The Verdigris Season
Eleven surveyors mapped the Moss Valley; the Office got eleven different valleys back. You are number twelve, with a theodolite, a government mule, and one season to learn why.
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A valley that will not hold still
A hundred years ago the Undam failed and the Moss Valley drowned. Forty years it sat under water. When the engineers finally breached the wreck and let the valley drain, what grew back was not what had been there before. The locals call the growth the verdigris, for the color: green shading to copper where it fruits.
Every spring the verdigris season runs eleven weeks, and every spring the Cartographic Office sends a surveyor to map the valley. Every autumn the Office receives a map that contradicts the last one. Roads fork that ran straight. A hill has moved a mile downstream. The orchard is on the wrong bank again. Eleven straight years of this, and the Office has concluded its surveyors are careless.
You are surveyor number twelve. You have a theodolite, a wax-sealed letter of authority, a bounty list for botanical specimens, and a government mule named Cabbage who has made this trip four times and survived, which is four times more than can be said for some.
The valley is not hostile. That is the strange part. The terrace farmers bring in their crops, the station master keeps the inn at Last Bridge warm, and the poacher who works the deep valley waves hello. People live with it the way people live with weather. But the deep valley rearranges itself in the dark, the specimens on your bounty list get stranger toward the valley head, and the last page of your predecessor's field book, held in the Office archive, ends mid-sentence with the words: the meadow is not where I
Observation holds
One rule shapes everything in this world, and it rewards playing like an actual surveyor.
Land that is watched, occupied, or freshly surveyed stays put. Your completed triangulations are stable ground you can trust. Sleeping rough in the deep valley means waking somewhere slightly different. So real fieldwork matters here: baselines, sightlines, landmarks, notes. Methodical play earns ground that behaves. Sloppy shortcuts meet a valley that takes liberties.
The verdigris is not malevolent and it never attacks. Danger is terrain, weather, and bad decisions. The technology is 1900s field science: theodolites, plate cameras, a telegraph at the station, no motorcars past Last Bridge. The tone is wonder first, unease second. This is a world about looking closely at things, not fighting them.
There is money in looking closely, too. The Office pays fixed rates for botanical specimens delivered to the station telegraph. Common verdigris cuttings buy supplies. The three entries at the bottom of the bounty list pay a season's wage each, and no one has ever collected them.
Who is in the valley
Five people the Game Master plays from the start, each with their own memory of you as you go.
Cabbage
Government mule
Veteran of four surveys. Opinionated, unhurried, and weirdly reliable about danger. Affection is bought with apples from the Drowned Orchard specifically. A full companion, not a prop.
Station master Brill
Keeper of Last Bridge
Runs the rail terminus with a stationmaster's fussiness and a curator's grief. Keeps the unclaimed luggage of eleven surveyors in a back room, labeled and dusted, for when they collect it.
Grandmother Osei
Eldest of Terrace Farms
Sharp, hospitable, and deliberately misremembers the flood in ways more accurate than the official history. Tests visitors with small chores before real talk.
Ferro
Poacher-botanist
Cheerful, territorial, works the deep valley and sells specimens to a private buyer at better rates than the Office pays. Could be rival, guide, or both, depending on how he is treated.
Ines Marchetti
Surveyor eleven
Missing. Until met, she exists as tidy campfires, survey pegs of an unfamiliar pattern, and a field book with its pages cut out. Follow the pegs.
And whoever you add
Your table, your valley
Every person you meet or invent is stored with their personality and their history with you, and read back whenever they appear. That is what the memory system is for.
Six places on the map, for now
The world ships with a real map. The Game Master keeps it, extends it, and holds every place where you left it. Unless nobody was watching.
Last Bridge Station
Rail terminus and the valley's front door: platform, inn, telegraph, and the Office depot. The last place below the bridge where things reliably stay put.
The Drowned Orchard
Apple rows that spent forty years under the flood and fruit again regardless. The lanes between the trees match maps a century old.
Bell Meadow
Open grazing above the river bend, prized by the terrace families and avoided by their animals after dark. The grass grows in faint concentric rings.
Terrace Farms
Four families' stone terraces above the old flood line, the valley's fixed point. Fields here have not moved in living memory.
The Undam Breach
The broken dam and the engineered wound that drained the valley. The masonry is fringed with the oldest verdigris, copper-hard and warm in frost.
The Valley Head
Where the deep valley closes in and the growth stands tallest. No current map agrees on the approach, and the last two surveyors who tried filed no map at all.
Pick a door, or bring your own
The world ships with two ready characters. You can also walk in as anyone you invent, described in a line of plain language.
Surveyor Twelve
The outsider with the instruments
The Cartographic Office's newest field surveyor, contracted to map the Moss Valley in a single verdigris season. Eleven predecessors filed eleven contradictory maps. The Office suspects carelessness. The Office is wrong.
Osei's Grandchild
The local coming home
Raised on the Terrace Farms, schooled six years in the capital, home with a folio of modern agronomy and a grandmother who reads the valley better than any instrument. The family fields never move, and it has never once occurred to the family to find that strange.
A world the Game Master actually holds
The Verdigris Season is not a writing prompt. It ships as a full world file: five pinned facts the Game Master never lets go of, four standing world rules, six mapped locations, five named people with their own agendas, and five open threads to pull on, from the season's survey contract to the question of what happened to surveyor eleven.
The Game Master reads all of it, keeps it consistent, and adds everything you do on top: the people you charm or cross, the ground you survey, the specimens you deliver. Come back in hour ten and the valley still remembers hour one. The map grows as you play, and your save lives in your browser, yours to export.
Three steps to Last Bridge
Sign in free
Head to the game and sign in. 10 credits on sign-up, 10 more to claim every day, no card.
Open this world
Find The Verdigris Season in the worlds library and press Play. It loads with the map, the people, and the season ready.
Step off the train
Pick a ready character or describe your own in a line. The Game Master takes it from there, one turn at a time.
Before you pack the mule
Is The Verdigris Season free to play?
Yes. The world itself costs nothing. Sign in to play free, with 10 credits on sign-up and 10 more to claim every day. The memory system is identical on every plan.
Do I need to know a rules system?
No. Describe what you do in plain language and the Game Master runs the consequences. If you want dice and character sheets, switch on a system mode from the library or build your own rules with a custom game mode.
What kind of game is it?
Exploration and mystery. The verdigris never attacks; danger is terrain, weather, and bad decisions. It is a world about looking closely at things, not fighting them, and it plays wonder first, unease second.
Can I play it with friends?
Yes. Invite friends into the same valley with a share code and take turns in the same scene. Solo is the default and works with nothing extra.
Will it replace the world I am already playing?
Opening a new world replaces your current world setup, and the game asks you to confirm before it does anything. Export your current world first if you want it back later. Old saves still load.
Who made The Verdigris Season?
The Auferet Team. It is an official world, published in the same library players publish to, and free for everyone.
Eleven surveyors filed eleven different maps.
The twelfth map is yours to file. Free, in your browser, one season on the clock.
Play The Verdigris SeasonWant a different table? Browse the worlds library, or start a plain AI text adventure and build your own from nothing.