Kynes steps from the passage into Phandelver’s square with the original records wrapped tight against his chest. Bren keeps close at his shoulder, while the Lead Reeve and town officials gather beneath the hearing dais.
The gold pulse in the bundle throbs once, bright enough to turn heads. Kynes sets the ledgers before the officials and opens them to the marked pages, treating the whole matter like a clerk’s fraud case, not a vault’s curse.
Kynes
These records show embezzlement, missing supplies, and false transfers. Start with the names tied to each tally.
Bren
She points at the columns, calm but sharp. "The pattern is deliberate. Someone feeds the town short, then writes the loss somewhere else."
Lead Reeve
He leans in, expression unreadable. "Then name who profits, Kynes. If this is only bookkeeping, the book will tell us."
As Kynes traces the entries, the gold pulse steadies on a line of red script the others can now see. It crawls past one seal, then another, stopping where the same hand receives cargo twice.
The pattern points toward the magistrate’s office, but also to two receiving clerks and a supply broker tied to the quay. Bren watches Kynes’s finger hover over the next name as the crowd falls silent.
✓ Quest Accepted
Force the officials to accept the redactions as fraud evidence
✓ Quest Accepted
Expose who profits from the magistrate’s bookkeeping scheme
“I ask the town officials where the supply broker can be found.”
SUCCESS (Legendary Persuasion, rolled +3)
Kynes
Where does the supply broker work, and where can I find him?
The officials trade a look, and the Lead Reeve’s guarded calm breaks first. He taps a finger on the redacted line, then on the quay-mark beside it.
Lead Reeve
At the quay warehouses, usually. He keeps a tally room near the fishers’ lane, under a blue lintel with a salt stain.
Town Official 2
You are saying the broker meets the clerks there, not in the market office?
Lead Reeve
I am saying the records point there, and the magistrate’s seal appears beside every delivery note.
Bren’s eyes narrow at that. The gold pulse in the pages settles on the broker’s route, and a second mark becomes clear, a storage key copied onto the same sheet as the magistrate’s signature.
Town Official 1
Then the broker is not just moving goods. He is keeping the chain intact.
At the dais edge, Town Official 3 leans in, pale now, as the nearby crowd rustles. The path to the quay is named, and the ledger has begun pointing beyond it.
Quest Complete
Force the officials to accept the redactions as fraud evidence