The copied pages remain spread across the refuge study, weighted by seals and medicine vials. Doku stands with the masked clerk, while Vale, Tamsin, and the attendant remain at their assigned posts.
The Masked Clerk
Here. These payment marks align with the route annotations, but the transfer changes hands before reaching the palace.
The masked clerk draws a charcoal line between two ledgers, tracing it through warehouse tallies and a ferryman’s notation toward the palace river gates.
The Masked Clerk
The concealed handoff occurred near the eastern quay, beneath the old saint’s bridge. The palace receiving mark was added afterward.
A smaller annotation sits beneath the route cipher, nearly lost beneath a medicine vial. The clerk lifts the vial and smooths the page flat with a gloved finger.
The Masked Clerk
This name appears only once: Pell Vey recorded a witness who was never questioned. I do not know whether the omission was deliberate.
The Masked Clerk
If the witness still lives, they may know who carried the patron’s instructions through the river gates.
✓ Quest Accepted
Find the witness who carried the patron’s instructions through the river gates
“I go with my parasol weapon in hand. Insert the much needed sleeping poison and prepare to go shoot this witness and take them in stealthily.”
SUCCESS (Good Ranged Weapons, rolled +2)
Doku takes the Needle-Firing Rapier Parasol and locked poison tray from the study. She loads a measured sleeping compound into the concealed mechanism, then seals the vial away.
At the eastern quay, beneath the old saint’s bridge, an adult elf woman waits beside stacked river crates. She has copper-brown skin, close-cropped white hair, a lean frame, and a weathered green traveling cloak.
Mist veils the river gates as Doku moves through shadow and mooring ropes. The parasol remains closed in her hand, its plum panels blending with the bridge’s darkness.
The witness turns at a distant chain’s rattle. Doku opens the parasol by a finger’s width and fires one poisoned needle, which strikes cleanly beneath the elf woman’s collar.
The Elf Witness
Who is there?
The sleeping poison takes hold without spectacle. The elf woman slumps against the crates, breathing steadily, and Doku catches her before she reaches the stones.
Doku binds the unconscious witness, checks her pulse, and lifts her into a covered handcart. The route annotation and its living testimony now belong to Nohara custody.
Quest Complete
Find the witness who carried the patron’s instructions through the river gates