The Unsigned Peace

Among the floating wreckage you find a sealed herald's scroll case. Inside lies a two-page peace treaty ending the forty-year feud between House Vey and House Orme, though neither side has signed it yet. A note pinned to the parchment reads: "To be witnessed and signed at the Boundary Stone."

Clinging to a drifting keel timber in the wreckage is a mercenary wearing no house colors. He starts talking before your crew even pulls him dry. "We were hired to kill the herald, not read what he carried! A cloaked steward paid us at night in a tavern—I never asked which house he served, but I can point him out if you keep me alive."

Two armed house yachts hover on opposite sides of a floating boundary monolith, each waiting for a herald who will never arrive. Lady Vey signals you first: she is ready to sign the treaty and will reward whoever forces Lord Orme to sign as well. Lord Orme signals second: he refuses to sign and will pay handsomely if you hand the scroll over to him to destroy.

The peace treaty is now signed and sealed by both houses. By custom, however, it does not become binding law until it hangs in the great hall of the house that petitioned for peace. With her own herald dead, Lady Vey entrusts the treaty to you to carry to her hold—but before you cast off, Lord Orme's boat master rows over with a quiet bribe: his lord will pay handsomely if that signed scroll never reaches her hall.

Lord Orme receives you in a hall hung with stuffed skywyrm heads, thoroughly pleased with himself. "Forty years of war, and good for forty more—nothing keeps a hold sharp like a feud!" He gestures toward a chest of silver and a deck gun crewed at his battery rail, offering to pay you in coin or artillery.

With the hired ambush survivor standing on the Boundary Stone between them, neither lord dares ask aloud who paid him first. Both sign the treaty in a hurry—and then each sends a boat to your ship in secret to buy your silence and make sure the witness never reaches a Guild court.

The signed peace treaty now hangs framed in Lady Vey's great hall. A compact woman with a soldier's bearing, she meets you on the dock. "My yacht wore wyrm-scale armor plating through forty years of war with Lord Orme. With the feud ended, she no longer needs it. Take the wyrm-scale plating for your own hull, or take your reward in silver from the household treasury."