The office door stands shut against the howl outside. Marin studies the informant’s shaking face, then the blood-stained notes on her desk. Thomas holds the doorway, listening to boots fade in the hall.
The Informant
I never saw the boss’s face. Just the orders, passed through dead drops and runners. But I know where the next message goes.
He points with a trembling hand at the salt works packet. On the torn wrap, a fresh mark matches the warning symbols from the buried facility.
Tracy
The mark ties the traitor to the machine.
Marin Tohinta
Say it plain. Where does it go?
The Informant
A ledger room inside the keep, under admin access. If the next drop lands, it names the patrol routes too.
Thomas looks from the packet to Marin, then to Tracy, ready to move. The whole conspiracy suddenly has a door, a schedule, and a path into the heart of Barony Chita.
✓ Quest Accepted
Reach the ledger room inside the keep
“I reach into the courier's mind to grab any more information there is on the drop location as I tell Thomas that we need to move.”
SUCCESS (Legendary Willpower, rolled +2)
Tracy
The drop point is in the keep, and the route to it is still in his head.
Tracy leans into the informant’s ragged focus and takes the rest before fear can swallow it. The hidden path resolves in flashes, a service stair, a cramped archive passage, then a ledger room off admin with a locked inner cabinet.
The Informant
Second floor, east admin corridor. Gray door, no sign. The runner leaves it with the watch change.
He gulps, then the relief in him steadies into something almost useful, like he has finally said the dangerous part out loud.
Tracy
Thomas, we move now.
Thomas Olsen
Then I’m in front. If that ledger room is real, we take it before they clear it.
Marin straightens over the desk, her grief hardening into command as her hand closes on the notes. Outside, boots gather again somewhere in the hall, and the windowless office feels one breath from motion.
“I head for the east admin corridor”
SUCCESS (Good Agility, rolled -2)
Tracy slips out first, keeping her steps light as the office noise fades behind her. The east admin corridor opens ahead, gray door waiting in the watch change gap, just as the informant said.
Her boot grazes the threshold trim, and a dry click ticks through the hall. Not loud, but enough to make her flinch and keep moving.
Thomas Olsen
I heard that. Keep going.
Thomas falls in behind her, one hand already angled toward the corridor corner, while Marin stays back with the papers, jaw tight and eyes hard.
Marin Tohinta
If anyone is posted beyond that door, you do not give them time.
The gray door stands where the route promised, unmarked and half-shadowed, with a thin strip of lamp glow leaking under it from somewhere inside.
Tracy reaches the corridor with the path in hand, but the scrape of her boot has already carried. From deeper in the admin wing, a chair shifts, and someone inside goes still.