Nathan The Great reaches the imperial magistrate’s estate as iron gates slam shut behind a trapped crowd of witnesses.
On the marble steps, ledgers and sworn testimony lie scattered beneath the magistrate’s boots. Guards seize a battered survivor and drag them toward the execution block.
The Imperial Magistrate
Forged rubbish. Silence every witness before this lie spreads.
The crowd recoils. The Gate Captain raises one hand, and crossbows angle toward the witnesses while two guards haul the survivor past Nathan The Great.
The Wounded Survivor
The fallen school kept a second ledger. It is hidden beneath the magistrate’s seal.
The magistrate’s composure cracks. He points sharply toward Nathan The Great, and the nearest guards shift formation to block the path.
The Imperial Magistrate
You there. Step aside, or become part of the evidence.
The Gate Captain advances, one hand on his saber, while the survivor is forced to their knees beside the execution block.
✓ Quest Accepted
Save the wounded survivor
✓ Quest Accepted
Retrieve the second ledger
Director's note
Killing multiple combatants
“I move swiftly on the way to stand to defend the survivor. I take one of the higher ranking guards as captive to exchange for the second ledger”
FAILURE (Fair Agility, rolled +0)
Nathan The Great bursts through the tightening formation, blade flashing low as he drives toward the Gate Captain and the kneeling survivor.
The Captain pivots sooner than expected. His saber catches the red blade and turns Nathan The Great's momentum aside, sending him skidding across the marble instead of taking the guard captive.
The Gate Captain
Hold the line! The survivor stays alive while he is inside our reach.
The failed rush still splits the formation. Nathan The Great lands between the execution block and the bound survivor, forcing the executioner back and stopping the immediate stroke.
In the collision, the Captain's coat tears open. A small iron key marked with the magistrate's seal swings from his belt, and its teeth match the seal-shaped clasp on the estate archive door.
The Wounded Survivor
That key opens the ledger vault. Take it, and do not let him drag me away again.
The guards close around the Captain and survivor, but the execution block is now screened by Nathan The Great's position. The sealed archive door remains visible beyond the magistrate's steps, while the Captain reaches for the swinging key.
Quest Complete
Save the wounded survivor
“I continue to fight my way through to the archive”
SUCCESS (Good Hand-to-Hand Combat, rolled -1)
Nathan The Great surges through the broken formation, driving one guard aside with a shoulder strike and folding another's polearm arm away from the survivor.
Therefore the path opens. Nathan The Great crosses the marble toward the archive steps, but a saber edge scores his armored forearm, leaving a sharp sting beneath the plate.
The Gate Captain
Stop him! The archive cannot be breached!
The captain lunges after him. Nathan The Great turns, traps the captain's wrist, and drives him into the guards' own line. The sealed iron key tears free and lands in Nathan The Great's hand.
Therefore Nathan The Great reaches the archive door with the key secured, while the guards stumble behind him and the survivor remains screened from the execution block.
The Imperial Magistrate
You have the key, mercenary. Use it, and decide whether the truth is worth the blood it will summon.
+ New Item Acquired
sealed iron key
“Bringing the survivor with me I unlock the archive, enter and then lock it behind me. Finding what I've looking for in the room. I also find some mild explosives in there and place them against a damaged wall before lighting them with a torch to blow the wall.”
SUCCESS (Good Reasoning, rolled +2)
Nathan The Great hooks an arm around The Wounded Survivor and pulls them through the archive threshold. The sealed iron key turns, and the heavy door locks behind them.
The Wounded Survivor
The lower shelves. The magistrate hid the true records beneath the tax rolls.
Therefore Nathan The Great searches the lower shelves and finds a lacquered ledger wrapped in oilcloth, its cover stamped with the magistrate's seal.
The second ledger is in Nathan The Great's possession. Beside it, a cabinet holds mild blasting charges, a fuse, and a brass torch.
The Wounded Survivor
That wall is already damaged. Beyond it lies the old records passage.
Nathan The Great sets the charges against the cracked wall, shields the survivor behind a stone pillar, and lights the fuse. The blast breaks the masonry open without collapsing the archive.
Dust rolls through the chamber. A narrow passage stands exposed, while voices and pounding fists reach the locked archive door from outside.
Quest Complete
Retrieve the second ledger
Attribute Upgrade: Agility Fair→Good
+ New Item Acquired
second ledger
+ New Item Acquired
brass torch
Nathan The Great leaves Imperial magistrate’s estate archive behind and arrives at the tree line at the edge of a field.
“Making my way through the hole in the wall, I enter an open hallway. The combatants who still remain alive are still in the other room before the chamber where I found the ledger. They are in disarray and scrambling with no quick way to make it to the hallway I now find myself in. I travel to a stairwell eventually finding a kitchen with a window facing a courtyard. With the ledger and survivor we climb out of the first story window and make for the tree line at the edge of a field”
SUCCESS (Good Agility, rolled +3)
At the tree line, the estate lies behind you across the open field. Wind combs the grass, carrying the distant toll of an alarm bell.
Nathan The Great reaches the shelter of the trees with the oilcloth-wrapped ledger secure against his armor. The wounded survivor stumbles beside him, alive and beyond the magistrate's immediate reach.
The Wounded Survivor
The seal is not merely proof. It names every official who paid the magistrate.
The survivor lowers themself against a broad trunk. Beyond the field, figures gather at the estate gate, but none cross into the open.
The Wounded Survivor
There is a way to make the ledger speak in public. The old shrine road leads to the provincial court.
A strip of red cloth is tied high on a branch ahead, fresh against the green. Beneath it, two sets of boot prints leave the shrine road and vanish into the trees.
The Wounded Survivor
Those marks were not there when I came to the estate. Someone else knows we escaped.
“We head to the shrine, I leave the wounded survivor a safe distance from it while I recon the shrink and figure out how many adversaries lie in wait”
FAILURE (Good Perception, rolled -1)
Nathan The Great guides the wounded survivor away from the marked trail, settling them in a fern-hidden hollow beneath the trees, well beyond the field's view.
The Wounded Survivor
I can stay here. Do not follow the red cloth.
Nathan The Great advances alone toward the shrine road, keeping low among the trunks. The forest floor betrays his approach with a sharp crack of deadwood.
He reaches a rise overlooking the shrine. Branches and dusk break the sightlines. Shapes shift near the road, but their number and positions refuse a reliable count.
The failed reconnaissance reveals one useful breach instead: an old drainage channel runs from the hollow beneath the shrine wall, concealed by collapsed stones.
The Wounded Survivor
If the shrine is watched, that channel may still reach the court road.
From the rise, a covered lantern suddenly opens beside the shrine gate. Its beam sweeps toward the channel, while the hidden figures turn in different directions.
✓ Quest Accepted
Continue to the shrine and expose the ledger’s contents
“The survivor calls out to me and shows me that he took some explosive components from where we had initially found them, he throws me a blasting cap. I tell the survivor that when he hears a blasting cap go of set the charges outside in the forest to set up a diversion.”
SUCCESS (Fair Willpower, rolled +0)
The Wounded Survivor
Nathan The Great. I took these from the charges we found earlier.
From the fern-hidden hollow, the survivor produces a wrapped bundle of blasting components and throws a single blasting cap up the slope.
Nathan The Great catches the cap against his armored palm. The sharp click carries farther than either of them wants.
Nathan The Great
When you hear this blasting cap go off, set the charges outside in the forest. Make the blast your diversion.
The Wounded Survivor
I understand. The charges will draw them away from the shrine road.
The survivor closes their hand around the remaining components. Across the road, the lantern beam halts, then pivots toward the hollow as a watcher calls for another lantern.
+ New Item Acquired
blasting cap
“I continue into the drainage system and find a way in to the shrine where a spiritual leader lives who holds more sway politically than the leaders in the structure I had just escaped from”
SUCCESS (Good Perception, rolled -1)
The redirected lanterns search the hollow, but Nathan The Great slips down the wooded rise and reaches the drainage channel before their beams find him.
At the channel mouth, he wedges aside a curtain of roots and lowers himself into the cold stone conduit, keeping the ledger tight beneath his armor.
The Wounded Survivor
The shrine wall is above you. Follow the carved lotus marks. They lead to the keeper's inner court.
Nathan The Great follows the faint carvings through knee-deep runoff. His armor grinds against the narrow stone, scraping a fresh line across his wounded forearm and leaving a dark smear on the wall.
The passage rises beneath a loose stone grate. Nathan The Great lifts it and emerges inside the shrine, behind the incense hall, with the ledger still secured and the drainage route open behind him.
Shrine Keeper
You entered beneath the seal, carrying the magistrate's hidden account. Set it on the altar, and tell me whether the survivor still lives.
“The survivor does still live. He is outside. I have the ledger which shows the misdeeds of the leader”
FAILURE (Fair Willpower, rolled -4)
Nathan The Great
The survivor still lives outside. I have the ledger. It records the leader's misdeeds.
The words leave Nathan The Great too quietly, swallowed by incense smoke and dripping stone.
As he draws the ledger from beneath his armor, runoff slips from its cover across the opened pages.
Ink blooms over several names, joining officials and crimes into blurred black wounds. The evidence remains, but its clearest entries are no longer readable.
Shrine Keeper
You speak of a leader, yet bring me a damaged book and no living witness. Which entry proves the magistrate's guilt?
The Keeper steps between Nathan The Great and the altar, palm hovering over the ledger without touching it. The shrine's quiet now depends on his answer.
“The survivor does still live. He is outside. I have the ledger which shows the misdeeds of the leader”
FAILURE (Fair Willpower, rolled +0)
The Keeper studies the waterlogged pages, then turns the ledger sideways in the incense light.
Shrine Keeper
The names are obscured, but the columns remain. Offices, payments, dates. This was made to be verified, not merely read.
A strip of dry vellum clings beneath the ledger's inner binding. Its edge bears the same seal as the shrine's altar, untouched by the runoff.
Shrine Keeper
A witness outside, a damaged record inside, and a concealed index beneath the binding. The magistrate expected the book to be found.
Shrine Keeper
Do not open it here. If the seal matches, the hidden index may identify every blurred entry. But once broken, the shrine cannot deny what it has seen.
The Keeper steps aside from the altar, revealing a stone basin filled with clear oil and a narrow bronze blade. The ledger remains in Nathan The Great's reach, while the choice of proof now rests between preservation and disclosure.
“I open the concealed index, my mission is to expose the treasonous leader”
SUCCESS (Good Reasoning, rolled +2)
Nathan The Great eases the dry vellum free, keeping the damp ledger supported beneath it.
The concealed strip unfolds into a narrow index. Its ink, protected from the runoff, names the Imperial Magistrate beside coded payments and matching dates.
Shrine Keeper
There. The seal, the office, and the payments align. The blurred columns are no longer enough to hide him.
The Keeper presses two fingers to the first entry, then traces the repeated mark beside several officials. The ledger's contents now expose a treasonous network, not merely one corrupt hand.
Shrine Keeper
This is proof the provincial court can test. But the index also names those who carried orders. If I copy it, the shrine becomes its witness.
From beyond the incense hall, a muffled impact shudders through the shrine wall. Dust slips from the carved lintel. The Keeper looks toward the sound, then back to the opened index.
Shrine Keeper
The magistrate's searchers have reached the outer court. Do we preserve the original here, or carry the exposed proof to the provincial road now?
Carry the exposed proof to the provincial court
Quest Complete
Continue to the shrine and expose the ledger’s contents
Attribute Upgrade: Willpower Fair→Good
+ New Item Acquired
concealed vellum index