• Location: Hope — primarily Route Stop of Hope (Riverfront 2), with optional detours to The Floodgate, Old Netter’s Rest, the Medical Station of Hope or any other possible location on the settlement's map like the River Dock Market.
• Type: Rest & Recovery · Resupply · Social Hub · Rumor Intake · Risk of Trouble
• Era: Beta Age
• Tone: Frontier warmth · muddy realism · cautious optimism · low-key tension beneath routine
• Entry & Exit (Nested Scene): If arriving with an NKCS caravan, a 4–6 hour rest stop is mandatory, and the PCs must leave when the caravan departs. Independent travelers decide how long they stay and what they do. Upon leaving Hope, the journey resumes in Scene 3 (Phase III).

Hope arrives before its streets do — a smell of wet grain, smoke, and river salt carried on warm air. The Trade Route straightens out near the Arla, and the jungle pulls back just enough to reveal the settlement: a stubborn sprawl of porches, granaries, and patched container walls planted into mud and optimism.

River mist hangs low. Seed drones buzz somewhere over the fields like tired insects. You pass carts stacked with sacks of grain and bundles of netting, and for the first time in hours the road feels less like wilderness and more like civilization. Or better said: civilization under construction …

If the PCs have a High Exposure status from Scene 1, Hope is dangerous. They cannot linger.

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The PCs may choose where to spend their layover. The DM should design these interactions and set the scene using the linked wiki articles for the respective locations. Select the corresponding outcome.

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This encounter triggers automatically the moment the PCs sit down in a taproom. It handles the discovery of the physical paper trail linking the hit squad to the fur trade.

The twins are deeply distrustful of anyone digging into their business, especially characters disguised as Covenant monks. They answer player questions with increasing suspiciousness. They will tolerate 2 to 3 questions maximum before completely shutting down the conversation. They reveal as little information as possible. Depending on the party's line of questioning and successful CHA (Persuasion or Intimidation) checks, they will only ever reveal the following three pieces of context:

• The Scarcity of Veyra: Veyra is incredibly rare. They cannot be hunted locally; they only thrive out in the steppes of the western Asari Region bordering the Desert Side. Furthermore, the native Senti Tribe fiercely protects them and does not tolerate exohuman hunters in their territory. Anyone hunting Veyras out there has to be a highly seasoned tracker, or they become the hunted themselves.
• Their Business Model: They specialize in Veyra fur exclusively because it is rare and holds an immense premium market value. If Veyra fur ever becomes a common commodity, they will immediately drop it and specialize in something else.
• Their Operations & Supply Chain: They are merely traveling salesmen running their “wholesale tour” from settlement to settlement, comparing their economic route to the way the Honga tribe runs their seasonal “Cycle.” They openly state that they pick up their pelts wholesale at Hale & Hook in Morningstar. They don't know the mysterious producer of this Veyra fur personally, but reveal that he is a seasoned hunter specialized on rare pelts who sets his market prices entirely himself.

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• Arrival State (Carry-Over): PCs may arrive injured, exhausted, or robbed due to Phase I trade route hazards. Let local tavern staff react with cold, frontier pragmatism—offering hot stew and weak spruce beer, not sympathy.
• Information Density over Combat: Scene 3a looks like neutral downtime, but it is highly information-dense. The Kettler twins appear ordinary, helpful, and dull. The handwriting link on the price tag should feel completely accidental. If the players feel clever for catching the 1mm stencil break and linking it back to Ezrah's office, you are running it correctly.
• Wanted Status Constraints: Public spaces are dangerous infrastructure disguised as hospitality. If the PCs have a High Exposure level, emphasize that local patrons or service bots are scanning faces. Keep the threat of Guarding Trooper enforcement active if they blow their covers.
• Exit Cleanly: Once the conversation concludes or the layover timer expires, gently push the party back onto the Trade Route to resume Phase III of their journey.

• ↑↑ Start: Hunting An Unknown Hunter
• ★ Overview: All Scenes of Hunting An Unknown Hunter
• ☞ Resolution: Case Resolution and discoverable Backstory
• ← Previous Scene: Scene 3 — Traveling to Morningstar
• → Next Scene: Scene 3 — Traveling to Morningstar