The tide draws back a little, leaving wet stone and silver silt underfoot. Serge stands with the phylactery in hand, while the Fisherwoman eases her weight onto a barnacled rock and looks out over the water.
The Fisherwoman
Long before the flood, the water dragons kept balance here. They did not rule the sea, they guarded it. When the world leaned too hard one way, they pulled it back.
She gestures toward the exposed trail of chained shells, then toward Serge’s armor and the relic. Sea spray beads on the metal and the kelp-wrapped stone alike.
The Fisherwoman
That scarred craft of yours, and this dead thing in your grip, I wonder if old power can tell the difference between them. Maybe it can smell the fire on you, maybe it can hear what you made to survive.
Serge
The shells are laid like a path, not washed random.
The Fisherwoman glances at Serge, her hard look softening at the edges. The wind shifts, warm for a moment, and the sea settles into a low hush around them.
The Fisherwoman
If you want, we can follow the shells after we breathe a while. Or you can tell me how that armor came to be. I have time.
✓ Quest Accepted
Design the new armor
✓ Quest Accepted
Gain the Fisherwoman’s full support
“Can the relic's corruption be channeled to reinforce my armor's structural integrity?”
NO (Unlikely, rolled 57)
Serge holds the relic against his armor, but the cold, dead stone remains inert against the dragon-forged plates. No spark of energy transfers, and the corruption within the phylactery refuses to bind with the metal.
− Scene Quest Removed
Design the new armor
“Show the fisherwoman my armor and ask for her insight on its origin.”
SUCCESS (Good Reasoning, rolled -2)
Serge lowers the relic from his chest and turns his left side toward the fisherwoman, the burn mark catching the pale light. The dragon-forged plates show faint seams and weathered inlays, but no glow wakes beneath the salt.
Serge
He asks her what she thinks the armor is made from, and where it might have come from.
The Fisherwoman
Old work. Not shore-made. Not common shore-made, anyway.
The Fisherwoman
This metal is dragon-derived, I think. The grain sits wrong for iron, and the sea has not eaten it the way it should.
She crouches closer, one hand hovering above the plates without touching, eyes tracing the ridges like she is reading a chart.
The Fisherwoman
If this was forged in the old ways, it was made for someone meant to endure floodwater, brine, and worse. That is not a casual craft.
The Fisherwoman
Show me the rest of the mark on your side, if you will. I want to know whether the fire that found you came from the same hand.
“Show the fisherwoman my armor them and tell her about how I created this own armor by my own technology it starts off by visiting the fire realm where I soon found a lawyer full of fire dragons I found three fire eggs I slowly escape with two the last one broke on my back I fell from a very high place of trying to escape two fire breathing dragons I really died that day and they're so haunts me but I wear this armor as a reflection of my courage and my willingness to stop badness is happening in the world I made sure to take care of that egg the best that I could but soon slowly died on me I have two incubated eggs back where I'm from they're slowly incubating as we speak now and a couple months from now they should be hatching and I can use their power to create an infinite source of energy that I could create an armor suit my plan is to create advanced technology to then take my my people into the Stars but I use the broken egg that had slowly died and I use his last energy to create”
FAILURE (Mediocre Persuasion, rolled -1)
Serge lays the relic aside and opens his left side fully to her gaze. He speaks of fire, of stolen eggs, of a fall that should have killed him, and of armor built from loss and stubborn purpose.
The fisherwoman listens without blinking, but her hand slowly drops from the air to her knee. The more he reveals, the quieter her face becomes.
The Fisherwoman
A broken egg as fuel... and two more kept alive elsewhere. That is not a tale of greed alone.
She studies the seams at his side, then the scar beside his eye, as if measuring whether the same fire made both. Salt wind slips over the exposed shells behind them.
The Fisherwoman
You built this from pain, then carried it as proof you still stand. I believe that much.
The Fisherwoman
If your aim is to stop ruin, I am with you. But if those eggs become another well of harm, I will not pretend otherwise.
Her gaze softens, then sharpens again, less wary than before. She tilts her chin toward his armor seam, inviting him to show more if he chooses, while the chained shells glint in the silt like a waiting path.
Quest Complete
Gain the Fisherwoman’s full support
Attribute Upgrade: Reasoning Good→Great