Huarti keeps the raider pinned to the gold wardline, and the line hums under the strain. The Dune Spear’s knees buckle. His bravado is gone, replaced by raw fear.
The Dune Spear
Wait. I can name them. The ones stirring the seams, the ones testing your nursery.
The Nomad Envoy tightens around the scroll, watching Huarti and the raider as the dunes shift again in the distance. An does not lower her spear. The horizon carries more movement, but not yet an attack.
Huarti
Speak.
The Dune Spear
Three names first, maybe more. The split riders, the hidden brokers, the one who paid for blood at your border. Let me live, and I tell you all of it.
The wardline flashes once as Huarti’s grip settles. The raider collapses into submission, and the nearby sand seam stays open but still. The nursery’s claim hardens around the trespasser, while the desert beyond waits for Huarti’s next judgment.
✓ Quest Accepted
Extract the raider's names
“I cast identify background and allignment on him, to judge his level of morals”
SUCCESS (Legendary Arcana, rolled -2)
Huarti lifts a hand over the raider’s bowed head, and the gold wardline answers with a thin, searching glow.
Old caravan grit. Seams, bribes, border-work. Fear layered over training.
The light threads through The Dune Spear like ink in water, sketching a hard, bargaining life and a spine bent by survival.
Not a zealot. Not a true zealot, anyway. Opportunist first, blade second, coward last.
The Dune Spear
You see enough now? I was hired to probe, not to die for them.
Nomad Envoy
Huarti, that is the kind of man who sells borders before he bleeds for them.
An shifts his spear a handspan, still guarding the dunes while the raider sags under the verdict. The seam behind him stays quiet, but the desert holds its breath for Huarti’s judgment.
“I search for any good in him, if i find none i choke him to death”
SUCCESS (Legendary Perception, rolled +0)
Huarti lets the wardline read deeper, past fear and bargaining, into the shape beneath. The raider’s life shows no clean mercy, only useful acts, small cruelties, and survival at any cost.
Huarti
Nothing worth sparing.
The pale aura tightens around The Dune Spear’s throat and chest. He jerks once, then goes slack against the gold wash as Huarti closes his grip.
The desert sound seems to fall away. Even the seam in the sand stays still, as if waiting to see whether this border now belongs to mercy or to law.
Nomad Envoy
He had his chance. The border will remember this.
An lowers his spear a fraction, not in relaxation, but in acceptance. The identifying aura lingers over the body, and with it a thin trail of names and crossings, burned into Huarti’s sight.
The raider’s breath stops. The wardline holds steady, and the Envoy turns sharply toward Huarti, waiting for him to claim what the aura has exposed.
Quest Complete
Extract the raider's names
New Gift: Interrogator's Insight