PLUME SURVEY · FIRST LIGHT
Coldtrail
A rogue stag crossed this moor an hour ago. You will not see it. What it left is a warm plume leaking downwind, spreading as it ages, and lying to you in the lee of every boulder.
Two posts and a bearing fix the animal. One post gives you a line. No post gives you a side and nothing else.
SURVEY HELD
Still on the wind
The ribbon keeps its shape while you breathe, and the light waits with it. Nothing on this moor moves until you do.
SURVEY CLOSED
Quarry
FIELD CARD
How the plume lies
Width is age — it spreads as it travels. Brightness is strength, and strength falls with a ninety-six second half life. The whole plume blows with the wind; the wind turns every twenty-six seconds.
What a cast tells you
Grade, the axis the ribbon lies along, and a bearing to the fresh end. The fresh end points at the animal: upwind means it is ahead of you, downwind means it is behind.
Posts
Three posts. A post reeks on its own and the stag will drift toward it — so posts steer the animal, and posts convert a bare bearing into a fix by resection. Two bearings that cross behind either post, or cross at under eighteen degrees, are bad fixes. The eddy will not forgive them.
Stance
Crouched you are slow, quiet, and nearly invisible. Running is three times faster, doubles the stag's notice of you, and lays a trail of your own scent across the moor for it to walk into.