"The Last Vigil — Extended Edition"

Online reading

Page 1 — Cover, hook, and parameters

THE LAST VIGIL — Extended Edition

Subtitle: Tonight, someone must stay awake for the lie buried beneath the chapel.

The wind is already closing the roads when the PCs reach Frêne-Bas. The gorse bows beneath the frost, the slate walls drink in the fine rain, and the chapel bell rings one time too many, as if someone had touched it from the inside.

In the common hall, old Heda still rests seated in her vigil chair, coat fastened, wrist circled by a copper bell. She was not supposed to die before dawn. For generations, she had guided the last night of frost, the one when the hamlet keeps its doors shut, its lamps lit, and its truths ready. Because in Frêne-Bas, they do not only keep watch over the dead. They keep watch over something older, more patient, buried beneath the chapel slabs and fed by every useful silence.

This year, the rite broke before it reached its end. The gravedigger is lying. The village elder would rather lose an outsider than lose face. The children can already hear their dead relatives answering from behind the walls. The village knows that a dead outsider in the right place would make an acceptable replacement.

So the PCs arrive too early to flee and too late to stay neutral.

Session parameters

System: Year Zero Engine, rural folk-horror adaptation
Players: 3-5
Duration: 4-6 hours
Tone: Breton moorland, unfinished mourning, collective guilt, the supernatural mimicking the intimate
Promise: village investigation under pressure, rising Stress, ritual choices, climax centered on truth and consent more than direct combat

Content warnings

Funeral wake and presence of a corpse
Community pressure, scapegoating, inherited guilt
Voices of the dead, children in danger, nighttime panic
Possible sacrifice of an NPC or a PC
Gentle fanaticism and violence born from fear

Summary of the conflict

The PCs are caught in the last night of frost at Frêne-Bas, a hamlet where an ancestral Vigile keeps a presence called Le Creux beneath the chapel. Officially, the rite protects the village from an old evil of the moor. In truth, it restrains the distorted memory of a founding crime: starving refugees were once walled up beneath the sanctuary, and the village learned to call tradition what had first only been a way to survive shame.

Heda, last keeper of the true protocol, died before finishing the wake. Ivar cut one of the red wool bindings to end the rite sooner. Maela would now rather twist the ceremony than admit that the elders preserved only half the truth. Nilsa knows her grandmother always said: "You never soothe anything alone, and never with a lie."

Page 2 — Extended context, hidden truth, and the Vigile Count

Frêne-Bas is little more than a dozen houses huddled against the wind, a common hall, a well, a stone washhouse, and a chapel built at the edge of a mist-eaten ravine. The villagers say they live "in the last pocket of earth before the moor." Winter lasts too long here. The dead are kept seated while they are watched. No one speaks the name of a loved one after sunset unless they want to give them a road back.

Every year, on the last night of frost, a Vigile is held in the chapel. One living person keeps watch before the crypt hatch. Three witnesses stay close enough to answer if the voice below borrows that of someone dead. The tallow lamp must never go out. The red wool must stay taut between altar, bell, and crypt handle. Before dawn, each person must name one dead and speak one truth they would rather have kept hidden. The villagers never explain the rite fully to children. They only say: "Otherwise, the chapel remembers."

Hidden truth for the GM

Le Creux is neither a Christian demon nor a simple local spirit. It was born in 1683, when five families from Frêne-Bas lured six starving refugees beneath the unfinished chapel and left them there to die. The next day, the guilty swore to tell the story as a "necessary evil."

Fear, hunger, and repeated lies braided a presence together. Generations later, Yuna Heda understood that it was soothed neither by prayer nor by blood, but by truth spoken by several voices together. She invented the current form of the Vigile: one keeper, witnesses, a light, true names, true regrets. The rite heals nothing. It maintains a truce.

What Le Creux wants

Le Creux wants, first of all, to stop being denied. It feeds on half-truths, convenient replacements, and outsiders sacrificed to preserve the fiction of an "innocent" village. It accepts human company if that company is lucid, and it quickly devours whatever comes to it under coercion or under falsehood.

It wants three things:

a willing voice that does not deny what it hears
exact names for the dead who were walled up
an end to the habit that turns a shared fault every winter into a half-understood ritual

The four forces in play

Maela Sorne and the elders: save the hamlet without exposing the full truth
Nilsa, Soizic, and the tired consciences: carry out the rite properly, even if transmitted silence must be broken
Ivar, Ronan, and those who want a brutal solution: offer a replacement, burn the chapel, or flee before dawn
Le Creux: force the living to choose between confession, offering, and abandonment

Shared counter — The Vigile Count

Use a counter from 0 to 8.

Add 1 to the Count each time:

a central Push Roll fails
a public lie is heard by the community
a violent noise erupts in the chapel or around the crypt
the tallow lamp is knocked over, the bell is rung at the wrong time, or the salt circle is broken
a witness is left alone to face the voices
a major truth is discovered and triggers accusation or panic instead of clarification

Suggested effects:

0-2: localized cold, cracking beneath the slabs, crows staring at the windows
3-4: Heda's voice answers, familiar dead speak behind doors, children dream of a stair beneath the chapel
5-6: the wool bindings bleed black dampness, animals refuse the pens, the hatch swells, and the moor seems to listen
7-8: Le Creux takes shape, the crypt forces open, and the climax can no longer be delayed

Reduce the Count by 1 when:

a costly truth is spoken publicly and accepted
the PCs repair a concrete element of Heda's rite
a moment of sincere comfort lets someone name their fear instead of projecting it outward
the remains or names of the walled victims are treated with dignity

Push Roll reminder

In this scenario, pushing a roll should leave a visible mark. A pushed success may cost a minor injury, a point of Stress, extra suspicion, a damaged ritual object, or an intimate detail torn free by Le Creux. If a PC pushes a roll while alone in the chapel, let them hear a voice that knows a precise memory they have never shared with the group.

Page 3 — Act 1: arrival in Frêne-Bas and the first vigil

Act 1 should first establish one simple truth: no one in Frêne-Bas is entirely innocent, but not everyone is equally cowardly. The hamlet must feel human enough that condemning it outright never comes easily.

Read aloud to the players

The hollow road disappears under frozen mud the rain cannot soften anymore. Rowan branches beat against the stone walls of the houses. You can smell tallow, wet wool, soup held too long over the fire. In the square, no one speaks loudly. At the back of the common hall, an old woman rests upright in her chair, as though she had been caught listening to something behind the wall. A bell hangs at her wrist. Her mouth is closed with black thread. And yet, the moment the door shuts behind you, the bell rings on its own.

Opening scene — Heda's body and the need for a replacement

The PCs arrive in the middle of a muffled argument. The funeral wake is not over. No one dares lift Heda down from her chair yet. Maela demands that order be kept. Ivar wants the body moved before "it starts." Soizic hands out scalding herbal tea to shaking hands. Nilsa stares at the outsiders as though she has been expecting them for hours.

What the PCs can understand here:

Heda died from exhaustion or terror, not illness
the copper bell should ring only if the keeper falls asleep
the village is not merely grieving; it is late for something vital

Useful tests:

Observation or Wits, Danger 2: notice fresh black earth under Heda's nails, as though she had tried to hold a hatch shut
Empathy, Danger 2: sense that Maela fears less Heda's death than what will follow without her
Manipulation or Command, Danger 2: impose a little calm and get them to explain at least the official version of the rite

NPCs to establish quickly

#### Maela Sorne Dry elder, flint gaze, sparing words. She knows almost everything but gives away only what allows her to preserve cohesion. Her immediate goal is simple: get through the night without a public collapse.

#### Ivar Tallec Gravedigger with a broken back, muddy hands, smell of cellar earth. Earlier in the evening he cut a red wool binding, convinced that Heda's rite had become madness. He already regrets it, but lacks the courage to admit it.

#### Nilsa Heda Twelve years old, coat too large, face shut tight with fatigue. She heard her grandmother repeat the true instructions. She is terrified, but less than the adults are. Above all, she knows the Vigile cannot be kept through solitary pride.

#### Soizic Keraudren Keeper of the common hall, former midwife, strong woman who learned to lie for civil peace. She wants to protect Nilsa and stop an outsider from being handed to the crypt "in the name of necessity."

#### Ronan Beuzec Bell-ringer and chapel warden, lame since an icy winter. He drinks too much when the moor starts speaking. He believes it would be better to burn the sanctuary than keep the lie going.

#### Yann Eozen Shepherd of the upper ravine, first to see the crows circling the chapel before Heda's death. He does not like the elders, but still obeys them out of habit.

Scene 1 — The official account

If the PCs demand explanations, Maela gives the accepted version: "At the end of every winter, one living person keeps watch in the chapel. It soothes the voices of the dead. Heda did this for years. This time, she faltered. We must pick up the thread and hold until dawn."

This explanation is both true and false. It deliberately omits:

that several witnesses are needed, not a single keeper
that the voices chiefly target liars and forced replacements
that the chapel contains a hatch leading to a crypt much older than the chapel itself

Recommended early omens

One of the candles near Heda burns pale green for a second, then returns to a normal flame.
A dog refuses to step into the square and backs away growling toward the ravine.
Someone behind the PCs whispers the name of a dead loved one; when they turn around, no one has moved.
The black thread sealing Heda's mouth tightens slightly, as if she wanted to speak.

Immediate hooks for the PCs

One PC recognizes their own name carved inside the chapel bell.
Another has already dreamed of an old woman handing them a crypt key.
Someone asked the PCs to attend Heda's funeral without saying why.
With the road blocked, leaving Frêne-Bas before dawn means crossing the moor in the storm.

By the end of this page, the PCs should understand that the night will not be a simple rural wake. Something is waiting for the village to choose a keeper, and the outsiders are already being watched as a possible answer.

Page 4 — Act 1: explore the village, its secrets, and its tired loyalties

Act 1 grows stronger if the PCs move through a Frêne-Bas that is compact, legible, and saturated with the unsaid. Every location should offer both information and moral coloration.

Priority locations

#### The common hall Social center, improvised morgue, place of debate. Here stand Heda's body, the elders, collective fear, and enough warmth or drink to calm or inflame a crowd.

#### Heda's house Small tidy dwelling, herbs hanging from the ceiling, notebook of crossed-out names, hardened loaf hiding a crypt key, red wool, gray salt, and notes scribbled on the true ritual.

#### Chapel of Saint-Ronan-des-Brumes Granite building older than its bell. The altar is recent; the hatch is not. The floor sounds hollow at the center. The air remains colder here than it is outside.

#### The well and the yew Place of confidences and omens. At night, the water sometimes reflects a dead face instead of the one leaning over it.

#### The washhouse on the slope Former place of exchange and gossip. Its stones bear cuts that look like ritual tallies.

#### The upper ravine Trail of livestock and escape. From here the chapel can be seen from the side, its base older than the rest. Yann found traces of fresh earth coming up from below.

Recommended chain of clues

1. In Heda's house, the PCs find a notebook repeating three lines: "Never name by halves," "Four voices are better than one hero," and "If Maela lies again, the crypt will take a child." 2. An examination of the chapel reveals that one red wool binding was cut cleanly, not worn through by age. 3. Nilsa confirms that for weeks her grandmother had been looking for "the names from before the village," as if the rite were losing strength for lack of complete memory. 4. Beneath a washhouse slab, Soizic hid an old family list from generations back, where some bloodlines are marked with a black sign. 5. At the upper ravine, Yann shows footprints of bare feet going from the chapel into the mist before turning back... or dissolving there.

How to play the human relationships

The village must not feel like a single uniformly hostile block.

Maela truly protects Frêne-Bas, but she confuses protection with control of the narrative.
Soizic lied to the Vigile once before to save her brother; she knows the real cost of that kind of arrangement.
Ronan hates the chapel because his wife broke there during a former panic.
Ivar did not cut the binding out of cruelty, but from weariness.

Useful interaction scenes

#### Nilsa's confidence If the PCs offer her genuine listening, she explains that Heda always repeated that "the elders must never be left to choose the price of the night alone." She also knows a fragment of an old Breton chant her grandmother kept for the moment when the voices rose.

#### Maela's pressure Maela can offer an apparently reasonable bargain: one of the PCs keeps watch alone "just for a little while," until the village gets organized. If no one accepts, she begins to spread the idea that the outsiders bring bad luck.

#### Ivar's incomplete confession When caught alone, Ivar admits he "loosened something." He first talks about a binding that had become useless, then finally acknowledges that Heda begged him not to touch the red wool.

#### Ronan's fear Ronan offers the simplest and worst answer: set the chapel on fire, take Nilsa, and let the moor swallow the rest. He is not mad. He is exhausted.

End of Act 1

Act 1 closes best when the PCs understand three facts.

The Vigile is not empty superstition; it truly was containing something.
This year's rite is incomplete because Heda died and Ivar sabotaged it.
The village is already preparing either a convenient replacement or a new collective lie.

At this point, the PCs should choose an initial lever: repair the rite, investigate the real origin, protect Nilsa, confront Maela, or try to leave Frêne-Bas knowing the moor is no longer neutral.

Page 5 — Act 2: dramatic complications and the truth of the crypt

Act 2 begins when the scenario stops being a simple village investigation and becomes an open struggle between competing versions of the past. Revelations must not calm the night. They must force everyone to show what they would rather lose.

Possible triggers

Move to Act 2 as soon as one of the following occurs:

the PCs open the crypt hatch or even come close to it
the Vigile Count reaches 4 or more
Heda speaks in the voice of someone close to a PC
Nilsa briefly disappears or goes alone to the chapel

Revelation 1 — The founding crime

Heda's notebook, crossed with the washhouse list and an old parchment trapped in the chapel lectern, lets the truth be pieced together. Frêne-Bas survived one winter of famine by refusing hospitality and then burying the problem alive. The first rite was not protection but a way to keep sleeping above the dead the village had chosen not to see.

The six victims were:

Bran the salt worker
Katell, his wife
Enora, their daughter
Maon, their son
an old man with no certain name, noted only as "the uncle"
a wounded woman, perhaps already dying, named Merec in some notes

This uncertainty of names explains why Le Creux has grown more unstable: the village kept the rite but lost its exact memory. Heda was trying to repair that before her death.

Revelation 2 — Heda wanted to end the cycle, not merely maintain it

Heda's newer notes show that she was no longer trying to buy one more winter. She wanted to bring up the bones, speak the true story publicly, and finally attempt a collective exorcism. She knew Maela would never accept it while alive, because acknowledging the full fault would have shattered the elders' authority.

Revelation 3 — Ivar was the trigger

Ivar cut a wool binding because Maela let him believe Heda was preparing "a useless shame." He did not act out of loyalty to the elder, but out of refusal to see an old woman break the village peace alone. In other words, he preferred the known compromise to moral risk. That is exactly what Le Creux feeds on.

Recommended complication scenes

#### Heda's mouth opens When the Count rises high enough, the black thread sealing Heda's mouth snaps. Heda does not rise, but she speaks. She calls Nilsa by name, then a PC by an intimate name, then Maela by her grandfather's name, one of the first guilty men.

Useful effects:

everyone present gains 1 Stress if no one regains control
Maela slaps the first person who dares say Heda is "coming back"
Nilsa confirms the voice is not her grandmother's, even if it borrows her throat

#### The breathing chapel The chapel walls take on a warm dampness like skin. The red wool drinks black water. The salt crackles. An ear pressed to the hatch hears either a child's song or slow fingernails, depending on what the moment needs.

Useful tests:

Wits or Observation, Danger 3: understand that the knocks answer the names being spoken
Empathy, Danger 2: sense which villager is about to collapse into panic or violence
Tech or Survival, Danger 2: temporarily repair lamp, circle, and wool enough to delay the worst

#### Nilsa's disappearance Use this if you want to push the action forward. Nilsa goes to the chapel or the ravine, convinced she must "replace" Heda. It is not a childish heroic whim: she already understands that the adults are lying. Finding her in time can offer a moment of truth or trigger a moral confrontation with Maela.

Moral dilemmas to place on the table

Should the founding crime be exposed immediately to a terrified village, at the risk of sparking a mob and raising the Count?
Should Maela be allowed to preserve order for one more hour to gain ritual time, even if it means prolonging the lie?
Should Ivar be used as an essential witness when his cowardice broke the night in the first place?
Should Nilsa be protected from this knowledge, or should it be acknowledged that she already understands the rite better than anyone?
Should a PC accept serving as principal keeper, knowing Le Creux adores outsiders who owe the village nothing?

How the supernatural becomes certain

At this stage, leave no more room for doubt about the reality of the phenomenon.

voices answer from the well in the exact tones of known dead people
the copper bells hanging in Heda's house ring in the same rhythm as the blows beneath the chapel
a shape of wool, mud, and jaws sometimes forms behind the crypt door
the ravine crows repeat a word or a first name in a croak that comes disturbingly close to speech

What matters is that Le Creux remain tied to the true human drama. It is not "an abstract horror under a church." It is a weave of shame, hunger, fear, and generations who preferred formula over mourning.

Page 6 — Act 2: speak with Le Creux and prepare the rupture

The second half of Act 2 shifts the scenario from discovery to dangerous dialogue. Le Creux is not talkative, but it is intelligent in its own way. It understands the holes in stories and exploits them with cruel precision.

First clear contact

When a PC stays alone or almost alone in the chapel, with the lamp low and the Count at 5 or more, the voice below stops merely imitating the recently dead. It speaks for itself.

You can begin like this: "You call this keeping watch. We call this holding us beneath your feet."

Or: "Every winter, you come give us incomplete names and call that justice."

Do not play Le Creux like a roaring monster. Its speech should be calm, almost tired. What frightens is not its volume. It is its accuracy.

What Le Creux reveals if listened to

Heda knew the Vigile had only one or two winters of effectiveness left, because the transmitted names were wrong or incomplete.
Maela has always known that a true exorcism would require public confession from the founding bloodlines.
The crypt does not demand a death every winter; it demands that the exact dead stop being replaced by a convenient version of history.
A keeper offered against their will seals nothing for long. It only gives the thing a more manageable voice for the following winter.

What Maela truly wants

Maela is not a cultist of horror. She simply believes that a village collapsing during a storm will die more surely than one that keeps the rite badly. Her sin is that she mistook stability for innocence.

The three roads toward the breaking point

At this stage, the PCs must be able to make out three major solutions.

#### 1. Collective sacrifice The village finally agrees to pay together: each house brings something irreplaceable, each elder names their fault, and a circle of shared blood replaces the false single keeper. This solution seals Le Creux for a generation, perhaps, but deeply marks Frêne-Bas.

#### 2. Exorcism ritual The bones must be brought up, the names recovered as far as possible, the bell rung thirteen times, the red wool put back in place not to hold the dead below but to guide their departure. This is the fairest solution, but also the one most likely to destroy local authority and perhaps the chapel itself.

#### 3. Flight and abandonment The PCs and a few survivors leave Frêne-Bas by the upper ravine or the peat-bog path, leaving the hamlet to its debt. It may be the only option if the community refuses all truth and the Count rises too fast.

How the chapel changes before the climax

At 6 or more on the Count:

the nave becomes too large inside, as though the space beneath the flagstones were gaining ground
the faces of the statues are eaten by damp until they resemble those of the forgotten victims
the bell rings without visible impact whenever someone lies beneath its roof
one PC sees the hatch standing ajar while for everyone else it is still shut

Moving into Act 3

The true shift happens when the PCs can no longer merely investigate. They must now choose who stands where, who speaks truth in front of whom, and what debt they are willing to carry.

Make the action converge around three places:

the common hall, if the truth must be spoken to everyone before the final rite
the chapel, if someone still tries to contain or exorcise
the upper ravine, if flight becomes a real option

By the end of this page, the group should feel that the night no longer offers neutral paths. Every solution costs something irreversible.

Page 7 — Act 3: the hatch opens and the village must choose

The climax begins when the Count reaches 7, when the vigil lamp goes out and is not relit in time, or when the truth about the walled dead is spoken before the entire village. The crypt hatch then lifts with the sound of wet boards. The air grows warmer near the ground and colder at shoulder height. Heda's voice mingles with others, older and less human.

Suggested dramatic arrangement

For the scene to reach full force, ideally place all of these at once:

Maela, forced to publicly own or deny the founding crime
Ivar, whose confession can either save the rite or break it completely
Nilsa, who understands the true meaning of the Vigile and refuses to be pushed aside
Soizic or Ronan, representing the ordinary village that mostly wants to survive
Le Creux, visible only in fragments: wool-drenched roots, hand bones, dry hides, jaws caught in mud

How to show Le Creux

Le Creux does not erupt as one single beast. It is a braided shape.

hands made of soaked wool come first through the crack
a face composes itself from several borrowed mouths
black roots hold bones as if they were tools
the voices never use a first name at random; they strike exactly where they mean to

What Le Creux says to the village

Choose one or two lines that hit hard.

"You taught me to speak with your dead."
"Every winter you call delay by the name of peace."
"Which one of you will again decide that someone else is worth more than the truth?"

Major actions available

#### 1. Force public confession The PCs bring Maela, Ivar, and the founding lines to finally say what happened. This option is not yet the full exorcism, but it can make both ritual solutions possible.

Useful rolls:

Command or Empathy, Danger 4: stop the crowd from tipping into a hunt for someone to blame
Manipulation, Danger 3: make Ivar or Maela give way at the right moment
Observation, Danger 2: notice when Le Creux is feeding on an incomplete sentence

#### 2. Hold the chapel Someone must keep the lamp, the wool, and the circle in place while the others prepare one of the three resolutions. This is the most thankless and exposed role.

Useful rolls:

Wits or Survival, Danger 4: keep the ritual setup functioning under pressure
Strength or Agility, Danger 3: stop a surge from the crypt or hold back a panicked villager

#### 3. Choose the outcome Once the central truths are out, the PCs must commit.

collective sacrifice if the village accepts paying together
exorcism if the names and bones are gathered
flight if all of that becomes impossible

How to play the crowd

The community of Frêne-Bas must feel dangerous because it is afraid, not because it suddenly turns demonic.

some want to hand over Ivar
others want the outsiders to solve the problem
a few, often the youngest, only ask that people stop speaking in halves
Soizic can become the moral pivot that prevents a lynching

Possible sacrifice of a PC

If a PC wants to take the place of the principal keeper, give them a real choice scene: the sacrifice matters more if it comes with a true statement than with a simple loss of Health.

Pacing advice

raise the scene in waves: confession, panic, regained control, manifestation, new decision
do not stretch physical combat out; Le Creux must never become a simple sack of hit points
immediately reward true words with a slight retreat of the monster or of the Count
punish convenient solutions with more precise voices, not only with damage

The point of this page is to bring the group to the edge of an irreversible choice where the right question is no longer "How do we survive?" but "What are we finally willing to recognize?"

Page 8 — Act 3: three alternate endings and their consequences

The three endings below match the outcomes required by the scenario structure. They can be played as written or shaded according to the survivors, the state of the village, and the truths still left unsaid.

Ending A — Collective sacrifice

Condition: Maela yields, the houses of Frêne-Bas agree to pay together, and the PCs ensure that no one is handed to the crypt alone.

Ritual: Each household brings to the circle a family object, a little of its own blood, and a fault spoken plainly. The bell rings once for each confession. The red wool no longer links the hatch to the elder, but all the hands present. Le Creux gorges itself on these confessions and on this shared pain, then slowly sinks back beneath the slabs.

Result: Dawn arrives without the hatch giving way any further. Frêne-Bas survives, but can never again pretend to innocence. Some of the objects burned or buried that night were the last symbols of prestige held by old families. The elders lose part of their sacred authority, and the solidarity that remains tastes bitter but clean.

Cost:

several villagers finish the night marked, exhausted, or wounded
the hamlet will have to live with greater poverty after destroying part of its goods and symbolic reserves
Le Creux is not exorcised; it is soothed for a long time, as long as memory is no longer confiscated

Ending B — Exorcism ritual

Condition: the PCs recover or reconstruct the victims' names, bring up their bones or enough of their remains, and impose a public truth before dawn.

Ritual: The hatch is opened not to feed Le Creux but to return what was denied to it: names, worthy witnesses, and dead treated as dead. Thirteen bell strikes, fresh salt, red wool set in a circle of passage, and Heda's sentence spoken by several voices: "We do not keep you beneath us anymore."

Result: The chapel cracks, perhaps partly collapses, and the ravine gives back a breath like an exhalation held far too long. The voices stop. The woolen shapes come apart. Heda falls silent at last. The village loses its sanctuary, but may gain the possibility of a future without yearly ritual debt.

Cost:

Maela may be broken politically or humanly by what she must acknowledge
Frêne-Bas loses the symbolic heart around which it stood
the PCs leave behind a free but stripped village, forced to rebuild its social bond without the useful lie

Ending C — Flight and abandonment

Condition: the village refuses all confession, the crowd turns on a scapegoat, or the PCs judge that no ritual solution can still be completed before the crypt opens fully.

Outcome: The PCs take Nilsa, Soizic, a few volunteers, or only themselves, and leave Frêne-Bas by the upper ravine or the peat bogs. Behind them, the chapel slowly gives way. The bells ring crookedly. Crows crash down on the roofs. The moor swallows the screams as they move farther away.

Result: The survivors save their skin and carry the truth with them, but the village is delivered to what it fed. Frêne-Bas may become a ruin inhabited by voices, a cursed place for a future campaign, or an open wound in the region's memory.

Cost:

the PCs will live with the abandonment of those they could not persuade
Nilsa or another survivor becomes keeper of a story that must be carried elsewhere
Le Creux gains an entire territory rather than a single hatch, at least until someone comes back to finish the work

Debrief questions

Which character paid the fairest moral price, and which one paid the most convenient?
Would your PC have preferred a small enduring lie to a destructive truth?
If Frêne-Bas is ever spoken of again, what detail will your character mention first: the moor, the bell, Heda, or the founding fault?

Recommended short epilogues

Nilsa finally copies the names of the dead onto a fresh page, without crossing any out.
Maela, if she survives, asks to be buried outside the chapel.
Ivar takes up his shovel again, but nothing in his posture looks like resignation anymore.
Another moorland community later sends a letter or a sign: it too knew of the Vigiles.

Page 9 — D6 tables and YZE creature profiles

D6 table — Nocturnal events in Frêne-Bas

1. Heda's bell rings in an empty room and every dog in the hamlet falls silent at once.
2. A closed door opens onto a warm draft that smells of fresh earth.
3. A child precisely describes a place beneath the chapel they have never visited.
4. The black thread on the mouth of a recently dead body comes loose by itself.
5. One of the houses begins to drip mud from the ceiling with no visible rain indoors.
6. Someone hears their own first name spoken by a voice ten years late.

D6 table — Encounters on the paths and near the ravine

1. Yann Eozen returns with a sheep flayed only around the head, as if something had tried to take its voice.
2. An old man who died last winter walks at the edge of the ravine, then proves to be nothing more than a coat caught in the gorse.
3. Three crows follow the PCs in silence and caw in unison whenever someone lies.
4. Ronan Beuzec, drunk and lucid at once, carries pitch toward the chapel to set it on fire.
5. Nilsa is already waiting at the right place, as though she had heard a call the others could not hear.
6. A wool-and-bone silhouette watches from the fog, motionless, then comes apart into black roots.

D6 table — Omens of the Vigile

1. Salt set on a table spontaneously forms six small parallel lines.
2. A mirror or a well shows not the viewer's face but that of a dead villager.
3. Lanterns burn lower whenever a lie is spoken.
4. The names carved beneath the bell seem more numerous than an hour ago.
5. The wind brings a child's chant in old Breton from the chapel.
6. The nave floor beats like a heart beneath the keeper's feet.

Compact YZE profiles — Creatures and manifestations

Le Creux beneath the chapel — Entity of hunger, wool, and voices

ATTR Strength 4 · Agility 2 · Wits 3 · Empathy 2 Health 6 Skills: Observation 3 · Manipulation 3 · Close Combat 2 ATK Bone-and-wool hands +2 [1 damage + 1 Stress] · Range Close Special:

Immune to ordinary fear
Feeds on half-truths: each time a public lie is spoken, it recovers 1 Health if the fiction supports it
Ritual recoil: it loses 1 Health or retreats one narrative step whenever an exact name and a costly truth are spoken in the chapel

PUSH: if Le Creux pushes an interaction and rolls 1s, it reveals an intimate secret of a witness aloud and inflicts 1 Stress on everyone who hears it.

The Forsaken of the Vigile — Former keeper badly held, taken back by the crypt

ATTR Strength 3 · Agility 2 · Wits 1 · Empathy 0 Health 4 Skills: Observation 2 · Close Combat 2 · Stamina 2 ATK Earth-caked nails +1 [1 damage] · Range Close Special:

Appears when the rite is sabotaged or when a keeper flees
Repeats the last words it heard before dying
Backs away from Heda's copper bell if someone rings it without fear

PUSH: on a 1, the Forsaken drags its target toward the floor or the hatch and forces an Agility roll to avoid falling.

Ravine crows — Flock of omens blackened by the moor

ATTR Strength 1 · Agility 4 · Wits 1 · Empathy 0 Health 3 Skills: Observation 3 · Mobility 4 ATK Beaks and wings +1 [1 Stress or distraction] · Range Short Special:

Mark liars: they follow or harry whoever has just denied an important truth
Can be scattered by fire, the bell, or an offering of grain thrown at the right moment
Can serve as omen more than direct adversary

PUSH: on a 1, the flock hides a crucial detail or briefly separates one PC from the rest of the group.

Mechanical use advice

Do not play Le Creux like an enemy to be emptied of Health. Its points are there to pace its presence, not reduce it to a duel.
Save the Forsaken of the Vigile for moments when a cowardly choice needs a concrete form.
Use the crows to announce, complicate, or moralize a scene more than to deal damage.

Page 10 — Appendices, schematic map, and "Folklore YZE" campaign hook

Quick NPC sheets

#### Maela Sorne Goal: save Frêne-Bas without letting the old order collapse. Secret: she has long known about the idea of a full exorcism, but smothered it.

#### Ivar Tallec Goal: survive the night without becoming the only guilty one. Secret: he is the one who cut the red wool on Maela's implicit suggestion.

#### Nilsa Heda Goal: not let her grandmother die for nothing. Secret: she knows a fragment of the final chant and where the crypt key is hidden.

#### Soizic Keraudren Goal: stop the village from sacrificing someone out of convenience. Secret: she already lied during an earlier Vigile, which makes her acutely sensitive to the pattern repeating.

#### Ronan Beuzec Goal: destroy the chapel before it takes someone again. Secret: his wife was psychologically broken after a previous night of panic.

#### Yann Eozen Goal: protect his animals and stop obeying the elders blindly. Secret: he already saw the crypt partly open when he was a child.

Schematic map of Frêne-Bas

Campaign hook — Folklore YZE

The Last Vigil can open into a campaign of rural horror folklore centered on isolated communities that turned old compromises into sacred customs.

other hamlets practice "Vigiles" under other names and each one hides a variation of the same original sin
Nilsa or a PC becomes a collector of true stories, going from village to village to distinguish useful superstition, consoling legend, and real supernatural debt
an outside authority discovers the existence of these rites and wants to eradicate them without understanding what they were containing
Le Creux was only one knot among others, tied to famine roads and chapels built over shameful burials

FTL notice

Published under Year Zero Engine license by Tomas Härenstam / Free League Publishing. This product is based on the Year Zero Engine Standard Reference Document, designed by Tomas Härenstam and published by Free League Publishing. Published under the Year Zero Engine Free Tabletop License (FTL). freeleaguepublishing.com