The moat stopped turning and the ward is failing. A folk-horror valley for Knave — one water downhill from a kept mountain stone to a green, sunken moat. 3d6 down the line, slot inventory, 100 spells, 7 linked sites + the sluice-works dungeon beneath. Complete Knave 1e (Ben Milton, CC BY 4.0).
The moat stopped turning. The ward is failing.
Twenty shaku below the jōkamachi walls, the old moat has gone still and green.
Ladder-keepers charge a copper for the climb. Eel-skiffs slip under sluice grates that were never meant to be a road. And a small hokora — flooded to its lintel, ringed by water the eels will not enter — has started answering prayers.
Badly.
**Mitani is one valley you read downhill.**
At its head, Denroku's iwakura stone still holds: rice left before noon, ofuda renewed, the third path refused. Four generations, same rules. Follow that same water down and every keeping has lapsed — a festival shrine emptied mid-rite and sealed only half-tight, a brewery shuttered for “spoiled rice” that was never spoiled, a ferry where cold, mud-caked coins pay double without being asked, a cursed circuit of villages pretending the next one hasn't gone quiet.
What you learn to do right at the mountain teaches you what went wrong everywhere else. And why the voice beneath the hokora grows louder each night it is left unkept.
You are knaves — tomb-robbers, debtors and masterless with 3d6 down the line and exactly what you can carry. Sixteen bench knaves already live here, each with a reason to climb, to warn, or to look away. Pack your slots until they matter, parley or pole a skiff instead of rolling, and decide what a single generation's neglect is worth to you.
**Inside — ready to play tonight:**
The complete text of *Knave 1st edition* by Ben Milton (used under CC BY 4.0) — every roll is d20 + bonus vs. 15 or a defense, inventory *is* the character sheet — plus 100 level-less spellbooks, all ten trait tables, copper-true prices, and a sheet that does the math live. On top, seven interlinked sites from stone to sunken moat with a 5-mile valley map, the dry sluice-works underneath — a dungeon that is just the town's forgotten plumbing with the ward peeled off — six valley yokai, and three rumors in Horibuchi to start wherever your table wants.
*What holds at the top explains what fails below. Go see for yourself.*
ATTRIBUTION — This project contains the complete rules text of Knave (1st edition) by Ben Milton, published by Questing Beast Games (https://questingbeast.itch.io/knave). The original work's license statement, verbatim: "Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License: You are free to share and adapt this material for any purpose, including commercially, as long as you give attribution." License deed: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Changes made: the rules text was reorganized into Craft file types (rules pages, rolling tables, equipment records, spellbooks, and a character sheet with derived values); no rules were altered. The license covers the rules text only — not the Knave name as a product identifier, nor the original artwork, which is why this project ships no art. Independent adaptation; not affiliated with or endorsed by Ben Milton or Questing Beast Games. Full details in the project's Attribution file.