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The San Telmo Incident · GM only · Spoilers

GM Quick Reference

Keep this beside you at the table.

Before play

  • Choose lines and veils
  • Select four to six pregens
  • Choose the crew's mandate
  • Start Chamber Answers at 2/6
  • Start Authority Seizes Site at 1/4

During investigation

  • Put every essential clue in three places
  • Failure changes cost or control
  • Let factions act when ignored
  • Show warnings before harm
  • Ask what the crew is protecting

Chamber warning ladder

  1. Warm metal and delayed echoes
  2. Flow contradicts pressure readings
  3. The chamber repeats names or rhythms
  4. Objects tremble in conflicting patterns
  5. A repeated pattern acquires physical force
  6. Pressure finds an uncontrolled outlet

Final decision

  • What happened to Resa, and who has him if anyone?
  • Who has the proof?
  • Who controls access?
  • What does the public hear?
  • Which faction was denied and what does it do next?

Chamber Answers · starts 2/6

Advance for violence, forced calibration, prolonged delay below, or incompatible signals.

At 6, pressure finds an uncontrolled outlet and physical evidence changes form.

Authority Seizes Site · starts 1/4

Advance when the crew openly challenges an authority able to enforce its claim, exposes the incident publicly, or gives another faction time to establish control.

At 4, the estate is sealed and people become property of procedure.

The five-line session review

  • Which faction gained most?
  • Which faction was ignored, and what did it do off-screen?
  • Which clock became visible?
  • What clue or witness changed hands?
  • What choice will matter even if every roll succeeded?

Evidence interpretation

  • Luz is accurate but did not see who delivered the second calibration housing.
  • The foreman ordered the repeat pulse under pressure from the Crown Office.
  • The quarantine order was prepared by the Crown Office before the repeat test as a contingency. It proves officials anticipated serious risk; it does not mean the accident was planned.
  • The Church inquiry began when that contingency quarantine was sent for ecclesiastical review. Verena knew an emergency review might be required, but she was not briefed on the repeat experiment.
  • The Crown technical office wanted to learn whether the first response was specific to the Heller housing or reproducible with a second calibration standard. It therefore procured an Albion-pattern copy through the deniable Stroomdijk exemption route.
  • Wren's cell did not supply the housing or order the test. It learned an Albion-pattern copy was circulating and moved to recover readings and limit attribution.
  • The foreman ordered the doubled ledger and altered manifest to hide the night convoy and repeat-pulse equipment from ordinary estate records. The broken seal came from replacing the cargo record after delivery.
  • The erased patient name was a separate act: a clinic orderly removed it at Luz's request to keep an injured witness out of Crown custody.
  • The night convoy delivered the second housing, the missing regulator assembly, and the sixth Éterlumin cylinder. Its gas powered the second pulse; the empty cylinder remains below near the repeat-pulse equipment.
  • Resa's note establishes that the chamber answers a signal rather than generating one.
  • 'A reference it cannot reconcile' describes the conflict between the two calibration patterns.
Tales of Mar de Oro · The San Telmo Incident · Adventure Zero