The storeroom remains sealed behind Sehra. The dead royal messenger lies beside the bloodied threshold, while the three dispatches rest secured in her thigh pouch and the mercenary captain watches her hands.
Within the quiet, one seal gives way. The letter names Aldren as royal-born, but its formal language turns strangely guarded before the final lines.
A second instruction is hidden in the messenger’s travel record: a route marked through abandoned waystations, ending at a place omitted from the official dispatch.
Harlan Voss
There. Now you know why my employer wants those papers. Aldren’s blood is not a harbor rumor, and the route matters more than the claim.
He does not reach for the pouch. His four mercenaries remain outside the sealed room, and the dockworkers have kept their distance along the quay.
Harlan Voss
My name is Harlan Voss. Read the rest if you must, Captain, but understand that every hour you keep those dispatches puts Aldren farther from whoever sent them.
✓ Quest Accepted
Identify the omitted destination on Aldren’s route
✓ Quest Accepted
Establish what the hidden route was intended to accomplish
“I read the guarded final lines to uncover the route’s purpose.”
SUCCESS (Good Reasoning, rolled -2)
Sehra angles the dispatch toward the quay light and studies the guarded final lines. The cramped script is formal, but its omissions reveal more than its declarations.
The waystations are not checkpoints for a royal escort. They are handoff points, chosen to move Aldren, a young man with a lean build, wind-browned skin, dark cropped hair, and a plain brown traveling cloak, quietly from the harbor toward an inland refuge without using roads watched by the crown.
Sehra
The route is meant to hide Aldren, not announce his claim.
A final notation identifies the abandoned station as a rendezvous with a sworn protector, then breaks off beneath a smear of wax. The purpose is clear; the protector’s identity is not.
The careful reading costs several quiet minutes. Outside, the tide shifts and the watch bell sounds again, while Harlan Voss studies Sehra’s silence.
Harlan Voss
You found the purpose, then. The route was never meant to deliver a claimant to court.
The dispatch now gives Sehra a concrete trail: abandoned waystations, a concealed inland refuge, and an unnamed sworn protector waiting at the rendezvous.
Quest Complete
Establish what the hidden route was intended to accomplish