The altar’s restored light settles into a steady glow. A narrow seam opens across its base, and a stone panel withdraws, revealing cramped steps descending into darkness.
Mira leans toward the opening, while the caravan guard remains near the chamber entrance, watching the root-sealed passage where the five travelers stayed behind.
Mira Pell
That was not shown on any shrine plan I have ever seen. The altar was hiding a second heart.
Dust lies thick below, undisturbed except for a narrow trail along the steps. Tablets line the walls beside maps bound in pale roots, their markings charting breaches older than the restored seal.
Edris Vale
The archive records every wound beneath this shrine. Read before you descend farther. The buried hunger may have had help from the surface.
At the archive’s center, one map-fragment has been torn from its root bindings. Fresh fibers curl from the gap, and the surviving marks form a warning around the absence.
The Caravan Guard
Someone came here recently. If that piece names the next breach, we may already be following their trail.
✓ Quest Accepted
Recover the missing map-fragment
✓ Quest Accepted
Identify who is shaping the breaches
“I use clairvoyance to attempt to locate the missing map fragment, then recast to attempt to identify the person manipulating the branches”
SUCCESS (Superb Arcana, rolled +0)
Stryker reaches through the archive with clairvoyance. The missing fragment appears beyond the shrine, caught in a root-wrapped niche beneath a fallen standing stone, its map-lines glowing faintly.
He recasts the sight across the fragment’s fresh fibers. The vision follows their living roots upward, through buried channels, and opens upon a moonlit clearing above the shrine.
A young adult elf woman kneels there, lean beneath a dark traveling cloak, with copper-brown skin, cropped black hair, and white root-shaped markings circling her wrists. She fits the torn fibers into a carved branch-staff.
Stryker
The fragment is beneath the fallen standing stone, and the branch-worker is Liora Vey.
Mira Pell
You found it, didn’t you? That look says the missing piece is not lost at all.
Edris Vale
The hand guiding those branches bears an old name. Liora Vey served the shrine before the first breach, then vanished with its forbidden records.
The clairvoyant image fades, leaving the fragment’s location and Liora’s identity clear. Above, the living roots continue bending toward the moonlit clearing, as if awaiting her next command.
Quest Complete
Identify who is shaping the breaches
Director's note
I walk over to the standing stone and lift it
“Ill life the stone, Mira, you grab the map piece”
FAILURE (Mediocre Strength, rolled -1)
Stryker follows the clairvoyant path into the moonlit clearing, where the fallen standing stone lies across the root-wrapped niche. Mira comes close behind, eyes fixed on the glowing fragment.
He plants both hands against the stone and drives upward. The slab shifts with a grinding groan, but its buried edge holds fast beneath the packed earth.
The movement tightens the living roots instead of freeing them. They coil over the niche, drawing the map-fragment deeper beneath the stone as pale lines flare across its surface.
Mira Pell
It is anchored below, not merely resting there. Stop before the roots pull the fragment out of reach.
Stryker releases the stone. It settles crookedly, one corner raised just enough to reveal the fragment’s fading glow, while the roots hold it in a tightening lattice.
Edris Vale
The standing stone is part of the old ward. Force will close the niche completely; another path must open it.
Mira Pell
Then we need to unfasten the ward, not overpower it. The fragment is still there.
“I attempt to use magic to contact Liora Vey and convince her to allow us to have the map fragment”
SUCCESS (Superb Arcana, rolled +1)
Stryker walks to the standing stone and sets his hands against its weathered face. Arcane sight follows the root-lines upward, seeking Liora through the living ward.
His magic reaches the moonlit clearing as a quiet current, carrying the image of the trapped fragment and his purpose to restore the shrine’s broken history.
The Root-Marked Woman
I hear you, bearer. You seek the fragment to mend what was broken, not to claim its secrets. I will release it.
The root-marked woman’s distant presence withdraws from the ward. The roots loosen at once, their pale coils uncurling from beneath the stone.
Stryker lifts the standing stone free of the earth. Beneath it, the map fragment rises in a cradle of roots and settles gently into his waiting grasp.
Mira Pell
She agreed. The ward itself recognized the promise behind your request.
The fragment’s glowing lines join the surviving map marks, revealing a continuous route from the shrine toward older breaches beneath the forest. The roots fall still.
Quest Complete
Recover the missing map-fragment
Skill Upgrade: Arcana Superb→Legendary
+ New Item Acquired
Map fragment