No Map, No Plan

Fatius O’Heevy woke up in a horse trough.

A horse stood nearby, watching him chew-mouthed and calm while streetlamp light spread over the cobbles. Somewhere close, a shutter knocked gently in the wind. A church bell marked midnight across the rooftops, and the rest of the town kept quiet.

His shirt was damp, his boots were muddy, and one sleeve had somehow been tied around a wooden spoon. He stared at it for a while, tried to remember why, then gave up. Whatever had happened after the whiskey was staying where it was. He hauled himself out of the trough and checked what he still had on him: one knife in his boot, one bent lockpick, and a foreign coin gone green with age. No purse. No coat. No useful memory. This was a new town, a new problem, and probably his fault.

The town had money. That much was clear from the clean cobbles, painted shopfronts, and working streetlamps. Fatius checked his pockets again, in case he had missed something, then looked past the sleeping houses and saw the estate on the hill. It was huge, black and gold, with towers, balconies, chimneys, glass, ironwork, and lamps burning behind a few curtains. Statues lined the road up to it, all carved as stern dead men in expensive poses.

The place had money. That was the important part. Fatius did not know who owned it, how many guards it had, or whether it contained dogs, traps, locks, curses, or footmen with a taste for violence. He had no map, no plan, no preparation, and no clear idea where he had left his dignity. But he needed cash, and the estate had more than enough to spare.

By the time the town clock struck something like one, Fatius was halfway up the hill, moving through the shrubs with more confidence than sense. He climbed the ornamental gate, caught his belt on an iron leaf, swore under his breath, and dropped into a bed of lavender. Nothing shouted. No bell rang. No dog barked. He took this as proof that the job was going well.

Around the back, he found a narrow window left open above some clipped hedges. He chose it because it was there, which was about as close as he came to method. He hauled himself through and landed in darkness on polished floorboards. The room smelled of old leather, cold ash, and expensive polish. Portraits watched from the walls. A cabinet held porcelain dogs, silver cups, and a curved ceremonial blade that had probably only ever been used to threaten relatives.

The plan remained simple: get in, get rich, get gone. On a side table, under a glass dome, sat a silver pocket watch on faded blue velvet. It was heavy and cold in his palm, with a raised dragon on the front and a short chain tucked beneath it. The watch still worked. The hands moved on, soft and steady, while the inside of the cover carried a rough message scratched into the metal by hand: Don’t forget 3.Oct.10. Fatius did not know what it meant, but someone had cared enough to mark it there. Better still, it fit in a pocket.

He left the smoking room by the nearest door and found a narrow library arranged more for display than reading. Most of the books looked untouched, but one had been hidden behind a false row of legal volumes. It was cracked reddish leather, marked on the cover with a golden hand and the number three. Inside were drawings, diagrams, warnings, odd symbols, and notes written by someone in serious trouble. Fatius tucked it under his arm. Two treasures in two rooms was a fine start.

The library opened onto an indoor courtyard filled with potted orange trees and a dry fountain. Above it sat a skylight, one pane propped open to let in the cold night air. With a climb onto the fountain, then the balcony rail, then one decent leap, he could get out. Silver watch, strange journal, no alarm, no chase. It would have been a clean little theft. Unfortunately, there were still many rooms, and Fatius was not a man built for leaving well enough alone.

He was already looking for the next door when the house gave a deep mechanical groan. Somewhere behind the walls, gears caught and chains tightened. Hidden weights dropped with heavy thuds. Panels shifted. Doors slid sideways. The corridor to his left shortened, the one to his right lengthened, and the skylight rotated away behind brass and painted plaster. Fatius stood there with the watch in one pocket and the journal under one arm, waiting for the building to finish making a fool of him.

By the time the movement ended, the smoking room was gone, the library was gone, and the courtyard had three doors where it had once had one. Somewhere overhead, a bell chimed once. It did not sound like an alarm. It sounded routine, which was worse. Fatius chose one of the new doors at random, because the house had already made better planning impossible, and stepped into a wallpapered passage lined with paintings of sour old men.

At the far end, a tall man in a velvet dressing gown stood before three servants and a brass control panel. He had a narrow face, a sharp moustache, and the furious posture of someone used to being obeyed. The owner was lecturing the staff about the house rearranging itself incorrectly. The west wing, he insisted, belonged in the west. Not beside the breakfast gallery, not behind the linen stores, and certainly not above the east conservatory as it had done the previous Thursday.

The servants endured it in silence. They had clearly learned that answering only made things longer. Then the owner started blaming them for delays, poor discipline, and why the central hall smelled of damp clothes and lavender. Fatius looked down at his wet, lavender-flecked trousers and moved carefully away. The man was clearly a bastard, but he was also nearly right.

He retreated through a side door, crossed a short service passage, then climbed a narrow staircase to an upper landing where the walls had old photographs instead of portraits. The change in decoration made that part of the house feel less public, so he kept his steps lighter. He was almost at the end when an elderly voice called him by the wrong name.

A woman peered from a room lit by a low fire. Her white hair was cut short and uneven, and her face was lined with age, but her eyes were sharp behind round glasses. She looked at him for half a second, decided he was one of her grandchildren, and asked him to help her back to her room. The house, she explained, had put her on the wrong floor again.

Fatius had lied to priests, soldiers, lovers, debt collectors, and at least one circus owner. He could have lied to her. Instead, he offered his arm. She took it with surprising strength and told him he had always been the nice one. Fatius accepted the role for now, even though it did not suit him.

They moved slowly along the landing, then down another short hall that had clearly not been in that position ten minutes earlier. As they walked, she referred to herself once as Grandma Max, and Fatius took the name without questioning it. She had been many things once, though most people here only remembered the quietest version. When Fatius asked whether she had always lived in places like this, she laughed and told him about school, storms, and a girl called Chloe who had never known when to leave danger alone.

The story she shared was about train tracks, a stuck foot, and an old junction lever that would not move until Max broke it loose. Chloe had laughed afterwards, once she was safe, but Max remembered how close it had been. She spoke about it softly, with one hand still tight around Fatius’s arm.

When they reached her room, she looked at him again. For one awful moment he thought she saw him properly: not the nice grandchild, just a wet criminal with stolen goods under his jacket. Then she pressed a heavy pouch into his hand and told him to get himself something nice. He tried one weak refusal. She dismissed it at once, patted his hand, and warned him not to let the owner make him cruel. Fatius pocketed the money. As she wandered into her room, she lifted one hand in a loose little sign-off.

“Shakabrah.”

The door closed behind her, leaving Fatius alone on the upper landing with more money than he had woken up with and a small, unpleasant sense that the place deserved worse than theft. He let that thought sit for only a moment. Sentiment was heavy, and he was already carrying a book he did not understand. He turned away from Grandma Max’s door and followed the landing until he found another way down.

The next door he came to was properly locked. He crouched, poked his bent lockpick into it, and snapped the thing almost at once. Before he could curse it properly, footsteps approached. A maid came round the corner with folded sheets and a ring of keys. Fatius stood, grabbed a silver tray from a side table, balanced the journal beneath it, and acted as though he belonged there and had already had enough of everyone.

He muttered just enough about the lower service passage, the old west not being the new west, and the master shouting downstairs. The maid understood at once. Shared misery did the rest. With a sigh and a tired look, she unlocked the door. Fatius slipped through before she could ask anything useful.

Beyond the door was a trap room. The first sign was a hat pinned to the far wall by six darts. The room was long and narrow, with dark wooden panels and black-and-white floor tiles. The ceiling held a folded net. The walls had tiny holes at ankle height, chest height, and one insulting row at groin height. A brass plaque read SECURITY DEMONSTRATION GALLERY. Near the centre, a steel-jawed man-catcher had snapped shut on a strip of torn coat. Beside it lay one boot, one glove, and a smear of dried blood leading toward a servant door.

Someone else had tried this route before him. That person had not had a clean night. Fatius listened to the low grind under the floor, waited for the click and the short pause after it, then crossed only when the mechanisms settled. Halfway through, a dart clipped a curl from his hair. He did not scream. He made a thin, startled noise no court could prove was a scream.

By the time he reached the far door, sweat had done more to sober him than cold water ever could. He slipped through into a darker passage and nearly walked into a woman holding a wine bottle by the neck. She wore an evening gown loose at one shoulder, though she carried herself with complete control. Her eyes moved from his damp boots to the tray, then to the stolen goods under his coat. She understood him immediately. He understood her almost as quickly, mostly because she was drunk, furious, and not remotely alarmed by the presence of a thief.

The owner’s voice echoed somewhere behind them, rising into another complaint about people born without titles. The woman closed her eyes for a second, then offered Fatius the bottle. He accepted. The wine was sharp, red, and far too expensive to drink in a corridor. A few quick questions passed between them without much pretence. He had taken a watch, a book, and coins from Grandma Max, who thought he was one of her grandchildren. The wife seemed unsurprised. Max, she explained, was quite “all there”, she had always told strange stories about impossible things: storms that destroyed towns still standing, old friends from lives that never happened and even rewinding time. The household had learned to treat most of it kindly and believe very little of it.

Fatius realised she was the owner’s wife. She confirmed it with two words and enough bitterness to settle the matter. The conversation changed after that. She told him the house had been built to confuse guests, creditors, and anyone else her husband wanted to avoid. It had never worked properly, which she considered its only charm. If Fatius found the private office, she wanted papers. Ledgers, letters, anything sealed in green ribbon. Especially anything with her name on it. It sounded less like theft than legal strategy, but she was clearly open to both.

The owner’s voice drew closer, so the wife ended the meeting before it could become a problem. She tipped half the wine onto her gown, staggered into a table hard enough to knock over a porcelain shepherdess, and began shouting down the hall about the walls moving again. Footsteps thundered toward her. Fatius left her to the performance and went the way she had indicated.

Her directions worked for all of one corridor. Then the house gave another low groan, not enough to rearrange itself completely, but enough to turn a straight passage into a choice of three. Fatius picked the least suspicious route and walked straight into an old servant with cloudy eyes, a bundle of brass room plaques, and the confidence of someone who had worked in that house for too long.

The servant mistook him for a new hire and gave him no chance to argue. A stack of plaques was pushed into his arms: MUSIC ROOM, BLUE STUDY, LESSER BREAKFAST HALL, THIRD CONSERVATORY, ROOM NOT TO BE USED. The upper west rooms were pretending to be the south rooms again, and if the lamps were not moved before inspection, there would be punishment by hinge-polishing.

So Fatius O’Heevy, thief, liar, occasional fugitive, and man of action, spent the next twenty minutes doing housework. He moved standing lamps, dragged a drinks trolley across a passage that sloped for no good reason, and replaced a plaque reading MAP ROOM with one reading ORANGERY ANNEX. The wall behind it rotated away while he was still holding the screws.

The work gave him more than sore arms. It gave him a better sense of the house. Every shift had a rhythm. Every corridor had a delay before it settled. Every servant seemed to know some private rule for surviving the place, and none of them seemed fond of the man who owned it. When Fatius asked whether this happened often, the servant explained that it happened every time the owner got nervous. When asked what the owner was nervous about, the servant gave the simplest answer possible: being found out.

That was interesting. Soon enough, the servant pushed him through a narrow door and sent him to fetch more polish from the private office. Fatius did not know whether this counted as luck or punishment, but it was the first clear route he had been given since the skylight vanished, so he took it.

The office was small, windowless, and viciously tidy. This was where the owner kept the things that mattered: locked drawers, coded ledgers, letters bundled by year, and a safe behind a portrait that somehow made him look even more punchable. Fatius found the green ribbon. Inside the bundles were letters between solicitors, lists of properties hidden under other names, payments to officials, false valuations, private settlements, and instructions about his wife’s allowance that made Fatius go still.

He had stolen many things in his life. Silver, cash, rings, watches, documents he did not understand but had been paid to fetch. He knew the difference between common valuables and the sort of evidence that ruined a man. This was the second kind. He took everything tied in green ribbon, then another ledger full of hidden rents, fake charities, and accounts buried behind dull company names. It was heavier than coins, harder to carry than jewels, and worth more than both.

The papers were awkward to carry, and they forced him to rearrange everything under his coat. As he stuffed the last bundle under his shirt, a soft whine came from beneath the desk. Fatius froze, expecting a guard dog, a bell cord, or some other rich man’s answer to guilt. Instead, a white German Shepherd looked back at him. The dog was huge, bright-eyed, and heartbreakingly clean. A silver tag hung from its collar. Its tail gave one careful thump against the floor.

Fatius dropped into a crouch so fast his stolen papers crackled. Every scrap of stealth left him at once. The dog crawled out and shoved its whole head into his palm. Fatius fussed over him with open delight. It was the least criminal he had looked all night.

Somewhere nearby, a guard thought he heard something. Fatius put one finger to his lips. The dog licked it, which was not silence but showed willingness. On a sideboard, he found half a ham wrapped in cloth, because apparently rich people did that sort of thing; left ham around for convenient snacking. Fatius chose not to question it and used it to secure the dog’s loyalty. The dog had clearly already decided, but ham never hurt. Fatius did not ask its old name. The dog was New Best Friend now, and that was that.

With the dog at his side and the papers hidden badly under his clothes, Fatius tried to retrace the route toward the courtyard. The house did not allow that. It shifted in smaller ways now, nudging him along, closing one route and revealing another, until the corridor ahead stretched long and straight. At the far end, curtains billowed around an open window. Cold air poured in. The sky outside was still dark, though dawn was close.

Exit.

Then a boy stepped out from behind a statue. He was about twelve, dressed in a nightshirt finer than most wedding clothes. His hair had been brushed neatly, and his face had already learned the family habit of looking down on people. He looked at Fatius, the dog, and the bulging papers, and realised what he had found.

The boy threatened to scream unless he got one of his father’s treasures. Fatius glanced at the window, weighed the distance, the dog, the papers, and the child’s face, then gave him one clear answer.

“No.”

The boy drew breath to scream. Fatius raised a fist just far enough to make the threat clear. The boy lost his nerve, spun on his heel, and ran for his father. He made it three steps before his foot caught a rumpled carpet. He pitched forward with a shriek and hit the floor face-first. Fatius laughed so hard he nearly dropped the ledgers. The dog barked once, delighted. As Fatius turned back toward the window, he made a mental note that, if he saw the wife again, he should remind her to surrender custody to her husband and spare herself the trouble.

The brat’s fall bought him only a second. Shouts erupted behind them. Doors opened. Bells rang. Lamps flared, gears ground, and the corridor began pulling itself shorter. The house was closing in. Fatius ran. New Best Friend ran with him. A guard lunged from a side door, but the dog swerved under his knees and sent him down in a clatter of armour and bad language. Above it all, the owner’s voice screamed about ledgers, betrayal, dogs, and the collapse of standards.

Fatius reached the window and did not slow. He jumped. For one wild second, he was in the air with stolen goods in his pockets, papers stuffed under his shirt, and a white dog beside him. Then he hit the gravel drive, tucked badly, rolled worse, and came up with half the skin missing from one elbow. The dog landed better.

A motorcar sat beneath the portico, black and polished, engine still warm. Fatius chose to regard it as part of the haul. He shoved papers and treasure onto the passenger seat, ducked beneath the steering column, and found the wires. The first two did nothing. The third sparked. The fourth made the engine cough, snarl, and wake. New Best Friend bounded into the back seat.

Fatius slammed the car into gear with no idea if it was the right one and tore down the drive. Gravel scattered. A hedge lost a fight. One wing mirror came off against the gatepost. Behind him, the estate rang with bells and fury. He laughed all the way into town.

By noon, the papers were hidden, the treasures fenced or stashed, and the dog fed better than most kings. By evening, Fatius had sent word to the wife through a servant who accepted payment for knowing where not to look. The divorce was vicious and satisfying.

The owner blustered, threatened, and denied everything until the ledgers reached people who knew how to read them. Properties surfaced. Hidden accounts became less hidden. Respectable associates found urgent reasons to be elsewhere. By the time his wife was finished, she had freedom, money, and the pleasure of watching him age ten years in a month.

She met Fatius twice after that. The first time, they drank better wine than either of them had any right to enjoy and laughed about the night the house had tried to keep him. The second time was steamier, messier, and better left without a full account. By the time it was over, they both seemed to understand the same thing: there was not much between them beyond that one strange night, the trouble it had caused, and the fun they could still make from it. They parted fondly enough. She kept her freedom. He kept the dog.

With the money, Fatius bought a handsome little house in the next town over. Nothing too grand. Grand houses attracted thieves, lunatics, and men like him. This one had a garden, a deep cellar, good locks, and windows that stayed where they were put. He hired security, because success had made him wise in one narrow and hypocritical way.

For a while, he lived well. He wore better coats. He ate hot meals. He slept in a bed that belonged to him and woke each morning with New Best Friend taking up half of it. The dog showed no interest in negotiation. Fatius told himself he was retired. Perhaps he even meant it.

For a while.

Then came another night of drinking, another town, and another set of choices that only made sense until sunrise. Fatius O’Heevy woke up in a fountain this time, one arm hooked around a decorative fish, with no purse, no coat, and no memory of how he had got there.

He coughed up water, dragged himself over the stone lip, and sat on the edge until the square stopped moving. Across the street, beyond the dark shopfronts, the hill rose above the town. At the top of it stood the nicest house for miles.

Fatius stared at it for a long moment. Then he checked his pockets.

Empty, of course.

He got to his feet, wrung water from his sleeve, and started walking.

About the Game

This story was written from a playthrough of No Map, No Plan by Seamus Conneely, a solo/GMless heist game about breaking into a wealthy estate with no preparation, no route out, and absolutely no sensible idea what you are doing.

The game uses playing cards to reveal rooms, trouble, treasure, security, strange encounters, and possible escape routes as the heist unfolds. Fatius’s disastrous night came directly from those prompts, then got shaped into the story above.

You can find No Map, No Plan here: DriveThruRPG — No Map, No Plan