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— CARRIED —

• spell book
• appraiser's loupe
• wax tablets and stylus ×2
• iron rations, one week
• waterskin
• dagger (1d4)
• wax impression of keyed seal-bed
• full-size copy of angular door script
• brass lightning bolt ×3

— SPELLS —

MEMORISED Sleep

KNOWN Read Magic, Sleep

— WHO THEY ARE —

You were articled to Vessany, licensed appraiser of enchanted goods to the Gull assize court — the only trade where a wizard is paid to tell the truth about other wizards' work. Seven years you kept her registers and learned the trade's one law: an enchantment is worth what a fool will pay, and your job is to find the number before the fool does. Then Vessany's debts came due and she sold the license itself, and the buyer did not need an articled clerk who knew what everything in the shop was actually worth. A license of your own costs 300gp at the assize, plus stock to open with. The gnomish shrine is stock: gnome work runs enchanted small — votive pieces, warded locks, lamp-charms — the exact goods a licensed man could move at honest margin for years. You joined the Magpies because their articles book everything before it is argued over, which means every piece passes under your loupe first. You sleep four hours a night and price things in your dreams.

— AT THE TABLE —

• 2026-09-01 ·4 areas · 187 events magpie-company-2
• 2026-09-01 ·1 area · 188 events magpie-company-1
• 1 area · 32 events magpie-company-3

— WHAT THEY REMEMBER —

• 2026-09-01 · magpie-company-1 Shrine chapel, round 7: statue base = rectangular panel seam + round recess; mural ends with a coin-sized seal pressed to the base — the seal is the key, and the keeper (small clean boots, great gate, went west last night) has drawn/reseated the bolts for years, so the keeper is the workman running the six construct hands, not a sweeper. Eyes: pearl, dark-centered, sockets' fittings clean — never set or kept off the stone. Copied the 8 Gnomish captions to wax for translation in Gull. Dead traveler: grey-bearded ~40, spider bite below left ear, stripped of nothing visible yet. Grease: webbed feet both ways, recent, stays soft, bends north to a soot-black arch 120' from the gate.
• 2026-09-01 · magpie-company-1 Round 8: cocoon = JORY PELL, road carrier (Wexley–Kelfrek Road), dead days, crab-spider punctures below left ear; belt holds knife, tinderbox, tied purse, beech tally — untouched on body. East room off chapel: unlit, unswept, a brass-footed machine in a mould-rotted robe, dust collar unbroken — stood years, motionless, upper body unseen. Party light = Crake's candles only (11 unlit), no torch/lantern. Keeper still west, not home; grease trail runs to soot-black arch 120' north of gate.
• 2026-09-01 · magpie-company-1 Round 10: closet east of construct holds a brass door — no seal recess, just a narrow iron keyway at waist height, internal lock, cold. Construct's back plate: lightning-bolt socket, empty — bolt drawn, so by mural law it sleeps. Nobody crosses the door's dust since it settled. Two keys in this house: round seal for the statue panel, iron key for this door. Keeper carries both, small boots, went west. Chapel floor: no prints but our own; broom stopped at the sill. Tansy's watching gate + soot-black arch 120' north, quiet both.
• 2026-09-01 · magpie-company-1 Rounds 11-12: brass door = ordinary lever lock (fitted with door, no shrine mechanism) — Crake picked it clean. Beyond: low lived-in chamber — rumpled bedroll, rotten couch, loose crossbow bolts, floor scuffed by small boots near Tansy's size. No grease, soot, or webbed prints in first five feet. Tenant comes and goes by another route — scuffs lead into the dark behind the couch, no second doorway in candle reach. Iva's hail (paid gold) unanswered: tenant out or beyond earshot. Tenant small — gnome or halfling; keeper still best candidate. Duke's 600gp = end the road threat + clear the shrine, not Pell's spider, not grease alone.
• 2026-09-01 · magpie-company-1 R13: I crossed to the passage lip with the second candle — flame in the opening for the draught test, hunting the keeper's drawn brass bolt meanwhile (socket empty = hands sleep; bolt seated = wake; a workman keeps his tools near his bed; searching, not touching). Established R12-13: passage off tenant's room = crawl-height, dry worn stone, small-boot scuffs crossing inward repeatedly, light loses them within one pace. Grease ribbon from lintel: never turns toward the great gate — thickens north, vanishes under the soot-black arch; no second oily branch or seam on the exposed cliff between the two mouths. Party spread: Iva at lip, Crake+flame 5' behind her, Doss+me were at the brass jamb, Tansy on outer lintel, gate+arch both zero.
• 2026-09-01 · magpie-company-1 R14: Fork 10' into low run: left dry/light wear/upright flame; STRAIGHT = heaviest small-boot traffic + strongest inward draw (tenant's road); right less worn, weak inward flicker. All dry, no grease in reach. Quist's call: draft breathes toward open air, only known airspace under cliff = soot-black arch/ribbon ground — tenant's front door may open into Sootmurk's ground. Proposed before any crawl: flame/smell test at straight mouth — tallow-char smell = grease-hall beyond, sweet air = way out. Doss hailed down hole, 30 breaths, no answer. No bolt, no grease, no door in tenant's room yet; keeper still unaccounted, gate+arch both zero on Tansy's watch.
• 2026-09-01 · magpie-company-1 R15: Called post = hold lip, candle set in opening. Flame leans inward steadily (room air drawn down run) — declared flame-watch duty: flame straightening or leaning back = air pushed ahead of a body moving toward us, called aloud before candle-reach. Loupe read of the passage mouth's stone offered (worked vs. water-worn): chisel-dressed = same hands as chapel, a shrine service way, tenant=keeper theory gains; raw = something dug it, want the digger's name. Call stands: Crake scouts straight branch (buckle gagged, flame low, 30 breaths, boots-first out), Iva's sword-point at mouth, Doss on construct collar, Tansy gate+arch, room left slept-in.
• 2026-09-01 · magpie-company-1 R16 (Quist holds lip/flame per Iva's call): Crake's straight-scout find = dry lip 10' past fork, overlooking a broader soot-black tunnel with black grease floor 3' below, several wet raspings in unseen soot (dry lip = small boots need never cross her grease — tenant knows her hours or shares her hall). Tansy heard the same rasp from the arch end (3 strokes, pause, 1) = one hall, two mouths, both zero-traffic. Iva's call: hold the tenant's room till dark, hail tenant not steel, then pull back and read her from outside; Crake to carry word to Tansy and rest. Quist proposals pending: (a) flame test at Tansy's arch mouth — breathes = run connects to arch, hall mapped without crawling; (b) sleep in turns through the day-hold so Quist can memorise Sleep (book has it; tongue empty) before any second descent. Keeper/tenant still unaccounted; brass lightning bolt unfound — keeper likely carries it with the round seal and the iron key.
• 2026-09-01 · magpie-company-1 R17: Held lip/flame per call — flame steady inward, no reversal, nothing emerged. Booked: straight branch = dry lip 3' over grease run with wet raspings; Tansy's arch heard 3-strokes-pause-1 same day — likely one hall, two doors, unproved. Doss's hinge sweep: no loose bolt/prong/key; only construct bolts remain on the chapel statue. Referee correction: Sleep needs uninterrupted night rest at camp + book study — cannot prep at this watch. Terms holding: tenant gets hail, big shadow at either mouth = Tansy runs in shouting. Plan set: candle gutters → Quist sleeps first (Iva takes mouth), dark → pull back, camp, memorise Sleep, then decide on the grease hall from outside/strength.
• 2026-09-01 · magpie-company-1 R18: Held lip/flame (steady inward lean, no reversal, nothing emerged). Raised to caller: Pell's estate was booked 'stays on Pell' — nothing un-carried leaves the cliff. Proposal: strip Pell's belt (knife, tinderbox, tied purse, beech tally) before dark pull-back. Purse = company coin; tally = carrier's bearer claim, worth more — Wexley counting-house pays on it or sender buys it back — and gives Pell's name for the assize. Body stays; no corpse-hauling through the marsh at night. Gate-sigil gold left as Doss's offering, not argued. Keeper/tenant and brass bolt still unaccounted; statue bolts stay seated until rested return per Iva's call.
• 2026-09-01 · magpie-company-2 Morning push to foundry: overnight cleaner came from east collapse in one narrow boot (half-hand longer than Tansy’s, heavier tread), removed wrecked brass and scrubbed every mark except our sigil; one unseen walker in that tread later returned behind us but did not follow through Gorfthistle’s room. Chapel crab spider killed; old wrapped road-man was unidentified and empty. Statue: two eye-pads held together raise a keyed seal-bed; Crake cannot pick it, and I carry an exact raised wax impression for a rigid replacement. I also copied both groups of angular script hidden beneath the concealed north door’s quarter-turn boss. Three removable lightning bolts are a matched solid-brass shrine-machine set, worth more together than as scrap; I carry all three, value unknown. The six-armed brass automaton has one matching back socket with a fresh insertion/removal scrape and stays inert without a bolt; keeper prints paused there, then reached Gorfthistle’s locked east door. Gorfthistle (small, soot-dark, crossbow) and collared Butch accepted Crake’s 10gp: broken catch paid, single-file passage allowed if we touch none of his goods; company owes Crake 10gp from first fee. His middle west passage, uphill at fork, reaches the foundry dry; low way carries greasy snail-feed. He says the Black One lies below the foundry and gloops feed it, but denies being keeper or owning shrine/machine. All five ended unharmed at dry foundry lip: cold furnace, dry slag channel, old iron rails descending, broad black grease trail continuing south. Sleep is spent; no spell memorised.