A naive bard tries diplomacy. A dwarf answers with a warhammer. A half-orc who plays cleric while picking pockets slips into the fog with his daggers. And somewhere in the middle of it all, a very reasonable negotiation turns into a very unreasonable amount of bloodshed — before an unexpected offer of a second chance changes the shape of the whole affair.

Told fireside, to two children who will not stop interrupting, this is the first disaster of Nex Nexus.

A dwarf plans the fight the way he plans everything: loudly, and with a warhammer. A half-orc in a priest's robes melts into the treeline, daggers first and prayers never. A bard is certain he can talk this one out — and for once, nobody lets him. What starts as three marked positions and a clever plan becomes a close, ugly thing among the roots, and when it's over the little gnome has his cargo back and the bard has learned that winning does not always look like something a man wants to remember.

Told fireside, to two children who would much rather hear about a golem, this is the second disaster of Nex Nexus.

A half-orc kneels to bless the corpse and lifts what's in its pockets on the way up. A dwarf, entirely out of patience with the whole idea of patience, throws a warhammer at a warden captain's head. A bard tries to charm his way out of a holding cell and makes everything, spectacularly, worse. Two days to prove a murder they didn't commit, a sealed letter drawn from a dead man's coat, and a road east where something low and heavy moves through the ferns — and does not run.

Told fireside, to two children who only ever wanted to hear about the warhammer, this is the third disaster of Nex Nexus.

A bard tries to hand back a keepsake he does not understand… A dwarf kneels in the dirt and reads a beast from its tracks… A half-orc in a priest's robes pockets the evidence, blesses no one, and quietly sharpens a plan that ends with his blades drawn. And a little gnome reads a stranger's secrets off an old scrap of parchment…

Told fireside, to two children who only ever wanted to hear about the horse, this is the fourth disaster of Nex Nexus.

A gnome's thorned vine drags one bandit after another into his own campfire, and finishes the last of them with a crackling, closed fist. A dwarf ends the whole business with four flat words, and nobody argues. A bard talks a frightened, surrendering man into a second chance instead of a shallow grave — and walks away with a witness, a name, and a small black box that hums, low and steady, like it is thinking. And a half-orc in borrowed priest's robes keeps his own quiet accounting of the night: a fine mantle spotted on a warden's back, and a purse or two lighter by morning. What they carry back toward Naath is meant to clear their names. Somebody else already has plans for it.

Told fireside, to two children who cared far more whether the man screamed than how a doomed cavalry made its last, glorious charge, this is the fifth disaster of Nex Nexus.