The party begins backing from the open threshold. Celia, Maurice, Elianor, Tomas, Brother Caldus, and Iven remain together in the gallery, leaving the dark basin undisturbed.
Footsteps scrape up the narrow quarry stair. Orren Vey, a human man with a narrow face and weathered brown skin,, a dust-covered middle-aged man with a lean frame, gray-streaked hair, and a torn brown coat, stumbles into the lamplight.
Orren Vey
Wait. Do not seal the way yet. I followed the old markings from the quarry road.
Orren grips a strip of cloth torn from a gatehouse signal cord. Dust cakes his face, and his breath comes short as Maurice steps between him and the threshold.
Maurice Headsman
Name yourself, and tell us why you came below alone.
Orren Vey
Orren Vey, bell-runner from the village. The bells stopped answering one another. Then something beneath the western foundations began knocking from below.
Brother Caldus
The root’s channels were quiet when we traced them. If the western foundations now answer, the corruption may have found another vessel.
✓ Quest Accepted
Reach the village
✓ Quest Accepted
Protect the village from the western-foundations threat
“I ask Orren to take us to the location of the knocking.”
SUCCESS (Legendary Willpower, rolled -2)
Celia Graves
Orren, take us to the place where the knocking began.
Orren Vey
I will. Stay close, and do not answer if it knocks again.
Celia’s command settles the gallery, but the effort leaves her composure thin. For one visible moment, her grip tightens on the staff and her breath catches.
Maurice Headsman
You heard her. We move together. Orren leads, and no one strays toward the basin.
Orren turns up the quarry stair, climbing quickly despite his exhaustion. The party follows into the fading light, then crosses the broken road toward the village’s western foundations.
Orren Vey
There. Beneath the old storehouse. The knocking started after sunset, three blows at a time.
He leads them behind a collapsed wall to a sunken foundation choked with rubble. From below, three heavy knocks travel through the stones, measured and unmistakable.
Quest Complete
Reach the village