Three weeks pass in uneasy quiet. Outside a half-shuttered roadside chapel, Tancred waits beneath a bruised evening sky as the wind worries dead leaves across the stones.
A man in a travel-stained cleric's coat approaches from the lane, one hand held away from his belt as if to prove he comes in peace. His face is gaunt, his eyes sleepless, and a heavy scroll presses a hard shape beneath his arm.
Brother Adelric
Tancred du Forietan, at last. I have been searching for you. This is no ambush, only a warning the dead will not let me keep quiet.
He draws out the scroll. Wax seals glint dark red in the dusk, stamped with the crest of du Morvannoux. The parchment looks old enough to have slept in a tomb.
Brother Adelric
They are stripping your house stone by stone, ledger by ledger. Graves opened, names cut away, relics taken for a rite I cannot yet name. They are feeding your legacy into something larger.
Tancred du Forietan
The seal is genuine. And he is afraid.
Adelric holds the scroll out, not quite offering it, not quite daring to come closer. The chapel door creaks in the wind behind him, and the dusk seems to listen.
✓ Quest Accepted
Learn what the scroll says
✓ Quest Accepted
Protect the truth of his house
“Has the entity from the church followed him here?”
YES (Likely, rolled 41)
A sudden, unnatural chill bites through the air, and the shadows stretching from the chapel wall begin to lengthen and twist against the stone, mimicking the shape of the spectral cords Tancred once severed.
Tancred du Forietan
The entity is here. It has tracked the tether, not the man.
“Eyeing Adelric warily, I will approach and accept the scroll from him. As I begin to open it, I ask, "Brother Adelric, who doth conducts this profane ritual and desecrates my ancestral home?"”
SUCCESS (Superb Diplomacy, rolled -3)
Tancred crosses the yard with measured steps, the wind tugging at his cloak. Brother Adelric flinches, then holds the scroll out with both hands.
Tancred du Forietan
Brother Adelric, who conducts this profane ritual and desecrates my ancestral home?
Brother Adelric
Not one man, lord. A chain of them. Priests, grave-men, and blooded hands that never speak the same name twice.
Tancred takes the scroll. The seal wax cracks under his thumb, and a thin smear of soot marks his blackened palm.
Brother Adelric
Read it quickly. If they know I have shown you, they will know what I fear.
The parchment opens in Tancred's hands, and Adelric watches the page with a face gone tight and hollow.
Brother Adelric
It names no single master. It names your house, your seal, and the men who mean to wear both like a door.
Quest Complete
Learn what the scroll says
+ New Item Acquired
scroll bearing the du Morvannoux crest