The opened seam rests behind Sava Nightshade, a dark line in the earth that gives off only a faint breath of cold air. No one descends. Around it, the camp settles into a careful stillness.
Lady Seraphine kneels beside the dry satchel and spreads route maps across a flat stone. Repeating lantern-house marks cross the parchment, linked by old paths and newer additions.
Lady Seraphine Valehart
These marks appear wherever the Chancellor moved information, not merely goods. But I cannot tell whether the lantern houses were waypoints, watchers, or doors into something older.
Elian
The spacing is deliberate. Some marks sit near streams, some near roads, and some in places no honest courier would choose. They could be measuring how quickly a message might travel unseen.
The Alpha Wolf circles the camp’s edge, paws silent over leaf mold. Elian watches the trees between glances at the maps, but the forest offers only birdsong and the slow stir of branches.
Lady Seraphine Valehart
Sava Nightshade, you have read the forest more truly than any mapmaker I have known. Will you show us what these repeating marks mean to someone who belongs here?
✓ Quest Accepted
Identify the compromised route or safeguard among the lantern-house marks
✓ Quest Accepted
Uncover the true purpose of the lantern houses
“I compare the lantern marks with streams, roads, and hidden forest paths.”
SUCCESS (Superb Perception, rolled -1)
“I compare the lantern marks with streams, roads, and hidden forest paths.”
SUCCESS (Superb Survival, rolled +1)
Sava Nightshade lowers herself beside the map stone and aligns the marks with the forest she knows, tracing streams, roads, and game paths with two fingers.
The pattern tightens. Three lantern marks follow honest movement through water and woodland, but a fourth skips the routes entirely, repeating beside an alder spring where no road should pass.
Sava Nightshade
The alder spring is not a waypoint. It is a concealed approach.
Sava Nightshade follows the old rain-route on the parchment. Its western safeguard meets the alder-spring mark, then vanishes beneath a smaller lantern-house sign whose center bears the same hidden seam found inside the sigil.
Elian
That mark was added later. The ink is newer, and the route bends toward the manor’s old service line.
Lady Seraphine Valehart
Then the compromised point is the western safeguard, not the whole network. Someone altered a trusted passage and concealed the change inside the lantern mark.
A breeze lifts the corner of the map. Beneath the altered mark, a charcoal notation points toward the forest edge, where the hooded courier’s warning about a waking name suddenly feels close.
Lady Seraphine Valehart
We can erase this route from our maps, or follow it and learn who still has access. Which protection do you choose?
Quest Complete
Identify the compromised route or safeguard among the lantern-house marks
“I conceal the mark and bait whoever uses it "me and alpha will bait them out"”
SUCCESS (Superb Stealth, rolled +0)
Sava Nightshade
Sava Nightshade covers the altered mark and says, "We conceal it, then bait whoever uses the route. The Alpha and I will draw them out."
Therefore, Sava Nightshade folds the map along the original route and smudges the newer charcoal notation into an ordinary stain, leaving no obvious sign of discovery.
Lady Seraphine Valehart
Then the map will lie convincingly. I will keep the camp quiet and watch for anyone who reacts to the bait.
Sava Nightshade carries the altered map toward the alder spring, while the Alpha Wolf slips through the fern-shadow ahead of her. Their paths divide without a broken twig or whispered signal.
The Alpha Wolf
The scent is old beneath the rain, but not forgotten. Someone returns here.
At the spring, Sava Nightshade replaces the concealed mark beneath wet leaves and sets the map fragment where a careless scout might find it. The false trail now points toward the western safeguard.
The forest holds its breath. Then, beyond the alder roots, a single stone clicks against another, followed by the faint rustle of someone approaching the hidden rain-route.
Lady Seraphine Valehart
There. Do not reveal yourselves yet. Let the visitor show us what they came to retrieve.