Handouts & Leads

Player-facing material: documents to read aloud or slide across the table, a sheet of Throat bar-talk, and three ready ways to open. Each artifact carries a short GM note in italics — what it is and where it threads — that you keep to yourself. Reveal everything in pieces; a relay that decrypts a layer at a time, a ledger read one row at a time, a transmission that cuts out before the word that matters all pull harder than the whole. Nothing here is a new rule.

The relay§

What the crew pulls out of the Greywell wreck — and the first thing the decryption gives back (file 01).

COURIER RELAY — recovered, Greywell field
  Housing:   hardened message-core, refit more than once, very old
  Power:     trickle-charge, self-sustaining; still live
  Cargo:     one (1) encrypted message, seals intact

  [decryption — layer 1 of several]
  SOURCE FLAG ... WANDERSTAR — final window
  ROUTING ....... [partial] — destination unresolved
  PAYLOAD ....... a voice; cuts out before it speaks

GM note: the campaign's object. Run the decryption as an extended effort across the acts (Chapter 5); layer 1 is all of Act I. The source flag should chill — a signal from the rogue planet itself, from the last moment it could send one (Chapter 29). Don't resolve the routing; the blank is the point.

The Last Transmission§

The message, as the seals come off — one box per layer. Hand the crew the next box only when they've earned it (Chapter 5). Let the last one stay unfinished for the whole campaign.

[ decryption 9% — source: WANDERSTAR, final window ]

  "...static... if you are hearing this... static..."

[ decryption 17% — the reversal: a place, and a claim older than the law ]

  "...if you are hearing this, you reached the Shore and we did not. Good.
   Carry it.

   ...we sent one thing ahead of you... static..."

[ decryption 24% — the fullest it will give ]

  "...you reached the Shore and we did not. Good. Carry it.

   ...do not let them tell you the crossing is over. We sent one thing
   ahead of you, and we left one thing behind — at ____

   [signal lost] "

GM note: Wanderstar's last word, and the reason a company older than the Ejection wants it silenced. The blank — "left one thing behind — at ____" — is a destination out in the sector ahead; do not fill it in, this campaign or ever within it. The crew ends Dead Air knowing there is a place and not its name; that blank is the doorway to whatever comes next. A fuller copy of this recording may exist somewhere out across the dark — a thread for later, not for here.

The lien§

The document that should not exist — the proof, at the reversal, that the buyer is an owner (files 02, 04).

INSTRUMENT OF LIEN          — registry echo, certified true copy

  Holder ............. [no name of record]
  Filing agent ....... NULL
  Secured against .... the courier relay recovered at Greywell —
                       and the message it carries, in whole
  Instrument dated ... [a year that predates the registry itself —
                       predates the Ejection]
  Redemption ......... on demand of the holder. No demand has been filed.
  Address of holder .. none on record.

  [clerk's annotation:]
  This cannot be valid. I have tried to strike it four times.
  It is also not removable.

GM note: the first hard proof that something older than the law is reaching for the relay — the turn from "a buyer" to "an owner" (Act II, file 02). Reveal it only when the crew works a registry or pushes Ashford hard. It should chill, not explain: who holds a lien filed before the law it's filed under, and why they want a dead world's last word buried, is the thread that runs off the end of this campaign.

The buyer's card§

The first touch, and every touch after — NULL's intermediary, who is never quite the same man twice (files 02, 04).

  [a plain card, no letterhead]

  Re: the old core you pulled from the field. My client would buy it.
  The price is generous, and rises. No questions. No record.
  Better it stays unread — for everyone's sake.

  Leave word with the fixer.
        — N.

GM note: hand this across in Act I and let it read as a windfall; it should not read as a threat until the dead couriers make it one (file 01). "Mr. Ashford" reappears at every stop, his description never matching between witnesses (Chapter 38, patron 64). The card is the same in Act III, when he makes his last offer — only the crew has changed.

The wake-record§

What the crew can carry out of Halflight — the lever against Lumen (file 02; Act II).

HALFLIGHT — REVIVAL PRIORITY        ·· TRUST COPY — NOT FOR STATION RECORD ··

  ID 2209   estate: cleared ................... THAW
  ID 2214   estate: in probate ............... HOLD   (pending settlement)
  ID 2218   estate: contested — names the Trust  DEFER  (indefinite)
  ID 2231   estate: encumbered, Trust-held .... HOLD
  ID 2240   estate: cleared ................... THAW
  ID 2255   estate: contested — surviving heir  DEFER  (review w/ legal)

  [in a different, hurried hand, down the margin:]
  the cleared ones wake. the contested ones never do. i stopped pretending. — M.V.

GM note: proof Lumen wakes whoever's safe to wake and quietly keeps whoever's estate it wants (the practice that damns Lumen anywhere). "M.V." is the Halflight triage officer (file 04), who wants out. Hand the players one row at a time. Taken, this is a coin they can spend at the Sill and at Saltgate — and a thread that reaches deep into the sector ahead.

Bar-talk in the Throat§

Roll 1D12 (or pick) when the crew listens at a dock, hunts a lead, or you need a thread to dangle. As always, at least one rumor at any table is wrong — let the crew weigh what they hear (Chapter 33).

1D12	What you overhear
1	A courier drone came up out of Greywell with something still live in it, and a crew filed no claim — they just ran
2	A quiet buyer's paying stupid money for old message-cores. Won't say who for. Won't take no for long
3	The couriers who carried that thing before? Every one of them's a grave now, one port back
4	Don't fuel at Halflight unless you have to. People go in to thaw and the lists do funny things
5	There's a dead ark out at Stillreach, frozen full. The cold ones are the lucky ones
6	The fixer knows a beacon-dark lane that nobody's watching — for a price that'll hurt
7	Customs at the Sill flagged a hull on somebody else's say-so. Money talks all the way out here
8	Whatever's on that core, it's older than the law. A lien on it predates the Ejection, they say
9	Wanderstar sent a last word before it left the reach for good. That drone's carrying a piece of it
10	The man buying it isn't a collector. He's the one who owns it, and he wants it in the ground
11	Past the far mouth there's a free port that'll sell you anything — including your own heading
12	The signal names a place. (It does — but the name's not in it. Someone wants you to think it is)

GM note: 1–3 open the chase; 4–5 Halflight and the ark; 6–7 the corridor's evasion beats; 8 & 10 the lien/reversal; 9 & 12 the Last Transmission; 11 Saltgate. 12 is the planted false lead — the name is not in the fragment, whatever a helpful stranger swears.

Three ways in§

Three ready openings, matching the on-ramps in file 00. Pick one to start.

The find. Hand the players nothing but a salvage job at Greywell and let them pull the relay out of the wreck (file 01). The buyer's card arrives within a session; the dead couriers, soon after. First lead: what is this, and who's paying to bury it?
Already holding it. Open with the relay aboard and a previous courier dead on the dock — the meet that went wrong. The net's already cast. First lead: which way do we run, and how far behind is he?
Hired to carry it. The crew are paid couriers, no questions, running the relay across the Throat — and they learn en route what they're carrying, and that their employer may be the thing hunting them. First lead: finish the job, or decide the word is ours to keep?

Whichever opening you choose, hand the crew one document and one rumor, and let them pull.