The Splintered Stool swallows them through its rain-darkened rear door. Danial, Mattheas, and Hattori carry the silent tome and brass records concealed among clothing and travel packs.
Rhon the Rose waits in a cramped back room, broad hands resting on a cleared table. Two guild runners watch the corridor while the tavern's noise masks their arrival.
Rhon the Rose
Mattheas, bolt the door. Hattori, set those records down. Danial, keep the book wrapped until I know what sort of trouble followed it here.
Mattheas secures the latch and takes position beside it. Hattori places the brass plate and sealed records on the table, while Danial retains the oilcloth-wrapped tome.
Rhon the Rose
I can arrange a buyer for the necromancer's volume, one discreet enough to pay three hundred crowns without asking foolish questions. But first, tell me why raiders were digging beneath Lantern Row.
Hattori Ishiwa
They were not merely hunting a book. The old waterworks carried bodies, reagents, and messages, and something below used the tome's buried names to summon drowned memories.
Mattheas ben-Igari
The archive may explain who opened those channels and what the raiders expected to find. We left the deeper chamber unexplored, but not undisturbed.
✓ Quest Accepted
Convince Rhon the recovered evidence is valuable
✓ Quest Accepted
Learn who opened the waterworks channels
“Can the records name who opened the waterworks channels?”
YES (Likely, rolled 36)
Hattori unfastens the outer record packet and spreads its brittle leaves beneath the tavern's single lamp. Ink preserved in salt-black wax names the officials who authorized the channels.
Hattori Ishiwa
Yes. The waterworks were opened by order of the former Keeper of Graves, under seal of the Baronial Registry. The authorization was not forged.
A second ledger supplies the missing hand: Keeper Odran Vey, dead these twelve years, directed bodies and reagents beneath Lantern Row toward a chamber marked only as the Quiet Repository.
Rhon the Rose
Dead officials leave living habits behind. If raiders found his route, someone showed them the registry or sold them a copy.
Mattheas ben-Igari
And the archive trail? Those men were seeking the same repository, not merely escaping with loot.
Hattori Ishiwa
The records name a final custodian, too. Odran transferred the repository's key to a guild of ferrymen before his death. Their mark is a split oar.
Rhon the Rose
Then the raiders were following an old chain, and someone in Qa'anuress still knows where it ends. That makes this book worth considerably more than three hundred crowns.
“Is someone in Qa'anuress supplying the raiders?”
YES (Likely, rolled 32)
Hattori turns the ledger toward the lamp. In its margin, a newer hand has copied ferry marks beside Qa'anuress addresses, all altered after Odran's death.
Hattori Ishiwa
Someone in Qa'anuress is supplying the raiders. These entries are not archival references. They are instructions, updated recently.
Rhon bends over the pages without touching them. One address bears the split-oar mark, followed by a symbol of three knotted cords.
Rhon the Rose
A ferrymen's sign, altered by a clerk who knows its value. The supplier is hiding behind an old guild mark and a respectable address.
Mattheas studies the copied names, jaw tightening. Beside the last address, a notation records payments in salt, lamp oil, and foreign silver.
Mattheas ben-Igari
Those are provisions for a sustained operation, not a single theft. The raiders had help before they entered Lantern Row.
Hattori Ishiwa
The address is near the river stairs, in Qa'anuress. Whoever waits there may know the Quiet Repository's true key, and who ordered the search.
“I explain why the records prove their value”
SUCCESS (Good Willpower, rolled +0)
Danial Tienad
The records prove the tome is not an isolated curiosity. They tie its buried names to sanctioned waterworks, the Quiet Repository, and a living supplier aiding the raiders.
Danial indicates the altered ferry marks, the recent entries, and the payment notation. The evidence forms a chain from Odran Vey's lawful seal to the present search beneath Lantern Row.
Rhon the Rose
So the papers buy us three things: a buyer's confidence, a route to the Repository, and proof that someone respectable is feeding raiders.
Hattori Ishiwa
They also prove the waterworks were designed, not improvised. The tome's summons belonged to a system, and this address identifies one hand still maintaining it.
Rhon's thumb presses the ledger margin, leaving a faint grease mark beside the three knotted cords. Hattori quietly seals the packet again, spending fresh wax from her supplies.
Mattheas ben-Igari
Then these records are worth more than coin. They can expose the raiders' patron, if we survive long enough to place them before the Baronial Registry.
Rhon the Rose
Agreed. The book earns its price, but the records earn leverage. I will raise the offer, and send word to Qa'anuress tonight.
Quest Complete
Convince Rhon the recovered evidence is valuable
Quest Complete
Learn who opened the waterworks channels