Harold remains near the dais with Ankura and Houk guarding the rear, while Lo circles the safe stones. Senkious stays beside Heusbga sssi, watching the unstable symbols.
Harold kneels among the broken control stones without touching the glowing cracks. He turns over a dark fragment and reveals a worn three-thorn stamp beneath the dust.
Harold Blackhoof
This is Wildthorn authority marking, from an old supply office. These seals should never have reached Crumm Vus.
He holds the fragment toward the violet light, studying its chipped edges. The unconscious beholder remains motionless, its great eye dim and its smaller eyes closed.
Senkious
The outer pattern resembles Tarkatan registry marks, but the cuts are altered. Someone copied a lawful seal without understanding its record.
Harold Blackhoof
Then the evidence points beyond this chamber. Crumm Vus received Wildthorn-linked authority, and the beholder used it to command the dais.
A hairline crack creeps across the inner platform. The violet glow tightens around it, warning the group that further disturbance could awaken the dais before its source is understood.
✓ Quest Accepted
Establish whether Harold’s Wildthorn evidence is genuine
“I ask lo to stap its eyes and i remove its small dominate one and clean it in arcane lab manner”
SUCCESS (Good Arcana, rolled +0)
Heusbga sssi
Lo, secure its eyes. I will remove one of the smaller dominating eyes and clean it through arcane means.
Lo
Understood. I will keep every lid shut and hold the creature steady. Do not disturb the cracked symbols.
Lo binds the beholder’s eye-stalks against the quiet body with marked cloth and careful knots. Senkious steadies the dais while violet cracks pulse beneath them.
Heusbga sssi works in a precise arcane sequence, separating one small dominating eye and enclosing it in a sphere of pale warding light. The procedure remains controlled and non-graphic.
Heusbga sssi
The eye retains a thin thread of the dais’s command magic.
He cleans the extracted eye with layered sigils, drawing away the command residue until the sphere holds a clear, inert specimen. The intended eye is secured and purified.
Lo
Done, but the warding light has cost you. Your casting hand is trembling, and the dais has noticed the missing eye.
+ New Item Acquired
Purified dominating eye
“I ask houk to summon a staff and ankura and me to fashion the eye at the top of the staff”
SUCCESS (Good Arcana, rolled -2)
Heusbga sssi
Houk, summon a staff. Ankura, help me fashion this purified eye at its top.
Houk Drogkur
A staff, then. Keep the dais quiet while I call one from the deep wood.
Houk plants his feet and invokes his power. Dark wood twists upward from the stone beside him, forming a stout staff capped with an empty thorned socket.
Ankura
Hold the warding sphere steady. I will shape the binding so the eye serves as a watcher, not a doorway.
Ankura lays precise sigils around the socket while Heusbga sssi guides the purified eye into place. Violet residue peels away and vanishes into the staff’s carved grain.
The eye settles securely at the staff’s crown, clear and inert. The completed focus gives one quiet pulse, revealing hidden lines across the cracked dais.
Lo
It is fashioned cleanly. But Houk’s summoning drained the nearby roots, and the staff will not answer freely until it rests.
+ New Item Acquired
Thorn-Eyed Staff
“I ask senkious to bless it calmed”
SUCCESS (Good Arcana, rolled +1)
Heusbga sssi
Senkious, bless it and calm it.
Heusbga sssi offers the newly fashioned staff toward Senkious, keeping the purified eye steady while the cracked dais gives a faint violet pulse.
Senkious
I will quiet its borrowed command. Hold it upright.
Senkious places one gauntleted hand beneath the staff’s crown and invokes a restrained Tarkatan blessing. A sober radiance travels through the wood, settling the eye’s pulse into a calm, steady glow.
Senkious
The staff is blessed. Its sight is calm, and the dais no longer stirs through it.
Lo
The hidden lines remain visible, but they are no longer pulling at the staff. We can examine them safely.
The staff rests quietly in Heusbga sssi’s grasp, its purified eye revealing a narrow pattern beneath the cracked platform: a path leading toward a sealed inner stair.
“I use my deep immortal knowledge and past experince as a beholder myself in past lives to deep dream rob the beholder dead”
SUCCESS (Great Willpower, rolled +1)
Heusbga sssi lowers the blessed staff beside the dais and reaches through the unconscious beholder’s sleeping mind, drawing on memories from his own ancient lives as a beholder.
The sanctum falls silent. His awareness descends through violet dream corridors shaped like endless eyes, drowned stairways, and forgotten chambers beneath the city.
the beholder
No. This is not my dream. These eyes have watched before me.
Heusbga sssi moves through the dream without disturbing its sleeping body, recognizing the beholder’s fear-patterns and bypassing the false memories guarding its deepest knowledge.
From the dream’s central eye, he draws a sealed memory: Crumm Vus receiving the copied Wildthorn authority from a veiled intermediary beneath the inner stair.
the beholder
The stair leads to the first archive. The one who marked me waits there, behind a voice wearing another name.
The stolen dream-memory settles into Heusbga sssi’s awareness, complete and clear. The beholder remains unconscious, while the blessed staff reveals the sealed stair’s opening sigil.
Quest Complete
Establish whether Harold’s Wildthorn evidence is genuine
Skill Upgrade: Arcana Good→Great