Inside the wake-house, the hearth glows gold against the winter dark. Brandon Dubois sits among the mentor’s kin, his mentor’s sword leaned carefully beside the table, its hilt catching firelight.
The Mentor's Wife
There. Drink a little. He would have scolded us all for making such a face at his own wake.
She pours ale with steady hands, though her eyes keep drifting to the sword. The room settles around the soft sound of cups and the hush of remembered grief.
The First Companion
He once laughed through a hailstorm in Holden and claimed the weather was testing our courage. None of us believed him, yet we followed anyway.
The Second Companion
And when the road bent toward trouble, he always rode first. That was his way. Someone had to be ready before the rest of us.
The Mentor’s Wife sets a filled cup before Brandon Dubois, then rests one hand briefly on the table near the sword, not touching it, only honoring it.
The Mentor's Wife
You knew him as a squire, and then as a knight. If you have a memory, Brandon Dubois, I would hear it. Stay with us a while longer.
+ Scene Quest Added
Hear the mentor’s memory from his kin
“I share a memory of my mentor”
SUCCESS (Fair Diplomacy, rolled +1)
Brandon Dubois
His story comes back with the smell of rain on saddle leather, and the ache of carrying a shield too large for a boy.
Brandon Dubois lifts his cup, then sets it down untouched. The firelight catches the scar on his right arm as he speaks of a training ride, when his mentor turned back through a storm to haul a frightened miller’s son from a ditch.
The Mentor's Wife
That was him. Always stubborn enough to be kind.
The First Companion
He would grumble the whole way, then give away his own cloak before dawn.
The widow’s mouth trembles once, then steadies. She reaches for the memory like a hand finding a railing in the dark.
The Mentor's Wife
Tell me that part again, Brandon Dubois, the part where he laughed. I want to hear it as he sounded then.
As Brandon Dubois finishes, the companions fall silent. The widow’s grip tightens around her cup, and a small, private warmth passes through the room, as if the dead man has briefly taken his seat among them.
Quest Complete
Hear the mentor’s memory from his kin