{"ashvale3d":"module","name":"quests","api":1,"v":2,"data":{"quests":{"ashen_crown":{"name":"The Ashen Crown","giver":"maren","steps":[{"id":1,"zone":"whisperwood","goal":{"kill":"wolf","n":10},"reward":"sword_t1","talk":["Ah. A traveller. Forgive an old woman for staring; we've seen few new faces since the river took the Brightwater road.","I am Maren. I keep the records here, and the well, and more memories than the valley has room for.","Something is wrong in Whisperwood. Every night the wolves come down to the fold and take a lamb. Always one. Always at the same hour.","Hungry wolves are never that tidy. These hunt as if someone tells them when.","My late husband's blade hangs over my hearth. Thin out ten of the grey wolves in the wood and it is yours. Plain bronze, but honest.","Whisperwood begins past the southwest gate. Tam sells bread if you need it. And come back alive; I hate writing names in the records."],"progress":["{left} more of the grey wolves, {name}. They run in threes near the old stumps.","If they bite deep, eat. Tam's bread mends a torn arm faster than any prayer."],"complete":["Ten. And not one of them with a full belly. Strange, for wolves that eat a lamb every night.","Here: Aldric's sword. He'd want it swinging again rather than gathering soot."],"locked":[]},{"id":2,"zone":"whisperwood","goal":{"kill":"bandit_leader","n":1},"reward":"xp:attack:1500","talk":["Something else troubles me. The hunter found boot prints among the wolf tracks. Men's boots, walking calm beside the pack.","Bandits. They herd the wolves to keep folk off the old road. There is something on that road they want kept quiet.","Their leader camps deep in Whisperwood, past the split oak. He is no farmhand with a stolen knife; he fought in the old wars.","Bring him down, {name}, and bring me whatever he carries. Train first if you must. The wood will wait; he will not get kinder."],"progress":["The bandit leader still walks free. Look past the split oak, deep in the wood.","He won't be alone. Thin his men first, and keep your strength up."],"complete":["You're back, and with blood on your sleeve. Not all of it yours, I hope.","A map, sewn into the lining of his coat? Let me see... These marks are the goblin camp, northwest of the old forest.","Bandits buying from goblins. Whatever passes between them, it starts in that camp. You have earned this, and more."],"locked":["The goblins have dug in at their camp northwest of the old forest. Garrick says go in strong, or not at all.","Train while you wait. Chop, fish, swing that sword. When you can walk into that camp and come out, come and find me."]},{"id":3,"zone":"whisperwood","goal":{"kill":"goblin_chief","n":1},"reward":"shield_t3","talk":["The goblin camp lies northwest of the old forest, through the gap in its northwest edge. Goblins fight dirty; their Chief fights dirtier.","The map names a Chief. Whatever the goblins trade the bandits, he decides it. Find him."],"progress":["The Goblin Chief still holds the camp northwest of the old forest. His goblins rally to him; thin them first."],"complete":["The Chief wore this round his neck? A shard of black glass... no. Not glass. Ash, hard as iron.","I have read of this. The Ashen Crown. The old king burned with his keep; what was left went into the dark under Whisperwood.","Orange-hoods have been walking that southeast trail. If they carry ash, they carry it toward the same hole. Take this shield. You will need it where this leads."],"locked":[]},{"id":4,"zone":"spidercave","goal":{"kill":"wraith","n":3},"reward":"xp:defence:6000","talk":["The crown was the old king's, burned with him when the Keep fell. What was left of it was carried down into the dark: into the Spider Cave, in the woods southeast of Whisperwood, at the end of the trail that leaves its southeast road.","Its pieces have been calling things out of that dark ever since. Three wraiths drift through the tunnels past the flooded grotto. Lay them to rest."],"progress":["{left} more wraiths. The cold you feel down in that cave isn't the damp."],"complete":["Three wraiths at rest. Something deeper will know they're gone. Go when you're ready, and not a moment before."],"locked":[]},{"id":5,"zone":"spidercave","goal":{"kill":"ash_knight","n":1},"reward":"body_t4","talk":["Past the wraiths, at the narrow way into the deepest chamber, the Ash Knight still stands guard, as he once guarded a king long dead.","He was the best of them, once. Give him rest, {name}."],"progress":["The Ash Knight still stands his watch. Grief makes a soldier stubborn; ash makes him tireless."],"complete":["You gave him his rest. I hope he thanked you, in whatever way a knight of ash can."],"locked":[]},{"id":6,"zone":"spidercave","goal":{"kill":"lich","n":1},"reward":["xp:strength:8000","fighter_boots"],"talk":["Beyond the queen's tunnels, at the very end of the cave, waits the one who wears the rest of the crown: the Lich of Ashvale.","End it, and the valley remembers what it was. Come back alive, and I will put fighter boots on your feet. They put real weight behind a blow."],"progress":["The Lich still holds the crown. Every night it does, the valley forgets a little more of itself."],"complete":["It's over. The lich is ash, and the valley can remember itself again.","Take these fighter boots. They put real weight behind a blow. Wear them, and your Strength will tell."],"locked":[]}],"done":["The crown is ash again, and the valley is ours. There'll always be a seat by my fire for you, {name}.","The dragon's ruin is not the king's keep. That one burned. The other still has a chain on it.","Now go on. Somewhere out there, something else is waiting to be written down."],"story":5},"drove_road":{"name":"The Drove Road","giver":"rowan","steps":[{"id":1,"zone":"whisperwood","goal":{"kill":"wolf","n":5},"reward":"xp:strength:600","talk":["Mind you stand between me and the gate. That heifer spooks at strangers and she's twenty stones of stranger.","Rowan. I take beasts down the Saltmere road and sell 'em there, eleven seasons running. This season I can't get a drove out of Ashvale.","Grey wolves come off the wood at dusk and run at the near side. They don't kill so much as scatter. Two miles an hour, and you'll walk 'em back twice over before dark.","Five of 'em. That's what it took last season and what it'll take now: thin the pack till the pack takes notice of a quieter road.","Southwest gate, then keep the old stumps on your left. Come back with five and I'll stand you shoeing at Garrick's."],"progress":["{left} more wolf, {name}. The drove's nervous enough as it stands.","They run in threes. Two at a time suits me better."],"complete":["Five. That's the southeast run, the lot of 'em, by the look of that pelt.","Beast walked two mile further today than it did last week. That's the whole of this trade, that is."]},{"id":2,"zone":"saltmere","goal":{"kill":"boar","n":6},"reward":"pack_t1","talk":["Aye, the beasts are calmer. The next trouble's further down the road, and it's closer to Saltmere than anyone down there will admit.","There's grazing southeast of the town - good grass, with a marsh drain running through it. Boar root the whole of it at night. Six acres this year, turned over like a kitchen garden.","Nettie feeds half the town off those marshes and Sela sells the reeds. They'll back me, but they're not going out at dusk to say it themselves.","Six boar. Quick, for the weight they carry, and they'll charge if you back them onto the drain bank. Keep a way back to the path open."],"progress":["{left} more boar. The grazing's still turned up wherever you haven't been."],"complete":["That's the marsh quiet again, and the grass'll come back before the frost.","Mention it at the Tap when you get down there. Hollis'll want to know who did it, and he won't charge you for the drink."]},{"id":3,"zone":"saltmere","goal":{"kill":"timber_wolf","n":4},"reward":"helmet_t2","talk":["There's a bigger trouble on the trail, and it isn't the grey pack you cleared.","Timber wolves. Bigger than the wood wolves and a good deal bolder. They follow a drove at night and take one off the rear, and by morning you've a collar in the grass and no dog.","Four of 'em. They won't come at you in the open - they'll test you where the path goes under the pines and the bells are out of sight.","Take the iron out of Ashvale if you've not got it. I'd rather pay for a helmet than write to a man's wife."],"progress":["{left} more of the big wolves. Listen for the bells - if the drove's gone quiet, they're behind it."],"complete":["Four. And they came off the southwest trail, not the road, which is the difference between a loss and a story.","Wear that. You've earned the weight of it."]},{"id":4,"zone":"saltmere","goal":{"kill":"bandit","n":6},"reward":"xp:attack:1800","talk":["Last of it, and it's the part I've not said to either elder, in Ashvale or in Saltmere.","There's a camp where the road bends out of the trees, and they've set a toll on anything with hooves in it. Six of 'em. A grey coat runs it; the rest are boys with sticks.","I won't pay it, and I've no wish to carry a sword into it myself. Take the camp apart, {name}, and the road's open again for everyone walking it, me included."],"progress":["{left} more of the toll-men. The camp's where the road bends out of the trees - you'll smell the fire before you see it."],"complete":["The camp's broken. That's my living handed back to me, and I don't know what to do with the thanks.","Go and sit in the Saltmere Tap and tell Hollis Rowan sent you. Whatever he's got for a traveller like you, you've earned it twice over."]}],"done":["The drove went northwest with all six beasts and none of them lost. That's what the road looks like now, {name}.","When you've a mind for more of it, ask after you in Saltmere. A town on the coast has its own way of being in trouble."],"story":2},"rudder":{"name":"The Shipwright's Rudder","giver":"bryce","steps":[{"id":1,"zone":"saltmere","goal":{"bring":"logs","n":8},"reward":"xp:woodcutting:1000","talk":["Eight sound logs and a boy to carry them, which is the same trouble twice. I can't get the boy either.","Bryce. I build boats here and mend them when the coast disagrees. The southwest boat came home last month with her rudder on the tide and nothing on the sternpost but iron.","I've a blank in the shed and no timber for it. Pine twists, and oak wants a season lying under cover, which is a season I don't have.","Eight ordinary logs, seasoned, stacked by the shed. Not the green stuff off the southwest road, and not pine. I'll know the difference and so will the sea."],"progress":["The shed wall is still empty, {name}. Eight logs, and I'll take them wherever you found them."],"complete":["That's a rudder blank in that stack, and it's the best half of one already.","You've an eye for timber. Most folk bring me fence posts and call it a week's work."]},{"id":2,"zone":"saltmere","goal":{"kill":"boar","n":5},"reward":"xp:strength:1200","talk":["Now the timber wants lying out, and the marsh won't let it lie.","Boar come up off the drain at dusk and root the whole of it. Last stack was forty logs; what I've got back is where they dragged it and what they didn't eat.","Five of them, and they'll charge the stack rather than move off it, so don't come at them with your back to the shed.","Rowan's already paid the marsh a visit. If they've come back, it's because the ones he left came looking for company."],"progress":["{left} more boar. The stack's still dragged about, and the mud's got tusks in it."],"complete":["That's the marsh quiet and the timber flat again. Look at that mud - that's a year of my life in it.","Take the strength you got out of it. It's the only thing a boat doesn't need a licence for."]},{"id":3,"zone":"saltmere","goal":{"talk":"tolly","n":1},"reward":"helmet_t2","talk":["It's hung. Rudder's on the southwest boat, hung and shipped, and I've not told the man who has to sail her.","Go down the third pier and tell Tolly she floats. He's pulled her six winters and won't ask me, and I won't go down there and watch him find out.","Say it plain: Bryce says she floats. That's all he wants and all he'll get out of me."],"progress":["Tolly, {name}. Third pier. Say the words and come back."],"complete":["He said the same back to you? Then it's true and we're both out of a excuse.","Here. Iron, off the old sternwork. On a boat a helm is the thing that turns her; on your head it's the same metal and I've no further use for it."]}],"done":["The southwest boat's out on the evening tide with a rudder that stays on. That's my name on the water again, {name}.","When you've a mind for the whole of it - the town, the harbour, and what the coast is short of - go and find Cobb by the portal. He's the elder, and he's been waiting for someone to ask."],"story":1},"salt_road":{"name":"The Salt Road","giver":"cobb","steps":[{"id":1,"zone":"whisperwood","goal":{"talk":"rowan","n":1},"reward":"xp:speechcraft:900","talk":["Sixty years I've kept the accounts of a town that never once asked what it wanted. Now somebody's walked the whole road and you're the first to ask me.","Cobb. I say where the boats may tie up, which is the whole of the trade, and it has taken me this long to notice we're the end of something.","Ashvale sends its beasts northwest and calls it a favour. We send fish southeast and call it Tuesday. Both of them are lying, and the road between has never had a name.","Walk back up to the northwest gate and tell Rowan Saltmere will take his drove on Tuesdays, at one price, every Tuesday, while I'm drawing breath. He'll want it from someone who came down it."],"progress":["Rowan, {name}. Up the trail at the northwest gate, and Tuesdays in your mouth."],"complete":["He said yes before you'd finished the sentence, I'll wager. Then the road has a price on it, which is most of what a road is."]},{"id":2,"zone":"saltmere","goal":{"bring":"iron_ore","n":6},"reward":"xp:mining:1500","talk":["We've a forge. Orin's anvil came out of the old chandlery when the town bought it, and it's a good anvil.","We've no mine. There's iron up in Ashvale, and every blade in this town has come down this road in somebody's pack and been sold back to the man who carried it.","Six iron ore, and I'll not tell you where to dig it. He'll melt it here, and the third of what he makes is town work: hooks, hinges, and the pins that hold a rudder on.","That last is why I'm asking. Bryce has a boat to hang and I'd rather pay for ore than pay for a funeral."],"progress":["The anvil's cold, {name}. Six ore, and Orin does the rest of it."],"complete":["That's a year of hinges in that stack, and work on the anvil that isn't selling swords to boys."]},{"id":3,"zone":"saltmere","goal":{"kill":"bandit","n":5},"reward":"chain_t2","talk":["There's a company on the southwest beach, and they call what they do salvage.","Wreck's wreck. The town's rule is the crew comes first and the cargo's ours, and we've held to that since before the church had a roof.","They take it off the sand before anyone's rowed out, and they've learned that nobody rows out in the dark. Five of them, and don't go at them where the shingle gives you no room to back up.","I'm not asking you to hang anybody. The town does that itself when it catches them. I'm asking you to make the beach unpleasant."],"progress":["{left} more of them. They'll go in the boats if you're slow, and stand in the surf if you're quick."],"complete":["The beach is quiet, and what washed up last week is standing in the town's hall where it belongs.","Put that on. It came off a wreck, like everything else here, only this time the town got the invoice."]},{"id":4,"zone":"saltmere","goal":{"kill":"bandit_leader","n":1},"reward":"cape_blue","talk":["Their man. They follow one man, and he picked the beach by the river mouth because that's where a wreck comes ashore and no one's rowed out to count it.","He'll be at the driftwood line at the turn of the tide. He won't wait for you to finish asking, so bring your boots and your patience in equal amounts.","You'll want to come back to me after. Sixty years I've kept a town's accounts, and there's one entry I've never once balanced."],"progress":["The driftwood line, {name}, at the turn of the tide. He'll be the one nobody else is standing near."],"complete":["That's the beach, then, and the ledger both. Come and find me by the portal - there's a thing I've kept by me six years for whoever walked the whole of the trail."]}],"done":["The Salt Road, then. Rowan will say it's his road, Bryce will say it's the water, and the accounts will say it's Tuesdays. All three of them are right.","That's the trail end to end in your column and mine. Mind you come down it now and then - a road nobody walks is just a long way to do nothing."],"story":2},"empty_water":{"name":"The Empty Water","giver":"perla","steps":[{"id":1,"zone":"saltmere","goal":{"bring":"shrimp_raw","n":12},"reward":"xp:fishing:1200","talk":["Perla. I mend nets in this town. I've mended eleven of them this past year, all of them on rocks, none of them wet.","Last spring the harbour had the town's marks moved out past the pier heads - ten metres of open water from the last plank, and they called it letting the shoal rest. The shoal rested. So did every net in Saltmere.","Net holes are like a ledger: you find the small one early or the whole thing runs open. What I couldn't work out was why nobody could land a fish to prove the nets were worth mending.","I've had the marks hauled back in, to where a person can stand and cast from a plank or a quay wall. Two weeks of arguing and I've had them hauled in. Go and prove it was worth the argument.","Twelve shrimp. The southwest pier heads and the quay wall, both - shallow water, a net, and you'll see them go past your feet."],"progress":["{left} more shrimp, {name}. They're the marks with the little floats on now, and they're under your arms, I'll warrant."],"complete":["So the water wasn't empty. It was out of reach, which is a different thing and a poorer argument. Hand those to Nettie and she'll have a tale to tell."]},{"id":2,"zone":"saltmere","goal":{"bring":"salmon_raw","n":4},"reward":"xp:fishing:2400","talk":["Shrimp keep a town fed. Salmon are what make a town talk, and I'd rather have both in the same basket.","There's a mark off the second pier head, the deep side where the channel runs out. Salmon on it, and it takes a rod, thirty in the skill, and standing on a plank that has no business holding a person.","Four of them. Bring them wet rather than in a bag - I want to see them wriggle when you come back to me.","And don't go at it in a blow. The planks are sound enough in a calm and they are not sound in a blow, and I've mended enough people as well as nets."],"progress":["Four salmon, {name}, and {left} to go. The tide's on the turn, which is when they run and when the pier creaks."],"complete":["That's the second pier fishable, and the first salmon anyone's landed off it in fourteen months. Write that down if you keep a book - I would."]},{"id":3,"zone":"saltmere","goal":{"bring":"lobster_raw","n":2},"reward":"xp:fishing:3600","talk":["Now the third pier, and I'll not pretend it's pleasant. That's the deep end of the harbour, and what lives down there has a shell and a grudge.","You'll want a pot, and forty in the skill, and you'll want to lower it slow and haul it slow, because a lobster that sees you coming is a lobster that's gone.","Mind the third plank on the way out. Tolly's right about it and nobody has fixed it and nobody will, so long as it holds a rope. Step over it, don't stand on it.","Two of them is plenty. They're not shrimp, and I'm not going to have you emptying the harbour to make a point about a mark."],"progress":["{left} more off the third pier, {name}. Slow down, slow up, and mind the plank."],"complete":["There's your point made, in two shells. The deep of this harbour was never empty either - it was a hundred metres further off than anybody was willing to walk."]},{"id":4,"zone":"saltmere","goal":{"talk":"nettie","n":1},"reward":"pack_t3","talk":["Last one, and it isn't a fish. Go and stand at Nettie's stall and tell her the harbour's fishing again.","She's sold nothing but inland trout off the Ashvale carts for a year, and she's done it with a straight face because somebody has to keep the stall open. She'll want it from someone who pulled it out of the water.","Tell her the marks are in, the prices are hers to set, and Perla says the nets are worth mending after all.","Come back to me after you've told her. There's a pack of mine you'll want, and I'd rather you filled it with what this harbour gives you than a cart of somebody else's trout."],"progress":["Nettie, {name}, at the fish market. Tell her the truth and she'll pretend not to believe you for a week."],"complete":["She sent you back to me with a face on. That's Nettie hearing news she's wanted for a year and not meaning to show it.","There's four of us who live off that water, and one of us who kept arguing about where the marks went. Put the pack to use - the harbour's back."]}],"done":["The Empty Water, and it wasn't empty at all, it was a hundred metres further off than anybody was prepared to stand. That's the whole of the tale.","Mind the marks when the storms go through, {name}. They drift, and a drifted mark is a season of empty nets and a mender with nothing to do but watch the water."],"story":2},"bronze_gate":{"name":"The Bronze Gate","giver":"silas","steps":[{"id":1,"zone":"village","goal":{"bring":"oak_logs","n":8},"reward":"xp:woodcutting:1800","talk":["You want to know what's wrong with the southwest gate. So do I, and it's thirty-one years since I last had a scaffold up on it.","There's a centering of green pine inside that arch, put in by me in a hurry in a wet spring. Pine moves when it dries. Oak doesn't. Eight lengths off the southeast slope.","Modulus measured it twice and says the arch is sound. The arch is sound the way a promise is sound. It has been holding its own weight on a lie about a tree since before you were born.","And while you're about it, the mortar I laid that gate with was burnt wrong. I know that now. That's the second thing you're bringing me."],"progress":["{left} more oak, {name}. Southeast slope, and if Pax asks, no, you did not take the ones he painted."],"complete":["That's the centering. From the road it'll look like I'm building a new gate. I'm not. I'm telling an old one the truth for the first time."]},{"id":2,"zone":"village","goal":{"bring":"coal","n":6},"reward":"xp:mining:1500","talk":["Lime burnt on wood in a low clamp comes out half-alive. It sets, after a fashion, and what it sets to is powder. That's why the gate still isn't dry.","Six out of the pit. There's three faces of coal in there, past the copper where the roof comes down low, and it wants twenty in the mining before it lets go of anything.","Wood gives you a fire. Coal gives you a heat, and a heat is the whole difference between a wall and a pile of stones with an opinion.","The village lads have been in after them with a candle. Don't tell their mothers I said the roof's low - I said the roof's low in the coal end, which is a different sentence."],"progress":["{left} more coal, and keep it dry. A wet sack of coal is a heavy way of learning nothing."],"complete":["Six. That's a kiln that comes up to heat and stays there long enough to mean it. One good burn, not a hoard - I'm mending a gate, not a fortune."]},{"id":3,"zone":"village","goal":{"bring":"copper_ore","n":12},"reward":"xp:mining:2400","talk":["Now the pins. Iron pins on a gate that stands out in weather are rust with a shape to them. Bronze isn't, and bronze is copper with a tenth of tin in it.","Twelve copper, and they're the easy part - four faces of it by the pit mouth, any level, and the wind comes up that passage so take a lantern as well as a pick.","Leave the rest in the hill. There's no sense working a seam flat for the sake of twelve pins, and the pit's mine to keep, not mine to empty.","The tin is the problem, and the tin is Garrick's, which is a longer story than a hinge has any right to be."],"progress":["{left} more copper. By the pit mouth, all four faces of them, northwest of the gate you're standing under."],"complete":["Twelve copper. That's the pins, the straps and the hinges, and now I need the one thing in this village I cannot go and fetch myself."]},{"id":4,"zone":"village","goal":{"talk":"garrick","n":1},"reward":"shield_t2","talk":["Go and stand at the anvil and tell Garrick the mason is ready to mix, and that it was me who said his scale.","He's kept a cake of tin since he cut the wheel off the old mill, and I've kept twelve copper in a bin since the spring, and neither of us has said the word across that street in six years.","He'll want to know why I didn't come myself. Tell him my knees are on an arch and his are by an anvil and neither of us is wrong.","He'll weigh it, because that's the man's whole goodness and he's never once mentioned it. And he'll hand you the boss off the first gate to carry up the ladder - bronze, off a door that's had its day. Take it if he offers it you."],"progress":["Garrick, {name}, at the anvil on the southeast street. Say the word scale out loud. With him that's the whole introduction."],"complete":["He weighed it in front of you so neither of us had to say anything about six years of nothing. That's it settled, by a man who minds his own business."]}],"done":["The southwest gate, then: oak inside it, bronze on the outside, and mortar burnt at a heat worth calling a heat. It'll be standing when there's nobody left who remembers either of us.","Nobody gets a statue for this work. You get a wall that still stands and a gate that shuts, and fair enough. Mind the hinge on your way out, {name} - it'll want a year to settle."],"story":2},"sail_loft":{"name":"The Sail Loft","giver":"mabb","steps":[{"id":1,"zone":"saltmere","goal":{"bring":"willow_logs","n":8},"reward":"xp:woodcutting:2000","talk":["Mabb. I make sails in this town, which is one sail a year and nine mends, and the loft's cold so stand where the wind doesn't come through the boards.","What's wrong with the southwest boat's sail is the lower third. It's battened with oak, and oak is the right wood for a gate and the wrong wood for a wing. Oak snaps when a gust arrives all at once. Willow bends and comes back.","Eight lengths of willow, thin as your thumb and as long as my arm. They'll be along the channel where the water goes slow. Soft wood, any level takes it, and it doesn't fight the saw.","Strip the bark where you cut it. Bark holds wet, and wet is how a loft rots from the rafter down - I'd rather learn that from you than from the ceiling."],"progress":["{left} more willow, {name}. Thumb-thin. And if you bring me oak I'll swear at you and use it anyway."],"complete":["That's the lower third going on a frame that'll forgive a bad gust. You can feel the difference through the cloth - oak tells you the moment it gives up, willow never tells you at all."]},{"id":2,"zone":"saltmere","goal":{"kill":"deer","n":2},"reward":"xp:attack:1600","talk":["Before I cut a thing there's an ask, and it isn't a favour to me, it's a tool. Two of the red deer off the marsh grazing, and I'll tell you what they're for rather than have you guess.","A sewger's palm is leather. Salt water eats a cloth pad in a week and a wet pad tears the thread more than your needle does. Deer leather takes the wax and keeps its shape when your hand sweats, which is most of the day in a loft in summer.","Northeast of the last houses, where the marsh grass comes up short because that's what they leave of it. There's a flight of them on that marsh, a hundred and fourteen paces from where I'm standing, four and twenty head and a few limbers gone over into the reeds, and you do not walk into a herd like that. They're red deer, level five, and they've no appetite for you - but they go at the first wrong step in the mud, so take the one you're beside and let the other three and twenty be a problem for the town's supper.","Take the hides and leave the venison where it falls - Nettie's stall has been thin since the storm and the marsh is the town's larder, not my cabinet. I want the skin, and I want it salted before it heats."],"progress":["{left} more deer, {name}. Northeast of the town and one at a time - the marsh is a bad place to chase anything."],"complete":["That's palms for the season. Hide off them, salt it, and bring it up before it sets - a stiff hide is a hide you wasted, and I don't like wasting anything that lived in the same town as me."]},{"id":3,"zone":"saltmere","goal":{"bring":"net","n":3},"reward":"xp:speechcraft:1500","talk":["Now the thread, and this is the part where I need your mouth rather than your hands.","Canvas wants warp before it wants weft, and warp wants line that's already been stretched and salted. Since the harbour moved the marks back in there are nets in the sheds that were mended twice and are easier replaced than mended a third time.","Three of them. Nobody throws a net away and nobody sells one easy, so ask for the ones with torn skirts off the southwest boats - a fisherman will sell you a bad net at a fair price and thank you for the custom.","Shake the salt out before you bring them up the ladder. Salt in a loft is a season of stiff canvas and a mender with a sore thumb."],"progress":["{left} more net, {name}. Look for the mending that was never finished - that's a net that knows it's finished and hasn't been told."],"complete":["That's a warp, and it's been salted once already, which is more than you can say for new line off a spool. It cost you less than twine because you asked for the damaged ones."]},{"id":4,"zone":"saltmere","goal":{"talk":"bela","n":1},"reward":"cape_red","talk":["Last one, and it's an errand of words. Go down to Bela's and tell her Mabb says the loft's clear, the warp's on, and she can put the price back on the three bolts she's had off the top shelf since spring.","She bought them back off me in the hungry month, and they're my cloth. She'll sell one to somebody as a curtain and I'll hear about it every market day until the day I die.","Tell her I said the word warp out loud. With Bela that's the whole introduction, and it settles an account without either of us having to say what the hungry month was.","Come back up to me after. There's a cape cut off the offcut of the southwest boat's sail and it's red because I ran out of white - that's a sailmaker's finishing, and you've earned the offcut."],"progress":["Bela, {name}, at the counter on the southeast street. Say warp. And don't let her talk you into buying a curtain."],"complete":["She laughed, then she pretended she hadn't. That's the account settled and the bolts staying where they are."]}],"done":["The southwest boat's sail, then: willow in the lower third, thread that was salted once already, and not one rat's hole in the leech. She'll hold a wind that takes the masts off the other two.","A sail is a wall that has learned to fly, {name}. Wear the red - same cloth, better cutting than most, and it'll keep the rain off you until the next one's cut."],"story":2},"elder_bow":{"name":"The Elder Bow","giver":"latency","steps":[{"id":1,"zone":"village","goal":{"kill":"hare","n":6},"reward":"xp:ranged:1800","talk":["Southwest gate, the torches, the path up the range. I'm late to everything and I still get there before you do. Six hares, and you shoot them, and that's not me being short of a labourer - it's me finding out whether you can hold a bow steady at ninety paces in a wind.","There's a ladder in this village that nobody ever climbed to the top of, and it's made of wood. Oak bows at the gate, willow bows, maple bows - every bow in the shops is named after a tree, and the trees go up the hill in the same order the bows go up the counter.","Six hares, out on the stubble where the grass goes short. They're a hundred and thirty paces from where I stand, two to a form and three at a push, and there are forms of them all the way round this parish - four hundred and ninety-three of them - which is a thing the fences have not managed to do anything about.","Stand downwind of where you think they are rather than where you can see them. Hares go by the grass moving, not by you arriving, and a bow that's aimed at the hare you saw is aimed at where the hare was.","Bring me nothing - I don't want the meat or the skins. I want to see six of them come down in a morning, because what I'm going to ask you for after that is a thing you cannot carry up the range if you can't shoot on the way."],"progress":["{left} more hare, {name}. Downwind of the grass, not aimed at where you saw one. Ninety paces is shorter than it looks when you're holding the weight."],"complete":["Six, and four of them at the far mark, which is the only report I've written this month that I was glad to write. You can hold it steady. That's the whole of step one."]},{"id":2,"zone":"village","goal":{"bring":"deer_hide","n":4},"reward":"xp:strength:1800","talk":["Now the case, and this is the part everybody gets wrong about a bow. A stave is a piece of wood that wants to be straight again. All of shooting is the wood being told to bend and being let go, and what keeps it straight in the years between is a hide and a strap and somewhere dry to hang it.","Four deer hides. There are more deer in this parish than hares - five hundred and nineteen herds of them against four hundred and ninety-three forms of hares - and the nearest stand a hundred and sixteen paces from my post, two and twenty head in a field, so what this ask wants isn't patience, it's restraint: four out of a crowd that size, and the rest of them standing.","Take them off the beast whole and salt them flat. A hide rolled green goes mouldy against a stave in eleven weeks, and I've lost two bows to somebody's green hide, so I know the smell before I see it.","They're heavy, and there's a lap of the hill between the pasture and my post, which is why the next thing you carry up here is your own back. The gatehouse peg is where they hang, and if a bow lives on that peg through a winter, it lives in a case."],"progress":["{left} more deer hide, {name}, salted flat. Whole, not cut into strips - a strip is a repair and I'm not asking for a repair, I'm asking for a case."],"complete":["Four, whole, and they'll take the thread. A bow on a bare peg in this weather is a straight stave by March, and I've had enough of straight staves to last me."]},{"id":3,"zone":"village","goal":{"bring":"yew_logs","n":6},"reward":"xp:woodcutting:2800","talk":["Here is the thing I have been walking this road to say. Up the range, where the path runs out and the fern comes up through the stones, there are nineteen yews. Nineteen, in this parish, standing there for a hundred years, and not one ask has ever been made on them.","It wants forty of woodcutting and a good axe, and it's forty-odd paces from where I'm standing - which is the joke of it. The nearest yew to this village is closer than the nearest maple people queue in Saltmere for. The deer come under those trees now the way they come under everything - two and twenty head in a feed, the nearest of them ninety-five paces off the trunks, and seven of their herds standing inside two hundred and fifty paces of this wood - so you'll know you're come to the yews by the fern being broken all round it. No wolves though. The nearest of theirs is eight hundred and sixteen paces from those trunks, which is the only mercy in this parish.","Six lengths. A stave takes four, and I want two over, because the first one you draw out of the wood will have a knot in the belly and it'll go across your knee before you've had it wet. Nobody tells you that at the shop end of a bow.","Cut them on the bend they're growing, and drag them out of the wood rather than throwing them - a yew bruised at the butt is a yew that'll throw when you string it. Bring them up green and I'll season them on the rafters of the gatehouse over the winter."],"progress":["{left} more yew, {name}. Up the range where the path ends, forty of woodcutting, cut on the bend. Nineteen trees, and you'll see them before you've counted to a hundred from my post."],"complete":["Six, on the bend, unbuilt, and there's the ladder's top rung lying in the grass at the southwest gate. Nineteen trees in this parish. I've wanted to say that sentence to somebody for eleven years."]},{"id":4,"zone":"village","goal":{"talk":"orin","n":1},"reward":"bow_t5","talk":["Last thing, and it isn't metalwork, it's arithmetic. Down the trail at Saltmere there's an armoury, and on its shelf is a bow they call a Yew shortbow, and it sells at sixteen hundred. There is no yew inside their map. There is no yew within a day's walk of their counter. The nearest yew is standing forty paces behind me.","So go and say it to Orin. Ask him what he thinks a yew bow would be worth that was actually cut out of a yew - and ask him, plainly, where he thinks his came from, because a name on a shelf is a promise about a tree.","He won't like it. He'll be decent about not liking it, which is more than most of them manage, and he'll want to see a stave. Tell him Ashvale's got nineteen, and tell him the warden sent me, and tell him the road's open.","Then come up the gatehouse, because if you've carried a message that far with a stave on your shoulder, you've earned the peg at the top of it, and there's only ever been one of those."],"progress":["Orin, {name}, by the anvil at Saltmere, third counter down the southeast street. Ask him about the yew and don't let him talk you onto a shelf instead."],"complete":["He said his came from a merchant out of the northwest, which is what a man says when he has never asked. Then he asked whether the wood was seasoned, and I'd say that's the beginning of somebody who'll buy it off us."]}],"done":["That's the peg. The elder bow - not elder as in a tree, there's no elder wood in this valley, elder as in old. It was old before the torches were hung on the southwest gate and there's no counter on the trail that would know what to do with it. Ranged forty-four, and it has never been off the wood it was cut from.","Take it up there and stand on the gatehouse if you like; you can see the whole road from there, the stubble the hares are on, the pasture, the wood line, and Saltmere if the weather's honest. If the road closes, that's me. If the road's fine, you never heard of me. That's the job done right, {name}, and it's done right today because a stranger carried a stave down it."],"story":3},"kitchen_range":{"name":"The Kitchen Range","giver":"cinder","steps":[{"id":1,"zone":"village","goal":{"bring":"shrimp","n":10},"reward":"xp:fishing:2000","talk":["Seven paces from the well and it's cold. There's your first surprise, then - a village that cooks on an idea of a fire. I'm Hob, I've the range, and I've been waiting for somebody with the sense to fill it.","Ten shrimp, cooked, and cook them here where I can see you do it. Four marks out in the lake will give them to a net and a level one - the nearest is sixteen paces from this wall and the furthest twenty-three, so you'll be wet before you're back and that's normal.","Here's the part nobody warns you about, so I will: at your level the fire takes two in five of anything you put on it. That's not the fire being wicked, that's your hands being new, and it loses four of every hundred each level you gain until it stops altogether.","So bait a net, and bring me back ten that came off the heat rather than ten that the heat agreed with. And your pay for this one is in fishing, not cooking - it's the skill my bank teaches, and the fire can wait its turn."],"progress":["{left} more shrimp cooked, {name}. Bring the burnt ones to me too and don't hide them - burnt shrimp goes to the pigs and I'd rather know the number than guess it."],"complete":["That's ten, and the smell is right. The burnt ones went to the pigs this morning, which is the only honest thing about a first batch - you'll burn four times as many before the winter, and then you won't, and that's the whole of cooking."]},{"id":2,"zone":"village","goal":{"bring":"hare_cooked","n":3},"reward":"xp:fishing:2600","talk":["Fish is the easy half of a kitchen because a fish is already clean. Now the meat, and the nearest meat in this parish is the thing the warden is shooting half the year.","Three hares, cooked through. The nearest of them are a hundred and seventeen paces northeast of this wall, there are more on the stubble than there are of us, and they want cooking five, which is where you'll already be standing by the time you come back from the lake.","A hare is small and it dries out, and drying out is just burning with better manners. Four counts a side at a range this size, so work it and don't wander off it - the people who lose a hare are the people who started a conversation next to a fire.","The warden takes four of them off the same field to prove that a bow can be held steady. I take three to prove that a person can be fed. Same grass, honest work, both of it. Paid in fishing again, and don't look at me like that - it's the level you're short of, and I'd rather you had the mark next week than the praise today."],"progress":["{left} more hare on the fire, {name}. Off the heat early, back onto it late - I'm not asking you for a sole, and neither is the fire."],"complete":["Three, cooked through, and none of them scraped. The warden measures a person with a bow on that same stubble; I feed them out of it. Same grass, two opinions of what a good day is."]},{"id":3,"zone":"village","goal":{"bring":"trout","n":4},"reward":"xp:cooking:1900","talk":["Now I'll tell you the thing about this village that I've wanted to tell somebody for eleven years. There are two marks in the whole world where a rod will take a trout. Both of them are in that lake, and both of them are sixteen paces from the wall of my kitchen.","Saltmere is built on the sea. It has a harbour, seven marks, pots and nets and a fish stall that argues with the tap about prices - and it has never landed a trout in its life. Not one. The trout stay in fresh water and the fresh water is ours.","So the tap and the fish stall out there sell you a cooked trout that came off a cart, and they charge you for the privilege of not knowing that - it's the only cooked trout on any shelf in the world, and it isn't caught where it's sold. You can do better standing on this bank with a rod and twenty levels, and I'll take four of them off your hands, cooked.","Don't salt them. Saltmere will salt anything you bring them, and a salted trout cooked on a range that's been cold since spring tastes exactly like what it is, which is a thing somebody carried in a bucket."],"progress":["{left} more trout, {name}. Two marks, both in this lake, sixteen paces from the wall and a rod at twenty. Take the heat off them before they argue."],"complete":["Four landed trout, unsalted, cooked by somebody standing sixteen paces from the water they came out of. Eleven years I've wanted to say that sentence in my own kitchen, and now I have, so it's yours to say somewhere else."]},{"id":4,"zone":"village","goal":{"bring":"venison_cooked","n":2},"reward":"xp:cooking:1600","talk":["Last of the ladder, and it isn't on the water. Two haunches, cooked - you want fifteen on the fire for venison, and there's your ladder: a shrimp at one, a hare at five, a trout at five, and a stag at fifteen degrees of my heat. Four things, four ways to fill a kitchen, and one number that goes down the longer you stand here.","The deer are a hundred and sixty-five paces from this wall, due north of it, a shade west. They're quieter than the boars and they run sooner, and the pasture they're on is the same ground the drover walks his beasts across, so you'll know the way and he'll have told you the rest.","Fifteen is where a haunch will take the heat, and at fifteen the fire still takes two in five of them - forty at the rung, nothing at all ten degrees over it. So expect one black in the pan, mind the pigs, and know that the number goes down the longer you stand here. That's the point of the whole errand.","Bring the haunches here and not to the tap. Saltmere would cook them beautifully, and then they'd sell them back to you as somebody else's dinner, at a price, with a sprig on the top."],"progress":["{left} more venison on the fire, {name}. The deer are a hundred and sixty-five paces due north and the fire wants fifteen - neither of them will come to you."],"complete":["Two haunches off a stag, a hundred and twenty paces from this wall, and no black on either of them. That's the ladder and you're at the top of it without having noticed, which is how it works."]},{"id":5,"zone":"village","goal":{"talk":"symmetry","n":1},"reward":"pack_t4","talk":["Now carry the last of it five paces southeast to the curator, and don't ask me why. It's eleven years of a kitchen; he's got a room of pots and I've got a fire, and one morning a year ago we agreed he'd eat what the fire made.","He'll want to know how it was cooked. Tell him a range, seven paces from the well, and nine marks in our lake, and a trout that Saltmere has never once landed - he writes that sort of thing down, that's the whole of his trade.","And take the frame pack off my wall going. Tier four of a ladder that stops at three on the counter and never starts again at five, eight stone of it it'll carry, and it held the supper across the marsh for eleven years before I hung it up.","It's yours, and it's not a gift, it's the pay for two haunches and a stranger who stood at my range long enough to stop burning the food."],"progress":["Symmetry, {name}, five paces southeast along the wall with the lake behind him. Take the last of the supper and tell him the range is lit again."],"complete":["He'll have written it down wrong, in pencil, on the back of something. He took the story, and you took the pack off my wall, and that is the whole of how this village keeps a record."]}],"done":["Then the range is lit, and it'll stay lit, and that's the whole of what I wanted. Four rungs, four verbs, and a cook who knows that two in five is not the fire's opinion of him - it's a number, and numbers go down when you practice.","Take the lake, take the stubble, take the pot mark if you've the fishing for it. And if you ever hear that Saltmere's fish shop has trout on the shelf, you come and tell me the price they're asking, because I'd like to know what a lie costs in a town with no fresh water.","That's the kitchen, {name}. Seven paces from the well, eleven years cold, and warm since you walked up. Nobody's going to write this in a book - the curator will, actually, badly, in pencil - but that's a day's work done and it's done today."],"story":2},"iria_supper":{"name":"A Meal for Iria","giver":"iria","steps":[{"id":1,"zone":"whisperwood","goal":{"cook":"chicken_cooked","n":1},"talk":["You are on the main path. I came down here, away from the pond. I am Iria.","Cook me a chicken. A raw one, on a range or a campfire, until it is cooked through and not burnt. The chickens run in Ashvale village, and Hob's range stands by the houses there. There is a campfire in the western tents of this wood if you would rather not walk back.","Bring me word when it is done. I will know if the fire took it."],"progress":["The chicken is not cooked yet, {name}. Kill one of the village chickens for the raw meat, then cook it on Hob's range or on the campfire in the western tents. A burnt one does not count."],"complete":["Cooked, and the smell is honest. I asked for a chicken. What I wanted was a sandwich."]},{"id":2,"zone":"whisperwood","goal":{"bring":"bread","n":1,"with":"chicken_cooked"},"talk":["A chicken on its own is a poor meal. Buy me a loaf of bread and bring it with that cooked chicken. Tam sells bread at the general store in Ashvale.","Then I can make the sandwich I meant from the start."],"progress":["I still need the loaf, and the cooked chicken with it. Tam, at the Ashvale general store. {left} loaf left to buy."],"complete":["Now it is a sandwich. Thank you. The plate is not finished."]},{"id":3,"zone":"whisperwood","goal":{"bring":"lobster","n":1},"talk":["A lobster on the side. I do not keep them here. This is the last ordinary thing I will ask of you.","Hollis sells lobster at the Saltmere Tap. Saltmere is the harbour east down the coast. Ask for Hollis."],"progress":["One lobster, {name}. Hollis, at the Saltmere Tap. The harbour is east down the coast."],"complete":["That will do for supper. You have fed me. The ring is another matter."]},{"id":4,"zone":"whisperwood","goal":{"kill":"timber_wolf","n":1,"bring":"timber_wolf_pelt"},"reward":"ring_angels","talk":["The Ring of Angels is not payment for a meal. Kill one timber wolf and bring me its pelt. They den in the trees southeast of the pond, well off this path, and further out in the woods.","Do both, and the ring is yours. Wear it. If a blow leaves you below a fifth of your life, it carries you home to Ashvale. It rests for an hour before it can do so again."],"progress":["One timber wolf slain, and its pelt in your bag. So far: {n} of {goal} slain. The pelt comes off the beast. Southeast of the pond, off the path."],"complete":["The pelt is honest. Take the Ring of Angels. Wear it, and if a blow leaves you below a fifth of your life it will carry you home. It rests an hour between saves.","Come back if you want that hour made short."]}],"done":["The ring is yours. Speak to me again if you would have it watch over you more often."],"story":2},"angel_gift":{"name":"The Gift of Angels","giver":"iria","steps":[{"id":1,"zone":"whisperwood","goal":{"kill":"timber_wolf","n":3,"bring":"timber_wolf_pelt"},"reward":"flag:gift_of_angels","talk":["The hour on that ring is long. Kill three timber wolves and bring me their pelts. The same dens, southeast of the pond, off this path, and out in the woods.","Do that and I will give you the Gift of Angels. The ring will rest ten minutes, not an hour."],"progress":["Three timber wolves, and three pelts. So far: {n} of {goal} slain. Bring every pelt. One wolf, one skin."],"complete":["Three pelts. The Gift of Angels is yours: it rests on you, not in your bag. The ring hears it now: ten minutes between saves, and no less."]}],"done":["The gift is yours. The ring rests ten minutes, then it can carry you home again."],"story":1,"after":"iria_supper"},"wayside_prayer":{"name":"The Wayside Prayer","giver":"aldous","steps":[{"id":1,"zone":"village","goal":{"talk":"symmetry"},"reward":"xp:prayer:100","talk":["Peace be with you, {name}. Mind the pews - the left one rocks.","I am Father Aldous. This little church is all Ashvale has, but Saltmere had a chapel once, and it has stood empty since the fever years.","I mean to light its altar again. For that I need the old chapel's blessing-roll, the list of every hand that was ever blessed there. Symmetry keeps the village's old things in the house with the green roof, east of the square.","Ask her for it, would you? She will know the one I mean: a grey scroll with a salt stain."],"say":["The blessing-roll? Oh, the grey thing with the stain. It ruined the line of my shelf for years.","I gave it to Odric the merchant last month. He was taking candles and cloth down to Saltmere for the chapel and said he'd carry the roll as well.","Tell Father Aldous it is on the road, not lost. I would never lose anything. I only move it where it looks right."],"progress":["Symmetry is in the house with the green roof, east of the square. Ask her about the blessing-roll."],"complete":["With Odric? Then it has been on the road for a month. Odric does the trip to Saltmere in four days.","Something has happened to him."]},{"id":2,"zone":"village","goal":{"talk":"odric"},"reward":"xp:prayer:250","talk":["Take the Saltmere road out of the village, east along the cobbles. Odric drives a covered wagon with a grey horse; you cannot miss it.","Find him, {name}. Then come back and tell me what you found - do not go on to Saltmere yet. If he is hurt I will need to know first."],"say":["Thank the stars, a face! I've been sat by this wreck four days. The axle went on a rut and the whole wagon went over.","The horse bolted for Saltmere and I've no legs for the walk on this ankle. The candles are in the grass, the cloth's torn... but the roll! The blessing-roll's safe, here in my coat.","Don't go on to Saltmere on my account. Go back to Ashvale and tell Father Aldous - he'll send help, and he'll know what to do with this."],"progress":["East out of the village, along the Saltmere road. Odric will be somewhere on the cobbles.","Come back and tell me what you find."],"complete":["An overturned wagon, and Odric sat by it four days on a bad ankle? I will send Rowan with his cart at first light.","And the roll is safe. Then the chapel can be blessed after all."]},{"id":3,"zone":"saltmere","goal":{"talk":"wenna"},"ends":"wenna","reward":"monk_robe","talk":["Now go on to Saltmere, {name}. The chapel stands at the southeast end of the town, the first house past the trail, with a little steeple on it.","Mother Wenna has kept it swept all these years with nobody to pray in it. Tell her the roll is found and Odric is coming. She will take it from there."],"progress":["The Saltmere chapel is at the southeast end of the town, where the trail comes in. Mother Wenna will be inside."],"complete":["Aldous sent you? And the roll is found - and Odric alive on the road? Then the chapel opens again. I have waited since the fever years to say that.","You walked the whole road for an old woman's church, {name}. Take this robe. It was sewn for the first monk of this chapel, and it has never been worn.","Wear it when you pray. It steadies the mind: you will find your prayers hold a good while longer."]}],"done":["The chapel in Saltmere is open again, and Odric is home with a new axle. Go well, {name}."],"story":1},"red_pyre":{"name":"The Red Pyre","giver":"wenna","after":"wayside_prayer","steps":[{"id":1,"zone":"whisperwood","goal":{"talk":"pike"},"flag":"vorth_gate","talk":["The chapel is open, {name}. That is not the end of the work.","The Bright Three keep this valley: Althas of the Hearth, Caelen of the Road, Mira of the Well. You walked their blessing-roll. They have an enemy.","Southwest of the village, up the Whisperwood path a little way, then northwest of the bandits: a closed gate, and a man who looks like one of them. He is not. Go talk to him. I will not say his name on this floor."],"say":["Keep your voice down. If they hear a prayer out of you I am a dead man.","I am Pike. Brother Pike, of Caelen of the Road. Aldous put me here as a lookout. The bandits think I watch the trail for them.","Inside that fence is the Red Pyre. They are Vorthans - not priests of the Three. Vorth was the fourth they buried still breathing. Orange hoods, a red church. I open the gate. You listen. You do not strike. If you blow this, they will know I let you in."],"progress":["Southwest up the Whisperwood path, then northwest of the bandits. A closed gate and a man who looks like a lookout. Talk to him, then come back."],"complete":["Pike. Yes. Caelen still has a man in that camp. You did not name him in the wood, I hope.","Go in. Hear them. Then come back to me before you do anything that looks like a fight."]},{"id":2,"zone":"whisperwood","goal":{"talk":"vorthan_reader"},"talk":["The red church is inside the compound. Speak to the one who reads. Come back and tell me what they worship, {name}.","Do not raise a hand. Pike's life is on that latch until I say otherwise."],"say":["The Bright Three are a lie the valley tells itself. Althas, Caelen, Mira - hearth, road, well.","Vorth was the fourth. They buried him still breathing. We wear the orange so the living remember the fire that was stolen.","If you have come to pray, kneel. If you have come from Saltmere, you have already stayed too long."],"progress":["Inside the gated compound, in the red church. Speak to the Vorthan who reads, then return to Saltmere."],"complete":["Vorth the Unburied. I had hoped it was rumour. The Three are hearth, road and well - and they had a brother they would not name.","Pike cannot hold that gate forever. There is a keeper among them who carries burnt beads, a rosary. Take them. One blow - Pike will look at the trees. Use the beads at once. Do not linger in the yard.","The beads will put you at a cave in the southeast woods. Whatever they have been hiding, it is there. Bring me what you find."]},{"id":3,"zone":"spidercave","goal":{"kill":"vorthan","n":1,"bring":"edric_note"},"reward":"xp:prayer:693","talk":["Take the beads from the keeper. One blow, then the dark - Pike is still on that latch. Use them. They will carry you to the Spider Cave, southeast of Whisperwood.","Halfway down the first tunnel you will find what they left. Search it. Bring me the writing. The robe is yours if it still holds together.","Do not go deeper than the first tunnel until Elder Maren sends you. There is a darker claim on that cave than ours."],"progress":["One Vorthan slain, and Edric's note in your bag. So far: {n} of {goal} slain. The rosary opens the cave. The bones wait halfway down the first tunnel."],"complete":["Edric. A Vorthan who ran. The Three hear a confession even when the mouth that made it is gone.","You have done more than open a chapel, {name}. Pray. The Road, the Hearth and the Well will hold longer for you now.","{name}. One more thing. A broken stone chapel on the trail between Ashvale and Saltmere. The altar is out of balance. Stand at it. It will show you the way."]}],"done":["The Red Pyre still stands, but it is known. Pike lives, and Edric's note is here. Go well, {name}.","A broken stone chapel on the trail between Ashvale and Saltmere. The altar is out of balance. Stand at it. The path it carves will take you to the one who keeps the balance."],"story":3},"even_grove":{"name":"The Even Grove","giver":"vael","steps":[{"id":1,"zone":"evengrove","goal":{"talk":"vael"},"fold":true,"talk":["You found the rope. Good. Most people walk under it and call it weather.","Take your time. The grove has waited this long; it can wait for you to be ready."],"say":["The birch on the left is arguing with the birch on the right. I was listening. Oh. A person.","I am Vael. Balance, wearing a body, for as long as the rope holds. The green does most of the talking.","A hawk is deciding whether the field is one thing or two. I have been on that question since morning.","You stink of a tipped scale. Chapel stones do that. The carving sent you forty-nine paces south and thirty-eight paces west from that altar, so here you are.","Plant three shoots in the grass around me. Not within ten tiles of this rope, not on the path the altar carves from the chapel, and not inside a town. Only grass will take them."],"complete":["Take the shoots. The open ground will know what to do with them."],"progress":["Vael is waiting at the edge of the Even Grove, {name}."]},{"id":2,"zone":"evengrove","goal":{"plant":"open","n":3},"near":[197,-51,16],"kit":{"sapling":3},"reward":"xp:prayer:36","talk":["Three shoots. Grass only, outside the ten tiles around this rope, and off the path from the chapel. A town's ground will not have them.","Take your time. The grove has waited this long; it can wait for you to be ready."],"progress":["The open ground is still short. {n} of {goal} shoots planted."],"complete":["Three in the open. The wind has already started taking sides, which is how a grove begins."]},{"id":3,"zone":"evengrove","goal":{"plant":"stump","n":2},"near":[197,-51,16],"stumps":[[201,-62],[184,-42]],"kit":{"sapling":2},"reward":"xp:prayer:48","talk":["Cut two trees. Each stump lasts an hour, then crumbles into open grass, and a sapling can go in that grass. Any stump, anywhere. When the grove is done, the chapel altar will trade: one log and some bones for a sapling, and 15 Prayer XP. That is a better prayer than burying the bones alone. Do you need an axe? If you do not already have one, you may take this.","Take your time. The grove has waited this long; it can wait for you to be ready."],"progress":["Wait for the stump to become grass, then set the shoot. {n} of {goal} replanted."],"complete":["They stood back up. Most things will, if you ask without taking."],"chop":true,"axe":"hatchet","flag":"replant"},{"id":4,"zone":"evengrove","goal":{"plant":"open","n":1},"kit":{"sapling":1},"reward":"xp:prayer:1358","talk":["One more. Anywhere the grass will take it, as far out as you like. Not within ten tiles of this rope, not on the path from the chapel, and not inside a town. Call it the heart of the grove. Then the scale sits level.","Take your time. The grove has waited this long; it can wait for you to be ready."],"progress":["The heart tree is not in the ground yet. Grass will take it anywhere outside the ten tiles, the chapel path, and the towns."],"complete":["There. The grove holds you, and you hold it. From a chapel's empty prayer to this: that is the climb from nine to fifteen, if you came from the Pyre's work.","When the Red Pyre is known, come back. There is a harder balance, and it is worn over the head."]}],"done":["The grove is awake. If Mother Wenna has heard the Red Pyre out, I have another lesson. If she has not, the rope and I will still be here, arguing with the wind.","The chapel altar will trade now. One log and some bones, and it gives you a sapling and 15 Prayer XP. Better than burying the bones, and the log is the tree you put back."],"story":2},"even_guard":{"name":"The Even Guard","giver":"vael","after":"even_grove","needs":["red_pyre"],"steps":[{"id":1,"zone":"evengrove","goal":{"kills":{"gale":1,"keel":1,"bramble":1},"n":3},"summon":[{"m":"gale","x":200,"y":-49,"loot":true},{"m":"keel","x":195,"y":-49,"carry":{"arrows_t1":400},"loot":true},{"m":"bramble","x":199,"y":-54,"loot":true}],"pray":15,"home":[197,-51,50],"reward":"verdant_wreath","talk":["You came back level. Listen, and try not to fall off the sentence.","Balance is not a stillness. It is a hand moving to the side that is about to drop. Overhead prayers are that hand.","Protect from Magic stills the heavy blow. Protect from Missiles stills the arrow that never hurries and never misses its time. Protect from Melee stills the one who swings like a drunk tree.","I will not call them until you say you want it. If you accept, three come for you and they will not stop. Die, or leave fifty tiles of this rope, and they vanish. Ask me again and I will call them back, even after the wreath is yours. You need Prayer 15. Any order will do. The sensible order is the heavy one first.","Gale hits hard and does not fidget. Keel hits true and ordinary. Bramble hits ordinary and then forgets how. Pray, then strike."],"progress":["They are still in the field, or the wind has taken them. {n} of {goal} down. If they are gone, say so and I will call whoever is left. Fifty tiles from this rope, or a death, and they leave."],"complete":["You wore the prayers like a person who means to live. I am pleased. The wind is also pleased, which is rarer.","Take the Verdant wreath. The leaves carry a monk's blessing: Magic +1, Prayer +3, and a second longer on every prayer point.","The Ancient Chapel will have you now. Kneel at that altar and it fills you past a normal prayer: six parts in five."]}],"done":["The wreath remembers. The chapel too. Say the word and I will call the three again. Same warning: they fight until you fall, or you leave fifty tiles of this rope."],"story":3},"manoomin":{"name":"Manoomin","giver":"mishoomis","steps":[{"id":1,"zone":"lodges","goal":{"bring":"wild_rice","n":20},"ends":"mishoomis","reward":["dried_mouse","asemaa:3"],"talk":["Boozhoo (hello), {name}. Sit, sit. My knees have not stood up since the last ricing moon.","Manoominike-giizis (the ricing moon) is here. Out on the zaaga'igan (lake) down the ziibi (river) the manoomin (wild rice) stands ripe, and my old arms cannot knock it.","It takes two in the jiimaan (canoe). One stands in the back with the gaandakii'iganaak (push pole) and moves her through the stalks. The other sits forward with the bawa'iganaakoog (ricing sticks): bend the stalks over with one, knock them with the other, and the rice falls in.","Ziigwan will carve you the gaandakii'iganaak (push pole) and the bawa'iganaakoog (knockers) if you bring her tamarack and cedar. Take the canoe from the landing. If you pole alone the rice still falls, just slower. A friend makes the work kind. Bring me twenty handfuls of manoomin.","Do this, and I have a really special gift for you. Something I have kept a long time. You will see when you come back."],"progress":["Twenty handfuls of manoomin (wild rice), {name}. {left} more. Two in the jiimaan (canoe): one poles, one knocks. The rice lake is down the ziibi (river) from the landing."],"complete":["Miigwech (thank you), {name}! Look at it, dark as a winter night. This will feed the whole village through biboon (winter).","Now. I promised you something really special. Close your hand around this.","A waawaabiganoojiinh (mouse). Dried. I found him in the rice basket three winters ago and I could not bring myself to throw him out. Now he is yours. Take him."]}],"done":["Boozhoo, {name}. The manoomin (wild rice) is drying on the birch bark. Sit by the fire a while.","Are you keeping the waawaabiganoojiinh (mouse) somewhere safe? A gift like that does not come twice."],"season":"rice","notYet":["Boozhoo, {name}. Sit with me a while.","The manoomin (wild rice) is not ripe yet. When manoominike-giizis (the ricing moon) comes, the heads turn heavy and we go out in the jiimaan (canoe).","Come back {when}, and I will send you out on the lake."],"ask":{"asemaa":1},"askLackTalk":["When you come to an elder for teaching, {name}, bring a little asemaa (tobacco). That is how it is done. Come back with some, and we will talk about the manoomin (wild rice)."],"askLack":"Bring asemaa (tobacco) to ask an elder for teaching.","askSay":"(When you say yes, you offer Mishoomis one asemaa (tobacco).)","homes":["ziibiing","ashvale"],"story":1},"sugar_bush":{"name":"Iskigamizigan","giver":"nookomis","repeat":"spring","note":"Martin 2026-10-08 (handoff/sugarbush_plan.md): sap, then syrup, then candy, each spring; the Quillwork makak the first time only","steps":[{"id":1,"zone":"ziibiing","goal":{"bring":["sap_bark","sap_pail"],"n":1},"reward":"xp:woodcutting:600","talk":["Boozhoo, {name}. Sit by me. Can you smell it? Under the snow the ground is waking.","When the nights still freeze and the days begin to thaw, the ziinzibaakwadwaaboo (maple sap) runs. It is the first gift of the year, before the leaves, before anything else is green.","We go to the iskigamizigan (sugar bush) in the woods up the trail, where the ininaatig (maple) and the wiigwaasaatig (birch) stand together.",{"*":"You need something to catch it in. Migizi can fold you a biskitenaagan (birch bark sap bucket) from two sheets of wiigwaas (birch bark) and some ojiitad (sinew) - ask Ma'iingan for that. Or buy an akik (pail) at the store in Ashvale.","ziibiing":"You need something to catch it in. Migizi can fold you a biskitenaagan (birch bark sap bucket) from two sheets of wiigwaas (birch bark) and some ojiitad (sinew) - ask Ma'iingan for that."},"Each ininaatig gives once a day, and only on a day that thaws after a night that froze. Bring me one bucket of sap."],"progress":["One bucket of ziinzibaakwadwaaboo (maple sap), {name}. It runs only on a day that thaws after a night that froze, in the days before the maples bud. Ask Animikii what last night did."],"complete":["Miigwech (thank you), {name}. Taste it - it is only a little sweet, like water that remembers the tree.","It boils a long time before it is syrup. That is why we sit up all night by the akik (kettle)."],"at":[32492,-2417],"mark":"Iskigamizigan (sugar camp)"},{"id":2,"zone":"ziibiing","goal":{"bring":["syrup_bark","syrup_pail"],"n":1},"reward":"xp:cooking:800","talk":[{"*":"Now boil it. Any fire will do - ours here, one you light yourself, even Hob's range up in Ashvale - but watch it. Hang the akik from the iskigamiziganaak (kettle frame) and keep the fire high.","ziibiing":"Now boil it. Any fire will do - ours here, or one you light yourself - but watch it. Hang the akik from the iskigamiziganaak (kettle frame) and keep the fire high."},"When it is thick and gold, it is zhiiwaagamizigan (maple syrup). Bring me a bucket of it."],"progress":["A bucket of zhiiwaagamizigan (maple syrup), {name}. Boil your sap at a fire until it is thick and gold."],"complete":["Look at the colour of it. That is the colour of the sun in iskigamizige-giizis (the sugar-making moon).","One more boiling."]},{"id":3,"zone":"ziibiing","goal":{"bring":"maple_candy","n":1},"reward":["quill_makak","asemaa:3"],"againReward":["xp:cooking:1500","asemaa:3"],"talk":["Boil the syrup once more and stir it as it cools, and it sets into ziinzibaakwadoons (candy). The children wait all winter for it.","Bring me one piece. Your bucket will come back to you empty, ready for next spring."],"progress":["One piece of ziinzibaakwadoons (candy), {name}. Boil your syrup again at a fire."],"complete":["Ahh. That is the taste of the iskigamizigewigamig (sap-boiling lodge) when I was a little girl.",{"*":"I sewed this makak (birch bark box) for you this winter. Wiigwaas (birch bark), spruce root, and gaaway (porcupine quill) dyed for the flowers. Carry it on your back - it holds more than any pack the stone towns make.","ziibiing":"I sewed this makak (birch bark box) for you this winter. Wiigwaas (birch bark), spruce root, and gaaway (porcupine quill) dyed for the flowers. Carry it on your back - it holds more than any other pack."},"Come back to the iskigamizigan every spring, {name}. The trees will remember you."]}],"again":["Boozhoo, {name}! The nights are freezing and the days are thawing again. The ininaatig (maple) are ready.","Bring me a bucket of ziinzibaakwadwaaboo (maple sap), then syrup, then a piece of candy, as you did before."],"done":["Boozhoo, {name}. The sugar is put away in its makak for the year. Sit by the fire.","When the sap runs again next spring, come and find me."],"season":"sap","notYet":["Boozhoo, {name}. Sit by me.","The ziinzibaakwadwaaboo (maple sap) is not running yet. It runs when the nights still freeze and the days begin to thaw, before the ininaatig (maple) buds.","Come back {when}, and we will go up to the iskigamizigan (sugar camp) together."],"ask":{"asemaa":1},"askLackTalk":["Come and sit by me, {name}. When you ask an elder to teach you, you bring a little asemaa (tobacco) - it is how we ask. Come back with some, and I will take you to the sugar bush."],"askLack":"Bring asemaa (tobacco) to ask an elder for teaching.","askSay":"(When you say yes, you offer Nookomis one asemaa (tobacco).)","homes":["ziibiing","ashvale"],"story":2},"biiwaanag":{"name":"Biiwaanag","giver":"mishoomis","homes":["ziibiing"],"note":"Martin 2026-10-09 (handoff/ziibiing_bow_quests_plan.md): flint from the riverbank below the painted rock, a canoe trip down the river; a fire of your own","steps":[{"id":1,"zone":"ziibiing","goal":{"light":"*","n":1},"kit":{"logs":1},"reward":["xp:firemaking:300","asemaa:3"],"talk":["Boozhoo, {name}. Sit. The fire in this wigwam was lit by my grandfather's hand, and it has never been let go out.","One of the people of Ziibiing (at the river) must be able to make a fire of their own. For that you need biiwaanag (flint).","Take the jiimaan (canoe) at the landing and paddle down the river, east, a little way. On the far bank, the south side, a rock face is painted with red figures. The bank under it is chalky, and biiwaanag (flint) lies in it. Pry it out with your fingers.","Here is a log from my woodpile. Lay it down, strike the biiwaanag (flint) over it until it catches, and come and tell me."],"progress":["A fire of your own, {name}. Biiwaanag (flint) lies in the chalky bank below the painted rock, down the river on the south side. Strike it over a log."],"complete":["I can smell the smoke on you. Good.","Keep the biiwaanag (flint). It does not wear out the way we do."],"at":[32377,-2364],"mark":"Biiwaanag (flint)"}],"done":["Boozhoo, {name}. Is your fire still going? Ishkode (fire) is a relative. Feed it and it looks after you."],"ask":{"asemaa":1},"askLackTalk":["When you come to an elder for teaching, {name}, bring a little asemaa (tobacco). That is how it is done. Come back with some, and I will show you where the biiwaanag (flint) lies."],"askLack":"Bring asemaa (tobacco) to ask an elder for teaching.","askSay":"(When you say yes, you offer Mishoomis one asemaa (tobacco).)","story":1},"mitigwaab":{"name":"Mitigwaab","giver":"mitigwaabiike","homes":["ziibiing"],"note":"Martin 2026-10-09: a maple log and ojiitad (sinew) for the bowstring, and a birch log for the arrows; two game hours later a maple bow (bound) and fifteen birch arrows; the tomahawk at the start","steps":[{"id":1,"zone":"ziibiing","goal":{"bring":"maple_logs","n":1,"with":{"sinew":1,"birch_logs":1}},"kit":{"tomahawk":1},"talk":["Boozhoo, {name}. Ma'iingan tells me you snared a waabooz (rabbit) and earned your first ojiitad (sinew). Good. Now a mitigwaab (bow).","Take this tomahawk. It cuts wood, and it cuts the wiigwaas (birch bark) off a tree when you need some.","Bring me one log of ininaatig (maple) for the bow, your ojiitad (sinew) for the bowstring, and one log of wiigwaasaatig (birch) for the bikwak (arrows). The sugar bush up the trail is full of maple and birch.","Ininaatig (maple) is hard wood. Your arm is young, so it will take many swings. Keep at it."],"progress":["One ininaatig (maple) log, one ojiitad (sinew) and one wiigwaasaatig (birch) log, {name}. The sugar bush up the trail has the wood. The tomahawk will do it, slowly."],"complete":["Good wood, and good ojiitad (sinew). Feel the weight of that maple - it will bend for you and come back."],"at":[32492,-2417],"mark":"Ininaatig (maple) and wiigwaas (birch)"},{"id":2,"zone":"ziibiing","goal":{"wait":2},"reward":["mitigwaab","birch_arrows:15","asemaa:3"],"talk":["Now leave me with it. A bow is shaved, not chopped, and the arrows want straightening over the fire.","Come back in two hours. Go and see Mishoomis, or cut yourself some wiigwaas (birch bark) with that tomahawk while you wait."],"progress":["Not yet, {name}. I am still working the bow. Come back a little later."],"complete":["Here. Your mitigwaab (bow), and fifteen bikwak (arrows) of birch.","They have no points. Birch is enough for a waawaashkeshi (deer) if the arrow finds it - two, and it is yours. Ma'iingan will want to see you hunt.","This bow was made for you. It will not go to anyone else."]}],"done":["Boozhoo, {name}. Bring me a wiigwaasaatig (birch) log whenever you need more bikwak (arrows)."],"after":"waabooz","story":1},"deer_hunt":{"name":"Waawaashkeshi","giver":"maiingan","homes":["ziibiing"],"after":"mitigwaab","note":"Martin 2026-10-09: with the bow, hunt a deer and bring its hide for sinew - the sinew for Migizi's birch bark sap bucket","steps":[{"id":1,"zone":"ziibiing","goal":{"bring":"deer_hide","n":1},"reward":["sinew:2","xp:ranged:300","asemaa:3"],"talk":["Boozhoo, {name}! Mitigwaabiike made you a mitigwaab (bow)? Then come hunting.","The waawaashkeshi (deer) graze in the open ground in the woods round the village. Go slowly. Two of the birch bikwak (arrows) bring one down, if they find it.","Bring me its hide, and I will give you ojiitad (sinew) from my rack. Migizi sews the sap buckets with it.","And cook the meat. Nobody hunts only for the hide."],"progress":["The hide of a waawaashkeshi (deer), {name}. The deer graze in the open ground in the woods. Two birch bikwak (arrows) bring one down."],"complete":["A good hide, cleanly taken. Miigwech (thank you).","Here, two lengths of ojiitad (sinew). Take them to Migizi with two sheets of wiigwaas (birch bark), and he will fold you a biskitenaagan (birch bark sap bucket) for the sugar bush."]}],"done":["Boozhoo, {name}. Any time you bring me the hide of a waawaashkeshi (deer), there is ojiitad (sinew) for you."],"story":1},"obsidian_arrows":{"name":"Obsidian bikwak","giver":"mitigwaabiike","homes":["ziibiing"],"after":"mitigwaab","note":"Martin 2026-10-09: obsidian from the bank upriver by the cairn and a birch log; two game hours later fifteen obsidian-tipped arrows","steps":[{"id":1,"zone":"ziibiing","goal":{"bring":"obsidian","n":1,"with":"birch_logs"},"talk":["You have been shooting birch, {name}. Now I will show you a point.","Paddle up the river, west, on this side. A cairn of stones stands on the bank. Below it the bank is full of obsidian - black stone that breaks sharper than any knife. You need no pick; work it loose with your hands.","Bring me a piece of obsidian and another wiigwaasaatig (birch) log, and I will make you fifteen bikwak (arrows) with obsidian points."],"progress":["A piece of obsidian from below the cairn up the river, and a wiigwaasaatig (birch) log, {name}."],"complete":["Black as a winter night. Good."],"at":[32567,-2283],"mark":"Obsidian"},{"id":2,"zone":"ziibiing","goal":{"wait":2},"reward":["obsidian_arrows:15","asemaa:3"],"talk":["Knapping takes patience. Each point is struck a hundred times before it is sharp enough.","Come back in two hours and they will be ready."],"progress":["The points are not all knapped yet. Come back a little later, {name}."],"complete":["Fifteen obsidian bikwak (arrows). One of these brings down a waawaashkeshi (deer).","Whenever you need more, bring me the obsidian and the birch."]}],"done":["Boozhoo, {name}. Obsidian and birch, and I will make you more obsidian bikwak (arrows)."],"story":1},"waabooz":{"name":"Waabooz","giver":"maiingan","homes":["ziibiing"],"note":"Martin 2026-10-09: Ma'iingan lends a nagwaagan (snare); set it where the waabooz (rabbits) run, come back, and bring three pelts for your first ojiitad (sinew) - before the bow","steps":[{"id":1,"zone":"ziibiing","goal":{"bring":["hare_pelt","snow_hare_pelt"],"n":3},"kit":{"snare":1},"reward":["sinew:1","xp:dexterity:200","asemaa:3"],"talk":["Boozhoo, {name}. You want a mitigwaab (bow)? Mitigwaabiike will want ojiitad (sinew) for the string, and you have none.","Before a hunter has a bow, he has a nagwaagan (snare). Here, take this one of mine.","Go where the waabooz (rabbits) run, in the brush round the village. Set it on the ground there and leave it. Come back in an hour or two and see what it holds.","Bring me three waabooz (rabbit) pelts, and I will give you your first ojiitad (sinew)."],"progress":["Three waabooz (rabbit) pelts, {name}. Set the nagwaagan (snare) where they run, leave it, and come back to it later."],"complete":["Three pelts. Miigwech (thank you) - they will line a pair of makizinan (moccasins) for the winter.","Here is your ojiitad (sinew). Take it to Mitigwaabiike for a bowstring. Keep the nagwaagan (snare) - a hunter always has one set somewhere."],"at":[32505,-2354],"mark":"Waabooz (hares)"}],"done":["Boozhoo, {name}. Three waabooz (rabbit) pelts or one waawaashkeshiwayaan (deer hide), and I will give you ojiitad (sinew)."],"story":2},"foolhardy_hero":{"name":"The Foolhardy Hero","giver":"squire_elian","steps":[{"id":1,"zone":"dragonkeep","goal":{"bring":"hero_bones","n":1},"mob":"chain_dragon","mobGive":"hero_bones","reward":"xp:prayer:250","mobSay":["The little knight? He climbed down my ladder, drew his bright sword, and challenged me by every title he could remember.","I ate him. He was braver than he was wise, and not nearly as filling as his speech promised.","The dragon gives a deep, smoky burp. Something pale and scorched clatters onto the stones at your feet.","Take those bones back to the one waiting outside. Tell him his hero found the dragon, and the dragon won."],"talk":["I'm Elian, squire to Sir Garran\u2014the Hero of Ashvale, and the strongest knight in the valley. He is brave beyond measure. Sensible only when it suits him.","Yesterday he found the ruined keep southeast along the bandit path. He told me to wait here while he climbed the outside ladder and took care of the chained dragon.","That was more than a day ago. Sir Garran can be braver than smart sometimes, but he has never left me waiting this long.","Follow your compass southeast along the path to the ruins, climb the ladder over the wall, and find out what happened to him. Please."],"progress":["The Hero went over the ruined keep wall more than a day ago. Follow your compass southeast along the path, use the outside ladder, and speak to the chained dragon. Bring me any sign of Sir Garran."],"complete":["Those are his. I know the nick in that silver buckle. Sir Garran said a hero should leave a story behind. I wish he had settled for telling one.","Thank you for bringing him home. I will carry the Hero of Ashvale back myself\u2014and next time someone calls courage the same thing as wisdom, I will know better."]}],"done":["Sir Garran came home, even if not in the fashion either of us imagined. The ruined keep is yours to face now. I have had enough of dragons for one lifetime."],"nextAfter":"even_guard","nextLocked":["Sir Garran used to say that prayer steadies the hand courage sends forward. I thought bravery was enough. His bones taught me otherwise.","Vael tends the Even Grove and teaches that balance. Stand with the Even Guard, learn what prayer asks of you, then return. I cannot ask the next duty of you before that."],"nextReady":["You stood with the Even Guard. Vael's lesson of prayer and balance sits in you now; Sir Garran would have respected that.","When I am ready to speak of the next duty, you will be ready to hear it."],"story":1},"dragon_heart":{"name":"The Heart Below","giver":"squire_elian","after":"foolhardy_hero","needs":["even_guard"],"steps":[{"id":1,"zone":"dragonkeep","goal":{"kill":"chain_dragon","n":1},"ends":"squire_elian","talk":["Sir Garran went to the dragon because he thought courage made every other plan unnecessary. I will not make that mistake twice.","Avenge him. Kill the chained dragon in the ruined keep. While you fight, I will take Sir Garran's bones to Father Aldous in Ashvale and ask that they be laid somewhere kinder than this road.","Come back to me after the dragon falls. I should be back from the church by then."],"progress":["The chained dragon still lives inside the ruined keep southeast along the path. Slay it, then return to Elian."],"complete":["You actually killed it? Right. Good. Very good. I returned Sir Garran's bones to Father Aldous, and I may have mentioned that you were going to avenge him, and Father Aldous said the dragon was\u2014","No. I should not finish that sentence. Go to the Ashvale church and speak to Father Aldous. Please."]},{"id":2,"zone":"village","goal":{"talk":"aldous"},"ends":"aldous","reward":"dragonheart_key","talk":["Elian has taken Sir Garran's bones to Father Aldous in Ashvale. The squire looked frightened by whatever the priest told him. Speak to Father Aldous in the church.","Whatever Aldous knows about the keep, he has kept it from the village for a long time."],"progress":["Father Aldous is in the Ashvale church, north of the village square."],"complete":["You killed the dragon? You killed it? That creature did not merely threaten the road\u2014it protected a great power beneath the ruined keep!","You: It's just a video game. The dragon has probably already respawned.","That is not the point! Respawned or not, its death breaks the old balance. The power below must be reset at the Heart of the dungeon before it tears itself loose.","Take this Dragon-Heart Key. It opens the iron hatch inside the keep. The dragon is older than my order; when it returns, speak to it. It knows the trials below better than any priest."]},{"id":3,"zone":"dragonkeep","goal":{"flag":"dragon_heart_reset","n":1},"ends":"aldous","mob":"chain_dragon","mobSay":["So. You killed me, and now the priest has remembered why my chain exists. At least one of you learns eventually.","The hatch descends through four chambers directly beneath this keep. It does not lead elsewhere; every floor is under the stones where you stand.","No, I will not solve the old keepers' trials for you. Look at each obstacle, try it, and pay attention to what the stone tells you when you fail. Preparation matters more than guessing.","Every chamber has an emergency ladder to daylight. If the dungeon shows you that you came unprepared, retreat, bring what you learned you need, and return."],"mobSayDone":["The Heart beats evenly again. I can feel its rhythm through every link in this chain.","Your work below is finished. Mine resumes.","Return to Father Aldous in the Ashvale church. Tell him the Heart is steady; he is the one who must close this matter."],"talk":["Use the Dragon-Heart Key on the iron hatch inside the ruined keep. Speak to the dragon after it returns for its account of the four trials below.","The key is warm in your hand, as if something below has been waiting for it."],"progress":["The dungeon occupies four increasingly broad floors directly beneath the ruined keep. Examine and attempt each obstacle, use the hints it gives you, reach and reset the Heart, then report to Father Aldous."],"complete":["The pressure is gone. I can feel the old stones settle from here.","You were irreverent, reckless, and\u2014against every lesson I intended to teach\u2014successful. The Heart is balanced, the dragon has its charge again, and Sir Garran may finally rest.","Next time someone says 'it is only a game,' remember that a world can still ask you to take care of it."],"reward":["xp:prayer:2500","xp:magic:2500"]}],"done":["The Heart below the chained dragon is steady. Let it remain so for a while, {name}."],"story":4},"vespers":{"name":"Vespers","giver":"aldith","after":"the_far_field","story":3,"steps":[{"id":1,"zone":"village","goal":{"talk":"aldous"},"reward":"xp:prayer:300","talk":["The chapel has stood empty since the last chaplain left, and now it has me, which is better than nothing and not by much.","Father Aldous in Ashvale kept the old order of evening prayer. I'd like his blessing before I ring the bell.","Take him this letter. Down the road, over the bridge, past the lamps."],"progress":["Father Aldous keeps the church in Ashvale, by the square."],"complete":["He sent his blessing and a list of everything I'm doing wrong. That is how I know he means it."]},{"id":2,"zone":"castle","goal":{"bring":"mutton_cooked","n":3},"reward":"xp:prayer:450","talk":["After vespers the poor come to the gate - drovers, a few old soldiers, Tobin's boy when his father isn't looking.","Bring me three roast mutton. Tobin's sheep give the meat; the castle's fires will cook it, if you watch them."],"progress":["Three roast mutton. Raw won't do, and burnt won't do either - I've tried both on them."],"complete":["Three. That's supper for the gate and a reason to come back to the chapel.","The castellan has been asking who brought the bell back. You'd better go and tell him."]}],"done":["The bell rings at dusk now. The watch say it makes the walls feel shorter."]},"rats_in_the_grain":{"name":"Rats in the Grain","giver":"edda","story":1,"steps":[{"id":1,"zone":"castle","goal":{"kill":"granary_rat","n":6},"reward":"xp:strength:400","talk":["You'll be from the road, then. Good. Everyone from the castle is too busy being a castle.","The granary by my mill has rats. Not a rat - rats, the sort that hold meetings. Six of them, at least, and every one eating the garrison's flour.","They work the yard round it, in the sacks waiting to go in. Thin them out. Mind the sacks; the sacks are the point."],"progress":["Still squeaking round the granary. I can hear them from the mill."],"complete":["Quiet. I'd forgotten the granary could be quiet.","Now the flour's only half spoiled, which in a castle counts as clean."]},{"id":2,"zone":"castle","goal":{"talk":"castle_cook"},"reward":"xp:cooking:350","talk":["Marta in the castle kitchens has been baking with whatever the rats left her.","Go and tell her the granary is clear and the next sacks will be whole. She'll want to hear it from someone who saw it."],"progress":["Marta's in the kitchens, in the bailey. Follow the smell of bread that isn't as good as it should be."],"complete":["She said 'about time', did she? That's Marta for 'thank you'.","Here - that's for the walking. Come back if Tobin wants a hand; he always wants a hand."]}],"done":["The sails turn and the sacks stay whole. A mill can't ask for more."]},"the_far_field":{"name":"The Far Field","giver":"tobin","after":"rats_in_the_grain","story":2,"steps":[{"id":1,"zone":"whisperwood","goal":{"kill":"wolf","n":5},"reward":"xp:attack:500","talk":["Edda says you're useful. Edda doesn't say that about the weather.","Grey wolves come down out of Whisperwood and take my lambs off the road at dusk. I've counted three gone this month.","Five wolves fewer and the rest will learn the road's not theirs. That's how wolves learn."],"progress":["Still lost one last night. They're in Whisperwood, north of Ashvale."],"complete":["Five. The ewes stood about the fold all morning like they'd heard."]},{"id":2,"zone":"castle","goal":{"bring":"logs","n":6},"reward":"xp:woodcutting:450","talk":["Now the fences. The cows lean on them, the sheep go under them, and I mend them, every day.","Six logs - plain wood, nothing fancy - and I'll have the pens tight before the frost."],"progress":["Six logs. There's wood all along the road if you've an axe."],"complete":["That'll hold them. Until it doesn't, and then I'll be fencing again.","Sister Aldith up at the chapel was asking after someone who'll walk a long way. That's you now."]}],"done":["Sheep in, cows in, wolves out. Some days a farm does what it's told."]},"castellans_bridge":{"name":"The Castellan's Bridge","giver":"castellan","after":"vespers","story":4,"steps":[{"id":1,"zone":"whisperwood","goal":{"kill":"bandit","n":6},"reward":"xp:defence:600","talk":["So you're the one the mill, the farm and the chapel all talk about. Three people agreeing is rare here; I'll take it.","Travellers stop coming when bandits work the road out of Whisperwood. No travellers, no market, no castle worth the name.","Six bandits. Then the road is ours again, and so is the bridge."],"progress":["The bandits work the woods north of Ashvale. The road won't be safe till they're fewer."],"complete":["Six. The drovers will hear of it before I've finished saying it."]},{"id":2,"zone":"castle","goal":{"talk":"gate_guard"},"reward":"shield_t2","talk":["Go to the gate guard and tell him the bridge is to be lit every night from now on, torches at both ends and on the crest.","He'll grumble. He grumbles at the portcullis too, and it still opens."],"progress":["The gate guard is at the barbican, leaning on the spear he says he doesn't need."],"complete":["He grumbled, then he lit them. That's the whole of soldiering.","Take the shield. It has the castle's mark, and the watch will know you by it."]}],"done":["The road is lit, the bridge is held, and the market comes in the morning. That's a castle."]}}}}