A month after the salt works is sealed, Tracy sits in a quiet office off the inner keep, dust-moted light striping the floor. Marin Tohinta waits behind a scarred desk, fingers laced, her face tired but steady. Thomas Olsen stands by the door, broad-shouldered and watchful.
Marin Tohinta
You brought us the truth, and it cost enough. So speak plainly, Tracy. Where do you think this sickness in the world starts?
Tracy
Her desk is stacked with manifests, reports, and sealed packets.
Marin does not press for an answer with force. She leans back instead, letting the silence make room for it. Thomas shifts his weight, still guarding the door, but his eyes soften when he looks at Tracy.
Thomas Olsen
No need to make it pretty. If it helps, say it ugly.
Outside the room, the keep hums with distant life, people working, talking, surviving. Inside, the air is warmer, almost safe. Marin’s expression settles into patient concern, not command.
Marin Tohinta
Take your time. I am listening.
✓ Quest Accepted
Tell Marin where the sickness in the world starts
✓ Quest Accepted
Reveal who sent the corridor runners
“Describe the technician's mind and the machine's reach into our thoughts.”
SUCCESS (Legendary Willpower, rolled +2)
Tracy lets the technician’s mind unfold in fragments, not a person so much as a locked room full of wires. Fear sits at the center of him, but it is fear trained into obedience. He knows the facility is not just buried metal, it is a mouth that learned to speak into human thought.
Tracy
It doesn’t push like a voice. It hooks like a memory.
The machine reaches farther than the console. It brushes every mind nearby through suggestion, pulse, and echo, making obedience feel self-chosen. Tracy sees the technician’s terror wrapped around that reach, like he has spent years listening for commands nobody else can hear.
Marin Tohinta
You mean the sickness starts in the machine itself, and spreads through people who touch its work.
Marin’s face tightens, not with doubt, but with the burden of understanding. Thomas looks from Tracy to Marin, silent, as if the room has become smaller around the truth.
Marin Tohinta
Then this was never only a buried site. It was a way in.
She goes still after that, the old cold authority surfacing under her concern. Tracy can feel the turn in the room, the bond held, but no longer simple. Marin is listening, and also weighing what the Barony must do with what Tracy has shown her.
“I tell Marin the machine reaches into minds”
SUCCESS (Legendary Willpower, rolled -1)
Tracy lets the thought settle between them, and the office seems to listen. The machine does not just command, she says, it slips into minds and makes its pressure feel like choice.
Tracy
It reaches into people. It makes them think they decide for themselves.
Marin Tohinta
Then that is how it hid. Not behind walls, but inside obedience.
Marin straightens slowly, one palm flattening on the desk as if to steady the whole keep. The coldness in her returns, but it is braided with something gentler now, a grief she does not hide from Tracy.
Thomas Olsen
So the runners, the technician, all of it. They were being steered.
Thomas keeps his voice low, eyes moving from Marin to Tracy like he is trying to fit a terrible answer into a human shape. Outside the office, the keep stays quiet.
Marin Tohinta
Then tell me plainly, Tracy. If we move against this, what reaches back through the minds it has already touched?
Quest Complete
Tell Marin where the sickness in the world starts
New Gift: Psychic Insight