[Regency Fantasy RPG] A scoundrel has insulted your sister before the whole assembly. Mortified beyond bearing, she flees the ballroom in tears...

Your regiment sailed for the Continent in the spring, and you went with it as a lieutenant in the 2nd Battalion, 64th Foot. At Belcourt they formed square on the reverse slope behind the farm and held there from mid-afternoon until dusk. Again and again the Valerois cavalry came on and broke against the bayonets, and between the charges their guns found the range. By evening, two thirds the regiment lay in the trampled rye.

Story start: Your father died while you were away at war, leaving you head of the family and heir to a difficult inheritance: a decaying house, a pile of debts, an ageing mother and an unmarried younger sister.

You did what could be done with the debts: sold your commission, got rid of everything that could be called excessive, and negotiated time from the creditors you could not pay outright. It is still rather bleak. The family lives on about £200 a year, enough not to starve and to keep a couple of old servants who would not leave anyway, but nowhere near enough for anyone in the county to take you seriously.

Lettie is nineteen, and two lost years of illness, mourning and empty purses have left her stuck. You want to do something good for her, so you bring her to the local ball for a winter in society while the family name still opens a few doors.

You look away for just a moment, and something goes wrong.

Now she is in tears.

Letitia (Lettie), 19, your younger sister.

Mrs. Tolhurst, 31, the friend of family and Lettie's chaperone for the evening

Mr. Gervase Ellingham, 24, the dandy

Mrs. Redwell (43), the hostess

WHAT NOW

All is in your hands. A few questions will tell you what happened (more or less). Then it is for you to decide what it demands: whether your sister’s evening can still be salvaged.

And somewhere deep in the crowd, quite unnoticed, someone is holding her breath.

Effie (18), your biggest fan

Miss Euphemia (Effie) Hulbert, a freckled redhead in sprigged muslin and another poor debutante of no consequence, saw the whole thing from first to last. She also knows exactly who the newcomer is: the sister’s brother, the officer back from Belcourt, a real soldier. And her vivid imagination goes wild...