Doku leaves the dispensary, while the hospital attendant remains with the apprentices and waiting patients. She returns alone to the sealed laboratory, parasol at her side.
The palace examiner has arranged the required inventory beside the salt ring. Her two young adult guards remain posted at the door, hands near their sheathed swords.
the palace examiner
The inventory is complete and witnessed. Before the court formalizes your authority, determine whether this breach is magical, human, or medical.
A silver seal on the inventory bears a hairline fracture that was absent earlier. The black vessel stays wrapped, its iron clasps unmoved, while gray residue dulls the salt.
the palace examiner
No one entered after your containment was accepted. The guards can testify to that. I require a cause, not another precaution.
One guard kneels to inspect the cracked seal without touching it. The other watches the laboratory threshold, and the examiner leaves the evidence arranged for Doku’s examination.
the palace examiner
If the breach is magical, name its channel. If human, identify the access. If medical, explain how the corruption crossed a sealed boundary.
✓ Quest Accepted
Determine what caused the laboratory breach
“I simply examine what caused the breach in the first place.”
SUCCESS (Superb Reasoning, rolled +0)
Doku kneels beside the salt ring and studies the dull residue, the fractured silver seal, and every fold of cloth without disturbing the iron clasps.
Doku Nohara
The corruption traveled through treated material, not through the vessel’s lock.
She angles the parasol’s needle beneath the inventory seal and lifts a trace of gray dust. It clings to the silver, then creeps toward the wax fracture.
The dust nicks through her glove at one fingertip. Numbness spreads across the skin, and she spends a prepared antidote before the sensation reaches her hand.
the palace examiner
You were exposed. Is the cause established, or has the residue merely confirmed its danger?
Doku identifies the breach: contaminated medical dust rode on the inventory’s silver seal, then crossed the boundary by alchemical affinity, cracking the wax from within.
the palace examiner
Then it is medical, with a handled object as its channel. The inventory itself carried the breach into your containment.
Quest Complete
Determine what caused the laboratory breach