User:
You are a worldbuilding archivist for a novel-in-progress at redacted. Read ONLY the file chapters/029-what-peri-asked.md. Do not read the canon notes — your job is to report what this chapter alone puts on the page, independently.
Produce a report in markdown with exactly these sections:
Facts
Everything the chapter asserts or firmly implies about: the world (geography, economy, institutions, history, seasons/calendar), the System (mechanics, skills, classes, levels, notifications), magic, farming practice, characters (biography, capability, relationships, habits, physical detail), and the timeline (dates, elapsed time, day-of-week, ages, durations).
- One bullet per fact, terse.
- Tag each
[stated] (explicit on the page) or [implied] (a reader would conclude it, but it isn't said).
- Give a short quoted phrase as evidence for each.
- Prefer specific and checkable over atmospheric. Skip pure plot summary — a plot event only counts if it fixes a fact (a date, a capability, a relationship change).
Questions
Questions this chapter raises that a coherent set of story notes ought to have an answer to (whether or not the answer belongs on the page). Include:
- setup/consequence questions ("this is introduced — what does it cost, who else can do it, why hasn't anyone before?"),
- numbers and scales the chapter gestures at but doesn't fix,
- character motivation or history the chapter leans on without establishing,
- anything that looks like it would contradict a plausible neighbouring fact.
One bullet each, phrased as a question, with a clause saying why it matters.
Tensions
Anything inside this chapter that sits oddly with itself — a number, a distance, a timing, a capability used more or less freely than elsewhere in the same chapter. Empty section is fine; say "None noted."
Be thorough but do not pad. Your final message IS the report — no preamble.
Facts
World / geography / calendar
- Calendar months include Harvestmonth, Saltmonth, Cornmonth, Frostmonth [stated]: "It's Saltmonth."
- Current chapter's action runs from the 9th–12th of Saltmonth, with plans set for dates into Frostmonth [stated].
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
- Distance Wystow area to redacted: forty miles [stated]: "Forty miles to redacted."
- Distance redacted to Ranner's Sluice by fen-edge drove: 130 miles [stated]: "a hundred and thirty miles from redacted back to Ranner's Sluice."
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose
- Dew ponds in chalk country are artificial clay-lined basins [stated].
- "redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose
Institutions / economy
- redacted is a warden with her own account book, distinct from "Fenholt's" book [stated].
- redacted's pay is split: Fenholt pays half, redacted and the Fellowship split the other half [stated]: "Fenholt pays half of me and redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
- redacted (a guild figure) has fifteen workers on the books, six hands, an unmoving day rate; three men work at Marsh's for three shillings and dinner, one marrying there [stated].
- redacted describes herself as "the fourth thing [redacted]'s lost this year" [stated].
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
- Auger tool available for purchase from "redacted's man in the town" for fourteen shillings, or possibly borrowed from the college [stated].
The System / magic
- Peri's class has an ability that "binds people's fates" [stated].
- She has had it "since my Choosing," in spring [stated].
- She has cast it once [stated].
- The ability has a cooldown of thirty days at her level [stated]: "It's got a cooldown. Thirty days at my level."
- It came back (off cooldown) at midnight on the 14th of Harvestmonth; as of this conversation (10th of Saltmonth) that's 56 days [stated] — this is an internally checkable date/duration claim.
redacted sentence: unpublished prose And it doesn't ask them."
redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted) is a major outlier.
- The "grey book" contains records of Peri's questions to some fate/answer-giving mechanism, with struck-through drafts kept [stated].
- Peri "took it out of doors" to ask her question, standing at redacted's west end, as she has done "since Cornmonth" [stated] — implies a ritual/behavioral requirement or preference for asking outdoors.
- Asking the same question twice is understood as "asking for the answer I want" — implies a norm/rule about querying this fate mechanism [stated].
- The answer to her question came back as three bracketed image-lines, cryptic vignette form [stated].
Characters
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted [stated] — implies injury occurred roughly late Harvestmonth/timeline check.
- Edwin keeps a book/log with entries in his own hand, including an account of "the gutter cut from redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose
- Peri has begun writing brief private annotations under Edwin's book entries (four lines under the 19th; one line previously under the 21st) [stated] — implies a growing intimacy/habit not yet discussed between them.
- Edwin noticed the annotation, chose not to read it, and said nothing to Peri about it for at least two days [stated] — characterizes his restraint/respect for privacy.
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
- redacted has a habit of writing dates into her own book as she speaks them, which Peri has started copying [stated].
- redacted comes from a cultural/family tradition ("my grandmother's people") where agreements among more than two people are spoken aloud before the household and written, with a built-in mechanism for someone to opt out later [stated].
- redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted.
- redacted was excluded from this particular party ritual/conversation and "took it well" [stated].
- Mattie Ordish is someone who "reads a chain in the rain" — a recurring, established task/role [stated/implied].
- redacted's boy (implied to be the same "boy of fourteen" redacted references) is paid for record-keeping work ("eleven lines that say nothing") [stated/implied].
redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted as witness [stated].
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
Timeline
- redacted did her accounts "on the ninth"; conversation continues into "the tenth," "the eleventh," "the twelfth" [stated] — chapter spans four consecutive days in Saltmonth.
- Firm future commitments: 14th of Frostmonth (field near Ranner's Sluice, meeting a fourteen-year-old boy), and "some time in Frostmonth" (Holm Deep second chamber) [stated].
- Party is at Wystow until the 17th (for Edwin's redacted) [stated].
- Second circular due on the 24th [stated].
- Assessment for the rim-road-south-of-Wystow house was done "on the sixth" [stated].
- Planned departure for redacted: 18th or 19th, arriving 21st or 22nd; redacted insists/settles on the 21st [stated].
- redacted plans to leave redacted by the 25th (latest the 26th) [stated].
- Route math laid out explicitly: 17th (leave Wystow area) → 18th out → 21st (arrive redacted, three days' travel) → 25th (four days on the ground) → 2nd of Frostmonth (seven days' travel back to Ranner's Sluice) → 14th is twelve days after the 2nd [stated] — a fully worked, checkable date chain.
Questions
- What exactly happened to Edwin's arm, and when — the chapter implies "eight weeks in a redacted" ending around the 17th, which would place the injury in early-to-mid Cornmonth; is that consistent with other chapters' account of when/how he was hurt?
- What is Peri's class, and what is the full mechanic of the fate-binding ability (range, cost, targeting requirements, what "binds" means concretely) beyond cooldown and irreversibility?
- What happened the one time Peri cast the binding ability — who was it used on, and why is she withholding it even from redacted and Edwin? This is heavily foreshadowed as future plot-critical.
- Why does the typical user of this ability skew so old (ninety, sixty years a priest) — what is the in-world reasoning (wisdom requirement, System gating, social convention), and does that constrain how NPCs will react to an eighteen-year-old wielding it?
- What is the fate/answer mechanism Peri consults (the bracketed-image answers) — how does it work, what are its limits, why does asking twice count as "asking for the answer I want," and is it the same "System" mechanism used elsewhere or something distinct (a fate spell, explicitly named as such by Peri)?
- Who or what specifically is meant by "line three" of Peri's vision (the ambiguous believed-party candidate) — the chapter leaves this deliberately open; does existing canon already commit to an answer that this must stay consistent with?
- What does Peri's private annotation under the 19th-of-Harvestmonth entry in Edwin's book actually say? The chapter stages this as a significant reveal-in-waiting.
- What is the nature/scope of the Fellowship, redacted, and Fenholt as institutions, and what obligations do the payment-split arrangement actually create — is redacted's implied friction with Fenholt (redacted losing people, unmoved day rates) going to escalate into a larger institutional conflict?
- What is "the third clause" redacted references — a guild/warden regulation permitting certain assessments? Its scope and limits matter if it recurs.
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
- Is the "boy of fourteen" (redacted's boy) the same figure as "line one" of Peri's vision — the chapter implies yes but doesn't confirm identity vs. role overlap between multiple children/record-keepers introduced (redacted's boy, Mattie Ordish, redacted, redacted, the boy at redacted).
redacted sentence: unpublished prose This is a significant-sounding event given zero context here.
- What is the significance of the specific number "four in six weeks" for assessments, and does redacted's planned rate/charge structure pay off later?
Tensions
- None noted — the date arithmetic (17th→18th→21st→25th→2nd of Frostmonth→14th being twelve days later) is internally consistent when checked, and the "eight weeks in a redacted" / "until the seventeenth" claims align without contradiction on the page.