Sarthien’s crews raise a temporary surface camp among the erased digging marks, setting canvas shelters and cookfires well away from the sunken junction. Mara, Vaelis, Nera, Corven, Elian, and the elderly elf woman remain with him.
Sarthien Pell
The northern crew stayed near the lime kiln and followed the burrower’s breaks. The eastern crew came here to mark the old watercourse, but neither was ordered to dig.
Sarthien unwraps his broad road map across a flat stone. Inked routes cross the hills toward Daggerford, while fresh charcoal marks show the crews’ last reported positions.
Sarthien Pell
These lines are mine. Those markers appeared after my last inspection, between the junction and the eastern approach. I thought they were survey work until she noticed the spacing.
The Elderly Elf Woman
They are not survey marks. The intervals repeat like a measured signal, with pauses where a surveyor would continue. Someone wanted the pattern carried onward.
She points without touching the map, tracing the spaces between symbols. Nera and Vaelis study the camp’s stacked marker stones, while Corven and Elian watch the surface routes.
Sarthien Pell
Can you help determine whether my crews unknowingly carried this signal elsewhere? If they did, I need to find every marked route before anyone mistakes it for a road.
“I compare the signal against both crews’ routes, as I ask Sarthien to recall every crew contact”
SUCCESS (Legendary Reasoning, rolled +1)
Mara
Compare the signal against both crews’ routes. Sarthien, recall every contact your crews had, and where each exchange occurred.
Mara lays her weathered trail map beside Sarthien’s chart, then aligns the repeated intervals with the lime kiln, watchtower, ravine, and eastern watercourse.
The pattern matches both crews’ routes. Its pauses mark every place where workers exchanged tools, reports, or directions, revealing the signal traveled through ordinary contact rather than through the buried road.
Sarthien Pell
The northern crew spoke with Corven at the burial overlook, then with a charcoal burner near the kiln. They met our eastern surveyor at the ruined watchtower.
Sarthien Pell
The eastern crew contacted the village well-keeper, traded notes with a shepherd at the dry ravine, and met our marker-setters here. No one was ordered to carry a signal.
The Elderly Elf Woman
The spacing confirms it. The marks followed those contacts, each exchange extending the pattern. Whoever began this expected people to carry it without knowing its purpose.
Mara’s comparison separates the crews’ genuine survey work from the hidden signal’s route. Every known contact is now accounted for, and the pattern’s spread is mapped.
“I establish a clear surface plan with Sarthien, then I ask Nera to trace the signal's source”
SUCCESS (Legendary Persuasion, rolled +1)
Mara sets one finger on the surface routes, then marks the buried junction with a firm circle. The camp’s attention settles on her plan.
Mara
We keep every crew above ground, erase the hidden signal from active routes, and seek willing dwarven or kobold guidance before examining any crossing.
Sarthien Pell
Agreed. I will halt all underground work, recall both crews to the surface, and record the signal as a warning rather than a road.
Sarthien redraws the camp’s orders in charcoal. The marker-setters begin separating survey stones from the repeated signal, while the eastern approach remains untouched.
Mara
Nera, trace the signal’s source. Follow its pattern, not its invitation, and tell us who began carrying it.
Nera
I will trace only the witnessed structure. If it has a source, I will distinguish the first mark from every later hand that repeated it.
Nera kneels beside the stacked stones and extends her silver-blue lights along the measured intervals. The pattern runs backward through the contacts, past the kiln and watchtower, to a first mark hidden beneath the eastern watercourse map.
Nera
The source is not either crew. Someone placed the first signal at the old watercourse, then designed its pauses so ordinary exchanges would carry it outward.
✓ Quest Accepted
Identify who placed the first signal
“I give nera a look that says there's no more ledgers”
SUCCESS (Legendary Persuasion, rolled +0)
Mara gives Nera a level look, then glances from the traced signal to the blank space beyond it. The message needs no words: there are no more ledgers to find.
Nera
Understood. There is no hidden ledger waiting behind this pattern, and I will not invent one.
Nera lowers the silver-blue lights until they hover over only the first mark beneath the watercourse map. The signal ends there, without a second record or concealed continuation.
Nera
The first mark is the source of the signal itself. I find no ledger, author’s register, or written chain beyond it.
Sarthien Pell
Then my crews carried a pattern whose beginning was deliberately made to look like ordinary survey work. I will record that limit plainly.
The elderly elf woman studies the extinguishing lights, while Vaelis separates the signal’s first casting from every later repetition. The camp keeps its silence around the untouched junction.
Nera
The evidence ends at the watercourse. Anything beyond that would be speculation, not another ledger.
“I leave the camp and follow the first mark”
SUCCESS (Legendary Perception, rolled -2)
Mara leaves the temporary camp without disturbing its orders, following Nera’s silver-blue lights toward the eastern watercourse while the others remain among the surface markers.
The route descends through cut brush and broken stone, past chalk marks now separated from the hidden signal. The old watercourse lies dry beneath a leaning shelf.
Mara
The first mark is beneath the watercourse map, not on the buried crossing itself.
Mara reaches the source and studies it without touching. The first mark is a compact violet-gray weave pressed into the map’s underside, designed to be carried by later hands.
Her perception follows its structure cleanly: the signal began here as a deliberate test of transmission through ordinary contacts, not as a road command or summons.
The examination costs the remaining afternoon. Fading light leaves the mark’s maker and intended recipient unresolved, though the source and its purpose are certain.
Behind Mara, the camp remains quiet and above ground. Ahead, the watercourse continues east beneath the shelf, while the first mark rests exposed to her knowledge but untouched.
“I look into the weave and sence who placed the mark and trace the rout to them”
SUCCESS (Legendary Arcana, rolled +0)
Mara bends over the exposed weave without touching it. Her arcane sight follows each violet-gray strand backward through the ordinary contacts that carried its pattern.
The route resolves beneath the eastern watercourse, then rises through concealed intervals toward a lone watcher’s hollow above the ravine. The mark remembers the caster clearly.
A distinct signature emerges: not Veyra Ashhand, not the elderly elf, and not any member of Sarthien’s crews. The caster is a young human mapwright, Sarthien Pell, whose hand first impressed the test into the map.
The weave also reveals its path to him: Sarthien placed the source mark, then allowed contact points to carry its measured pauses outward. No hidden author stands beyond his working.
The Elderly Elf Woman
You found the beginning and the hand behind it. The signal was his experiment, not an older command beneath the crossing.
The route folds closed in Mara’s perception, leaving the source exposed as witnessed fact. The watercourse remains undisturbed, and no buried path has been opened.
By dusk, Mara knows who placed the mark, how it traveled, and where its trail ends. The account is ready to carry back to Sarthien without touching the crossing.
Have Sarthien acknowledge the first signal’s source
Quest Complete
Identify who placed the first signal
New Gift: Unerring Fate Tracing