A week passes in Baldur’s Gate by choice, not obligation. Kynes, Bren, Mara, and Vetta remain in Phandelver, while Slaan and Nhal wake beneath the silver-marked notice.
The map has not changed, but the silver mark now resembles Slaan’s maternal sigil. Fine lines around it depict no borders, only scattered crossroads and blank spaces.
Nhal
It waited until we chose to look. That feels like her legacy already, offering direction without placing a hand on the reins.
Beyond the window, Baldur’s Gate rolls onward in harbor bells, gull cries, and shouted bargains. No ward answers the map, and no distant archive stirs to demand attention.
Nhal
If your mother built a path toward freedom, perhaps the first test is whether we can approach it without becoming its servants.
Silver ink gathers at the map’s edge, forming a brief image of a black-crystal observatory beneath unfamiliar stars. Then it fades, leaving the choice visible but unforced.
Nhal
We can open it now, leave it closed, or ask someone in this city what they know. Whatever comes next, it belongs to us only if we choose it.
− Story Quest Removed
Reach Slaan’s mother’s hidden destination
“I ask a harbor scholar about the sigil”
SUCCESS (Legendary Persuasion, rolled -1)
They find a harbor scholar beneath the weathered lighthouse, an elderly woman in a salt-stained blue cloak, with white braids and ink-dark fingertips. Her table holds tide charts and brass instruments.
Slaan
What do you know about this silver sigil?
Ilaris
That mark belongs to no guild, crown, or temple. Sailors have copied it for generations from stones that appear after great workings end.
The scholar studies the map without touching it. Her cloudy eyes sharpen as the fading observatory reappears in silver ink, then dissolves.
Ilaris
It means a road was left open, but ownership was refused. The blank spaces are deliberate. Whoever follows must choose what the road becomes.
Nhal
So it carries an invitation, not an instruction. That sounds like the legacy we want to honor.
The scholar nods and marks a quiet quay on the map, where old sailors leave offerings of stories rather than goods. The silver sigil remains unchanged, patient and unclaimed.
At the offering quay, the tide whispered against the pilings while the silver-marked notice rested between them.
Nhal
No owner. No command. We walk it because we choose to.
Ilaris
Then leave room on the map for both your names, and neither of them.
Slaan
Whatever waits beneath those stars, it will not decide us for us.
Nhal folded the map, and Ilaris watched the silver mark fade into ordinary ink.
The road remained open, not as a summons but as a promise they had made their own. With the harbor behind them and their freedom intact, Slaan and Nhal turned toward the hidden legacy together, neither bound nor alone. Baldur's Gate kept its lights burning as they departed the quay, and the tide carried the last secret quietly out to sea.