#Sample Drifters (漂流者見本)

Contents

Authority. The figures of the 6 samples of this document are a narrow Canon — canonical only within this volume, and they override no item of the canonical modern person. The common opening fragment is Fiction-Only, and §Impromptu Operation One Page is a Scene Tool. The six are all users of the Identity Set, so, as with every variant of this volume, they are premised on GM permission — and fc cannot override co Canon.

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#Scent — The People Who Crossed the Same Fog

#Opening Fragment — The Last Bus

The last bus left the stop at the mouth of the valley at nine in the evening — the passengers were six, seven counting the driver.

In the very back seat, Amano Sora pressed her forehead against the window. On the phone on her lap a half-sent message hung. Mom, I'm leaving now. It was a school trip she was three days late for — her mother's hospitalization, a missed muster, and the three days of a bus she had failed to catch. In the next seat, Hasumi-sensei held out a can of coffee without a word.

"You can sleep. I'll wake you when we join up."

"...I'm sorry, for making even you late."

"Chaperoning is, after all, the work of standing beside the slowest child." The teacher said it and hugged her own bag. A heavy bag with textbooks and a teacher's guide inside, the bag she carried everywhere.

Across the aisle, a woman in dirt-dried work clothes sat with her eyes closed, a large backpack held in her arms. It was not the breath of a sleeping person — it was the breath of one trained in how to rest. Right behind the driver's seat, a middle-aged man in uniform had on his knee an envelope holding orders of appointment, and in the seat behind him an old physician dozed with his glasses laid atop a stack of conference papers. At the end of the aisle a young engineer held a tool bag and nodded her head slowly to the beat beyond her earphones.

The bus entered a long tunnel. The radio died first. Static — then silence.

In the top left of Sora's phone the antenna vanished. Out of range. "It's a tunnel," Sora muttered.

The tunnel was long. Too long. And when they came out of the tunnel — it was fog.

The headlight beams were like stirring through milk. The driver killed the speed. "Now that's strange. Fog like this, on this road..."

In the span of two passes of the wipers the fog cleared. The driver hit the brakes, and the bodies of seven people pitched forward all at once.

There was no center line. There was no asphalt. What the headlights lit was a narrow dirt road with two deep ruts of cartwheels.

"Did I... take a wrong road." The driver tapped the navigation. The screen was searching for satellites. Searching, searching, searching on and on.

The man in uniform stood up first. "Driver, let us stop for now. — Everyone, is anyone hurt. I'll do a headcount." His voice was uncannily calm, so the people followed the words. Passengers six, driver one. All safe.

The woman in work clothes was, before anyone noticed, up at the very front. She read the dark beyond the windshield for a while, then said low. "The road back is fog too. Better to look for a light."

The bus crawled over the dirt road. There was no light. The fuel needle dropped visibly, and the young engineer crouched beside the driver's seat and peered at the instrument panel.

"The vehicle is fine," she said. "What's broken is — the outside of the vehicle."

Dawn cleared away the last of the fog. Terraced paddies appeared. Thatched roofs appeared. Power poles, in the end, did not appear.

At the village edge the bus coughed twice and stopped. The fuel was at an end.

The first to come were the children. Persimmon-poles still in hand, they looked up by turns at the enormous thing of iron and the seven people stepping down out of it. The grown-ups stood ringed at a distance, hoes in hand — and at last a bent-backed old man pushed through the people and came out.

The old physician, the one who had dozed all through the bus, bowed his head first. "We cause a disturbance. This place — which village is it."

The words got through. The old man's eyes widened, and from the shoulders of the seven a handful of strength they themselves had not known went out. That an answer comes back to a question asked — that was the first miracle of that morning.

The old man looked up at the bus for a while, and looked at the seven in turn. It was the face of one who had finished a reckoning.

"It is a Kamikakushi (神隱し)," the old man said. "The spirits hid them and gave them back. — Seven all at once."

Sora looked down at her phone without understanding the words. Out of range. Below the half-sent message red letters hung.

Send failed. Try again?

Sora pressed try again. For that habit to end, from then, it took one season.

#Scent — One Bus, Seven Stories

Drifting is not a single event but a continuing phenomenon (The Principles of Drifting). The people who stood in each fragment of the 02 series — the nurse at the barrier, the Self-Defense Officer in the mire, the black-clad one in the burning village, the physician on the highway, the researcher at the mountain temple, the mechanic in the shed, the young man in the underground passage — are all Kamikakushi of a different night, a different gate. This bus is but one event of that phenomenon, one tray this volume has set out in advance for impromptu play.

The seventh person — the driver — is the GM's NPC. The name and the story are left to the table. But if one suggestion is written down: make him a person who, in the end, cannot leave the side of the bus. On the day, far in the future, that body becomes an iron shrine — the seat of the first shrine-keeper will already be filled.

And the emotional center of this party is not the strongest person but the weakest person — the youngest. Exactly as the civilian-student set is designed, only one who crossed over without the armor of an occupation can say "I just want to go home." The spine of this volume does not bend here either. This book is not a book that makes the modern person strong. It is a book that gives the drama of a future being consumed. The six sheets below are the starting remaining-count tables of that drama.

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#The Six Samples — The Party of the Last Bus

All six are tier 1 canonical modern person, one per set — they wore, as is, the set data of the six documents of the 02 series. The numeric grammar follows that of the canon samples, and the drifted-goods remaining-count notation doubles, as is, as the entry example of the remaining-count sheet. Energy Transfer and the ability-score special (Courage/Finesse/Physique -1, Wisdom/Presence/Fate +1) are kept by all six as the skeleton of the occupation — exactly the canon-protection principle of Overview Law 2. The background is recorded by name only — the detail is in the canon backgrounds, and if a set-replacement ability and a background ability perk point to the same ability, the forced-move rule of Overview Law 2 does the work.

#1. Self-Defense Officer — Fukazawa Rin (深沢凛)

The night a half-month flood deployment ended, a Sergeant 3rd Class who missed the unit transport and boarded the last bus, gear and all — at the bottom of her ammunition pouch remained the eight rounds that had not yet gone onto the return ledger. The first night she switched on the radio for a single breath out of habit, heard only the static of four hundred years' worth of empty sky, and switched it off. Since then the radio has been off — the day she switches it on again, she decides.

Fukazawa Rin (深沢凛) — modern person tier 1 · Self-Defense Officer set (disaster-deployment type)
Wounds 4, Defense 10 (disaster-deployment work clothes), Energy 11. Courage+0, Finesse+1, Physique+1, Wisdom+1, Presence+0, Fate+0.
Background: wanderer (route unselected) | Heart: 忠
Abilities: Stratagem●● Archery (firearms only)● Negotiation● Perception● Survival● Fortune● Hardiness● Scouting● (set replacement: Medicine entry→Archery (firearms only) entry — Licensed cap; background wanderer: Survival·Fortune / free: Hardiness·Scouting)
Technique: Firearm Proficiency [aptitude] (set tier 1 — a choice instead of the canon "Foresight"), Adaptation-borrowable slot 1
Adaptation: fast path samurai / blocked path shinobi
Drifted goods: Type 89 rifle 1 [Depletion 8·rounds] — the GM's-choice 0~10 entry example (the card is in the firearms document)
 personal first-aid pouch ×2 (each [Depletion 3·uses]) · field ration [Depletion 6·uses]
 portable radio [Depletion 6·Clock] · flashlight [Depletion 4·Clock]
 helmet, work clothes, canteen, field shovel, a coil of rope, rescue gloves (no [Depletion])
Conflict: the trigger without orders — the one responsible for the eight rounds is, now, her alone.

The full cards of the drifted goods are in Self-Defense Officer, Firearms, and Electronics. The disaster-deployment type's suppressing fire is, with high likelihood, a once-in-a-lifetime thing — when that one time is, is this character's story.

"Reckon the gun as if it is not there. That is the most accurate reckoning."

#2. Rescue Worker — Ogawa Mamoru (小川守)

He spent twenty-five years as a patrolman in the city, received the orders for a mountain-village police box, and was on his way to take up the post alone, first — his family was to follow in spring, and that spring was left four hundred years outside. The first morning he confirmed the count of seven, and from that day has not skipped that reckoning a single day. He drew his pistol twice in twenty-five years and never once fired it — that record has not yet been broken.

Ogawa Mamoru (小川守) — modern person tier 1 · rescue worker set (police)
Wounds 3, Defense 10 (uniform), Energy 11. Courage+0, Finesse+1, Physique+0, Wisdom+1, Presence+1, Fate+0.
Background: Memory of the Modern Age | Heart: 義
Abilities: Unarmed Combat●● Intimidation● Negotiation● Perception● Stratagem● Medicine● Deceit● Scouting●
 (set replacement: Stratagem acquisition→Unarmed-Combat acquisition, Medicine entry→Intimidation entry — Licensed cap; background Memory of the Modern Age: Stratagem·Medicine / free: Deceit·Scouting)
Technique: Subdual [Kata] (set tier 1 — a choice instead of "Foresight". non-lethal — 2d10+Finesse+Unarmed Combat), Adaptation-borrowable slot 1
Adaptation: fast path Wildman / blocked path shinobi
Drifted goods: revolver [Depletion 5·rounds] (reserve rounds 0 — base recommendation) · handcuffs (the key is one)
 baton (non-lethal) · whistle · flashlight [Depletion 4·Clock]
Conflict: whose law is it — the law he kept is of no domain of this era.

The five rounds are not the engine of this set — exactly as the sentence of rescue worker has it, they are five lines of dialogue saved for the last. On the day after the pistol falls silent, he does the same work as yesterday.

"All safe, confirmed. — Good. Then let us begin today's work."

#3. Medical Worker — Kariya Shoichi (刈谷昭一)

Thirty years at a clinic in the mountains — "a physician does not walk leaving the bag behind" was his creed, and even on the last bus back from a conference the house-call bag was on his knee. That stubbornness carried three bottles of miracle into this era. The first night he opened the bag and closed it without a sound — the reckoning ended with that one time, and after that, only the work of dwindling remained.

Kariya Shoichi (刈谷昭一) — modern person tier 1 · medical worker set (doctor)
Wounds 3, Defense 10 (suit), Energy 10. Courage-1, Finesse+0, Physique+0, Wisdom+3, Presence+1, Fate+0.
Background: Memory of the Modern Age | Heart: 仁
Abilities: Medicine●● Stratagem●● Negotiation●● Perception● Herbalism● Hardiness● (set replacement: Stratagem acquisition↔Medicine entry — grade swap; background Memory of the Modern Age: Stratagem·Negotiation upgrade / free: Herbalism·Hardiness)
Technique: Disinfection and Suture [aptitude] (set tier 1 — a choice instead of "Foresight": discarded emergency medicine +3
 and chose "clean treatment" — what the set sells is not number but quality), Adaptation-borrowable slot 1
Adaptation: fast path Pure Land Monk / blocked path killing arts (殺法)
Drifted goods: house-call bag — surgical tools (no [Depletion] — an implement) · treatment consumables [Depletion 6·uses]
 antibiotics [Depletion 3·uses]
Conflict: whom to save — the drug bottles are three, the line is long.

The operation on the day the last 1 use becomes a question was set out by the "the last 1 use" entry of medical worker — the GM who runs this character should read from that entry.

"There are only three bottles of antibiotics. So everyone — please, do not fall ill."

#4. Scholar-Teacher — Hasumi Chiaki (蓮見千秋)

A teacher in her tenth year teaching history — she was a chaperone chasing the main body with a single pupil who had fallen behind by family circumstances. The classroom vanished, but the textbooks in the bag and the habit of calling the roll crossed over with her. That her specialty is history is a joke of good fortune — and the fact that that history is half a memory of another world is no joke.

Hasumi Chiaki (蓮見千秋) — modern person tier 1 · scholar-teacher set (teacher)
Wounds 3, Defense 10 (civilian dress), Energy 10. Courage-1, Finesse+0, Physique+0, Wisdom+2, Presence+2, Fate+0.
Background: Memory of the Modern Age | Heart: 慈
Abilities: Stratagem●● Medicine●● Negotiation●● Agitation● Perception● Deceit● (set replacement: Perception entry→Agitation entry — Licensed cap; background Memory of the Modern Age: Medicine·Negotiation upgrade / free: Perception·Deceit)
Technique: Foresight [aptitude] (canon tier 1 kept — in the choice with the set's "Literature Appraisal" she
 chose the canon. whichever is chosen is correct), Adaptation-borrowable slot 1
Adaptation: fast path scholar / blocked path shinobi
Drifted goods: a couple of textbooks, a teacher's guide (specialist books — no [Depletion], it only gets wet)
 a writing-kit set [Depletion 6·uses] · glasses (no [Depletion] — broken is the end)
Conflict: whose are the letters — in an era where teaching becomes a crime, she is a teacher.

On the day she reaches tier 3, The One Who Teaches waits before her — until then her lectern is beside the campfire, and in the class roster one name is written.

"Calling the roll. — Amano. ...Yes, good. All present today too."

#5. Engineer — Tsuji Sanae (辻早苗)

A twenty-three-year-old electrician coming down from a night inspection of a relay station on a mountaintop — she dozed on the last bus with her tool bag in her arms. What she had mended all her life was the signal, yet in the sky of this era there is not a single line of signal. Instead, at the first interlude she had the whole party's load spread out — that wiping, tightening, and slowing the clock was her work, she knew before anyone told her.

Tsuji Sanae (辻早苗) — modern person tier 1 · engineer set (electrician)
Wounds 3, Defense 10 (work clothes), Energy 12. Courage-1, Finesse+2, Physique+0, Wisdom+2, Presence+0, Fate+0.
Background: wanderer (route unselected) | Heart: 無心
Abilities: Disable●● Medicine● Negotiation● Perception● Infiltration● Fortune● Stratagem● Hardiness● (set replacement: Stratagem acquisition→Disable acquisition — Licensed cap; background wanderer: Infiltration·Fortune / free: Stratagem·Hardiness)
Technique: Emergency Repair [aptitude] (set tier 1 — a choice instead of "Foresight". the whole party's Depletion Clock
 hangs on this hand), Adaptation-borrowable slot 1
Adaptation: fast path Artisan / blocked path the domain of the mysterious
Drifted goods: tool set (no [Depletion] — only gets lost, the loss special) · work lamp [Depletion 6·Clock]
 spare-parts pouch [Depletion 3·uses]
Conflict: to mend, or to bury — the mending hand is the hand that is copied.

To move the sentence of engineer into this party's words, it is this — on the day Sanae is lost, what the party loses is not one comrade but the remaining days of everyone.

"The bus was fine. Even now, that is what frightens me most."

#6. Civilian-Student — Amano Sora (天野昊)

A school trip she was three days late for because of her mother's hospitalization — a seventeen-year-old who held a message she could not send on the last bus chasing the main body. She crossed over with no title and no qualification, and so to the eyes of the people of this era she is the face easiest to understand of the seven. The first night, when the reckonings of the grown-ups all went dark, the one who silently tore open two bags of snacks and passed them around was — this youngest one.

Amano Sora (天野昊) — modern person tier 1 · civilian-student set (student)
Wounds 3, Defense 10 (school uniform), Energy 10. Courage+0, Finesse+0, Physique+0, Wisdom+1, Presence+1, Fate+1.
Background: wanderer (route unselected) | Heart: 無心 → 仁 (gradual)
Abilities: Stratagem●● Disguise● Negotiation● Perception● Survival● Fortune● Footwork● Deceit● (set replacement: Medicine entry→Disguise entry — Licensed cap; background wanderer: Survival·Fortune / free: Footwork·Deceit)
Technique: Living Wisdom [aptitude] (set tier 1 — a choice instead of "Foresight". a technique that stands, from the start,
 on the side that does not wear down in this volume), Adaptation-borrowable slot 1
Adaptation: fast path blank delegation (the first borrowed occupation is fixed in that instant) / blocked path agreement on the opposite pole
Drifted goods: smartphone [Depletion 4·Clock] (per scene switched on — no leniency) · wallet (no [Depletion])
 everyday goods in the bag d10 — the 4·9 example: two bags of snacks [Depletion 2·uses] · student ID (no [Depletion])
Conflict: why was it me — the grown-ups of the same bus had an occupation left to them. What was left to her
 is 1 unsent message.

The full cards of the smartphone and everyday goods are in Electronics and civilian-student. On every night the question of return surfaces at the table, the GM should light up the face of this youngest one — she is the only one who can answer "and what will you do once you go back" with "just, live the way I always did."

"There's a message I'll send first thing if the signal reaches. — So I, I'm going back."

#The Reckoning of Six

The firepower of this party is thirteen rounds, all told — Rin's eight rounds and Mamoru's five rounds. On the day they are spent, the party returns to six canonical modern persons, and from that day on it is the main feature. Medicine is propped by the two — Shoichi's bag and Rin's first-aid pouches; the clock is slowed by Sanae; the record is left by Chiaki's writing kit — and in the middle stands the youngest one, who is nothing. The remaining count was set tight on purpose. The adjustment of the starting remaining count is the part of the §Operation Dial of the Depletion System and the GM Guide — but before raising it, first read the warning of "Slow."

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#The Senior Who Came First — Takagi Sayaka

A few years ahead of the bus, there is a Kamikakushi who crossed over by a different gate — a homebound train. The medical student of the canon samples, the person called "the physician of the Chinese style" at the border of the Kagura Domain. This volume adds not a single letter to her sheet — the figures use the canon's tier 1, 5, and 10 sheets as is, and she is given no set either. The canonical modern person without a set is complete in itself (Overview Law 2). She is the living proof of that sentence, one who lived this era out before sets were made.

For a rumor to cross a pass, a fortnight is enough. On the day the rumor of "seven all at once" reaches her camp — the senior comes.

The instant she sees Shoichi's house-call bag, her first words are set. "...A fellow practitioner." Beside the two physicians who recognize each other by the hand-movement of opening a bag, the party sees, for the first time, one of their own futures — that they can survive. And that she has not been able to return in four years. Those two float together upon the face of the same person.

• The choice of tier. The recommendation for the one-shot is tier 5 — a field physician in her fourth year, who has finished adapting and set aside the answer to "do you want to go home." Depending on the campaign's period, the canon's tier 1 and tier 10 sheets may be drawn out and used as is.
• What she does. Three is enough. ① Name and worth — she teaches the way a Kamikakushi lives in this era in three lines: show your calling, take a price for the work, count what dwindles. ② Living proof — proof of survival, and proof of being unable to return. ③ The source of the tradition — for a table headed for a return campaign, the living source of "the tradition of those who crossed over first," which the return-condition hook of the GM Guide points to, is her exactly.
• Caution. The senior is no fixer. The appearance is one scene, the prescription one line — the instant she solves the six's story in their stead, the cameo devours the leads. She has her own patients — let her stay one night, and let her go.

The morning she leaves, this section closes with the words she leaves the youngest one. — "I'll tell you the words I wish I could have told myself four years ago. Count. Sorrow cannot be counted, but what remains can be. While you are counting — you can go on living." And before she crosses the pass she looks back once, and smiles. "Six, how I envy you. I was alone."

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#Impromptu Operation One Page

This section alone is a Scene Tool — not a rule but a knob in the GM's hand. With this document and one remaining-count sheet, the table opens even on an unprepared evening.

1. Choose — one of the six above per PL. The remaining figures are the GM's companion NPCs. Run the blocks above as they are, or copy them onto the canon sheet.
2. Record — move the [Depletion] of each block onto the remaining-count sheet. The notation above is itself the entry example — the record is the PL's part, and the GM does not count for them (Depletion System).
3. Read — read the fragment of §Scent aloud. The three things to show in the first scene are exactly the list of The Principles of Drifting — the relief of words that get through, the unease of dead goods, and the moment a name of address is attached.
4. Open — the first session needs but one hook: the sun sets — the haggle over a place to sleep and food, and something crying in the dark. Begin by putting into their hands, as common drifted goods, a single flashlight from the bus's emergency box (the sample card of the Depletion System — that object of "the terminus it never could reach"). A longer board is carried by the table hooks of each document of the 02 series and the seasoning-type fare of the GM Guide.
5. Run — the Depletion dial need not be touched. The remaining count of the six above is already set tight — eight rounds, five rounds, three bottles. Run it as the standard and the first silence is not far. And to the last scene of the one-shot, send the senior — Sayaka above is written for that seat.

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The last bus did not reach the terminus. Instead — the place where seven people stepped down at that dawn became the first stop of each one's story.