Bloodied Note

Lore & Background

In the rotting heart of the bayou, where the trees grow so thick the sun forgets the ground, the Hunt stirs. The blood on the Note is not fresh—it has soaked into the fibers over what feels like years, though the ink still holds its shape. Scholars in the outer settlements speculate it was once a letter, a confession, or a set of instructions for a ritual that was never completed. The blood, they say, is the seal. Remove it, and the words dissolve. Keep it, and the message endures, binding whoever reads it to the same promise that bound the writer.

The Hunters who brave the swamp rarely speak of what they think the Note says. Most treat it as a macabre prop, a key-shaped object no different from the Lock or the Key. But the older ones—the ones who have survived a dozen Hunts and still carry the smell of gunpowder and swamp-moss in their coats—whisper that the Note is a warning. That the chest does not reward. It *remembers*. And the blood on the page is the price of being remembered.

In the wider lore of the bayou, the four artifacts are said to be the shattered remains of a single document: a pact, a map, a confession. The Key opens the lock. The Lock holds the note. The Note names the debt. And the fourth piece—the one that changes—completes the sentence. Together they form a single, terrible statement that no living Hunter has ever read in full, because the moment the chest opens, the fog takes the words back.

In Their Own Story

The fog rolled in at the second bell, thick as wet wool, and Mara could see nothing past the barrel of her rifle. Somewhere ahead, a shotgun cracked—short, ugly, close. She crouched behind the rotted hull of a pirogue and counted her breaths. Four. Five. Six. The Note was supposed to be on the second floor of the plantation house, behind the hanging lantern. She could still smell the kerosene from where she'd passed it twenty minutes ago, the wick guttering in a draft that smelled of iron and old rain.

A boot crunched on gravel to her left. She didn't turn. Didn't need to. The Note was in her pack, warm against her spine like a second heartbeat, and the other three were scattered across the map like teeth in a jaw. She had two more to find. Two more rooms to walk through while someone else walked through them with a rifle aimed at her back.

The fog thickened. The lantern above the door swung, slow, patient, like a pendulum counting down to a verdict no one had asked for. Mara checked her magazine. Six rounds. She exhaled through her nose and started walking.

Reader's Guide

The Bloodied Note is a passive objective artifact, not a weapon. It deals no damage, has no range, and cannot be fired. Its sole function is to be one of the four pieces required to open the end-of-match chest. You pick it up by walking over its glow and pressing the interact prompt; it then sits in your inventory until you reach the chest and place all four artifacts into the lock mechanism.

Spawn locations vary by map and by match. On the larger open maps, the Note tends to appear in interior structures—plantation houses, abandoned churches, or the upper floors of warehouses—where a short firefight is almost guaranteed. On tighter maps it may sit in a more exposed clearing, making it a tripwire for the first team that pushes through. Because every squad needs it, the Note's location is effectively public knowledge the moment the match begins, and the first five minutes of play often revolve around who arrives first.

Is it worth the risk? In a standard four-person squad, yes—skipping the Note means you cannot win the chest, which is the primary reward. However, if your team is already down to two or three members and the Note is in a contested interior, a cautious squad may choose to let another team grab it, survive to the fog, and extract with whatever they've already looted. The Note is not a kill or a score. It is a gate. Walk through it, or walk away. Both are valid. The bayou does not judge. It only waits.

Did You Know?

• The Bloodied Note is one of four artifacts; the chest will not open until all four are collected, meaning a single missing piece renders the entire Hunt's primary reward inaccessible.
• The Note's blood-stained appearance is consistent across maps and matches—it is always depicted as a dark, crumpled scrap, reinforcing the idea that it is an old, weathered object rather than a freshly written one.
• Because the Note is a universal objective for every squad, its spawn point effectively becomes a de facto early-game engagement zone, making it one of the most contested locations in the first minutes of a match.
• In the game's atmospheric design, the four artifacts are visually distinct from standard loot: they emit a faint, unique glow that cuts through the fog, making them simultaneously easier to spot and easier to track by en