The nearest sealed alcove cracks before Mazana can choose. Dust bursts outward, and three armed kobolds scramble through a gap behind the stone seal.
They fan across the buried chamber, placing themselves between Mazana and the three untouched alcoves. Their chieftain raises a hooked blade, while a charm marked with the same kind of spark-symbol glows at their throat.
The Kobold Chieftain
Keeper, lower the staff. Those silences are not treasures. They are cages.
The charm flares. Four thin lines of light crawl from it toward the sealed alcoves, then snap taut like invisible chains. The opened alcove groans, and something deep within answers with a single dull knock.
The Kobold Chieftain
The tower fed on the creatures below. We broke one seal to reach you before it wakes again. Do not break another.
One raider darts in low as the chieftain lunges high with the hooked blade. The chamber becomes a crossing of claws, steel, glowing marks, and four waiting silences, with Mazana caught at its center.
✓ Quest Accepted
Drive back the kobolds
“Ask them why they'd be in this ruined of a tower that doesn't even store alcohol”
SUCCESS (Good Willpower, rolled +1)
Mazana Horenteni
Why are you in a ruined tower that does not even store alcohol?
The question cuts through the crossing attack. The chieftain checks the hooked blade, and both raiders ease their weapons without leaving the alcoves unguarded.
The Kobold Chieftain
Because the tower stores something better than drink. It stores stolen voices.
Their spark-marked charm dims to a steady ember. The four lines of light slacken, and dust settles over the ancient floor.
The Kobold Chieftain
Our elders heard the creatures calling from below. The tower caught their words, copied them, and fed on the copies.
The First Kobold Raider
We came for the silence before the tower could make it speak again.
The Second Kobold Raider
And for the one who carries the creatures' mark. We thought you came to break every cage.
The Kobold Chieftain
You ask plainly, Keeper. So we answer plainly. Will you listen before choosing which seal to touch?
“Attempt to make a deal using my Book of Many Cantrips to record any spells they know in exchange for me helping them.”
SUCCESS (Good Willpower, rolled -2)
Mazana Horenteni opens the Book of Many Cantrips and turns it toward the kobolds. Its blank leaves wait beside the four dim spark-marks.
He records the spell-pattern from the chieftain's charm, then copies the raiders' smaller warding signs. Ink crawls into place like tiny roots.
The Kobold Chieftain
You would carry our defenses instead of taking them.
The chieftain presses two claws to the page. Their knowledge settles into the book, complete. In return, the kobolds step away from the nearest sealed alcove.
The First Kobold Raider
Then help us keep the stolen voices buried.
The bargain costs more than ink. A sharp pulse leaps from the page into Mazana Horenteni's staff, scorching its binding cord and ringing through the chamber.
The Second Kobold Raider
That sound will wake whatever listens below. Choose the seal quickly, Keeper.
✓ Quest Accepted
Explore the four sealed alcoves
“Use the first ward to bypass the first seal.”
SUCCESS (Great Simple Magica, rolled +2)
Mazana Horenteni lays the first ward over the nearest spark-mark. The copied signs answer his touch, brightening beneath his fingers.
Therefore, the light binding that alcove folds inward instead of resisting. The stone seal unlocks with a deep, dusty sigh.
The First Kobold Raider
It opened. The ward accepted you.
The nearest alcove parts, revealing a narrow chamber lined with dark bell-metal and pale marks shaped like creature tracks.
The Kobold Chieftain
Do not cross the threshold yet. The tower remembers more clearly from inside.
A voice rises from beyond the opened seal, layered with distant echoes. Its first words are meant for the keeper.
The Buried Voice
Keeper, the first memory is unbound. Will you hear what was hidden here?
“Tell the buried voice what I only seek,Simple Magica. And nothing more.”
SUCCESS (Good Willpower, rolled +1)
Mazana Horenteni
I seek only Simple Magica, and nothing more.
The words enter the bell-metal chamber without force. The pale track-marks gather their glow around them, accepting the plainness of the answer.
The Buried Voice
Then you have not come to possess what was hidden. You have come to learn the smallest door by which it may be carried.
The Kobold Chieftain
That is how the creatures taught us to trust a keeper. Simple things held carefully can outlast grand commands.
The First Kobold Raider
We feared your mark meant another master. It may mean a student instead.
The voice leaves a clear warmth in the nearest alcove, and a single creature-track mark brightens beside the threshold. The other three spark-marked seals remain quiet.
The Buried Voice
Mazana Horenteni, will you listen as a student, and let the kobolds remember with you?
Quest Complete
Drive back the kobolds
Attribute Upgrade: Willpower Good→Great
“Tell the voice that I will,for Kobolds make for bullied creatures,and being sent here is unfair to them.”
SUCCESS (Great Willpower, rolled -2)
Mazana Horenteni
I will listen. Kobolds make for bullied creatures, and being sent here was unfair to you.
Therefore, the warm mark opens like a small eye. Its light crosses the floor to touch each kobold's feet, and the chamber accepts Mazana Horenteni's words.
The Kobold Chieftain
Unfair, yes. The tower called it duty because it feared we would call it a cage.
The First Kobold Raider
We were sent below with blades and orders. No one told us the stolen voices still remembered being stolen.
But the act of listening takes its price. The copied ward fades from one page of the Book of Many Cantrips, leaving the charm's final sign unreadable.
The Buried Voice
Then hear this first: the creatures did not send servants. They sent witnesses. Chieftain, will you remember what the tower made you forget?
“Let the chieftain speak for this is his answer,not mine.”
Mazana Horenteni lowers his hand and gives the chieftain the silence to answer.
The Kobold Chieftain
I remember the first command. Speak the tower’s words, or lose your own. We chose silence, and called that choice survival.
“Clap hands twice to reaffirm the voice that we are nothing but students in this endeavor.”
Mazana Horenteni claps twice. The sound crosses the buried chamber, and the warm mark answers with a gentle pulse.
The Kobold Chieftain
Then remember this with us. We were students too, before the tower taught us to fear every lesson.
“Listen for the voice in my pendant again to see if it's made any progress in the spirit world due to the seals opening slightly”
SUCCESS (Fair Perception, rolled -2)
Mazana Horenteni reaches beneath his clothing and closes his fingers around the pendant. The chamber’s fading pulse thins into a thread of sound.
Through it, he hears a spirit-world hush opening like a distant door. Voices move beyond it, no longer buried under the tower’s command.
The Pendant Voice
The seals remember. One path is clear, and the warning has found a listener.
The pendant answers with a sharp heat. It burns a red crescent into Mazana’s palm, but the message resolves before the connection fades.
The Kobold Chieftain
You heard them, then. Tell us what passed through, before the other marks forget their silence.
Across the chamber, the three unopened spark-marks flicker once. The open alcove keeps its warm glow, waiting on Mazana’s answer.
“Ask the lesser cloud sprite attached to my ring what they think”
SUCCESS (Great Willpower, rolled +1)
The ring’s cloud gathers above the pendant, drawing the chamber’s thin light into a small, silver-edged figure.
Mazana Horenteni
What do you think passed through the pendant?
Lesser Sprite
A warning, not a command. The clear path leads to the mark that remembers how the tower silenced choice.
The sprite turns toward the three unopened alcoves. One dim spark-mark trembles, and a hairline glow runs from it toward the open chamber.
The Kobold Chieftain
Then the warning has chosen its witness. That mark holds the memory of our first refusal.
The lesser cloud sprite compresses into the ring again, leaving its opinion clear: the next seal concerns the moment the kobolds kept their own voices.
The Kobold Chieftain
Will you let us reach it before the tower remembers us for us?
✓ Quest Accepted
Prevent the kobolds from seizing the next sealed alcove