Session 9 covered 29 and 30 Coldrise, 1714 PSF. Temerity tried to learn where Eliza Kemble had been going, the party walked back to Argentum, and Luma took a job surveying sealed vaults under the city and hired the others as her security. The session ended as the door of Vault 13 opened.
Synopsis
Eliza
Temerity got up before the sun on 29 Coldrise to catch Eliza Kemble before she slipped away for the day.1 It was below freezing, with a heavy fog.2 Eliza’s room is on the second floor of the Kemble farmhouse, with a window over the backyard.3 Temerity hid by a tree out back and watched Henry Kemble come out to chop wood without noticing her.4 After a quarter of an hour she threw a pebble at the window.5 Eliza looked out, rolled her eyes so that Temerity could see it through the fog, and a minute later came out the back door, dressed for the day with a satchel over her shoulder. “Did you forget whose room was whose?”6
Asked whether everything was all right, Eliza looked briefly panicked, then relaxed and said she was fine.7 “You are not my mom, Tem.” She said she spent her time with friends, and asked what else there was to do in a dead little town.8 Temerity asked her at least to make it to dinner, since people were worried. Eliza said nobody had talked about being worried about her.9 She asked whether Temerity had people following her around at her age, and said Temerity had done as she liked and spent as much time at the farm as at the church.10 When Temerity’s thoughts went to the Sorrowsworn, Eliza cut her off. She said it had been charming, the way everyone in town knew Temerity was going to do greater things:11
Everyone knew it. Juniper knew it. Pa knew it. Father Emberthumb knew it. And it was kind of cool, you know, but I think something really awful happened to you, Temerity. I think when you left, you realized it too. And it’s just not charming anymore. I don’t need saving. You do not have to be my hero. I’m not in trouble.
Temerity could tell that Eliza was not lying about being in no danger, and that whatever she was doing, she did not think it dangerous. She was being vague on purpose, and the last part had been meant to get under Temerity’s skin.12
Temerity told her she was entitled to her own life, but that her family worried, the way they had over Trever when he acted up, and that she still had obligations. Eliza narrowed her eyes at “obligations”.13 Then she apologized for what she had said and for the night before. She had needed space, she said. She liked spending time with her friends, and she did not want to spend her life working on a farm.14 Temerity suggested other ways to help, or paid work in town. Eliza asked why she had to want something, and mentioned that her cartography licensing business had not lasted.15 She said she did not like scamming people and had meant it as a joke, though she probably would have kept the gold, and that she did not know whether there was any career she wanted: “I just don’t see the point.”16
She agreed to try to make it to more dinners, “if that’ll get you off my back”.17 Everyone else in the family, she said, had chosen at her age how to spend their time, and had chosen barrels and fields, which she did not want.18 She apologized again for the dinner and said she had not thought it would get Temerity into as much trouble as it did.19 Temerity asked her to keep an eye on Juniper Kemble. “She’s going to be fine,” Eliza said. “She had to know that that’s how it was going to be. If it wasn’t, you wouldn’t have left.”20 They shared a half-hearted hug.21 As Temerity came around the front of the house, she caught a glimpse of Eliza disappearing into the mist north of the barn.22
Breakfast
Rhysaene went for breakfast at the general store, a barn fitted out with shelves of tools, nails and horseshoes, with fresh bread at the back.23 Rebecca Brice, a woman in her early fifties with her hair in a practical knot and a floral apron over her work clothes, had not seen her before.24 The store had bread and laminated pastries and nothing more elaborate.25 Brice asked an ember, and Rhysaene paid two to help a family business.26 “Rhysaene, that’s a pretty name. I’m Rebecca. Oh, everybody calls me Bec.”27 Asked what Temerity likes, Bec said the pastries, like everyone else in town, and that Temerity also comes in for bread for dinner with the Kembles or with Father Emberthumb, and for fishing tackle.28 She added more pastries, which the extra ember covered, and tied the lot up in paper and twine.29 Back at the church, Rhysaene slipped Temerity a pastry before the others noticed.30
Luma had spent the night in the back corner of the church, where Emberthumb writes his sermons, with the history she had found in his collection.31 She had tacked pieces of paper over every surface she could claim and looked perturbed.32 She took a pastry from Rhysaene without looking up from the book and forgot it was in her hand.33 Emberthumb was in the house brewing coffee. He sliced one of the loaves and buttered it, and when Rhysaene thanked him for his hospitality, he said friends of Temerity were welcome anytime.34
Hazel fought her tent and lost. She ended up wrapped in it, swearing, turned down Iva’s offer of help, and after about five minutes worked her way out and threw the cover at Iva to fold.35 Iva offered to put up and take down Hazel’s tent from then on. Hazel said she would not be using a tent from then on.36
The Author
The history, A Chronicle of the Silver Vale, lists its author as Oldstone Archivist Hulduro. Luma had never met him but knew the name. He is a historian associated with the Silver Archives, the branch of the church that keeps the libraries and historical records of Argentum, and he was alive when she last heard of him, a couple of years earlier.37 “I’m going to find this guy,” she muttered.38 “I’m not upset. I’m academically challenged. And I don’t like it.”39 It was the first book she had seen about the years before the Elder Exodus.40 It suggested that those who left did so because they were stubborn and self-centered. Her grandfather had been one of them, and from the stories she had heard, he was not self-centered.41
She asked Hazel, as a hunter, to track the author down. Hazel smelled the book and got old paper and puff pastry.42 Luma put the book at about forty years old, older than she is, and thought the author was still alive.43 Hazel could not help with the subject. All she knew was the common knowledge that about 150 years ago a great many elves and dwarves left, and she had that from one of her other sisters. Hecate had never spoken of it.44 But she offered to help find the man.45
The talk turned to family. Hazel said she knew nothing of her heritage.46 The coven, Luma suggested, seemed like family. Hazel said they were perhaps the closest thing she had to family, but no.47 “Especially not Anthusa,” she added, when Iva pointed out that her own mother now lived with them.48 The Sisters trust one another, Hazel said, but keep the ties between them professional rather than familial.49 Iva said she was all for found families.50 Hazel said she trusted the party with her life, but that thinking of them as anything close to family would create problems. Luma reminded her that they had broken the friend bread, and renewed it every morning, and Hazel agreed that they were friends.51 Looking around the church, Hazel said she hoped Bahamut was truly dead, since otherwise he must be listening, and then told Temerity, “No offense.”52
Luma thought Hulduro was with the Silver Archives, or had been, and meant to ask her boss.53 Hazel offered to find him by tracking or by divination.54 Iva suggested asking the people they owed a favor. Hazel said she would rather stay away from the Tarnar Syndicate, since asking a favor of someone you already owe one is hardly ever a good idea, and Temerity, who had forgotten the debt, pinched the bridge of her nose.55 “I think we’ve done enough terrorism as a group,” Hazel said, looking at Iva.56
The Road to Argentum
They broke camp and set off down the Old Road. The fog cleared later in the day, but the sky stayed overcast and the air cold.57 Hazel asked Rhysaene about finding work in the city. There are no arboretums in Argentum, but there are greenhouses run by families and businesses, and apothecaries and clinics.58 Rhysaene thought first of the upscale taverns and inns, which are almost always hiring, and of merchants such as Sterling Outfitters & Expeditionary, where Miri Wetherlite now works.59 She named the Dancing Sword and the Sterling Sovereign in the Hearth Wall, and the Firestar Chariot in the Lantern Wards, which is popular with people with money.60
Rhysaene offered to find her a place at a tavern. Hazel considered “exemplary servant” and settled on maid.61 Rhysaene warned her not to take offense if someone called her a tavern wench, the common term. Hazel laughed. “I’ll show them tavern wench. I’ll be the greatest tavern wench of this city.”62 “I have no doubt you will,” Rhysaene said, and leaned down to ruffle her hair.63
The road was quiet, busier after five hours as it passed farms and hamlets, and they came in by the North Gate around six in the evening.64 They split up to see to their own business, with a plan to meet at the Sterling Sovereign.65 Luma observed that it cost a lot more than the Dancing Sword.66
Errands
Iva checked the three dead drops the Tarnar Syndicate had set aside for her, one for each part of the week. A Light Warden willing to work with the Syndicate had made her an important asset.67 The drops were a potted plant, an old manhole cover left unlocked because the sewer beneath it had caved in years ago, and an alley between a dive bar and an apartment building.68 All three were empty, but the manhole cover had been opened regularly and the plant’s soil was freshly turned.69
Temerity found a short note from Rhea Larnas in her cubby at the barracks, dated that morning. Things were proceeding well, and her Dragoon training should begin in the next few days.70 Most Dragoons are picked out of the Order of the Lantern rather than signing up, but choosing someone who was not yet a Light Warden was unusual and had caused complications.71 She thought of looking for books on purification. The main library, though, is the Silver Archives, in the heart of the city beside the Cathedral of the Silver Flame, and she did not know her way there.72 She wandered toward the Sovereign instead.73
Luma crossed one of the four bridges over the canal into the Lantern Wards, where her citizenship papers were checked as usual.74 The Bureau of Infrastructure & Mapping is one of a cluster of archival buildings near the cathedral, beside the Silver Archives.75 Kessa Tumblebrim was gathering up her notebooks to go home.76 She had a formal work order for Luma, which had come in that morning from the Vaultsmiths and asked for Luma by name.77 Its seal carries the Vaultsmiths’ emblem, an anvil with the flame of the Synod above it.78 A senior Vaultsmith in the Structural Integrity Division wanted sections of the sealed vaults under the city surveyed and mapped, perhaps to be used again for work or storage.79 The vaults had been sealed some five hundred years earlier, the Vaultsmiths had not been in them since, and the Vaultsmith had warned of unusual danger.80
Two sections were to be surveyed, each entered from a different place.81 The first, old foundries or forges, is reached through the Hall of the Anvil, the Vaultsmiths’ guildhall, and the Valve Halls beneath it, and the work order alone would get Luma in.82 Kessa gave her two keys of the Guild of Sparks design, which were not to be lost or given to anyone and were to be returned afterward.83 The second section is entered from the basement of the Silver Archives, and Kessa needed a day or two to arrange clearance for it.84 She paid Luma fifty crowns up front for her pay and supplies, and twenty platinum dragons to hire security of her own choosing.85 It was the first time the Bureau had been given anything involving the sealed vaults.86
Luma asked about “the Oldstone Archivist Rurik Hulduro”.87 Kessa knew the book but not the man. He is a fairly famous historian who works through the Silver Archives but, she believed, technically for the Synod.88 He has written a few books, mostly recent histories of Argentum, one of them on Dell.89 She offered to ask people she knew at the Archives whether they could arrange a meeting, and warned Luma that she was not anybody important.90 Then she went home to feed her cat.91
Rhysaene and Hazel went to Rhysaene’s apartment in the Hearth Wall, a little bigger than most to suit her.92 Rhysaene put out bedding for Iva, who was to stay with her.93 She offered to do Hazel’s makeup, which Hazel does herself as pitch-black circles around her eyes.94 Hazel washed in the bathtub, which is big enough to be almost a hot tub.95 Rhysaene had kept a former friend’s wardrobe of fine clothes.96 Most of them were open-backed silks, and Hazel would wear nothing open-backed.97 As far as Rhysaene could remember, the friend had never worn brown or anything understated. By taking outfits apart she put together a rich chocolate brown dress trimmed in silver and deep emerald green, with a short emerald green silk jacket to cover its open back.98 It was too big, the friend having been considerably taller, and Rhysaene belted it for the evening.99 “Whose clothes are these?” Hazel asked, and was told they were a friend’s.100
The Sterling Sovereign
The Sovereign is a large three-story stone building near the Canal Markets on the south side of the Hearth Wall, probably the finest establishment of its kind outside the heart of the city.101 Without her antlers and with Rhysaene’s makeup, Hazel was nearly unrecognizable.102 “Rhys, who’s that with you?” Iva asked. “I didn’t know you knew other pretty women.”103 Hazel said her face felt restricted.104 Temerity stared, then told her she looked good.105 Luma got out a sewing kit and pinned and tacked the jacket to size so that it could be let out again, while Hazel kept her back to the wall.106 “Thank you, Luma. Ever a practical ally.”107
Inside, the first floor is an open restaurant with private rooms for hire.108 Kessel, who had served the party on their last visit, greeted them in a fine suit and bow tie and offered them the private room again.109 Hazel said she was looking for work.110 The Sovereign always needs bartenders and servers, and the inn needs housekeeping.111 Hazel did not know what maids and bellhops were, and when Rhysaene explained, said she would rather not clean.112 She could not cook.113 A server’s pay, a couple of silver a week, sounded adequate to her, and Kessel scheduled an interview for a few days’ time, depending on whether a position was open.114 Rhysaene paid five crowns for the room.115
Luma offered Hazel an easier job. The Vaultsmiths had hired her to map the vaults and told her to hire security, and she knew four people who could kill a Sorrowsworn.116 She hired all four for both sections at fifty crowns each.117 She paid them on the spot, five platinum dragons apiece, more than most jobs pay over months.118
When Luma offered to draw up employment contracts, Hazel said there were no records of her at all.119 Crossing the bridges into the Lantern Wards takes papers that amount to a birth certificate. Hazel had none, and Iva had only the one for Iva Toguri D’Aquino, the Light Warden.120 Hazel, who can take the shape of just about any animal, decided to cross that way.121 For Iva, a forged certificate good enough for a bridge would not be hard to make, and the seal could be taken from her old one.122 That certificate was itself a forgery, the work of the Syndicate’s best forger.123 With a flourish of her hat, Luma erased the name with prestidigitation and wrote a new one in the same hand with her magical tattoo.124 The document was as convincing as before.125 “It’s only a little bit of a crime,” she said, since she had not made the whole forgery.126 Iva liked the name Fletcher until it was pointed out that Fletcher was the surname of the farmer they had burned.127 They settled on Carpenter, and the certificate now reads Iva Carpenter.128
Kessel took their orders. Hazel asked for whatever would get her drunk fastest, which turned out to be very expensive dwarven whiskey, and took a cheaper whiskey instead.129 Iva asked Rhysaene what it was like to have parents like herself, since Iva, Temerity and Hazel were all raised by people unlike them.130 Rhysaene said it had been nice to have people to relate to, though they did not always answer her questions.131 “I don’t know what I would fucking do if I was raised by humans and I had to ask, Hey, can you get me some horseshoes?”132 Luma asked whether her parents could also pull swords out of their chests, and wrote “not hereditary” in her notebook when told no.133 Iva said her mother had done her best, but could not tell her whether it was normal for her face to itch when it shifted. Hazel, who does not itch, suggested it might be a condition.134
Temerity said she whittles, and Hazel said she had seen the collection when she slept in Temerity’s bed in Crick's Bend.135 Rhysaene likes dancing and meeting people.136 Hazel likes birdwatching, but cannot take the form of a bird. Birds are tricky to get down, and that her Headmistress and her sister Circe manage it shows their skill as witches.137 Luma said she used to draw and was now afraid to. She drew a chair, which came up out of the page, then pushed it back in, where it became a drawing again and faded.138 Hazel asked whether she was making the chair or taking it from somewhere, and Luma realized she did not know.139 Temerity grimaced at the talk of magic and drank, and Hazel apologized to her.140 Iva said that growing up had been frightening until she learned to control her ability, and that Anthusa had kept her indoors most of the time.141 Luma said she grew up in a logging town, Erhadell, on the other fork of the river.142
Asked about Juniper, Temerity said the Kembles took her in after she died protecting Juniper from bandits.143 Hazel said Juniper plainly wanted Temerity’s offspring, and Temerity choked on her drink.144 Several drinks in, Temerity said she had told Juniper she did not want a relationship with her, and admitted it was not what she felt.145 She had thought a concrete answer was better than stringing Juniper along, and said she had not lied, since Juniper had asked what she wanted.146 Then she asked what love is supposed to feel like:147
I know that I have a destiny, I know that I have a job. I know what to do there. I know that, you know, if the field needs tending, the field needs tending, if a fence needs fixing, a fence needs fixing. But how do you answer a question like that?
“I don’t think you look to fix fences for answering questions like that,” Iva said.148 Temerity said she meant to go beyond the Vale one day and could not take Juniper there.149 She did not want Juniper waiting another year, or three, after waiting so long already.150 “It seems that you’re rather okay with the thought of being forever alone,” Hazel said.151 Rhysaene asked whether she had decided for Juniper how Juniper would feel about her leaving. Temerity said that had been Juniper’s complaint, but that after seven years it did not feel right to ask her to wait longer.152 “In trying to be selfless, you may have been really selfish,” Rhysaene said.153 Temerity put her head in her hands.154 Rhysaene told her that a person can admit they were wrong and take it back, and offered to help her work it out the next time they went to Crick’s Bend.155 Then she raised her glass “to love being a bitch”, and the table drank to it.156
As the evening ended, Hazel said she should get back to “Calypso. Well, I mean, my sister.”157 Luma asked whether Rhysaene had beds enough for everyone and offered to build her one overnight. Rhysaene kissed the top of her head, which turned Luma pink.158
Night
Luma needed masks for the vaults, and they could not be bought.159 Emergency ones of her own making would give some protection from bad air for a while.160 At Sterling Outfitters & Expeditionary, the only shop still open, she paid ten crowns for charcoal and cloth enough for five.161 At a pet shop she bought a sparrow and a cage, since she had heard that miners used to take birds underground as a warning of bad air.162 The size of her security budget suggested the survey would take less than a week.163 She spent the night at home building the bed.164
Rhysaene and Iva walked Hazel home, Hazel leaning on Rhysaene.165 At the door she told them they could not come in, and tucked her map under a potted plant.166 Calypso was in the kitchen reading over tea. “Oh, you’re back. Hecate said you’d be, wait. What are you wearing?”167 Hazel said a friend had helped her dress for a job interview. “That’s a whole number of things I would not expect you to say separately, let alone in one sentence.”168 Told that the job was tavern wench, and that Hazel thought it best to take a layman’s job, Calypso said, “All right. Fair enough. You look good, by the way. That look suits you.”169 Hazel put a hand to her reddening cheek, thanked her and went to bed.170
Iva, a crown’s worth of whiskey in, talked all the way about how much she wanted to be like Hazel.171 At the apartment Rhysaene showed her the bed and the pantry and told her to ask before taking anything.172 The apartment is hung with silks and looks something like a boutique, with pillows, a central bed, rugs with intricate patterns and a makeup parlor.173 It has a kitchen, the large tub, and two walk-in wardrobes from a time when two people shared it.174
Temerity found a young recruit asleep in her bunk at the barracks. Warden Brightshield had assigned it to him that morning.175 He told her the Dragoon candidates, the “wetscales”, slept at the other end of the barracks.176 There she found nine recruits, nearly all in their early to mid twenties and all taken from the Light Wardens.177 The oldest was an elf with long, tangled black hair in a loose ponytail and golden eyes, sharpening a war pick with a bone blade on his bunk, and the least approachable person in the room.178 Temerity asked him whether the bunks were assigned. “You didn’t have to tell me you were new. That’s pretty obvious. No, the bunks aren’t assigned.”179 In the next bunk over, a slight, strikingly pretty young half-elven man was folding origami.180 Temerity left the introductions for when she was sober.181
Hazel dreamed of a giant tree standing in the middle of the city where the chapel should be. Its roots ran through the cobblestones into unworked earth, down into great worked chambers of stone, and deeper still into a place as hot as fire, where they writhed. Then she woke.182
Into the Vaults
On the morning of 30 Coldrise the party met at Luma’s apartment for tea and breakfast.183 Iva remembered being slammed into its wall by Temerity. Luma said she had reinforced it, and when Temerity joked that she would not have to hold back next time, told her it was not an invitation.184 Hazel returned Rhysaene’s clothes, folded neatly.185 Rhysaene told her to keep them as a welcoming gift to the city.186
Luma laid out masks with charcoal canisters, the sparrow in its cage, rope, rations, flasks of oil and torches.187 Hazel fed the sparrow seeds from her pocket, then gave a perfect sparrow call, and the bird answered in full song.188 Luma showed everyone how to fit the masks and went over the work order.189 It warned of bad air and toxic gas, and of instability and new fissures that might let creatures in.190 It also warned that “older sections may contain legacy security mechanisms that were not deactivated prior to sealing”.191 Unmarked passages were to be marked, not explored.192 “I don’t want to go down there alone,” she said.193 “I’ll do my best to protect you, Luma,” said Temerity.194
To cross the bridge, Hazel became a rabbit and rode inside Luma’s hat. Written inside it, in Hecate’s hand, were the words “always fits perfectly”.195 The guards checked their papers and let them through.196 The Lantern Wards are paved in laid cobblestone and built of stone in a more consistent style than the outer city.197 The party passed the cathedral of the Silver Flame, massive and almost gothic. Its southern tower has huge stained glass windows with clear glass at the center, and the silver light that comes through looked to them like the Silver Flame itself.198 North of the cathedral, in a plaza with grass, trees and a pond, stands a silver or platinum dragon, presumably Bahamut, about forty feet from nose to tail. It is the largest dragon statue any of them had seen.199 They passed the real headquarters of the Order of the Lantern, which is not the barracks.200
The Hall of the Anvil is a stone building like a temple, with big pillars in front and the Vaultsmiths’ emblem on its face, the anvil and flame found on every copper anvil.201 Inside, it is a busy guildhall, and many of the people there wear medallions with the same emblem.202 Temerity kept stopping to stare.203 Hazel changed back in an alley, and Luma, finding rabbits very cute, promised to show her a pet shop that might have some.204
A guard stood at a stairwell marked Valve Halls. Luma introduced herself: “My name is Luma Drace. I’m a cartographer with the Bureau of Infrastructure and Mapping.”205 He read the work order and sent them down. Vaults 13 to 16 lie below the Valve Halls and are reached from Vault 6, the last of them.206 “Don’t touch any valves. Obviously. Could explode us all.”207 He told Luma that the maintenance tunnels she had mapped before are not the vaults. They run close to the surface, carrying feed lines of Everfire, steam and water.208 The party were to stay where they were meant to be, anything that looked hot probably was, and they would be hundreds of feet underground.209
The stairs wound down past the maintenance tunnels and the lowest sewers, where the party had once found Miles Quickstep and Silas Wintermist. The air warmed from the mid fifties at the surface to the upper sixties.210 The Valve Halls are open chambers about forty feet high and roughly a hundred by a hundred and fifty feet, full of copper pipes and valves, where Vaultsmiths and some members of the Guild of Sparks check pressures and reroute lines.211
In the halls an old dwarf was berating a young, freckled clerk. He wanted two barrels of grade two machine oil sent to the minting vaults within a couple of hours, supply shortage or not, or he would have the clerk’s job.212 He took a swig from a leather-wrapped silver flask.213 Hazel recognized him as the drunk dwarf from the Festival of Bells and said hello.214 “No, we’ve never met. I don’t remember you.”215 He was surprised to hear from Luma that old vaults were being unsealed, said it was the first he had heard of it, and complained that nobody told him anything anymore.216 Luma suggested he had forgotten, and when he said he never forgot anything, reminded him that he had forgotten Hazel. “I’ve never met this elf in my life.”217 He sent them off to do their job. “Yeah, you too, elf.”218
A wide staircase cut into the stone took them steeply down past numbered branches to higher vaults, most of them heavily guarded.219 At the bottom stood a round cast-iron door about twenty feet high, with a cross-shaped keyhole about four feet up in a newer lock of lighter metal.220 “This is a threshold,” Luma said. “Everything beyond this point is unmapped and unknown.”221 Temerity gripped her hammer, Iva readied her shield and spear, and Rhysaene summoned her green sword.222 The key turned four tumblers at once, and the door ground aside.223 Hot, dry, stale air came out, smelling of copper.224 Beyond it lay a dark chamber with a ceiling about sixty feet up, massive carved pillars, and walls cut with brutal geometric patterns.225 Stone furnaces, crucibles and workbenches lay thrown aside and broken among scattered tools, with scorch marks on everything.226 More than a hundred feet away, firelight glowed from behind the pillars.227
Featured Characters
Player Characters
New
Returning
Mentioned
- Anthusa Toguri
- Cassia Brightshield
- Circe
- Douglas Fletcher
- Hecate
- Juniper Kemble
- Miles Quickstep
- Miri Wetherlite
- Rhea Larnas
- Rurik Hulduro
- Sage
- Silas Wintermist
- Trever Kemble
Quotations
- “You are not my mom, Tem.” Eliza Kemble to Temerity.228
- “I don’t need saving. You do not have to be my hero.” Eliza Kemble.11
- “I’m not upset. I’m academically challenged. And I don’t like it.” Luma, on the history she was reading.39
- “I’ll show them tavern wench. I’ll be the greatest tavern wench of this city.” Hazel.62
- “I don’t think you look to fix fences for answering questions like that.” Iva to Temerity.148
- “In trying to be selfless, you may have been really selfish.” Rhysaene to Temerity.153
- “That’s a whole number of things I would not expect you to say separately, let alone in one sentence.” Calypso to Hazel.168
- “Don’t touch any valves. Obviously.” A guard at the Valve Halls.207
- “This is a threshold. Everything beyond this point is unmapped and unknown.” Luma.221
Inventory
- A work order from the Vaultsmiths and two vault keys of Guild of Sparks design, issued to Luma by Kessa Tumblebrim and to be returned after the survey.
- Fifty crowns for Luma’s pay and supplies, and twenty platinum dragons for security.
- Five platinum dragons each to Hazel, Iva, Rhysaene and Temerity, from Luma.
- A chocolate brown dress and an emerald green silk jacket, given to Hazel by Rhysaene.
- Iva’s birth certificate, altered to read Iva Carpenter.
- Charcoal and cloth for five emergency masks, a sparrow in a cage and a flask of oil, bought by Luma.
- A bedroll, from Luma to Iva.
- Bread and laminated pastries from Rebecca Brice’s store.
Speaking Time
| Speaker | Time | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Dungeon Master | 1:50:35 | 38% |
| Temerity | 1:01:14 | 21% |
| Luma | 42:21 | 15% |
| Hazel | 36:54 | 13% |
| Rhysaene | 26:20 | 9% |
| Iva | 11:12 | 4% |