Two crews move on the same warded door tonight: you want the Albion strongbox behind it, the Lich Cult wants the ward on it gone, and the only way to the prize wakes the thing the ochre was painted to hold.
The Situation
The Albion Embassy keeps a sealed strongbox behind the last ward-ochre door still holding in the quarter, and as the comet climbs and the old red marks fail lane by lane, three crews want that door open before dawn. Eppy Flinder pinned the job at the Bastion: lift the box, bring her the ochre, because she knows what a quarter of dead does once the wards go dark. The Lich Cult sent Vadim Solh's cell up from the catacombs to scrape the same ward to nothing, so the Albion Quarter rises with the rest of the city. Behind the paint, fed on the disappeared, the cellar sump has waited a long time for the seal to crack.
Objectives
- Primary · Carry the Embassy strongbox out of the Albion Quarter to the Bastion before the Red Guard cordon seals the lanes.
- Secondary · Scrape the genuine ward-ochre out intact, the paint Eppy wants, the only working ward left in the quarter.
- Secondary · Get Olivia Faren clear if she will come, and keep Albion blood off the floor so the Embassy cannot name the Bastion.
The Clocks
- Main · The Cordon. A six-step wind on the porter's alarm-clock. It advances one step each time the party makes noise, forces an Albion lock, or raises a voice. At six the bell trips and the Red Guard ring every lane out of the quarter, with the party still inside and holding the box.
- Fast · The Scrape. Vadim's cell works the ochre from the catacomb side. Three steps, one each turn the party stalls in the cellar. At three the ward breaks on the Cult's terms: the sump wakes hating everyone, and the ochre goes to paste.
- Comet · The Failing Wards. Phase II eats the quarter's old marks this week. On any turn a die reads 1, one more outer ward dies and something cold stirs a cellar over. When the last one goes, the streets fill and the cordon guards thin, which opens the route and floods it at once.
The Five Beats
- Entrance · The Embassy stands open to no one because it sits on foreign soil. The Red Guard ring the block and will not cross the sill, and the iron door answers only to an Albion key. The party comes through the coal hatch or the porter's booth, where the chair sits empty and still warm, the winding-key gone, and the alarm ticking down half-wound on its own.
- Discovery · Down in the brick cellar, the ochre door: the last ward-mark still holding in the quarter, the red paint fat and fresh-fed, and behind the iron something breathes wet. The strongbox waits in the warded room past it. Olivia Faren stands at the shelf with a dark-lantern, counting, and she did not come to sell what she finds.
- Setback · The ward cracks, by the party's hand or Vadim's scrape, and the sump lets go. The Bulk comes up the drain wearing the quarter's missing. The dry stair runs one way out, the alarm finishes its wind above, and someone chooses now: the box, the door, or Olivia.
- Climax · A low brick cellar going to water and corpse-mass while the cordon seals the lane overhead. One narrow stair, the sump mouth, a single ochre-marked lintel that holds only if the scraped paint is spent on it. The box sits here, or the box moves, and the one leaf that makes it readable is sewn into a dead seamstress's hem on the thing in the water.
- Resolution · Out of a sealed quarter with the box, or the ochre, or Olivia, three things and rarely all of them. The Bulk loose in the Albion Quarter, one fewer ward between the dead and the street. The accounts stay blank until the right blood reads them. Gold Imperials from Eppy for the paint, a colder debt from Olivia for the names.
Leverage Points
- The ward-ochre. Genuine, the only working ward-paint left in the quarter, worth a room of Krone to Eppy. Scrape it to keep it and the seal breaks on your timing, which wakes the sump now instead of never.
- The porter's alarm-clock. Jam the Albion clockwork and the Cordon clock stops cold, but a stalled bell sends the winder down to learn why, and he carries the only Embassy key.
- Olivia Faren. Bring her in and she reads Albion locks and knows every brick of the cellar, but she will not let the box be sold, and she walks the moment Albion blood hits the floor.
- Vadim's impatience. Let the Cult break the ward first and they do the dirty work for you, but the sump wakes hating all comers and the ochre is already ruined.
- The coal sump. A flooded Albion drain runs out under the cordon, a road past the Red Guard ring. It is also the road the Bulk takes up into the quarter, and it climbs to the chest as you wade it.
The Cast
- Olivia Faren (Albion Empire, investigator) · At the cellar shelf tonight, counting the Embassy's true accounts by lantern. Wants the box for a tribunal that convicts the Court, never for coin. Turns ally the moment the party proves they mean to read the names and not bury them, and turns her back the instant they cut an Albion throat.
- Vadim Solh (Lich Cult) · Working the ochre from the catacomb side with a crossbow on his hip and the rooftops mapped for his exit. Wants the ward gone so the quarter's dead rise on schedule. Lets the party crack the seal for him, then takes the box off their bodies; folds only when the Bulk turns on him too.
- The Cellar Sump (Necrotic Bulk) · The quarter's disappeared, packed wet behind the iron, wearing the coats they vanished in. Wants out and up. It slows for one breath at a name it knew in life, long enough for a clever party to pass or to pull something off it.
Climax Variable (d6)
Roll once when the seal breaks, or take the twist that pays off what the party already did.
| d6 | Twist |
|---|---|
| 1 | The winder comes down early. The alarm finishes now and the cordon seals in one turn; jump the Cordon clock to six. |
| 2 | Vadim took the box in the dark. He runs the rafters for the coal hatch, and the take turns from a grab into a chase. |
| 3 | The readable leaf is on the Bulk. Magrit Soller sewed the blood-cloth into her hem before they marched her down; the accounts open only if someone pulls it off the corpse-mass. |
| 4 | The lintel needs the paint. The scraped ochre is the one thing that seals the stair and holds the Bulk a breath; smear it and lose the prize, or keep it and fight in the open. |
| 5 | Barron's voice from the stair-top. The dying ambassador offers a clean lane out for the box, and the Red Guard hold their cordon at his word; take the deal and the names serve his plan, not Olivia's. |
| 6 | The comet pulses. Every outer ward in the quarter fails at once, the cordon pulls back from things rising in the lanes, and the cellar is suddenly the safest dark left in the Albion Quarter. |
Breadcrumbs
A coat scrap snagged on the cellar brick carries Magrit Soller's tailor's mark, proof the disappeared came down this drain, and proof one of them carried the cloth that reads the box, which is the leaf on the Bulk in the climax. Beyond this quest: the strongbox holds Captain Feeney's hidden accounts written in Bloodborn Ink, blank to every eye but his blood-kin, and somewhere in Kormor Kirak a relative of the man the Court cut eighty-eight times can open what the party stole.
The Not-Line
This quest is not a clean vault-crack. It is a take you cannot read and a thing you let out to reach it, with the quarter sealing shut around you.