The payer’s half of a split tally: proof that a debt is paid, and a second chance to refuse a bargain you never made.
Wondrous Item, Uncommon (Requires Attunement)
Rules
A notched stick of pale wood, split lengthwise, with one long half. It is cut for one debt, when that debt is settled: the notches record who owed it, to whom, and what settled it, and anyone who reads tallies can read them. A creature that collects debts (such as a tallyman) cuts it and keeps the short half.
Quit. While you carry the stick, you are in good standing on the debt cut into it: you owe nothing on it, and no creature or effect can collect it from you or distrain for it. You don’t need to be attuned for this.
The debt cut into the stick is the one that was settled. Any new promise made in order to settle it (a service someone swore, a yearly share, a toll to be paid from now on) is a new debt, and the stick doesn’t cover it.
While you are attuned to the stick, you are also in good standing on any debt you are party to only by inheritance, by an oath someone else swore for you, or by belonging to a household, community or other body that owes it. This doesn’t cover a debt you agreed to yourself, or costs you incurred by your own acts (a tallyman’s Costs, for example). It makes you quit of the debt, not the others who owe it: the debt still stands against them, and you can still choose to pay your share.
Against a tallyman. Being in good standing means you aren’t in arrears. Its Arrears Ward doesn’t apply to your damage, Knows Its Debtors doesn’t find you, and it can’t serve notice on you unless you owe costs. Quit does nothing about costs, and Not My Bargain doesn’t reroll a saving throw against Distrain, which takes an article and compels nothing.
Not My Bargain. You must be attuned to the stick to use this property. When you or a creature you can see within 30 feet of you fails one of these saving throws, you can take a Reaction to let the creature that failed reroll it:
- a saving throw to avoid or end the Charmed condition;
- a saving throw against a spell or other effect that would make the creature obey a command or follow a course of action someone else chose (such as Command, Suggestion, Geas or Dominate Person).
The creature must use the new roll. This property can’t reroll the same saving throw a second time. Once you use this property, you can’t use it again until the next dawn.
The stick, broken. If the stick is destroyed, the debt stays settled: only the proof is lost. Both parts of Quit end, because both depend on carrying it, and so does Not My Bargain.
The setting layer
Identity
You carry the long half of a split stick, and in notches anyone can read it says that a debt is paid. It was cut on the day someone finally settled what was owed, and it goes on saying so long after the creditor and the collector have gone. Attune to it, and the debts you inherited rather than chose find no purchase on you; and once a day, when someone else’s will closes on you or on a friend close by, it gives you a second chance to say no.
Sensory palette. Pale willow or hazel, the notches dark with old dirt or silt; the split face smooth as a planed board; a faint smell of whatever place the debt was sworn in (river water, bracken, sealing wax), however long the stick is kept dry. When Not My Bargain answers, the bearer feels the stick’s notches under their thumb, one by one, like a sum being checked. Never glowing, never humming: it is a receipt.
In different worlds
| Profile | Who has it there | Local names | How it looks | Story hook | Rules caveat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Caerwyn (the house world: mythic culture, a confluence) | cut by a tallyman when a debt is settled at the place it was sworn; the short half stays in its book | a quittance; river-folk say a quit-stick; Not My Bargain is “standing quit” | willow, notched, river silt still in the cuts; it smells of the river however long it is kept dry | the Wickering quittance, cut at the ford-stone for a town that swore a toll to the Salmon Mother; years later, another collector stops short at the bearer’s door and bows | None. Under Caerwyn’s rule for oaths sworn by a body, a bearer quit of a body’s oath leaves their share with the rest of the body: the debt still lands on someone. |
| Urban intrigue | the counting-houses’ sealed receipts, issued by a bank’s bonded collectors | a quietus; Not My Bargain is “the quietus clause” | an ebony rod with a wax seal at each end; it smells of sealing wax and old paper | a forged quietus is the perfect crime, until the bank’s collector comes to the door holding the matching half | none |
| Wilds and courts of the fey | the hidden folk’s receipt for a favour returned | a hazel token; a cleared score | a hazel twig that never dries, notched with a thorn; it smells of crushed bracken | a changeling carries one and won’t say what debt it clears, or whose | none |
Origins and inspiration
- The split tally sticks of the English Exchequer (in use from the 12th century to 1826): a hazel or willow stick notched for a sum and split lengthwise. The payer kept the longer half, the stock, as a receipt; the Exchequer kept the shorter foil, and the two were matched to prove payment. The word counterfoil comes from this, and the old tallies’ burning in 1834 set the Palace of Westminster alight.
- The legal quittance, a written release from a debt (from Old French quitance), and the Exchequer’s formula quietus est for an account discharged.
- Fairy-bargain folklore, in which a token proves a debt to the hidden folk discharged.