Into the Unknown
You’ve got a job. A client. An occasion. A countdown. Now you have to find the ingredients to cook.
The location on your job card is where you are. It’s real. You can walk it, explore it, dig into it. The urgency on your job card is how much time you have. That’s how many flips you get. Each flip is a situation. A creature. A location. A vendor. Something with ingredients waiting.
You don’t know what you’ll find until you flip. Neither does anyone else. The card doesn’t tell you. You have to draw what’s there, figure out what it means, and decide if it’s worth taking. Then flip again.
When you’ve burned through all your flips, exploration is over. You’ve got what you’ve got. It’s time to cook.
How It Works
Check the Urgency on your job card. That’s how many flips you get. Cross one off with each encounter.
Before the first flip, look at the Location card from job creation. That’s where you are. Everything you encounter lives there.
A lone traveler in a mine cart still moving is different from one on a moss patch behind an old stone wall. The location doesn’t constrain the encounter. It focuses it. If something doesn’t fit, make it fit. That’s the job.
Flip a card. Check the color and suit. Look up the rank. That’s what you encounter.
Red card = something living. The suit tells you how it meets you. Black card = something built or constructed. The suit tells you its condition.
The group decides what happens. Draw it, act it out, narrate it. Then flip again.
Some encounters leave something usable: an edible creature, a vendor with stock, a pantry, a loaded cart. When something fits, add a tally mark to the index card. That count becomes your cooking flips.
If the deck runs out, shuffle and keep going. Drawing the same card twice is fine. The prompt lands differently every time.
When the flips run out, it’s time to cook.
Suit Guide
| Suit | Type | State |
|---|---|---|
| ♥ Hearts | Organic | Friendly, open, willing |
| ♦ Diamonds | Organic | Unfriendly, guarded, complicated |
| ♠ Spades | Inorganic | Thriving, active, working |
| ♣ Clubs | Inorganic | Ruined, broken, abandoned |
The Tables
Red Cards: Organic Encounters
You step out into this strange new place. The diner is behind you with its warm light and kitchen hum, the smell of your own workspace. Ahead is everything this world has to offer.
You're looking for ingredients, and the world is full of them. Living creatures. Structures built by hands long gone. Paths worn by feet you'll never know.
What you find first is...
Something alive is here. A person. A creature. Something that breathes in this world. You meet. The question isn't what it is. It's how it greets you.
♥ Hearts: friendly, open, willing ♦ Diamonds: unfriendly, guarded, complicated
| Rank | Encounter | ♥ Appears... | ♦ Appears... |
|---|---|---|---|
| A | Someone walking alone, slower than they should be. They keep stopping to look behind them. | Smiles when they see you. Finally, a friendly face. | Doesn't stop walking. Doesn't quite meet your eyes. |
| 2 | A whole crowd moving in the same direction with real purpose. Nobody's leading. Everyone just... knows. | Parts around you like water. A few wave. | They don't see you. Or they're pretending not to. |
| 3 | Set up right in the middle of your path. Everything displayed. Everything with a price. They've been here a while. | "Oh, I was hoping someone like you would come by." | They see exactly what you need. The look on their face says they know it too. |
| 4 | Something living, and by the look of it, something edible. It's been watching you for a while. You just noticed. | Doesn't run. Seems almost resigned to this. | Has strong opinions about being approached. |
| 5 | Someone whose job is to stand exactly where you need to go. They're good at it. | "You look like you belong here." They step aside. | "That depends. Answer me this." |
| 6 | You hear them before you see them. Either way, something has clearly gone wrong. | "Oh thank goodness. I've been here for..." They take a deep breath. "...a while." | "I had it handled." |
| 7 | Another kitchen crew. Same job? Different job? Hard to say. They're not volunteering anything. | Shares something useful. Call it professional courtesy. | Ahead of you, and they want you to know it. |
| 8 | Someone who knows where everything grows, hides, or gets left behind. Every path. Every patch. | Takes you right to it. | The directions make sense at the time. You end up somewhere adjacent. |
| 9 | You can always tell. The way they're standing. What they won't look at. What they look at too much. | They're going to tell you. They've been waiting to tell someone. | They know you noticed. Now what? |
| 10 | Mid-act. Full commitment. Whatever they're doing, they've been doing it for a while and they're not stopping for you. | They weave you into the performance like you were always part of it. | Somewhere in the act, something that was yours ends up in their hands. |
| J | Small. Out here alone. Either very brave or very lost. Possibly both. | Takes your hand. Starts walking. Seems to know the way. | "Can I come? Can I come? What about now?" |
| Q | Older than anyone you've seen in a while. Sitting somewhere they've clearly been for a very long time. | They look at you like they expected you. "Here." They hand you something. | "I'll tell you what's going to happen." They're not wrong. |
| K | Much larger than expected. The kind of large where you recalculate everything. The space around it. How loud you've been. Whether running would help. You also notice what it's been feeding on. | Moves off unhurried. Leaves the site behind. | Turns to face you. Fully. Slowly. Hasn't finished here yet. |
Black Cards: Inorganic Encounters
You step out into this strange new place. The diner is behind you with its warm light and kitchen hum, the smell of your own workspace. Ahead is everything this world has to offer.
You're looking for ingredients, and the world is full of them. Living creatures. Structures built by hands long gone. Paths worn by feet you'll never know.
What you find first is...
You find what someone built. A structure. Still standing or mostly. These are the marks left behind. When you find them, the question isn't what was made. It's what became of it.
♠ Spades: thriving, active, working ♣ Clubs: ruined, broken, abandoned
| Rank | Encounter | ♠ Condition... | ♣ Condition... |
|---|---|---|---|
| A | More than a few buildings. Enough to call it something. People have been here long enough to build habits and stores. | Noise, movement, and something good coming from somewhere nearby. | The buildings are still standing. Whatever was in the stores was left when everyone went. |
| 2 | A space designed for exchange. Stalls, tables, the architecture of wanting things and having things. | Open. Loud. Full of things you didn't know you could want. | The goods are still on the tables. Nobody's come to collect them. |
| 3 | Something had to be built here because getting across wasn't otherwise possible. Someone did the math, did the work, left the result. | Solid. Has held up for a long time. Will hold up for longer. | Holds. Probably. One of you should go first, just in case. |
| 4 | Four walls, something overhead, and the particular smell of a building built around food. Smokehouse. Larder. Drying room. Hard to say from outside. | Warm, occupied, and exactly as stocked as you were hoping. | The door hasn't been closed in a while. Something's still on the shelves. |
| 5 | Enough feet went this way enough times that the ground remembers. Not made. Worn. | Clear, recently used, easy to follow. | Barely there. You're mostly guessing. |
| 6 | A decision built into the landscape. Here is in. Here is out. Someone made that permanent. | Open. Welcoming, even. Someone left it this way on purpose. | Shut tight. The mechanism looks like it hasn't moved in years. |
| 7 | Built to do something specific with food. Press it, grind it, dry it. Gears or levers or something that hums. | Whatever it does, it's doing it. The output is right there. | Still running. Unattended. Whatever it's been producing has been collecting. |
| 8 | Built to be seen. To say: here. Remember this. You'll need to find it again. | Still standing. Still pointing at whatever it was pointing at. | Most of it is down. The part still standing is enough to know where you are. |
| 9 | Space built for holding things in wait. Shelves, containers, a system someone designed for keeping track. | Full. Well-organized. Someone knew what they were doing. | Empty. Not abandoned. Cleared out. Deliberately and recently. |
| 10 | Built to carry something from one place to another. Still loaded. Whatever it's carrying hasn't gone anywhere yet. | Parked deliberately. The cargo is intact. | Not going anywhere. The cargo is still there. Most of it. |
| J | Not obvious at first. Designed not to be. Someone put thought into where you'd step, what you'd reach for. | Sprung already. Harmless now. Someone came through before you. | Still live. You almost didn't see it in time. |
| Q | Built to say something that words can't, or to say it to people who might not read. Big enough that you had to notice it. | Maintained. Flowers at the base. Someone still cares. | The inscription is mostly gone. Whatever it meant, it meant a lot to someone. |
| K | Built for control. For staying, or for keeping things out. Everything about it says: we thought about this. | Occupied. Guards visible. Smoke from the chimneys. | The gate is open because no one's left to close it. |