Dagg reaches the south-quay counting room beneath a row of shuttered offices. He crouches beneath one window, keeping Sera’s tokens, folded address, and payment dates secure beneath his coat.
Muted lamplight spills through a gap in the shutters. Inside, a well-dressed middle-aged man with silvering hair and a burgundy coat, a broad-shouldered man with a neatly trimmed beard and a high-collared cream shirt stands over a ledger, while a younger, sharp-faced man in dark green gloves, a lean young adult man with cropped black hair, a dark green doublet, and narrow black boots paces beside him.
Orren Vale
The school must be delayed before the first wall rises. Once those records and wages exist, families will ask who has been buying their obedience.
Matthias Quill
You speak as though the contracts are charity. The children from the nearby towns carry messages, collect debts, and repeat instructions without understanding whose bidding they perform.
Orren Vale
They are useful precisely because they do not understand. Feed a family, promise a copper, and a whole village becomes our hand. This school teaches them to read the hand that guides them.
Matthias Quill
Then stop arguing over the account. You authorize the payments, I move them through the quay. If either of us names the ledgers or the next collection, both authorities become evidence.
The ledger closes with a soft slap. Through the shutter gap, Dagg sees one man reach for a sealed list while the other turns toward the room’s inner door, leaving the next move within reach of his hearing.
✓ Quest Accepted
Disrupt the payment operation
“{When the bigger man reaches for the record, an arrow pierces his hand pinning it to the table. Dagg aiming his bow at the other guy speaks} I think you both better just stand where you are. {Dagg slowly climbs in the window} this operation ends today.”
SUCCESS (Legendary Ranged Weapons, rolled +0)
The silver-haired man reaches for the sealed list. Dagg’s bowstring snaps, and an arrow drives through the man’s hand, pinning it to the ledger without striking the record.
Dagg Nabbitt
I think you both better just stand where you are.
The younger man freezes beside the inner door. Dagg keeps the bow trained on him, his long bow’s enchanted arrow quivering in the table while steady control holds the threat exactly where he placed it.
Dagg climbs through the window slowly. His relaxed nature would rather leave this tedious work to someone else, but Steady Under Watch keeps each movement measured and his aim unwavering.
Dagg Nabbitt
This operation ends today.
The younger man raises both gloved hands and steps away from the door. The silver-haired man grimaces around the pinned hand, then stops reaching and leaves the sealed list beneath the arrow.
Quest Complete
Disrupt the payment operation