The Warden's Margins

The estate auction is underway on the dock among the late Warden's old chairs and copper kettles. Lot thirty-one is a worn workbook whose margins are crammed with tiny compass bearings. Only one other bidder has noticed what it really is: a rival lord's household mage, who has ignored every other lot.

Under your cabin lamp that night, you study the workbook. Alongside the compass bearing and the door-ward sequence, another entry repeats every few pages: "Wages owed to me by the hold, still unpaid"—followed by dates and sums spanning decades. Down on the dock below, the rival household mage is still pacing the pier, watching your ship.

You find the rival mage's yacht moored beside a lone crag tower. She stands at the tower door with the workbook open, unpicking the ancient door ward thread by thread. Spotting your ship, she doesn't pause her work—while her yacht's Casting Room lights up to drive you off.

The practice tower stands alone atop a wind-scoured crag. Across its stone doorway hums a self-sustaining ward that has held for twenty years. The workbook's margins explain how the Warden wove it—and, in smaller script, the exact sequence to unravel it safely.

Inside the swept stone chamber stands a humming auxiliary ward frame beside the window, surrounded by shelves holding thirty years of dated practice journals recording every spell experiment the old Warden ever ran.

The door ward drops at dusk, and your crew helps carry the dead Warden's collection aboard her yacht: a humming auxiliary ward frame, a bronze ward-bell, and thirty years of dated spell journals. Once the last crate is loaded, the rival mage pauses at your rail. "My lord doesn't know what secrets are written in these journals either—and I will pay well for a captain who keeps quiet about what came out of this tower."