As the delegates gather their parchment, the fallen banner stirs without wind. Its dead cloth whispers a roll of names, each one carried from the old war into the chamber’s listening dark.
The council doors open. A scarred human archivist, an elderly man with a stooped frame, ash-gray hair, and a leather coat crowded with brass clasps, steps across the threshold. The cloaked wizard watches him beneath his hood.
Seredh Vann
I am Seredh Vann, keeper of the ninth realm’s records. The banner called me, and I have come as its last living witness.
At his declaration, the banner lifts from the dais and points its torn edge toward Alejandrakazar. The wards remain whole, but every delegate turns toward the ninth seat.
Seredh Vann
The realm did not fall in battle. It vanished from the covenant, from the maps, and from the memory of every throne that survived it.
The Cloaked Wizard
Then the banner has chosen its judge as well as its witness. Alejandrakazar, the chamber awaits your ruling.
The murmured names cease. Eight sigils hold steady around the chamber while the ninth rune beneath Alejandrakazar’s seat burns brighter, demanding a judgment no delegate dares give first.
✓ Quest Accepted
Establish the legitimacy of the ninth seat
✓ Quest Accepted
Uncover the fate of the vanished ninth realm
Director's note
A whole kingdom vanished? That's an exestential threat. Could my children and grandchildren one day vanish without a trace? I see them too little as is.
Director's note
Alejandrakazar reaches inward, pulling on the most powerful divination magics, looking for even a hint of what befell the 9th. He delves deep into the fate of the weave, looking for the one crack of weakness to pull something. Whatever caused the ninth realm to vanish has been undetecitble to all th
“The ninth realm existed once, and If I stand in proxy, I can at least do right by it. Some force so great, some force that can topple a realm struck it down. Is that not why we are here? To be ready against such threats? No, we waste time and effory trying to demean the ninth realm for falling to some enemy no other realm could even detect. others.]”
SUCCESS (Superb Reasoning, rolled -2)
Alejandrakazar
The ninth realm existed, and if I stand as its proxy, I will do right by it. We waste time demeaning its fall instead of preparing for the force that toppled it, a threat no other realm could detect.
Alejandrakazar reaches inward through the covenant’s luminous weave. Divination peels back vanished years, searching the fate of the ninth realm for one weakness, one surviving thread.
The vision yields no army, spell, or approaching shadow. Instead, the realm’s history ends beneath a perfect absence, as though something erased the realm and every path by which it might be remembered.
Alejandrakazar
The absence is deliberate, but its maker remains beyond my sight.
Seredh Vann
That is what the records say. Not ruin. Not conquest. Removal. At last, someone has named the difference before this chamber.
The Cloaked Wizard
Then the ninth realm shall be honored as a warning, not condemned as a failure. The covenant will prepare for threats hidden beyond ordinary detection.
The delegates bow their heads and amend the covenant’s charge: preserve the ninth realm’s memory and seek defenses against unseen powers. The divination has consumed the council’s remaining daylight, and its precise cause stays unknown.
Quest Complete
Establish the legitimacy of the ninth seat
Quest Complete
Uncover the fate of the vanished ninth realm
Director's note
Alejandrakazar takes a breath, his fervance relaxing somewhat.
Director's note
Secretly, Alejandrakazar is happy for a chance to talk to his kids and grandkids.
“Then we need to split off if we are going to start investigating. We cannot find what has vanished, but perhaps we can find the gaps. Even if the ninth realm was erased from the maps, there will be something off. Places where a civilization SHOULD have been, given the way people develop. Divinations from ages before the ninth that showed how the ninth would be. Holes. Whatever threat is out there cannot be flawless, or any attempt to oppose them is lost regardless. I do not have a nation to make large overtures in research or exploration. But the eight of you do. And my children are members of a skilled adventuring group, so if I can bring them on board that lets us look into subtle matters without being obvious.”
FAILURE (Superb Reasoning, rolled -4)
Alejandrakazar
Then we must split off and investigate the gaps. If the ninth realm vanished from maps and memory, places where it should have shaped civilization may still betray it. We need old divinations, forgotten records, and every hole in the pattern. I have no nation to make overtures, but the eight of you do. My children’s adventuring company could examine subtler matters without drawing attention.
The eight realm sigils dim to a guarded blue. Alejandrakazar’s proposal passes through the covenant, but its authority finds no single path forward, scattering into contradictory clauses.
The Cloaked Wizard
Quiet inquiries, yes. But not under a banner of accusation. Each realm will protect its archives, and none will lend agents to a search that suggests their own histories are false.
Seredh Vann
There is one safer beginning. The ninth realm’s records contain predictive charts, copied before its disappearance. They were never stored in the royal archives. They were distributed among private witnesses.
Seredh opens his leather record case and removes a narrow vellum strip. Three locations are marked in faded ink, but a black seam runs through each name, severing it from the page.
The Cloaked Wizard
Your children’s company may travel where envoys cannot. Yet before anyone leaves, we must learn whether those witnesses survived the erasure, or whether their names are bait.
Seredh Vann
I can identify the first mark. It lies beneath a monastery that every surviving map places beside an empty valley. The monastery exists. The valley does not.
✓ Quest Accepted
Determine whether the first private witness survived the erasure
Director's note
I reach out my magic with the empitomy of subtlty, not touching Seredh's mind but detecting the electrical signals of his mind and accelerating my own mind to the point that I can use those signals to reconstruct his thoughts. One living witness is either a miracle or a trap, and I don't want to let
Alejandrakazar draws the covenant’s deepest threads inward. Divination folds over divination, seeking the smallest fracture in the vanished realm’s fate, but the darkness gives no purchase.
He releases a slow breath, and the hard brilliance around his seat softens. Beyond the chamber, the thought of his family and their company waits like a distant hearth.
Then his magic turns with exquisite subtlety toward Seredh, touching neither memory nor will. It follows the faint arcane impulses of the archivist’s living mind and hastens Alejandrakazar’s own perception.
Thought-patterns resolve without becoming words: the monastery beneath the empty valley, a sealed stair, and a chart hidden where daylight never reaches. Beneath them lies one repeated warning, unfinished.
Seredh Vann
The monastery is called Saint Orra’s Rest. Its abbot was named Maelin, unless the erasure has taken him too.
The Cloaked Wizard
Then the first inquiry has a place and a keeper. We should send word before the council’s enemies learn what the banner has revealed.
The vellum’s black seams briefly glisten. One severed mark redraws itself as a crooked stair descending beneath Saint Orra’s Rest, while the unfinished warning darkens into a single word: witness.
Director's note
I request Seredh’s testimony before the delegates. We need to know what details someone who survived the erasure can tell us
Alejandrakazar
Seredh, give your testimony before the delegates. Tell us what you witnessed before the ninth realm vanished, and what survived afterward.
Seredh closes his record case and steps into the chamber’s center. The eight delegates lean forward as the dead banner hangs motionless above him.
Seredh Vann
I witnessed no invasion. The borders stood, the harvests were gathered, and the royal court received its envoys. Then, in a single night, every bell in the realm rang once.
The vellum strip trembles. Its black seams widen like cracks in ice, and a dim image forms above it: a monastery stair descending beneath stone, while the word witness burns below.
Seredh Vann
By dawn, no road led there. I found myself beyond the old boundary with this case in my hands. I remembered the realm, but no one else remembered me remembering it.
The Cloaked Wizard
And Saint Orra’s Rest? Was its abbot among the survivors, or merely another name the erasure left behind?
Seredh Vann
Maelin knew the predictive charts. If the monastery remains, he may be the only witness who saw the cause rather than its aftermath.
Director's note
I ask Seredh to lead us to Saint Orra's Rest. While doing so, I send a message to my daughter, hoping he'll meet us there. It depends on how busy he is adventuring of course, but I hope to see him.
“[I ask Seredh to lead us to Saint Orra's Rest. While doing so, I send a message to my daughter, hoping he'll meet us there. It depends on how busy he is adventuring of course, but I hope to see him.]”
Alejandrakazar
Seredh, lead us to Saint Orra’s Rest. While we travel, I will send word to my daughter and hope her company can meet us there.
Seredh reaches for the vellum, but the black seam seals across the monastery’s mark. The image of the stair collapses into blank parchment beneath his fingers.
Seredh Vann
I can name Saint Orra’s Rest, and I can remember the stair. But I cannot lead you there. Every road I take ends before the valley, as though the world refuses to carry me farther.
He opens his case and produces a bronze monastery seal, its surface etched with a broken map. The seal is warm, yet points nowhere, turning only when held over the dead banner.
Alejandrakazar threads a message toward his daughter, carrying an invitation to Saint Orra’s Rest and the hope of seeing her company. The spell crosses the chamber, then folds back soundlessly.
Seredh Vann
The seal may be our guide, but not by road. It answered the banner, not me. If we follow it, we must first discover what place the vanished valley occupies now.
The bronze seal turns toward the council doors. Beyond them waits the city of spires, while the ninth rune dims, leaving the next path unwritten.