Message in a Bottle

Start here

Chicago has had ten quiet years. Your old crew has a friend to bring home, a portal to assemble, and a perfectly reasonable expectation that this will be the strangest part of the evening.

It will not be the strangest part of the evening.

Message in a Bottle is an eight-gathering campaign for Savage Worlds Adventure Edition (SWADE). It starts with a playable reunion and ends with a voyage between realities. Between them: cartoon physics, a corrupt municipal contractor, cosmic property law, and a Chicago whose residents have never been told what contains their city.

Audience: Game Masters. Full campaign spoilers. Give players only the separate player handouts, and reveal the later handouts when their scene arrives.

Requirements: The SWADE core rules, dice, Action Cards, Bennies, and three to five players with characters. The core rules are not included. This is an original fan adventure, not an official Pinnacle product. No Companion is required. It works best with a group willing to treat absurd things seriously enough to save the people inside them.

Recommended baseline: Four Seasoned Wild Cards, eight gatherings of roughly three to four hours. Give one Advance after Sessions 1, 3, and 5. If you import powerful characters from an older campaign, keep their identities and agree their SWADE builds before play. These are choices for this edition, not recovered facts about the original game.

Status: Free fan edition 0.1. Written and mechanically checked; not playtested. Encounter counts and challenge targets are starting points. After your first session, adjust pressure rather than changing an NPC's numbers secretly in the middle of a roll.

What changed for this edition

The campaign bible established eight gatherings, Chicago's ownership mystery, the Vivarium Keeper, the accelerator, the timed passages, and the homecoming. It deliberately left maps, NPC builds, several mechanics, and alternate endings open.

This edition adds runnable scenes, original NPC profiles, explicit clues, a node map, adventure-specific clocks, a fictional accelerator site, three travel stops, handouts, and failure routes. It chooses a fictional mayor named Calder, a generic returning hero named Mark, and the Keeper's repossessor as its field agent. These additions are preparation for a new table. They do not rewrite the old campaign's history or supply player decisions that never happened.

The sea and archipelago imagery comes from Austen Tucker-Crowder's The Witch Who Sold the World, whose universe is distinct from the Ink and Paint books. This campaign is an intentional tabletop remix, not a canonical sequel. All cartoon people here are original; use no licensed cartoon cameos.

Human-directed AI tools assisted development, writing, assembly, and illustrations. The images interpret campaign plans. They are not recovered maps or records of played sessions.

Before people arrive

1. Read The secret in one minute, Session 0, and the NPC profiles.
2. Decide whether Mark is a player's character or a supporting NPC. A player controls their own character. If Mark is an NPC, he supplies the fiction of electrical navigation, not automatic solutions or bonus turns for the GM.
3. Ask each player for a place in Chicago worth saving and one remembered adventure image. Memories are proposals: confirm them together before adding them to continuity. New groups can invent those memories openly.
4. Agree boundaries around disaster, coercion, cruelty, and confinement. This campaign depicts people treated as property; it rejects that treatment. Check whether the group wants that theme. Revise or remove distressing descriptions freely.
5. Pick a pause signal, allow breaks, and establish that a player can step away without explaining. Use public fictional intake questions, never publish personal answers.
6. Print the reunion sheet. Keep the other handouts behind the screen until their scenes arrive. Put a copy of SWADE's Support, Tests, Dramatic Tasks, Quick Encounters, and combat sections within reach.

The secret in one minute

Up was a higher-dimensional accountant who kept small realities as living collections. Up died in a stupid accident. He was not murdered. His collection went to an estate auction.

A human municipal contractor, Calder, found scavenged auction technology. A human could not bid, so an eligible higher-dimensional buyer acted for him. Its compensation was Chicago as a living snow globe, including permission to shake it. Calder gained political power and a profitable disaster-repair business. The Keeper gained entertainment.

The heroes experience the shakes as unrelated weirdness. They discover the business pattern, enter the Thompson Center's dimensional bureaucracy, find the bottle's seam, and use a fictional accelerator to crack the ownership boundary. Chicago need not fly away: the heroes are thrown outside while the city remains where it is.

The final two gatherings are a voyage through a primordial archipelago. The heroes send a message, find their city, and return without rebuilding the boundary. The intended ending is simple: Chicago belongs to its people.

Run the mystery without a gate

Essential clues are available when characters take a sensible action. A failed roll changes time, exposure, witnesses, or detail; it does not erase the only path forward. Roll for risk and uncertainty, not to decide whether the campaign continues.

Track the following revelations. Deliver each through at least two routes before asking players to act on it:

Checks, clocks, and core rules

Use SWADE normally for Trait rolls, Support, Tests, combat, damage, Bennies, and Dramatic Task complications. This book refers to those rules; it does not reproduce their text. An unlisted skill is not an automatic rejection: let the player describe a method, then choose a suitable Trait and a consequence.

Adventure clocks are new procedures for this module. They are not extra SWADE rules. Draw the stated number of boxes. Fill a box only at the trigger the scene gives you. Tell the players what is worsening. A roll failure does not fill two clocks unless the scene explicitly says so.

For multi-person Dramatic Tasks, use the stated token goal and duration with the core rules. Any eligible character may work, Support another character, or handle the surrounding threat. Do not count a Support roll as its own Task Token. The generous opening is a tutorial; the accelerator demands trade-offs. If the group has three heroes, reduce group token targets by two; with five heroes, increase them by two. Leave deadlines unchanged. These targets are this edition's calibration choices.

Cartoon physics, without a new subsystem

Describe impossible physics, then resolve a concrete action with the core rules. A painted door is an exit if a character establishes why this scene's rules allow it. A dropped anvil is a hazard, not permission to ignore damage. A squashed person can be rescued; the injury still matters.

Before a roll, say what the character expects, what rule is currently strange, and what a failure will cost. Let characters learn that rule through observation or a harmless test. Never secretly change it to negate a clever plan. Cooperative rescue earns allies; cruelty loses them. Cartoons are people.

Adjust at the table

For newer players, reduce the number of simultaneous enemies and introduce one rule at a time. For stronger parties, add an endangered location, a second objective, or a competing deadline before adding damage. Keep enemy retreats and negotiation available.

Each gathering includes an exit condition and a failure route. Stop on a revelation if the group is tired. Session numbers describe a useful spine, not a rule that nobody may investigate ahead or return to a place. Use the printable session checklist or the GM runner's Used marks to remember what actually happened.

Session 0 - Bring Mark Back

Act I - The city slips. Bring the crew together and teach SWADE through an urgent shared job.

Opening

The portal frame is taller than the garage door. Its cables are labeled in handwriting you recognize. Through the empty center, someone knocks three times. A voice says: “I found the exit. Please tell me you found the entrance.”

Essential clues

• Mark crossed passages that opened on a schedule.
• Somewhere outside, living worlds are kept as collections. Mark remembers a label, not an explanation.

Visible clock: Portal instability

3 boxes. Fill one box at the end of a task round while the portal remains unfinished. At the limit: Mark arrives with collateral trouble. The return is never cancelled.

1. Agree the return

Offer: Ask each player what their hero contributes and what they want Mark to find waiting.

Let the crew examine the frame and choose three feeds: power, alignment, and physical stability. No roll is needed to discover these jobs. A successful Notice, Electronics, or Repair roll spots a scorched label and allows the group to choose where the first complication appears. Give new players one ordinary roll before introducing the larger task.

Clue: A strip of tape says: “Keep an anchor at both ends. Do not wait for the third pulse.”

2. Build the portal

Offer: Open the core Dramatic Task reference. Offer power, alignment, bracing, or Support.

Tutorial task: 8 group Task Tokens in 3 rounds. Electronics or Repair operates a feed; Athletics braces the frame; a convincing alternative uses the appropriate Trait. Run Action Cards and complications using SWADE. In round 2, two rift leeches attach to exposed feeds. A player can remove, lure, or fight them, or Support someone doing it. Explain each rule at the moment it becomes useful. Do not require every character to possess technical skills.

Clue: The feed display counts three pulses between neighboring realities.

3. Let the first mistake matter

Offer: Bring Mark through. Ask the players which thing they protect when the portal kicks.

On success, Mark arrives and the crew secures the frame. If the goal is missed or the task ends early, he still arrives; choose one cost with the players: the frame is ruined, a leech remains loose, or a harmless but unsettling patch of wrong weather follows him. Use a brief combat with remaining leeches only if the group wants that tutorial. Mark describes contradictory corridors and a hard departure window. He knows nothing about Calder’s purchase.

Clue: Time windows and current can guide a route, but neither supplies a destination.

Outcomes

Success: Mark returns; the working frame can later supply a spare anchor.

Partial success: Mark returns with one chosen cost. Record it and make it visible in Session 1.

Failure route: Mark returns after a destructive kick. The crew salvages the route notebook and continues. An injured or Incapacitated hero is handled with core rules and care; failure does not erase their agency.

Before the next gathering

Spend the next gathering with the Chicago the crew wanted to come home to. End this one on reunion, not the ownership explanation.

Session 1 - Chicago Is Safe

Act I - The city slips. Make the ten quiet years matter before reality becomes visibly unreliable.

Opening

The city looks like home. The train arrives when the sign says it will. A shopkeeper knows your order. Then a street name changes while you are looking at it, and everybody else seems certain it was always that way.

Essential clues

• Continuity errors cluster near newly installed weatherization panels.
• At least one witness remembers the change. Public records insist nothing changed.

1. Visit something worth saving

Offer: Use a place the players chose on their reunion sheets.

Invite each player to introduce one local person, then confirm the invention with the group. Mark can tell one fragment from his route without a lore monologue. Use Persuasion, Common Knowledge, or Research only when a character takes a risk or wants privileged access. Ordinary friendly conversation succeeds without dice. Introduce contractor stickers on replacement panels as scenery.

Clue: The same contractor seal appears on two apparently unrelated repairs.

2. One harmless error, then one costly error

Offer: Change a sign; then let a crossing briefly lead to the wrong platform.

Give the group an obvious observation first: the station announcement names a street that nobody agrees about. Next, one civilian is stranded on a platform visible through an impossible doorway. A cooperative rescue uses one suitable Trait roll per participating hero or a core Quick Encounter. A failed roll costs the crew a broken tool, attention from security, or extra time; the civilian remains reachable through a mundane service exit. Never require a roll to notice the doorway.

Clue: The civilian saw the panel crew working before the error began.

3. The first undeniable cartoon

Offer: Introduce Pip, an original toon-bodied person, carrying a painted umbrella.

Pip steps through the platform door. Their shadow takes a moment to catch up. They are frightened, capable of explaining their own needs, and not an enemy. Ask whether the crew offers shelter, containment, investigation, or an escort. Each is a valid next action. A failed Persuasion roll makes Pip cautious; food, patience, or a trusted witness earns a second conversation without another required check.

Clue: Pip’s neighborhood is real too. Its physical rules were separate until the shaking began.

Outcomes

Success: The crew has a witness, an ally, and a panel seal to investigate.

Partial success: The cartoon arrival is witnessed publicly. Contractors can identify the crew; Pip still offers the essential information.

Failure route: The crew loses Pip in the confusion. Pip leaves the umbrella and a route mark; a civilian witness can lead them to the next incursion.

Before the next gathering

Give the crew its first Advance. Ask how it prepares for another overlap, then bring the cartoon gathering to a chosen neighborhood.

Session 2 - Ink and Paint

Act I - The city slips. Make coalescence tangible through rescue, containment, and conflicting physical rules.

Opening

A bus brakes for a painted crosswalk. The crosswalk lifts off the road like a ribbon. On one side, people run as if gravity has stopped listening. On the other, people are still expecting gravity to work.

Essential clues

• Calder Restoration delivered specialized replacement panels before the incident.
• A Thompson environmental-control routing mark is on the dispatch sheet.

Visible clock: Public danger

6 boxes. Fill one box when a rescue round ends with nobody addressing civilians. At the limit: A second group becomes stranded. Rescue remains possible; ask which group the heroes reach first.

1. Establish the local physics

Offer: Show one reversible oddity before anyone risks their life.

A ladder can bend without breaking, a painted door opens onto the other side of the same wall, and falling objects hang for one heartbeat before dropping. Keep those three rules consistent for the encounter. Let harmless testing establish them without rolls. A risky crossing uses Athletics, a suitable technical skill, or a player’s creative proposal. Announce a failed crossing’s cost before the roll; an ally or alternate door prevents an instant dead end.

Clue: Pip recognizes the neighborhood as a real place, not a hallucination or invading army.

2. Save the people on both sides

Offer: Offer three jobs: anchor the bus, open an escape route, and hold the unstable boundary.

Rescue task: 8 group Task Tokens in 4 rounds. Use appropriate Athletics, Electronics, Repair, or Persuasion actions; Persuasion can organize panicking people, not command physics. A falling-sign hazard occurs once in round 2: tell everyone beneath it first, then allow an Agility roll to get clear; failure deals 2d6 damage. Heroes who move civilians out of that area prevent it without damage rolls. Contractors arrive to seize Pip, one per hero. They prefer restraint and can be persuaded that evacuation outranks their order.

Clue: A contractor says, “They told us what would be damaged before the first call came in.”

3. Follow the cleanup

Offer: Put Handout 2 in front of the group.

The dispatch paper is automatically available from an abandoned kit, a cooperative worker, or a supervisor’s public notice. Research verifies the order timing; a raise names a second matching job. A failure still confirms the before-and-after sequence but attracts Calder’s attention. Helping the contractors get home makes a crew contact available later. Defeating them yields the same paper, without the ally.

Clue: The job is profitable, predicted, and connected to Thompson.

Outcomes

Success: Civilians escape and the boundary stabilizes. Pip or a contractor volunteers evidence.

Partial success: Choose damaged property or a stranded civilian group. The crew gets the dispatch paper and can mount a second rescue.

Failure route: A larger rescue is needed, not an erased population. A witness carries the paper to the crew. Record which people need help and move the investigation forward.

Before the next gathering

The players now know who profits. Let them choose the first investigative route in Session 3.

Session 3 - Shake the Snow Globe

Act II - Somebody owns this place. Turn separate emergencies into an acquisition mystery without betting it on one roll.

Opening

The repair invoice is routine. Same company. Same surcharge. Same “unexpected” emergency. The delivery time is the strange part: the replacement supplies arrived before the city knew anything was broken.

Essential clues

• The municipal business profits from predicted shakes.
• An external owner can move the city’s boundary; the human beneficiary is not the eligible bidder.

1. Offer three ways into the pattern

Offer: Records desk, repair depot, or incursion witness. Let the group choose.

At the records desk, Inez shares public invoices; Research adds the matching shell account. At the depot, workers share the kit schedule; Stealth or Persuasion secures a private manifest. At the witness site, someone points out the equipment that pulsed just before the air changed; Electronics explains its connection to Thompson. Each route supplies the core pattern automatically. Failed rolls cost access, time, or discretion. Use contractors only if a confrontation develops; they are witnesses as well as obstacles.

Clue: Three incidents share an equipment serial and a Thompson control destination.

2. Show the hand outside

Offer: A window reflection shows the whole skyline tilted in a curved glass wall.

An announced shake gives the crew a short rescue or observation choice. A hero who protects someone gets a clear view of the external shape; another can secure the equipment. Use an ordinary roll for either risky action. No roll is needed to understand that the event is deliberate. A failed observation still leaves a recording from a witness, but the crew is identified by the control network.

Clue: The incident is someone exercising a privilege, not a machine breaking at random.

3. Confront the beneficiary

Offer: Calder offers a job before he offers a threat.

He says the city needs someone who can arrange reliable recovery. If exposed, he attempts to reach Thompson, where normal jurisdiction fails. Do not give him an automatic escape: capture, negotiation, surrender, or defeat are valid. If the players capture him, his key and the records direct them to Thompson anyway. If he dies, a deputy contractor has the routing order. A core Social Conflict or a short chase can resolve opposition; the result changes his leverage, not whether the maze exists.

Clue: Calder says someone else did the bidding and expects to be paid in “enrichment.”

Outcomes

Success: The crew secures the key or a cooperative guide and enters Thompson with leverage.

Partial success: Calder reaches Thompson first. The party has the destination and records, but custodians expect them.

Failure route: The crew is publicly blamed for a disruption. Inez supplies a service entrance and proof. That accusation is fictional fallout; it cannot remove every action the players can take.

Before the next gathering

Give the second milestone Advance. Keep Calder’s fate and the workers’ loyalties when preparing the maze.

Session 4 - The Thompson Center Maze

Act II - Somebody owns this place. Make the location reveal the purchase, the shaking rights, and a way to break the boundary.

Opening

The ticket says your number will be called shortly. It has been printed on a leaf, a boarding pass, and a municipal parking citation. Across the atrium, three offices occupy the same door. All three say you need the other office first.

Essential clues

• Up died accidentally; his estate auction sold the inhabited holding.
• The Keeper’s compensation includes shaking rights.
• The control seam can be cracked by a tuned beam without relocating Chicago.

Visible clock: Maze shift

4 boxes. Fill one box for a repeated route without a changed method, or a delay the crew knowingly accepts. At the limit: Custodians arrive, one per two heroes rounded up. Other routes remain open.

1. Choose a route through jurisdiction

Offer: Use the node map. Start at A and visibly offer B or C.

Calder’s key admits the crew to one node without a roll. At B, an elven departures queue contains stranded travelers; helping them gains a transit badge and a route to D. At C, Inez or an estate clerk provides the ledger. A roll can speed either route or preserve discretion. Failure fills the shift clock once and opens the other route. Never send the party back to the start as its only consequence. Security can be persuaded, bypassed, or fought.

Clue: The bidder’s name and the beneficiary’s name occupy different columns.

2. Make the deal legible

Offer: Reveal Handout 3. Answer questions plainly.

An eligible higher-dimensional Keeper bid for Calder. The arrangement gave the Keeper Chicago as a living snow globe. Up’s death was a stupid accident; there is no murder solution hiding behind it. Research or Persuasion can discover a severance record or an enforcement weakness, but the central facts need no roll. If the crew tries a legal cancellation, let it suspend one shake or free one custodian. Complete invalidation of ownership still requires reaching the seam in this edition.

Clue: A person’s presence in a ledger does not make the ownership legitimate.

3. Choose what to disable

Offer: At D, offer the shake switch or the path to Calder. At E, offer the seam diagram.

Electronics or Repair disables a local shake feed; a creative physical bypass can work too. Success prevents the first extra hazard at the accelerator. Failure costs a tool or brings a custodian; the seam diagram remains readable. It names the fictional Loop Resonance Works, and a clear note distinguishes cracking the ownership boundary from moving the city. A surviving Calder can bargain, surrender the key, or be escorted out. Keep choices about him in the players’ hands.

Clue: The heroes may be flung outside when the boundary breaks. Chicago can remain in Chicago.

Outcomes

Success: The party has the diagram, route, and one disabled feed or allied custodian.

Partial success: They have the route but must evacuate people or bring Calder with them.

Failure route: They escape through a service passage with the essential diagram. Pursuit costs them the easy accelerator entrance; it does not hide the objective.

Before the next gathering

Ask who they want to protect when they fire. Prepare the accelerator around that choice.

Session 5 - Crack the Bottle

Act II - Somebody owns this place. Give the whole party simultaneous jobs while freeing the city from ownership.

Opening

The control display shows a seam through the city, but the line belongs to something larger than the map. The engineer points to three feeds. “Power. Aim. Containment. You can get two wrong and still make a terrible noise.”

Essential clues

• The seam and the earthquake are different problems.
• A correct shot severs ownership; the city does not have to leave its physical place.

Visible clock: Earthquake

6 boxes. Fill one box after each activation round. Add one extra only for an explicitly announced containment mishap. At the limit: A ground hazard strikes and evacuation becomes urgent. The team can still fire.

1. Reach the fictional test hall

Offer: Use Loop Resonance Works, a fictional installation. Show three feeds and two exits.

Dr. Vale can explain the fantasy physics, but does not operate every station for the heroes. There is no real accelerator schematic or real-world firing procedure here. The group chooses power, calibration, containment, evacuation, and protection. An allied custodian holds an entrance; an allied contractor opens an exit. If the crew disabled Thompson’s shake feed, the first hazard is only a warning. Otherwise a falling panel threatens the service route: announce it and allow Athletics or Repair to protect that route.

Clue: The beam targets a higher-dimensional ownership seam, not residents or a real geological weapon.

2. Activate under pressure

Offer: Use a Dramatic Task alongside initiative for interference.

Group goal: 12 Task Tokens in 4 rounds. Electronics calibrates or energizes; Repair contains; Athletics braces; Persuasion organizes evacuation. Each action needs a concrete job. Support works normally and does not itself earn tokens. Two rift leeches interfere in round 2; contractors equal to half the heroes, rounded up, arrive in round 3 unless an ally or agreement keeps them away. Fill one earthquake box after each round. Announce a containment mishap before a risky attempt; a Critical Failure on that attempt adds one extra box as well as the core task consequence. Apply other core complications normally.

Clue: The seam display opens a channel out of the bottle as calibration approaches its goal.

3. Choose a cost and let the world open

Offer: At the task’s end, resolve the seam and quake separately.

If the goal is reached, the seam cracks. If not, allow one clearly offered emergency firing: it cracks the seam at the cost of damaging the hall and filling the earthquake clock. A crew that refuses can evacuate, regroup, and retry with a portable salvaged feed; this costs a scene, not a new campaign. At six quake boxes, everyone in an exposed area gets one announced Agility roll to reach cover; failure deals 2d6 damage. A successful evacuation action protects the civilians automatically. The boundary then throws the heroes onto a service platform outside. The city remains where it belongs.

Clue: An auction service plate on the platform can become a vessel and a route instrument.

Outcomes

Success: Chicago is freed; the heroes reach the archipelago with a stable vessel component.

Partial success: The city is freed with repair needs or missing equipment. Allies evacuate survivors; the voyage has an extra repair beat.

Failure route: An emergency firing or second attempt frees the city at a severe local cost. If the party declines both, use the retreat and retry route. Do not narrate them into an action they refused.

Before the next gathering

Give the third milestone Advance. Describe the primordial sea and let the players name their improvised vessel.

Session 6 - Adrift in the Universe

Act III - Adrift, then home. Teach timed crossings while making outside realities into places with people.

Opening

The platform floats above a foggy sea. Far away, a school, a wood, and a lit train carriage drift on separate horizons. Your route instrument pulses once. Mark stops talking. “We have until the third one.”

Essential clues

• Every useful slide has a brief window and needs an anchor at both ends.
• A home signal can use a chosen Chicago place as its address.

Visible clock: Slide departure

6 boxes. Fill one box after each meaningful travel beat or local choice, not after each individual roll. At the limit: The window closes. Wait for the next one with a cost, or use another island route.

1. Build a way to travel

Offer: Turn the auction platform into a skiff, ferry, or other group-chosen vessel.

Establish a power source, a steerable surface, and a route instrument. Each needs one suitable successful Trait roll, with Support welcome. A failure adds a repair beat and a chosen limitation, not destruction. Mark can energize a compatible component while a hero navigates or repairs; another electrical or mechanical method works if he is absent. Reveal Handout 4. The foggy sea is fantastical; do not impose realistic cryogenic lethality on this adapted novel imagery.

Clue: A place the players named in Session 0 is recognizable as a destination signal.

2. Choose two stops, not a tour checklist

Offer: Offer the stranded train, elven departures, and the auction dock. The crew chooses its route.

At the train, saving passengers costs two beats and earns a signal lamp; leaving costs one and leaves an ally unresolved. At departures, two custodians demand a badge; negotiation, showing the ledger, or a short fight earns a route stamp. At the dock, an abandoned lot offers spare anchors; searching costs a beat, and the repossessor can offer a shortcut in exchange for a future ownership claim. Let players reject it. Each local problem uses one or two ordinary rolls or a core Quick Encounter. Reset the slide clock when arriving at a new stop.

Clue: The lamp, stamp, or anchor identifies a home route. Any one supplies the essential direction; two make the finale’s first calibration easier.

3. Leave before the slide closes

Offer: Show six boxes and state the current departure pressure.

Crossing uses one navigation roll and one anchoring roll, with suitable skills and Support. Success and failure change the crossing’s cost. At six boxes, the current window closes: wait for the next cycle and add a repair or rescue problem, or go by the other offered route. If both anchors are lost, the crew is marooned between realities; a visible drifting cable can be caught with Athletics, or an ally can pull them to a nearby island. No single failed roll ends the voyage. End when they know the home signal and see the final route.

Clue: Getting home must not reconstruct the city’s enclosure.

Outcomes

Success: The crew has a clear home signal and two helpful preparations.

Partial success: They have the signal with damaged gear or an ally to return for. Preserve that promise for the epilogue.

Failure route: A missed slide changes the route. They recover at another island, obtain the signal from a beacon, and begin Session 7 with one repair beat.

Before the next gathering

Ask what message the crew wants Chicago to hear. Make it the centerpiece of the final gathering.

Session 7 - Message in a Bottle

Act III - Adrift, then home. Pay off the voyage and the electrical motif without returning the city to captivity.

Opening

The city answers your signal. There are people at the other end, not a glass wall. A second voice interrupts: “We can make your passage quite safe. All we need is the old boundary.”

Essential clues

• The Keeper’s safe passage bargain would restore ownership.
• The tether is a mechanism the heroes can disable, not an invincible monster to defeat.

Visible clock: Final tether

4 boxes. Fill one box after a finale round while the tether remains active. At the limit: The repossessor boards. Disabling the tether remains available.

1. Make home recognize them

Offer: Ask each hero for one line of the message and one contribution to the crossing.

The route requires the group’s chosen place name and three long flashes plus one short. Electronics, Repair, Persuasion, or a justified other skill can send, stabilize, or coordinate the signal. If the crew gained two preparations in Session 6, give +1 to the first calibration attempt. If Mark is a player, let that player choose the electrical contribution; if he is an NPC, he supplies current while the heroes make the decisions. Missing gear can be replaced with a visible cable and one repair beat.

Clue: Residents on the other side can anchor the destination without enclosing it.

2. Resist the last claim

Offer: The repossessor attaches a visible tether. Put its target terminal within reach.

The agent offers safe passage for a renewed boundary, then attempts enforcement if refused. Use its original profile. The heroes may fight, bargain for time, demonstrate the severance, or disable the tether with Electronics or Repair at -2. The terminal has Toughness 6 and can be broken; no need to kill the agent. The task to align and cross requires 8 group Task Tokens in 3 rounds using core rules. A hero who addresses the tether has a clear competing job; Support counts normally. Fill the four-box tether clock only while the anchor remains attached.

Clue: The agent’s legal assumption can be rejected; the city’s people are not valid collateral.

3. Resolve the crossing, then listen

Offer: Use the crew’s actual choices to determine the ending.

Goal met with tether disabled: return freely. Goal met with tether active: the bow crosses but the vessel remains held; residents help stabilize it while the heroes take one last scene to sever the terminal or force a release. Goal missed: the final window closes, leaving an anchored island and a new cycle; accept a damaged vessel or a delayed homecoming, then try again after a concrete repair. A crew that accepts the bad bargain gets a compromised ending, with the ownership problem explicitly unresolved. Do not call that freedom. At home, ask each player for one changed relationship and one place they visit first.

Clue: The intended victory is freedom plus homecoming. A warm welcome cannot hide a renewed cage.

Outcomes

Success: Chicago is safe because it belongs to its people. The heroes return, and residents publicly acknowledge what they did.

Partial success: The city is free; the heroes return later or with damage, and keep a promise to rescue an ally. Give them a route to honor it.

Failure route: They remain temporarily anchored outside, or knowingly accept the Keeper’s bargain. State the cost honestly. Offer the repair-and-retry route; never turn one unlucky roll into an unannounced total-party death.

Before the next gathering

Close on player epilogues. Record which places, people, and promises survived. Ask what should change before anyone calls this edition playtested.

NPC profiles

All profiles below are original builds for this edition. Attributes, skills, Pace, Parry, and Toughness use SWADE conventions. Wild Card and Extra are rules labels; use the core book for how each works. Unlisted skills use the core unskilled procedure. Damage marked Str+d4 or Str+d6 uses the character's Strength die. Armor is included in Toughness and shown in parentheses. Listed gear is deliberately simple; substitute equipment from your own core book when appropriate.

Mark, returning hero - Wild Card

Use only if Mark is not a player character. He is glad to be home, frightened of going back outside, and unwilling to treat the displaced as disposable.

Attributes: Agility d6, Smarts d8, Spirit d8, Strength d6, Vigor d6. Skills: Athletics d6, Common Knowledge d6, Electronics d8, Fighting d4, Notice d6, Persuasion d6, Repair d6, Stealth d4. Pace: 6. Parry: 4. Toughness: 5. Hindrances: Loyal. Edges: None. Gear: A scorched coat, insulated tools, a pocket notebook; improvised tool, Str+d4.

Navigation fiction: Mark can feed his electrical current into a compatible device. This is not a general combat power or a new Arcane Background. Roll his Electronics when he operates that device. He can Support; he cannot replace a player's action. If a player wants a fully powered Mark, agree a core-rules character build and Trappings separately. No proprietary power text is included here.

Contractor, security operative - Extra

A worker following an emergency contract, not automatically a murderer. Most surrender or retreat when abandoned. A persuaded crew may become an ally.

Attributes: Agility d6, Smarts d4, Spirit d6, Strength d6, Vigor d6. Skills: Athletics d6, Fighting d6, Notice d6, Persuasion d4, Repair d6, Shooting d6, Stealth d4. Pace: 6. Parry: 5. Toughness: 6 (1). Hindrances/Edges: None. Gear: Protective vest, Armor 1; tool baton, Str+d4; insulated net, use a core grappling or improvised restraint resolution. No firearm is required for any scene in this campaign.

Custodian, dimensional security - Extra

A person paid to protect a jurisdiction they only partly understand. Their priority is their own exit route, then their assigned checkpoint.

Attributes: Agility d6, Smarts d6, Spirit d4, Strength d8, Vigor d8. Skills: Athletics d6, Fighting d6, Intimidation d6, Notice d6, Repair d4. Pace: 6. Parry: 5. Toughness: 8 (2). Hindrances/Edges: None. Gear: Protective coat, Armor 2; heavy baton, Str+d4; transit badge. Tactic: Guard an exit, warn once, and withdraw if the contract is visibly cancelled. Persuasion or a convincing forged order can end the encounter without fighting.

Rift leech - Extra

An original creature resembling a wasp assembled from electrical insulation. Treat its tangled cable mass as Size 0 for this profile. It feeds on current, not on moral alignment. A spare battery can draw it away.

Attributes: Agility d8, Smarts d4 (animal), Spirit d6, Strength d4, Vigor d4. Skills: Athletics d8, Fighting d6, Notice d6, Stealth d8. Pace: 6 (flight). Parry: 5. Toughness: 4. Hindrances/Edges: None. Gear: None. Attack: Bite, Str+d4. Custom ability: While a leech is attached to a live cable, that feed cannot contribute to a task. An adjacent character may remove it with a successful Athletics or Repair roll as an action, or lure it away with another live source without a roll. It has no unexplained immunity or copied creature abilities.

Calder, fictional mayor - Wild Card

This is a fictional antagonist, not a claim about a real politician or family. He wants ordinary status and unlimited control over the disasters that make him look useful.

Attributes: Agility d6, Smarts d8, Spirit d8, Strength d6, Vigor d6. Skills: Athletics d4, Common Knowledge d8, Electronics d6, Fighting d4, Intimidation d6, Notice d6, Persuasion d8, Repair d6, Research d6, Stealth d4. Pace: 6. Parry: 4. Toughness: 5. Hindrances: Greedy (Major). Edges: None. Gear: Auction key, emergency procurement book, portable radio; improvised briefcase attack, Str+d4. Tactic: Offer jobs, invoke procedure, retreat behind contractors. He is not a super-powered combat boss.

The repossessor - Wild Card

The Keeper's field agent. Courteous, precise, and incapable of seeing a resident as anything but inventory until someone makes that assumption costly.

Attributes: Agility d8, Smarts d10, Spirit d8, Strength d6, Vigor d8. Skills: Athletics d6, Common Knowledge d8, Electronics d8, Fighting d8, Intimidation d8, Notice d8, Persuasion d8, Repair d6, Research d8, Stealth d6. Pace: 6. Parry: 6. Toughness: 8 (2). Hindrances/Edges: None. Gear: Boundary coat, Armor 2; tuning rod, Str+d6; a portable jurisdiction stamp.

Custom jurisdiction anchor: The rod sustains one visible tether attached to the vessel. An adjacent hero can disable it with Electronics or Repair at -2, break the exposed terminal (Toughness 6), or get the agent to release it. Disabling the tether does not require defeating the agent. The agent is not immune to ordinary combat or Tests. It leaves if the boundary is severed and it has no defensible contract.

Allies and the Keeper

The records clerk Inez, cartoon resident Pip, and engineer Dr. Vale are original supporting names for this edition. Give an ally d6 in a relevant skill when a roll is needed; they supply access, context, or a single Support action, not Task Tokens on behalf of an absent player. Pip does not have to be comic relief.

The Vivarium Keeper is a remote antagonist. Do not give it a huge combat profile and turn the ending into a fight with an unkillable creature. Its actions arrive through a shake, a contract, a tether, or an agent: specific things the heroes can confront. Its baseline is a collector who calls danger enrichment. If your table prefers the Cruel Naturalist or the Spectator, change the voice and motive, not the established clues or shaking rights.

Table reference

The Thompson Center node map

This is a fictional encounter map, not a plan of the real building. Each connection takes one scene transition; do not measure a real pedestrian route.

A closed route always has the other listed route. A clerk can redirect a lost group to C. The maze's shift clock creates a cost, not an infinite random walk. The GM runner tracks scene completion independently of clock pressure.

Pressure ledger

These are manual scene clocks, not actual-minute timers. The runner's session timer is a pacing aid and does not fill them automatically.

Encounter scaling and review

Start with one contractor per hero in scenes that call for contractors; use half that many custodians, rounded up, when a threat also shares a timer. Add the repossessor only at the finale. Never add every possible enemy from the appendix to one scene.

Run one dry pass before inviting a table: follow the clues without rolls, take the failure exit from the portal, skip one travel window, and end with the tether intact. The campaign must still have a next action in every case. That structural check is not a playtest. Damage balance, actual pacing, and the emotional effect of the ending require people playing.

Between gatherings

• Write down the revealed clues, chosen costs, surviving allies, and one thing a player made true.
• Ask what destination or investigation the group wants next. Prepare it before filling in an unrelated branch.
• Record any content adjustment privately. Player personal disclosures do not belong in the public module or source repository.
• Advance only at the agreed milestones. Update encounters for the characters' actual capabilities.
• Keep the next session's opening, immediate objective, essential clue, and two exit states within reach.

Credits, source boundaries, and fan notice

Campaign conception and direction: Austen Tucker-Crowder. This free module was expanded from the current Message in a Bottle campaign bible and eight unplayed session outlines, reviewed October 9, 2026. New mechanics and supporting names are identified as additions for this edition. No private player questionnaire, correspondence, real-person backstory, Dread scenario text, Dread audio, or Pinnacle rulebook text is bundled here.

The GM runner takes its practical format from the author's Dread at the Wooden Shoe GM guide: a clear control room, scene cards, printable reference, manual cues, and local progress. Its clocks, guidance, and campaign content are newly adapted for this campaign; it does not use Dread's resolution system.

Illustrations: existing human-directed AI interpretations from the campaign walkthrough. Text and production: developed with human-directed AI assistance. This edition is offered free without a signup or payment requirement. The SWADE core rulebook remains a separate requirement.

Required Savage Worlds Fan License notice:

This game references the Savage Worlds game system, available from Pinnacle Entertainment Group at www.peginc.com. Savage Worlds and all associated logos and trademarks are copyrights of Pinnacle Entertainment Group. Used with permission. Pinnacle makes no representation or warranty as to the quality, viability, or suitability for purpose of this product.

Pinnacle's Fan License terms. The Savage Worlds Fan logo is Pinnacle's supplied asset. It is distinct from the official licensed-product and Adventurer's Guild logos. This release makes no claim of Pinnacle approval.