THE EIGHT O'CLOCK NUMBER

• ERRAND
• ESCORT
• CLEM
• BOOT HILL
• CHAIN LINK

THE EIGHT O'CLOCK NUMBER is an errand CLEM hands out on BOOT HILL, and it wants RUBY delivered in one piece.

An escort is the one errand shape that can FAIL rather than merely stay open — RUBY is a body on the field the horde can reach, and if they fall the errand goes with them.

It is not offered cold: LAST CALL and HOUSE RULES have to be handed in first, on this same map and to this same person.

A dancer hand performs the eight o'clock every night to an empty room, and her knee is seizing. Walking her out past the water tower works it off, because she will not stop on her own. She comes back walking, and does the number again that night, which she would have done either way.

What it asks

SHAPE	WHAT	HOW MANY
ESCORT	RUBY	—

• RUBY280 health, and takes 55% of what a monster's touch would land on you. They walk at 46 px/s — a shade under your own — and stop rather than follow once you are more than 260 px ahead.
• WHY IT IS HARDnothing on the field is retargeted onto them: the horde reaches an escort because the escort follows YOU, which is what makes the fight want you to kite and the errand want you not to.

What it pays

Handing it in pays experience, 220 coins and 2 rolled pieces.

The experience is authored as a SHARE of your own level bar — 0.85 of one — rather than as a figure, so the same errand is worth the same fraction of a level on the first map and the last. The table below is what that comes to for a hero at the level this venue is tuned for; take it later and it pays more.

The rolled pieces go through the ordinary drop pipeline at your own level, with 2 tiers of skew on the rarity roll — the same skew the merchant's stall takes. A quest is a second CALLER of the loot system, never a second loot system, so what it hands over is the same kind of thing a monster drops.

The chain

Comes after LAST CALL, HOUSE RULES.

A chain never crosses a map or a run: the quest log belongs to the run you are in rather than to the hero, so every link of one is taken, done and handed in on a single visit, from the same person.

What is said

The errand in the giver's own words, covered until you ask for it.