The Constable steps back onto the dock, giving the harpoon one last wary glance. Before he can leave, an elderly man approaches with measured, careful strides.
Thick spectacles magnify the stranger's eyes. A leather-bound notebook rests beneath his arm, its pages crowded with diagrams and tight handwriting.
Elias
Elias. Sorry to interrupt, but I believe that shard deserves more attention than a good-luck charm.
The Teenager tightens his grip on the fishing pole. Elias ignores the Constable's departing footsteps and studies the corroded fragment on the gunwale without touching it.
Elias
That corrosion pattern is distinctive. I have seen it in records concerning a lost era, though never on an object this intact.
Elias
Let me examine it closely, and I will tell you what I know about its origin. No grabbing, no collecting. An exchange of information.
✓ Quest Accepted
Learn what Elias knows about the shard's origin
✓ Quest Accepted
Keep the shard's origin from exposing Caelan's past
Director's note
I look closely at while knowing full well it's a shard of a God Slaying Sword
“Ok you may take a look at it but I must say it looks like nothing more then a piece of an english broadsword to me”
SUCCESS (Great History, rolled +3)
Caelan Thorne
You may take a look. Though to me, it looks like nothing more than a piece of an English broadsword.
Elias nods, removes a linen cloth from his pocket, and lifts the shard without touching it. He turns it beneath the gray daylight, examining every edge.
Elias
Your eye is good, Caelan. It is a broadsword fragment, English in form, likely late medieval. The broken shoulder and fuller make that clear.
He compares the fragment with a sketched blade in his notebook. The teenager leans closer, while Caelan keeps one hand resting near the fishing pole.
Elias
But this steel is wrong for ordinary battlefield manufacture. The records place a matching weapon beneath this lake, lost during a sixteenth-century wreck.
Elias closes the notebook, then marks a precise point on its margin. He offers the page to Caelan rather than reaching for the shard again.
Elias
There is more. My notes identify three other fragments in the same inlet, all within rowing distance of this dock.
Quest Complete
Learn what Elias knows about the shard's origin