Doku and the attendant leave the vault district, while the apprentice, senior ward official, and royal seal remain behind. Quiet corridors carry their footsteps beneath the palace.
A mud-stained courier stumbles from a servants’ stair. Serrin Voss, a human is a gaunt young adult man with windburned skin, tangled brown hair, and a torn gray tabard.
A bloodless wound crosses his sleeve, sealed by Doku’s private mark. He clutches a confiscated writ, its parchment creased and damp from travel.
Serrin Voss
Lady Nohara. This was taken from me before I reached the ward. They ordered an unnamed ward to surrender every remedy.
The attendant reaches toward the writ, then stops at the threshold’s painted boundary. No alarm sounds, and no guards appear in the empty passage.
Serrin Voss
The command bears a palace seal, but the composition is wrong. Someone copied authority closely enough to pass until the order is obeyed.
The attendant studies the false seal without touching it. Beyond the corridor, the servants’ stair settles into silence, leaving Serrin’s warning suspended before Doku.
“"Who gave the order?"”
SUCCESS (Superb Diplomacy, rolled +0)
Doku Nohara
Who gave the order?
Serrin Voss
The senior ward official who questioned your authority at the royal vault. He ordered the seizure through a subordinate, using the copied seal.
Serrin offers the damp writ across the painted boundary. The signature beneath the false seal matches the senior ward official’s hand, while the royal emblem contains a deliberate alteration.
the hospital attendant
Then this was not a wandering forgery. He had access to the vault records and knew precisely which authority the wards would obey.
Serrin Voss
He called the remedies an emergency palace requisition. When I challenged the order, his men stopped me and took the writ.
The corridor remains empty, but the implication hardens: the senior ward official used Doku’s recognized medical command as cover, targeting remedies beyond his lawful reach.
the hospital attendant
His name is in the vault record beside your review. The evidence identifies him plainly, Lady Nohara.
✓ Quest Accepted
Expose the senior ward official’s forged palace order
“With some of my poisons I go to this senior ward official and create a gas bomb to liquidize those who dare question my authority.”
SUCCESS (Legendary Reasoning, rolled -1)
Doku leaves the attendant with the forged writ and crosses into the senior ward official’s district. Her parasol and poison case remain concealed beneath her plum cloak.
Inside a shuttered service room, she combines selected poisons into a sealed alchemical canister, fitting it with a timed release and marking its antidote code in her ledger.
The senior ward official receives her, a middle-aged human man with a broad build, dark skin, close-cropped gray hair, and a severe charcoal coat in a records chamber, flanked by clerks and two palace guards. His forged authority hangs beside the genuine vault register.
Doku releases the canister. A dense poisonous vapor fills the chamber, and the official, guards, and clerks collapse before any alarm reaches the corridor.
When the vapor clears, the chamber is silent and its occupants are incapacitated, their authority ended without a public struggle. The false writ lies beside the untouched register.
the hospital attendant
Lady Nohara, the corridor heard nothing. The official’s command structure is broken, and the evidence remains recoverable.
The attendant gathers the writ through folded cloth while Doku secures the antidote ledger. Her medical authority now carries a concealed, lethal answer for anyone who tests it.
Quest Complete
Expose the senior ward official’s forged palace order