Ashara leads Dez through a cracked cloister choked with dust and fallen ivy. Behind them, the remaining delegates stay at the reliquary with the attendants, guarding the sealed chamber.
The silver-haired delegate and the hooded delegate accompany them in wary silence. Ashara opens a concealed stone panel, revealing an archive untouched by the collapse, its shelves sealed beneath amber ward-light.
Behind a squat stone reliquary, Ashara presses her cracked key into a narrow groove. The wall unfolds into a ward-map, silver channels branching from the Ninth Lock across the Nine Realms.
Ashara
There. One route has gone dark since the seal answered you. It runs toward the western court.
A blackened line stains the map’s western branch. Tiny cipher marks crowd its margin, and the silver-haired delegate leans close before recoiling as though the symbols have burned him.
The Silver-Haired Delegate
That is Corven’s cipher. The western court’s defenses are compromised already.
The Hooded Delegate
No. The cipher marks a diversion. If the route is dark, the eastern watch has lost its defenses first.
The map pulses once, sending a dim thread from the western court toward a second sealed branch. Ashara’s hand remains above the key, while both delegates turn toward Dez and wait for his judgment.
✓ Quest Accepted
Identify the immediate target of the compromised ward network
“Can the dim thread reveal the immediate target of the compromised network?”
YES, BUT (Likely, rolled 55)
The dim thread brightens beneath Ashara’s hovering hand, tracing the western branch past the court’s outer wards and ending at a single marked chamber.
Ashara
The immediate target is the western court’s ward archive. Whoever altered the orders means to blind the defenses from within.
The map answers with a second pulse. The marked chamber resolves into a seal-house beneath the court, where control of every western ward converges around one ancient keystone.
The Silver-Haired Delegate
The keystone commands the western watch. If it falls, Corven’s remaining wardens will stand blind before the court understands the breach.
The silver-haired delegate reaches toward the map, but amber light lashes across the channels. The ward-map splits along its western branch, and the archive’s precise inner passages vanish.
The Hooded Delegate
The route is revealed, but our fastest path is gone. We can reach the seal-house only through the court’s guarded undercroft.
Ashara
Then we go before the diversion becomes a conquest. The target is known, and the western court must hear the truth from us first.