Beyond the butcher’s hamlet, the eastern road dips into a caravan camp. Cookfires glow between covered wagons, and pack animals stand tethered beneath the evening sky.
The calm driver from the earlier roadside stop looks up as Kynes approaches. Recognition passes across their face, followed by a small, deliberate nod.
The Calm Driver
You noticed them at the stall. Good. The warning was never only about loose tongues.
They keep their voice low while several travelers pretend to tend cooking pots, check harnesses, or watch the road. Their attention keeps returning to Kynes, waiting for a reaction.
The Calm Driver
Those shoppers were measuring the road’s pattern. Who stops, who watches, who leaves quickly, and who looks only after being told. They wanted to know whether you understood the test.
The Calm Driver
I told you plainly because plain warnings are harder to twist. If you mean to reach the Crypt, decide carefully who here is merely traveling, and who is waiting for your answer.
✓ Quest Accepted
Determine which caravan traveler is waiting for Kynes's answer
✓ Quest Accepted
Identify who is reporting the party's movements
“" me and my kin are going to Daggerford way up north east of here. We're traveling the trade roads.," I share”
SUCCESS (Legendary Persuasion, rolled +1)
Kynes
My kin and I are bound for Daggerford, northeast along the trade roads. We are traveling openly.
The camp absorbs the statement. A cook pauses over the pot, a harness buckle goes still, and the nearest travelers exchange quick glances before resuming their chores.
The Calm Driver
A clean answer. It gives honest travelers a destination, and watchers a direction.
The driver lifts two fingers toward the road. Farther east, a teamster quietly folds a scrap of marked cloth beneath a ledger instead of packing it away.
Slaan
That one was listening before Kynes spoke. The journal's weave would make a poor disguise for a planted report.
The Calm Driver
There. The report will leave before your fires cool. I cannot name the hand receiving it, but the camp has shown you who carries word onward.
The marked scrap disappears into the teamster's coat. The eastern road remains open, but the camp now offers a choice: confront the courier, or let the message travel and follow its consequences.
✓ Quest Accepted
Secure the marked report
Quest Complete
Identify who is reporting the party's movements