The Court Clerk carries the witness tablet from the hearing chamber to the archive vestibule, exactly as promised. Behind them, the stone doors remain sealed. Two guards hold the archway while the tablet’s charged record glows beside the surviving authority marks.
Court Clerk
The tablet preserves the Lord’s words without alteration. Let the marks decide what those words authorized.
The Clerk sets the tablet into a bronze cradle. Lines of pale light rise from its surface, meeting three old seals cut into the archstone. One line reaches the order concerning inspection. A second reaches seizure of records. The third stops short of removal.
Serren Vale
There. Odran could inspect the refuge under the Lord’s mandate. He could seize records found there. But the authority to remove Maelin was never written into it.
The Lord
Then Vey added that command himself.
The final light gutters against a dark residue embedded beneath the tablet’s seal, the same black sealing wax that marked Odran’s hidden records. The archive does not merely confirm the testimony. It distinguishes the Lord’s command from the crime carried out in its name.
Court Clerk
Recorded and witnessed. The inspection was authorized. The seizure was authorized. Maelin Hart’s removal was not.
“"who forged the black sealing wax?"”
SUCCESS (Superb Reasoning, rolled +2)
Carciel
Who forged the black sealing wax?
The question draws every gaze to the dark residue beneath the tablet seal. Its surface bears a fine crosshatch, pressed with the same broken quill mark found in Odran Vey’s altered records.
Court Clerk
The wax was not made by the Lord’s seal-maker. Its resin carries a private archive compound, used in Odran Vey’s records chamber.
Serren Vale
Then Vey forged the black sealing wax, or ordered it forged for his own hidden work.
The Clerk lifts a narrow scraping from the cradle and turns it beneath the blue ward-light. The compound answers the tablet’s mark, binding the residue to Vey’s office rather than the Lord’s authority.
The Lord
Odran Vey used a private seal compound without my authorization. That is evidence of his concealment, not mine.
Court Clerk
Recorded: the black sealing wax was forged for Odran Vey’s unauthorized records work. The Lord’s authority ends before it.
✓ Quest Accepted
Depart the archive with Serren
“I look at the Clerk. "May we go now?"”
SUCCESS (Legendary Willpower, rolled +1)
Carciel
May we go now?
The question settles over the ward-lit cradle. The Clerk studies Carciel, then the completed record, and finds no lawful ground to hold either witness.
Court Clerk
Yes. The testimony is entered, the authority trail is marked, and your presence is no longer required.
They lift the bronze latch. The thick oak doors ease open, admitting rain-cooled air and the dim path beyond.
The Lord
Leaving does not lessen what was said here.
Serren Vale
Nor does it erase who ordered what. Come, Carciel.
“I leave with Serren”
Carciel steps through the open doors with Serren, leaving the ward-lit vestibule behind. Rain cools the archive path as the completed record follows them into the wider world.
Quest Complete
Depart the archive with Serren