As your spell completes, the world blurs for a breath, and then stills again. The soft rustle of your own movement is muted beneath the settling hush. You step silently closer, past faint scuffs on the stone floor and the thin breath of wind through a cracked window down the hall.
Peering inside the study, you find a tall, thin man hunched over a desk, his silhouette etched against the amber light of a single hovering lantern. One hand absently thumbs through a crumbling folio while the other scribbles erratic notes into a ledger with twitchy precision. The scent of old vellum and ink hangs thick in the room. He mutters to himself in the focused haze of obsession. “It’s not a limiter... not in the classic sense. It’s a... harmonization engine. That’s the trick. If it were just suppression, we’d see more raw fracture events, not fewer. The ninth proves it. Unless... unless it’s selective.” He trails off, flipping another page. “Or maybe... maybe it’s not the... it’s the grid? The whole pattern? Gods, did they miss that?” He rubs his temple, then exhales a low groan. “I need a drink.”
His voice fades as he pushes his chair back and wanders toward a side alcove. Papers flutter behind him. Whatever insight he’s chasing, he seems close, yet lost in it. Not once does he notice your unseen presence in his doorway.
The elf listens, silently trying to piece together the man's ramblings. Not a limiter, but a selective harmonization engine? Does he mean the monoliths...? An interesting idea to be sure. And "the whole pattern"...Effectively distracted from their task, he moves back over to the mural to try to discern any sort of shape the monoliths' positions might form.
You step back from the door like a shadow, the murmurs still curling behind you. You return to the mural and its sprawling web of sketched structures and painted ley paths.
Now, with this fresh context, the pattern sharpens. At first glance, it appears like any other academic approximation: Dots and glyphs marking each runic monolith's location, spread across the continental landmass of Runewarren, but now, guided by that scholar’s strange rambling, you begin to see it differently: There is a rhythm to the spacing, a balance not obvious at first. The monoliths aren’t evenly distributed, but they are aligned, it would seem, angled subtly along arcs that mirror natural ley lines, but also converge on something central and unseen. Tracing their orientation, you begin to see why people would argue they don't anchor magic, but steer it, like massive pylons directing energy around a shape not drawn on the map.
A selective grid. A harmonization engine.
With your scholar’s eye, you suspect that if you had the locations of all the monoliths, including the rumored sunken or buried ones, you might be able to reconstruct the full intent of this formation. As it is, what you see feels... deliberate. Not merely passive wards, but an intelligent design. With enough knowledge, perhaps, one could exploit or override it. The implications thrum beneath your skin like a taut string ready to snap.
Still behind you, the researcher has begun pouring hot water over crushed grounds as he hums tunelessly to himself.
Rowan doffs an imaginary cap as he slips past the threshold. “Evenin’, Vasha—beg pardon for barging in,” he says, voice warm as sun-baked loam. His teal gaze sweeps the shelves opposite her desk, lingering on a cluster of arcane curiosities far from the parchment she’s abandoned. “Mercy, that’s a fine spread o’ trinkets you’ve got—puts a humble farmhand right in his place.”
With his back to her he clears his throat, rumbling a single Giant word—“Skuld ”—for Käinen alone. Then Rowan ambles toward the distant shelf, keeping Vasha’s eyes on him while his companion has room to study the writing table. Then, as though drawn by simple wonder, Rowan loosens one hand and extends a finger toward an arbitrary trinket sitting on the shelf, hovering just shy of its surface. He pauses there—fascinated farmhand debating whether to prod the miracle—giving Vasha every chance to call out before he dares a touch, and keeping her attention squarely on him giving the Goliath space to roam more freely.
After Teryn turns invisible, Ellanise blinks. Her mouth opens and closes a couple of times before she tentatively whispers, "Teryn?"
She looks around, momentarily dumbfounded. Well, she's not going to stand around and wait to get caught.
Moving silently down the hallway, she begins inspecting doorways for any indication of whose them might be, hoping for some sign — physical or magical — of Eltrax.
Teryn stands motionless a moment longer, eyes tracing the invisible architecture hidden within the mural’s artistry. His pulse stirs with the thrill of understanding, of seeing something others had missed — or perhaps refused to see. The thought curls inside him like smoke, dizzying in its implications. Only Ellanise’s hushed voice, like a thread tugging at his sleeve, pulls him free of that unraveling web. He exhales, steadying his thoughts, and drifts after her with ghostlike steps, casting a quick message spell to confirm his presence to her.
"Still here. Just got caught in the mural's spell for a moment."
He also does his best to look for any indication of Eltrax's office, perhaps his initials on the door or something similar.
Vasha’s chair creaks faintly as she shifts her weight. Her horns catch the lamplight as she tilts her head in Rowan’s direction, not quite rising, but not ignoring you either. “That’s not a trinket,” she murmurs, a rare tinge of impatience behind her words. “It’s a fragmented aetherial conduit…don’t touch it.” She doesn’t sound angry, just distracted. Her fingers fidget absentmindedly against the arm of her chair, her eyes flicking back and forth.
Käinen, meanwhile, is able to move like a shadow, your broad frame disturbingly silent. With Rowan soaking up her attention, you cross behind her desk and glances down at the spread parchment. It's the same aged scrap Teryn had passed off to her earlier, the one from inside the box paired with the curious ring. It’s covered in delicate script. The markings look burned in, like frost on a windowpane. Faint, silvery script running edge to edge. One section in particular is still fresh, as if the script had just finished forming. It curls in an unfamiliar hand, refined and composed. But from what you can see, the symbols are little more than arcane calligraphy, unreadable.
Still, you note something else. Beside the parchment lies a stack of books, on the top, worn tome with corners soft from years of turning. It’s open to a page titled: 2E 401 - The Arisaan. A diagram shows the same sigil from the ring. Whatever Vasha’s been researching, it’s deeply old.
Teryn & Ellanise
The two of you slip quietly past the open doorway, your footfalls swallowed by silence. The old scholar doesn’t even pause his rambling as you slip by. You navigate the second floor corridor, its lamps flickering with dimming light. This wing clearly sees less traffic; dust coats many of the doorframes. Names etched on copper plaques flash by: Thaleen, Professor Ixtan, Vaelor Dunn… and then finally: Eltrax.
The door appears locked, both physically and, thanks to Ellanise's detect magic, magically.
You see it immediately: a minor evocation ward laced through the doorframe, drawn with the subtlety of an experienced practitioner. It’s not designed to keep someone out, but more likely it’s meant to punish them for trying. It is to be assumed that should the lock be tampered with without disabling the ward, something violent will respond. For now, the runes lie dormant.
"Let me take care of that ward before you try picking it. Stand aside a bit, just in case."Teryn will attempt to disable the deterrent based on Ellanise's description of it, not wanting to drop his Invisibility just in case.
The ward fades with a soft hiss, like a held breath being released. The faint shimmer of magic dissipates from the doorframe, leaving only the brass lock behind. Your fingers lower from the glyph you've just disrupted, the residue of the careful counter-script still fading from the air. Whatever force had been waiting to lash out now lies dormant.
But the physical lock remains. It’s old, likely enchanted at some point, but the enchantment has long since faded, only solid craftsmanship now. No sound yet from within.
Ellanise smiles. "Whatever you did worked. The ward has been disabled." She slips her fingers into a pouch and withdraws two thin pieces of metal. "Let me take care of the lock."
Kneeling before the door, she slides the thieves' tools into the lock. The feel is at first foreign. It has been quite a while since she has attempted this. She closes her eyes, willing her fingers to remember what they used to know so well.
The lock yields with a soft metallic sound, and the door creaks open just enough to allow entry. No wards spring to life, just the silence is there to greet you.
Inside, Professor Eltrax’s office is sharply ordered, if a bit dim in the sunset light bouncing through the drawn curtains. Shelves packed with arcane tomes dominate the walls, their spines bearing titles in ancient dialects and specialized magical theory and charts are pinned to corkboards, neatly arranged by theme. On the desk lies the inkwell: a dark glass vessel with elegant copper filigree and copper nameplate at its base. It matches Marsh’s description exactly.
Next to it, a few loose pages lie half-curled atop a closed journal. Though clearly private musings, they aren't hidden. Eltrax never expected intruders. A few lines in tight script catch your eye,
"The massive runic structures were never designed to suppress. They regulate."
"Lifting their influence and restrictions would free magic. The possibilities would be, in the literal sense, limitless. The youngest of our kind may burn themselves to ash chasing it. We just can't forget the old warnings of our peril."
A man clearly not in favor of preservation. Not someone who’d look kindly on Saelric’s ambitions, even if the latter were better at charming donors.
And that's it. No alarms. No opposition. Just the lingering weight of being somewhere you aren’t meant to be.
Teryn moves for the inkwell with the careful precision, but just as his hand hovers above the glass, he notices the words on the loose pages as is distracted again.
Regulate…His lips part around a thoughtful exhale. “It matches the scholar’s muttering,” he murmurs, voice low, as if even the shelves themselves might overhear. “A harmonization engine. Not mere suppression but... intelligent, selective shaping. If the monoliths could be disrupted or made to ignore certain casters, someone could draw on the raw weave of the world without limit.”
He glances to Ellanise, not sure if she cares about the theory but needing to say it aloud anyway, if only to feel less alone with the idea. “It makes me wonder if the Concordance is a piece of the same puzzle. The timing. The sudden interest...Hm, but 'we can't forget the old warnings'?"
As your eyes pass over the neat rows of Eltrax’s notes, something stirs at the edge of a memory. A phrase. A symbol. A buried page from another life.
A memory swims up from the dust of your mind, plucked from an obscure passage in a tome you once skimmed through during a long, storm-stilled night. The writer claimed 'the weave' that all magic casters tap into was not simply a natural phenomenon, but something deliberate, designed and created by the gods specifically to limit the potential of mortals, part of a living lattice tuned to the arcane frequencies of Runewarren itself. If a caster could force the arcane weave out of phase, it could be bypassed. Just for a moment. Just long enough. Most scholars of the time dismissed it. Too volatile, too theoretical, too dangerous. Some even called it heretical. "Breaker’s greed," they said.
And then, like a song remembered in a dream, another thought presses in, a nursery rhyme your tutor once drilled into your young mind suddenly tastes different, darker:
When stones sing and sky runs red, Speak no spell or join the dead; Breaker’s greed and Binder’s lies Brought the world to ash and cries.
You never thought much of it as a child, perhaps just another bit of mystic caution. Standing here now, parchment crackling under your fingers and the warm pulse of the stolen inkwell in your satchel, you wonder, what if the rhyme wasn’t a metaphor? What if someone really has tried to break through the weave before? What if they succeeded?
Ellanise lays a hand on Teryn's arm delicately to draw his attention. "We need to go," she says just above a whisper. "I'm not sure what you're pondering, but if it can wait, let it."
Teryn's eyes widen as the memory washes over him. "Breaker's greed..." He murmurs, thoughts whirling, before coming back to his senses at Ellanise's voice. No wonder the other scholar ended up rambling to himself; he might have gotten lost in his own head as well without her there.
His first reaction was to wander how Rowan knew he spoke giant. Then he remembered that that even if people like him were far from the most common they weren’t exactly strange to anyone living in the city. The fact that goliaths, as a norm, spoke the languages of their forefathers was no secret.
”Yeah.” He spoke after the halfling, making it sound as if he was agreeing with the statement about trinkets. The true message was for his cohort alone – I will scout.
When thinking of stealth most people thought about moving slowly, holding their breaths. Amateur mistakes. The more time one spent in a place, the greater the risk of being seen. The longer one held their breath, the deeper and louder he would eventually inhale. True skill was about in being measured, natural, and that Käinen knew how to do.
“It is not safe to stay alone while we deal with our situation.”The goliath started,standing behind the tiefling. To her it could feel as if he just teleported there, a thing that, funnily enough, he could do. “And the professor asked us to get the third volume of Runael’s Transitional Theorems while speaking something about the sanctity of his vertebrae.” He tilted his head to the right, as if admitting that that was their true reason for being there. “Any progress with our mysterious note? The one from the ring box.”
With the inkwell secured, you are able to slip out of Eltrax’s office without incident. The hallway remains empty. A hush lingers over this wing, quiet, save for the soft creak of wood. The grand doors of the archive building's faculty wing close behind you, and the open air is a welcome change. The campus grounds have thinned as students and scholars finish their day. Shadows stretch long across the flagstones, the air tinged with the cool stillness of early evening.
You manage to find a secluded area to the side of the faculty building, abandoned for the time being and with a good view of oncoming foot traffic.
Rowan & Käinen
In the study cluttered with scrolls and brass implements, Vasha’s expression shifts at Käinen’s question. Her usually unreadable face draws into something faintly brighter, focused, intense. Almost… eager. She speaks quickly, as if the words have been bottled for too long.
“Yes. I’ve made progress,” she says, her golden eyes flicking to the ring she wears before glancing back at the parchment on the desk. “This paper, it’s more than it seemed. It’s a channel.” She pauses, then continues in her measured, academic tone, still faster than her usual cadence. “The person on the other end signs their messages with ‘L.’ They’re a scholar. They’ve been… informative. Extremely so. I believe they lived nearly a millennium ago, likely during the academy’s original construction, before Luminaar’s independence, even. Their knowledge of early warding techniques, infrastructure, even certain metaphysical theories... it’s all incredibly valuable.” Vasha steps back from the desk slightly, eyes lingering on the parchment. "I… may have let my studies consume me. More than I intended.” She doesn’t look away from the parchment as she says it. “But this is unprecedented. I’ve confirmed the ring and paper share a unique resonance, an enchantment designed for long-range, asynchronous communication. Not through space, but... time? It's the only explanation I can think of.” She lifts one hand slightly, as if offering no defense beyond the truth itself. The parchment remains on the desk beside her, the illusionary ink still faintly fresh.
Teryn exhales as the invisibility’s shimmer dissipates from his skin. The last tension in his shoulders unwinds, though the relief is edged by a sinking heaviness in his chest. He drags a hand over his face before offering Ellanise a small smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes.
“Well,” he murmurs, voice quiet but unshaking, “that’s my first theft…from a law-abiding person, anyway.”A faint flush of shame colors his cheeks. “Not exactly how I imagined my academic career culminating.” He crosses his arms tightly against his chest, trying to anchor himself in the evening calm as he gathers his thoughts.
When he speaks again, his tone is earnest, almost raw. “Ellanise…Saelric doesn’t just want Eltrax’s endorsement for vanity. It's all politics. He wants support to justify dismantling the monoliths’ restrictions. To break whatever safeguard they impose for power. The warnings Eltrax wrote about...I've heard them ever since I was a child:
When stones sing and sky runs red,
Speak no spell or join the dead;
Breaker’s greed and Binder’s lies
Brought the world to ash and cries.
I was so focused on the Concordance, I didn’t even see it. If he succeeds, if this is all part of that larger design…”His silver eyes shut, brows knitting. “It would be because of me...That's..."
Rowan rubs the back of his neck, eyes fixed on the parchment like it’s a patch of soil sprouting weeds he’s never seen. “Hells, Vasha, that’s a marvel fit to twist a body’s brains,” he murmurs. “But folk can dress up in all manner o’ old robes from the attic and claim they’re ghosts of seasons long gone. How d’you reckon this ‘L’ ain’t just some slick scholar—or worse, a meddlin’ spirit—pullin’ your plow by the reins?” He gestures at the vellum, careful not to touch. “Knowledge that deep cuts both ways. If the one writin’ truly sits a thousand winters yonder, we can’t steer where their questions' answers will roam. And if they’re standin’ in our day wearin’ yesterday’s mask, that’s devil-clever mischief ready to salt every field from here to the harbor.”
Rowan shakes his head, stray curls bouncing. “I’d tread light. Ask what you must, but give ’em no seed they could sow in dark furrows. Till we know whose hands hold the other quill, best keep our own harvest close.”
Vasha listens in silence, her eyes flicking once from the parchment to Rowan as he speaks. The steady cadence of his words doesn’t rattle her, but it clearly makes her think. One of her hands drifts unconsciously to the ring on her finger, her thumb brushing its edge.
“Caution is wise,” she says at last, her tone level as ever. “But I’ve followed the sigils, cross-referenced them with lineages abandoned before Luminaar was more than a camp of tents and chimneys. The mark on the ring belongs to a house long forgotten. They vanished during the first construction of the old university, before the Archive was even sealed. Their crest shown in any book matches the ring perfectly.” She pauses, then exhales. “That kind of precision would be difficult to fake, even for a clever spirit. The vocabulary they use, the way they reference things that no longer exist, scholars whose names survive only in footnotes... It’s either authentic, or it’s the most elaborate deception I’ve ever seen.” There’s a flicker of rare emotion in her gaze, a quiet hunger. “And if it is authentic, then we have a living window into the mind of a brilliant scholar from the days of old.”
She looks down again, voice softening just slightly. “Perhaps you should take it back. I've become far too distracted by it, and you lot were the ones who found it to begin with.” She says, with certainty.
As your spell completes, the world blurs for a breath, and then stills again. The soft rustle of your own movement is muted beneath the settling hush. You step silently closer, past faint scuffs on the stone floor and the thin breath of wind through a cracked window down the hall.
Peering inside the study, you find a tall, thin man hunched over a desk, his silhouette etched against the amber light of a single hovering lantern. One hand absently thumbs through a crumbling folio while the other scribbles erratic notes into a ledger with twitchy precision. The scent of old vellum and ink hangs thick in the room. He mutters to himself in the focused haze of obsession. “It’s not a limiter... not in the classic sense. It’s a... harmonization engine. That’s the trick. If it were just suppression, we’d see more raw fracture events, not fewer. The ninth proves it. Unless... unless it’s selective.” He trails off, flipping another page. “Or maybe... maybe it’s not the... it’s the grid? The whole pattern? Gods, did they miss that?” He rubs his temple, then exhales a low groan. “I need a drink.”
His voice fades as he pushes his chair back and wanders toward a side alcove. Papers flutter behind him. Whatever insight he’s chasing, he seems close, yet lost in it. Not once does he notice your unseen presence in his doorway.
DM : The Shade Over Runewarren | Vaelen Gravesong : Shadow of Eternal Night
"Fear is the weight we carry, love is the treasure we bury."
The elf listens, silently trying to piece together the man's ramblings. Not a limiter, but a selective harmonization engine? Does he mean the monoliths...? An interesting idea to be sure. And "the whole pattern"...Effectively distracted from their task, he moves back over to the mural to try to discern any sort of shape the monoliths' positions might form.
Investigation: 22
You step back from the door like a shadow, the murmurs still curling behind you. You return to the mural and its sprawling web of sketched structures and painted ley paths.
Now, with this fresh context, the pattern sharpens. At first glance, it appears like any other academic approximation: Dots and glyphs marking each runic monolith's location, spread across the continental landmass of Runewarren, but now, guided by that scholar’s strange rambling, you begin to see it differently: There is a rhythm to the spacing, a balance not obvious at first. The monoliths aren’t evenly distributed, but they are aligned, it would seem, angled subtly along arcs that mirror natural ley lines, but also converge on something central and unseen. Tracing their orientation, you begin to see why people would argue they don't anchor magic, but steer it, like massive pylons directing energy around a shape not drawn on the map.
A selective grid. A harmonization engine.
With your scholar’s eye, you suspect that if you had the locations of all the monoliths, including the rumored sunken or buried ones, you might be able to reconstruct the full intent of this formation. As it is, what you see feels... deliberate. Not merely passive wards, but an intelligent design. With enough knowledge, perhaps, one could exploit or override it. The implications thrum beneath your skin like a taut string ready to snap.
Still behind you, the researcher has begun pouring hot water over crushed grounds as he hums tunelessly to himself.
DM : The Shade Over Runewarren | Vaelen Gravesong : Shadow of Eternal Night
"Fear is the weight we carry, love is the treasure we bury."
Rowan doffs an imaginary cap as he slips past the threshold. “Evenin’, Vasha—beg pardon for barging in,” he says, voice warm as sun-baked loam. His teal gaze sweeps the shelves opposite her desk, lingering on a cluster of arcane curiosities far from the parchment she’s abandoned. “Mercy, that’s a fine spread o’ trinkets you’ve got—puts a humble farmhand right in his place.”
With his back to her he clears his throat, rumbling a single Giant word—“Skuld ”—for Käinen alone. Then Rowan ambles toward the distant shelf, keeping Vasha’s eyes on him while his companion has room to study the writing table. Then, as though drawn by simple wonder, Rowan loosens one hand and extends a finger toward an arbitrary trinket sitting on the shelf, hovering just shy of its surface. He pauses there—fascinated farmhand debating whether to prod the miracle—giving Vasha every chance to call out before he dares a touch, and keeping her attention squarely on him giving the Goliath space to roam more freely.
Skuld (proficiency in Giant language):
“mind the lay o’ the land”
|| Oriace - Halfling Bard - Dragon Heist || Valerian - Elf Rogue - Wildnis || b'Reh - Stig Cleric - Humblewood || Rowan - Halfling Giant - Runewarren || Khazela - Spiritfarer Dervish - Tribute || Arista - Frost Sorcerer - Old Keep || Zephirah - Demonic Bard - Sands || Merry - Gifted Surgeon - Short || Marasatra - Blood Mage - Avernus || Lan - Dwarf Dragon - Wuxian ||
After Teryn turns invisible, Ellanise blinks. Her mouth opens and closes a couple of times before she tentatively whispers, "Teryn?"
She looks around, momentarily dumbfounded. Well, she's not going to stand around and wait to get caught.
Moving silently down the hallway, she begins inspecting doorways for any indication of whose them might be, hoping for some sign — physical or magical — of Eltrax.
Teryn stands motionless a moment longer, eyes tracing the invisible architecture hidden within the mural’s artistry. His pulse stirs with the thrill of understanding, of seeing something others had missed — or perhaps refused to see. The thought curls inside him like smoke, dizzying in its implications. Only Ellanise’s hushed voice, like a thread tugging at his sleeve, pulls him free of that unraveling web. He exhales, steadying his thoughts, and drifts after her with ghostlike steps, casting a quick message spell to confirm his presence to her.
"Still here. Just got caught in the mural's spell for a moment."
He also does his best to look for any indication of Eltrax's office, perhaps his initials on the door or something similar.
Perception: 19
Rowan & Käinen
Vasha’s chair creaks faintly as she shifts her weight. Her horns catch the lamplight as she tilts her head in Rowan’s direction, not quite rising, but not ignoring you either. “That’s not a trinket,” she murmurs, a rare tinge of impatience behind her words. “It’s a fragmented aetherial conduit…don’t touch it.” She doesn’t sound angry, just distracted. Her fingers fidget absentmindedly against the arm of her chair, her eyes flicking back and forth.
Käinen, meanwhile, is able to move like a shadow, your broad frame disturbingly silent. With Rowan soaking up her attention, you cross behind her desk and glances down at the spread parchment. It's the same aged scrap Teryn had passed off to her earlier, the one from inside the box paired with the curious ring. It’s covered in delicate script. The markings look burned in, like frost on a windowpane. Faint, silvery script running edge to edge. One section in particular is still fresh, as if the script had just finished forming. It curls in an unfamiliar hand, refined and composed. But from what you can see, the symbols are little more than arcane calligraphy, unreadable.
Still, you note something else. Beside the parchment lies a stack of books, on the top, worn tome with corners soft from years of turning. It’s open to a page titled: 2E 401 - The Arisaan. A diagram shows the same sigil from the ring. Whatever Vasha’s been researching, it’s deeply old.
Teryn & Ellanise
The two of you slip quietly past the open doorway, your footfalls swallowed by silence. The old scholar doesn’t even pause his rambling as you slip by. You navigate the second floor corridor, its lamps flickering with dimming light. This wing clearly sees less traffic; dust coats many of the doorframes. Names etched on copper plaques flash by: Thaleen, Professor Ixtan, Vaelor Dunn… and then finally: Eltrax.
The door appears locked, both physically and, thanks to Ellanise's detect magic, magically.
You see it immediately: a minor evocation ward laced through the doorframe, drawn with the subtlety of an experienced practitioner. It’s not designed to keep someone out, but more likely it’s meant to punish them for trying. It is to be assumed that should the lock be tampered with without disabling the ward, something violent will respond. For now, the runes lie dormant.
DM : The Shade Over Runewarren | Vaelen Gravesong : Shadow of Eternal Night
"Fear is the weight we carry, love is the treasure we bury."
"Let me take care of that ward before you try picking it. Stand aside a bit, just in case." Teryn will attempt to disable the deterrent based on Ellanise's description of it, not wanting to drop his Invisibility just in case.
Arcana: 16
The ward fades with a soft hiss, like a held breath being released. The faint shimmer of magic dissipates from the doorframe, leaving only the brass lock behind. Your fingers lower from the glyph you've just disrupted, the residue of the careful counter-script still fading from the air. Whatever force had been waiting to lash out now lies dormant.
But the physical lock remains. It’s old, likely enchanted at some point, but the enchantment has long since faded, only solid craftsmanship now. No sound yet from within.
DM : The Shade Over Runewarren | Vaelen Gravesong : Shadow of Eternal Night
"Fear is the weight we carry, love is the treasure we bury."
Ellanise smiles. "Whatever you did worked. The ward has been disabled." She slips her fingers into a pouch and withdraws two thin pieces of metal. "Let me take care of the lock."
Kneeling before the door, she slides the thieves' tools into the lock. The feel is at first foreign. It has been quite a while since she has attempted this. She closes her eyes, willing her fingers to remember what they used to know so well.
DEX check: 14 + proficiency: 16
*Click*
The lock yields with a soft metallic sound, and the door creaks open just enough to allow entry. No wards spring to life, just the silence is there to greet you.
Inside, Professor Eltrax’s office is sharply ordered, if a bit dim in the sunset light bouncing through the drawn curtains. Shelves packed with arcane tomes dominate the walls, their spines bearing titles in ancient dialects and specialized magical theory and charts are pinned to corkboards, neatly arranged by theme. On the desk lies the inkwell: a dark glass vessel with elegant copper filigree and copper nameplate at its base. It matches Marsh’s description exactly.
Next to it, a few loose pages lie half-curled atop a closed journal. Though clearly private musings, they aren't hidden. Eltrax never expected intruders. A few lines in tight script catch your eye,
"The massive runic structures were never designed to suppress. They regulate."
"Lifting their influence and restrictions would free magic. The possibilities would be, in the literal sense, limitless. The youngest of our kind may burn themselves to ash chasing it. We just can't forget the old warnings of our peril."
A man clearly not in favor of preservation. Not someone who’d look kindly on Saelric’s ambitions, even if the latter were better at charming donors.
And that's it. No alarms. No opposition. Just the lingering weight of being somewhere you aren’t meant to be.
DM : The Shade Over Runewarren | Vaelen Gravesong : Shadow of Eternal Night
"Fear is the weight we carry, love is the treasure we bury."
Teryn moves for the inkwell with the careful precision, but just as his hand hovers above the glass, he notices the words on the loose pages as is distracted again.
Regulate…His lips part around a thoughtful exhale. “It matches the scholar’s muttering,” he murmurs, voice low, as if even the shelves themselves might overhear. “A harmonization engine. Not mere suppression but... intelligent, selective shaping. If the monoliths could be disrupted or made to ignore certain casters, someone could draw on the raw weave of the world without limit.”
He glances to Ellanise, not sure if she cares about the theory but needing to say it aloud anyway, if only to feel less alone with the idea. “It makes me wonder if the Concordance is a piece of the same puzzle. The timing. The sudden interest...Hm, but 'we can't forget the old warnings'?"
He tries to think of what this might refer to.
History: 15 + 5 from book if applicable
As your eyes pass over the neat rows of Eltrax’s notes, something stirs at the edge of a memory. A phrase. A symbol. A buried page from another life.
A memory swims up from the dust of your mind, plucked from an obscure passage in a tome you once skimmed through during a long, storm-stilled night. The writer claimed 'the weave' that all magic casters tap into was not simply a natural phenomenon, but something deliberate, designed and created by the gods specifically to limit the potential of mortals, part of a living lattice tuned to the arcane frequencies of Runewarren itself. If a caster could force the arcane weave out of phase, it could be bypassed. Just for a moment. Just long enough. Most scholars of the time dismissed it. Too volatile, too theoretical, too dangerous. Some even called it heretical. "Breaker’s greed," they said.
And then, like a song remembered in a dream, another thought presses in, a nursery rhyme your tutor once drilled into your young mind suddenly tastes different, darker:
When stones sing and sky runs red,
Speak no spell or join the dead;
Breaker’s greed and Binder’s lies
Brought the world to ash and cries.
You never thought much of it as a child, perhaps just another bit of mystic caution. Standing here now, parchment crackling under your fingers and the warm pulse of the stolen inkwell in your satchel, you wonder, what if the rhyme wasn’t a metaphor? What if someone really has tried to break through the weave before? What if they succeeded?
DM : The Shade Over Runewarren | Vaelen Gravesong : Shadow of Eternal Night
"Fear is the weight we carry, love is the treasure we bury."
Ellanise lays a hand on Teryn's arm delicately to draw his attention. "We need to go," she says just above a whisper. "I'm not sure what you're pondering, but if it can wait, let it."
Teryn's eyes widen as the memory washes over him. "Breaker's greed..." He murmurs, thoughts whirling, before coming back to his senses at Ellanise's voice. No wonder the other scholar ended up rambling to himself; he might have gotten lost in his own head as well without her there.
"Right. This isn't the time or place. Let's go."
His first reaction was to wander how Rowan knew he spoke giant. Then he remembered that that even if people like him were far from the most common they weren’t exactly strange to anyone living in the city. The fact that goliaths, as a norm, spoke the languages of their forefathers was no secret.
”Yeah.” He spoke after the halfling, making it sound as if he was agreeing with the statement about trinkets. The true message was for his cohort alone – I will scout.
When thinking of stealth most people thought about moving slowly, holding their breaths. Amateur mistakes. The more time one spent in a place, the greater the risk of being seen. The longer one held their breath, the deeper and louder he would eventually inhale. True skill was about in being measured, natural, and that Käinen knew how to do.
“It is not safe to stay alone while we deal with our situation.” The goliath started,standing behind the tiefling. To her it could feel as if he just teleported there, a thing that, funnily enough, he could do. “And the professor asked us to get the third volume of Runael’s Transitional Theorems while speaking something about the sanctity of his vertebrae.” He tilted his head to the right, as if admitting that that was their true reason for being there. “Any progress with our mysterious note? The one from the ring box.”
Teryn & Ellanise
With the inkwell secured, you are able to slip out of Eltrax’s office without incident. The hallway remains empty. A hush lingers over this wing, quiet, save for the soft creak of wood. The grand doors of the archive building's faculty wing close behind you, and the open air is a welcome change. The campus grounds have thinned as students and scholars finish their day. Shadows stretch long across the flagstones, the air tinged with the cool stillness of early evening.
You manage to find a secluded area to the side of the faculty building, abandoned for the time being and with a good view of oncoming foot traffic.
Rowan & Käinen
In the study cluttered with scrolls and brass implements, Vasha’s expression shifts at Käinen’s question. Her usually unreadable face draws into something faintly brighter, focused, intense. Almost… eager. She speaks quickly, as if the words have been bottled for too long.
“Yes. I’ve made progress,” she says, her golden eyes flicking to the ring she wears before glancing back at the parchment on the desk. “This paper, it’s more than it seemed. It’s a channel.” She pauses, then continues in her measured, academic tone, still faster than her usual cadence. “The person on the other end signs their messages with ‘L.’ They’re a scholar. They’ve been… informative. Extremely so. I believe they lived nearly a millennium ago, likely during the academy’s original construction, before Luminaar’s independence, even. Their knowledge of early warding techniques, infrastructure, even certain metaphysical theories... it’s all incredibly valuable.” Vasha steps back from the desk slightly, eyes lingering on the parchment. "I… may have let my studies consume me. More than I intended.” She doesn’t look away from the parchment as she says it. “But this is unprecedented. I’ve confirmed the ring and paper share a unique resonance, an enchantment designed for long-range, asynchronous communication. Not through space, but... time? It's the only explanation I can think of.” She lifts one hand slightly, as if offering no defense beyond the truth itself. The parchment remains on the desk beside her, the illusionary ink still faintly fresh.
DM : The Shade Over Runewarren | Vaelen Gravesong : Shadow of Eternal Night
"Fear is the weight we carry, love is the treasure we bury."
Teryn exhales as the invisibility’s shimmer dissipates from his skin. The last tension in his shoulders unwinds, though the relief is edged by a sinking heaviness in his chest. He drags a hand over his face before offering Ellanise a small smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes.
“Well,” he murmurs, voice quiet but unshaking, “that’s my first theft…from a law-abiding person, anyway.” A faint flush of shame colors his cheeks. “Not exactly how I imagined my academic career culminating.” He crosses his arms tightly against his chest, trying to anchor himself in the evening calm as he gathers his thoughts.
When he speaks again, his tone is earnest, almost raw. “Ellanise…Saelric doesn’t just want Eltrax’s endorsement for vanity. It's all politics. He wants support to justify dismantling the monoliths’ restrictions. To break whatever safeguard they impose for power. The warnings Eltrax wrote about...I've heard them ever since I was a child:
When stones sing and sky runs red,
Speak no spell or join the dead;
Breaker’s greed and Binder’s lies
Brought the world to ash and cries.
I was so focused on the Concordance, I didn’t even see it. If he succeeds, if this is all part of that larger design…” His silver eyes shut, brows knitting. “It would be because of me...That's..."
Rowan rubs the back of his neck, eyes fixed on the parchment like it’s a patch of soil sprouting weeds he’s never seen. “Hells, Vasha, that’s a marvel fit to twist a body’s brains,” he murmurs. “But folk can dress up in all manner o’ old robes from the attic and claim they’re ghosts of seasons long gone. How d’you reckon this ‘L’ ain’t just some slick scholar—or worse, a meddlin’ spirit—pullin’ your plow by the reins?” He gestures at the vellum, careful not to touch. “Knowledge that deep cuts both ways. If the one writin’ truly sits a thousand winters yonder, we can’t steer where their questions' answers will roam. And if they’re standin’ in our day wearin’ yesterday’s mask, that’s devil-clever mischief ready to salt every field from here to the harbor.”
Rowan shakes his head, stray curls bouncing. “I’d tread light. Ask what you must, but give ’em no seed they could sow in dark furrows. Till we know whose hands hold the other quill, best keep our own harvest close.”
|| Oriace - Halfling Bard - Dragon Heist || Valerian - Elf Rogue - Wildnis || b'Reh - Stig Cleric - Humblewood || Rowan - Halfling Giant - Runewarren || Khazela - Spiritfarer Dervish - Tribute || Arista - Frost Sorcerer - Old Keep || Zephirah - Demonic Bard - Sands || Merry - Gifted Surgeon - Short || Marasatra - Blood Mage - Avernus || Lan - Dwarf Dragon - Wuxian ||
Vasha listens in silence, her eyes flicking once from the parchment to Rowan as he speaks. The steady cadence of his words doesn’t rattle her, but it clearly makes her think. One of her hands drifts unconsciously to the ring on her finger, her thumb brushing its edge.
“Caution is wise,” she says at last, her tone level as ever. “But I’ve followed the sigils, cross-referenced them with lineages abandoned before Luminaar was more than a camp of tents and chimneys. The mark on the ring belongs to a house long forgotten. They vanished during the first construction of the old university, before the Archive was even sealed. Their crest shown in any book matches the ring perfectly.” She pauses, then exhales. “That kind of precision would be difficult to fake, even for a clever spirit. The vocabulary they use, the way they reference things that no longer exist, scholars whose names survive only in footnotes... It’s either authentic, or it’s the most elaborate deception I’ve ever seen.” There’s a flicker of rare emotion in her gaze, a quiet hunger. “And if it is authentic, then we have a living window into the mind of a brilliant scholar from the days of old.”
She looks down again, voice softening just slightly. “Perhaps you should take it back. I've become far too distracted by it, and you lot were the ones who found it to begin with.” She says, with certainty.
DM : The Shade Over Runewarren | Vaelen Gravesong : Shadow of Eternal Night
"Fear is the weight we carry, love is the treasure we bury."