The quay breathes fog and salt around the crane’s iron frame. Kynes follows the vibrating token to a narrow counting shed where dock ledgers hang under a swinging lamp, and the clank answers from inside.
Bren
That sound is not just cargo work. It is keyed to your mark.
Kynes pushes the shed door open. Stacks of tally tags spill across the floor, and every tag bears the same red seam of House Xar script beneath a clerk’s neat ink.
Kynes
This is a record room, not a shrine.
Then the crane groans above the dock, and the red script on the tags lifts like wet thread. It snakes toward Kynes’s hand, answering the token with hungry motion.
Sable
The line is not administrative. It is reaching.
Kynes’s seal flares through his palm, and the shed walls answer with a hidden pulse. Somewhere out on the quay, the broker is no longer just a name in a ledger. He is a node in the Xar lattice, and the hunt turns open.
✓ Quest Accepted
Corner the supply broker at the quay
“Kynes recognizes the Xar script, reaching threads, seal flare, hidden pulse, and idea that the broker is a lattice node as another trauma-induced misinterpretation. House Xar remains permanently destroyed and has no surviving agents, nodes, mechanisms, magic, or influence. Kynes grounds himself, sees the counting shed as it actually is, and continues the mundane investigation to physically locate and corner the corrupt supply broker.”
SUCCESS (Legendary Willpower, rolled +2)
Kynes steadies his breathing and lets the false pattern fall away. The shed is only wood, salt, ink, and bad bookkeeping, and the red seams on the tags are just ink over a hidden trail.
Kynes
Paperwork. Follow the paper, find the man.
He lowers the token to the ledger table. Its vibration settles on one column, the one marked with quay weights and boat counts, where a broker’s initials repeat beside the magistrate’s seal.
Bren
There. The entries point to the eastern berth, under the crane house.
Sable crouches by the scattered tags and flips one over. A broker’s token is stamped into the wax smear, matching the cache Kynes pulled from the wall.
Sable
He has been moving goods through this shed, then hiding the chain in plain sight.
Bren opens the door wider and points toward the fogged quay. A dockhand in a tar-black coat stands near the crane house, suddenly stiff, one hand half-hidden under his cloak as he looks toward the shed.
Kynes has the line now. The broker is visible, the path is named, and the quay holds its breath around the next move.
“I grip the broker telekineticlly and drag him roughly to me " hello lad, where are you going."”
SUCCESS (Superb Strength, rolled -1)
Kynes lifts a hand, and the dockhand jerks free of the quay stones, boots scraping wet planks as invisible force hauls him toward the shed.
The man slams against the doorway frame, cloak twisting open, and the broker’s token flashes at his belt like a guilty answer.
Kynes
Hello, lad. Where are you going?
Dockhand
I, I only haul crates. Let me go.
Bren steps in behind him, blocking the quay with one hard shoulder, while Sable straightens from the tags and studies the token now dangling in plain sight.
Sable
He is stamped into the chain. Not just a carrier.
Dockhand
No, no, not here. Not with the ledger open.
Beyond the shed, a crane hook swings once in the fog. Men shout from the berth, and the dockhand’s face drains as he realizes the quay is watching.
Quest Complete
Corner the supply broker at the quay
New Gift: Quay-Broker's Arcane Insight