. Somebody notices the asport worked.

Who holds the handset

Holder	Then
R Unit	At the next Misery, a Roused signaller reports for duty. Nobody living called him.
The Shop	Darren is rented by the hour. Pymm is promoted.
The void current	It is mined as an apport. Tash learns the dead man's name.
The party or Jean	It rings at dawn every day. Someone has to decide whether to answer.
Destroyed or deported	Silence. Nobody is ever sure it worked.

What Walks Tonight

Most of these come from the setting's own table. Few people here carry weapons, and fewer want to use them.

Who	Encounter	HP	Morale	Armour	Attack	Note
Jean Harrow	1, 7, 8	4	—	—	—	Unconsenting channel. Taking the jars by force breaks her.
Gareth Pymm	2, 8	6	5	—	fountain pen D2	Everything he says is a bid.
Shop floor	2	16	9	−D4	—	A failed Presence test is a bid on you.
Ruined operative	2	8	4	—	—	Presence already −2. One scroll: Last word.
Mr Lomax	3, 8	8	9	—	sidearm D6	Never fights first. Remembers who did.
Unit asset	3, or the High Road at 9:30	10	9	−D4	rifle D8	Attacks twice if an ally is near.
Tash's crew (void cell)	4	14	11	−D2	shovels and charms	People, not spirits.
Ray, coroner's officer	6	6	8	−D2	—	Calls the police if slighted.
The 1998 file (Inquiry)	6, or 8	14	—	−D4	—	Not a man. Each failed test is a paragraph.
Walkway lads	7	D6 each	6	—	knife D4	Travel in twos. Barely adults.
Darren, if Roused	8	12	—	−D2	—	No morale. Fire, silver or Last Post.

Seams in the Setting

Building this scenario exposed a few places where THE ROUSE leaves the GM to decide.

Missing: how public the phenomena are. A Home Office Order is published law, which implies the state has admitted exudate exists. This scenario assumes it went through as an obscure statutory instrument that almost nobody read. Decide whether the public knows, half-knows or has never heard of it, because that changes what the press and the Families can do.
Missing: rules for procedure. Inquests and inquiries are the setting's central institutions, yet the only mechanic for them is the Inquiry stat block. The exhibit count here is a stopgap. If procedural scenes recur, the setting may want a small subsystem of its own.
Overstated: the march toward 7:7. The setting describes the end as the premise becoming infrastructure, but the Calendar is pure chance and nothing players do moves it. Rolling the die twice after a treasure verdict is a patch. Withercrown solved the same problem with Machine Turns.
Minimized: the unrostered. They are listed as a faction that wants to stop being a resource, but they have no way to speak except as a player class. Here Darren is mostly a voice through someone else. If a PC is unrostered, consider letting their testimony count double: the dead giving evidence about whether the dead are somebody.