The clearing stills around the conjured meal, silver haze clinging low as mud splashes at the treeline. A rider in hard West Orangol armor pushes through the brush, reins tight, eyes fixed past Demetrius and onto the settlers.
The Rider
There you are. Conspiring with a foreign cleric, are you? Sabotage dressed as mercy.
His horse stamps hard, snorting steam into the cool air. The Lead Settler shifts first, shaken but upright, while the Second and Third Settler edge into a guard stance, hands near their belts.
The Lead Settler
You ride in here and throw lies like stones. State your business, West man.
The Bound Man
Not another blade at our throats. Not after all that.
The Thug keeps between Demetrius and the rider, knife lowered but ready. The silver clarity tugs faintly at the rope remains, as if the truth itself is listening.
The Rider
My business is the empire's. Yours is treason, if you shelter him.
“You have no authority here Demetrius states as he stands tall.”
SUCCESS (Superb Willpower, rolled -3)
Demetrius straightens in the trampled grass, calm as a warded altar. His voice lands cleanly across the clearing: the rider has no authority here.
The words take hold. The settlers ease a fraction toward him, and the Thug’s knife hand dips lower, uncertainty flickering across his face.
The Rider
Authority? I bring the empire’s warrant. You hide a traitor and call it mercy.
He shows no parchment, only a gloved hand tightening on the reins. Mud flecks his greaves as the horse sidesteps, nervous under the pressure.
The Lead Settler
Warrant or not, you do not command this road by barking at us. Say who sent you.
At that, the rider’s gaze shifts, not to the settlers, but to Demetrius, weighing him like a sealed letter just broken open. The silver thread near the treeline gives a faint, answering tug.
The Rider
The name comes from higher than you can stand against. Ask yourself which side the royal house favors when the east starts lying.
“It is the West who lies. Greed has blinded their ambitions. I implore you to seek the truth. For your own sake”
SUCCESS (Fair Persuasion, rolled +2)
Demetrius’s words settle over the clearing like a blessing. The rider’s hard stare wavers, then drops from Demetrius to the settlers, as if measuring how much of the west’s story still holds here.
The Rider
Truth is a costly thing in these woods. Yet... if the west has lied, then someone here has been useful to them.
The Lead Settler
We know that much already. We want the hand behind it, not another badge waving at us in the dark.
The rider’s horse stamps once and stills. Mud glistens on its fetlock. The silver thread near the treeline gives one last faint tug, then lies pointing east, toward the road beyond the clearing.
The Thug
Then say it plain. Who sent you?
The Rider
A sealed order from East Orangol’s own office reached the road watch. It bore the royal mark of the west, and a name copied beneath it. I never saw the signer’s face.
That answer changes the air. The settlers do not relax, but their focus shifts away from Demetrius and onto the rider’s testimony, each of them turning the lie over in silence.
“Demetrius hoots and whistles softly. A call to his companion pigmy owl named chakra”
SUCCESS (Good Animal Handling, rolled -1)
Demetrius lifts two fingers to his lips and gives a low, practiced whistle. The clearing hushes around it.
A small shadow drops from the branch line, wings beating hard as it comes in low over the meal and the cloaks.
Chakra
Too loud. You called me into company.
The Thug
That bird knows you? Gods, of course it does.
Chakra lands on Demetrius’s wrist with a sharp scrape of talons, then flares one wing toward the rider and the east road.
Demetrius cloudkin
He is pointing the same way the thread did.
The Lead Settler
If your creature sees a trail, let it speak, before the west man decides to lie again.
The owl’s arrival draws every eye at once, but it also carries a price, the horse jerks, the rider’s hand goes to his rein, and the clearing tightens around the sudden cry.
“Demetrius sends the owl on a scouting mission, then kneels and prays to his God for guidance and protection”
SUCCESS (Legendary Arcana, rolled -2)
Chakra springs from Demetrius’s wrist, a dark arrow over the meal and toward the east road.
Demetrius drops to one knee in the trampled grass, holy symbol in hand, and bows his head to pray for guidance and protection.
The prayer answers as a thin pulse of certainty, the vision-thread snaps forward through the treeline, and the east road brightens in his mind.
Demetrius cloudkin
The road is the source. Not the rider, the road.
Chakra circles once above the canopy and vanishes into the woods, while Demetrius feels the edge of the vision tug hard enough to sting behind the eyes.
The Lead Settler
Well? Tell us what your god showed you.
The rider stays in the saddle, tight on the reins, as the settlers wait on Demetrius's answer and the clearing holds its breath.
“Elowicios the Black is all Demetrius could say with a concerned look”
SUCCESS (Fair Persuasion, rolled +0)
Demetrius cloudkin
Elowicios the Black.
The name lands in the clearing like a dropped coin. The Lead Settler stills, eyes narrowing, while the rider’s posture tightens in the saddle.
The Lead Settler
Elowicios... the black seal from west ink?
The Thug shifts his grip on the knife at his side, not lifting it, only bracing as if the air itself has turned sharper.
The Rider
That name is not spoken lightly.
The Second Settler
Then it was never our own office at all.
The words settle over the meal, the rope, and the trampled grass. In the hush, suspicion slides away from Demetrius and hardens toward the unseen hand behind the order.
Quest Complete
Learn who ordered the name on the rope
Attribute Upgrade: Willpower Superb→Legendary