The chamber is marked for containment, its sealed focus ringed with silver pins and wardwright chalk. The gallery commander remains above with the injured knight, candidates, and copper-skinned wardwright under guard.
The sandy-haired wardwright leads Arzerelus through the palace's service passages to Warden Vale's royal forge. He carries the copied inscription and silver tracing carefully wrapped in ward-cloth.
the sandy-haired wardwright
Vale has worked with enchanted steel longer than any living wardwright. If this pattern has a weakness, he will recognize its shape.
Heat and hammer-song meet them beneath the forge vault. Warden Vale, a large, heavyset beastkin man with dark tawny fur and a blunt muzzle, studies the tracing beside unfinished blades and warded fittings.
Warden Vale
This is no simple failure circuit. The cuts are meant to enter enchanted metal without marking the surface.
Vale sets a clawed finger beside the copied lines, comparing them with a half-forged sword whose inner ward glows faintly through the steel. His expression hardens.
Warden Vale
I have seen this method used to weaken armor, blades, and siege wards from within. If it spreads beyond the arena, our readiness against the goblins may already be compromised.
✓ Quest Accepted
Determine whether the kingdom's enchanted arms are compromised
✓ Quest Accepted
Assess whether hidden weaknesses have spread beyond the arena
“I compare the tracing against the forge's warded fittings for matching weaknesses.”
SUCCESS (Mediocre Reasoning, rolled +0)
Arzerelus lays the ward-cloth beside Warden Vale's unfinished sword and studies the tracing against the forge's warded fittings. Hammerlight glints across nested runes.
She follows each inner channel by sight, then shifts the tracing over breastplates, blade tangs, and shield bosses. The same hidden weakness appears wherever one ward crosses another.
Arzerelus
The cuts do not break the ward. They redirect its strength into the metal's adjoining layers.
When Arzerelus presses the tracing flat against a silver-threaded fitting, the copied lines kindle. A thin spark leaps across her fingertips, numbing two fingers and scorching the edge of the ward-cloth.
Warden Vale
There. You found the join. Every fitting with a layered ward can be turned against its bearer if the cut reaches that crossing.
Warden Vale draws several finished pieces from a locked rack and tests them against the tracing. Three breastplates and a ceremonial blade answer with the same faint inner pulse.
the sandy-haired wardwright
Then the arena was a proving ground. The pattern can compromise our armories, but now we know which fittings to isolate before the weakness spreads.
Have Vale agree to isolate the compromised fittings
Quest Complete
Determine whether the kingdom's enchanted arms are compromised
Quest Complete
Assess whether hidden weaknesses have spread beyond the arena