A Debt in Kind

Steal a playing card out of a bank vault before a devil can play it. Then find out what you have stolen.

Thirty-one years ago Sorrel Vale lost a card game in the high room of the Velvet Mask and signed something he did not read. He has been dead for nineteen years. The debt has not. It names the house of Vale, and the last of that house is his brother Garrick, who keeps the Iron Rose, the one neutral room in the Gilded Exchange. Three nights from now the Dealer calls the marker in. Garrick will not ask anyone for help. Somebody has asked on his behalf, in a hand that never signs.

A Debt in Kind is a free heist one-shot for 5e, written to the 2024 rules, for characters of levels 3 to 5 (built for four 4th-level PCs), in one 3–4 hour session. No sourcebook required.

The Heist Is the Easy Half

The marker is a single card, the four of coins from a deck that has no four of coins, in Box 119 of the lower registers. Lifting it out takes eleven quiet minutes under four hundred clerks. It also makes the thief the new bearer of the debt. The real game starts there: four days, a card in a PC's pocket, and three ways out. Each of them works, and each one costs something.

• A bylaw that was never filed properly, and a councilor whose signature has just gone up in price
• A fact about what sleeps under the city, traded to a devil who is frightened of it
• A consecrated fire in the Burned Church, and a long walk up the nave in front of witnesses

And a fourth door your players may invent, which works too. It is the monstrous one.

Built to Be Run

• A one-page Short Version and the Rules of the Marker: who bears the card, when, and every edge case a clever table will try (familiars, mage hand, charm, a bag of holding, the harbour)
• A Control Panel: the four-day clock in half-days, the doors at a glance with their deadlines and costs, and an "If the players… the world answers" table
• A clue index: what each clue is, where it is, what check finds it, which door it opens
• Eight characters with something to sell: a dying innkeeper too proud to ask, a devil who is packing, a vault-keeper waiting for the right question, a cambist who can be bought exactly once, a priest who burns things, and a mute broker who talks in folded notes
• Five handouts: Whisper's four notes and the instrument itself
• Five endings, from clean to ugly; the last decision is whether the party lets an old man pay his brother's debt

No combat required. A table that reaches the end without rolling initiative has played it as written. The Dealer is not the villain of a fight, and the ending is a consequence, not a boss.

Velnaris

The adventure is set in Velnaris, City of Temptation: a gothic city where courtesans hold the secrets of the powerful and something old grieves under the streets. The full city is in the Velnaris sourcebook; this adventure stands on its own, and it leaves your campaign with a debt in it.

Tone & Content

A caper: fast, funny in places, and the object you are stealing is a trap. Content notes: an infernal contract that binds a person without their consent; an old man's failing health. No sexual content on the page. Player safety guidance included.

More in the Line

A Confession in Red (free one-shot) · TOLL · Player's Guide to Velnaris (free) · Velnaris: The Complete Edition.

Designed by a human; AI assists with editing and line revision, translation and illustration.

Compatible with fifth edition. Includes material from SRD 5.2.1, licensed under CC BY 4.0. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Wizards of the Coast.