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Bypass the triple lock
A glassblower left some promising tools here last month. Creep down at the darkest hour of night. Don't get caught. That would be embarrassing.
Difficulty: Cunning*1
Success: The door gapes
You slip along corridors whitened by moonlight. Stained-glass ancestors observe you sorrowfully. You settle to work at the lock with oil and a selection of tools. Slow progress! By the end of the first night you have barely defeated the first lock. This one is relatively simple, but its stiffness almost defeats you.
On the second night, you bring a page from a Tevene book on the topic. It has useful diagrams, although they're hard to make out in the moonlight. An hour passes. Another. You grit your teeth and finally the lock clicks open.
The third night! Your attendants have noticed you yawning during the days. This is undignified: they must not know the truth. You fiddle with the lock, but its complexities defeat you. The first was strong, the second subtle, but this one looks like dwarf-work. Eventually, in a fit of temper, you bash it with a hammer! The sound echoes away into the soft-shadowed night. The lock drops into your hand...
A tremor! A susurration rises from the chateau cellars. The vestibule vibrates. With a sharp crack, the stained-glass Andraste scene opposite the door fractures neatly across the middle. The tremor subsides. All is quiet again.
The lock-plate will hide the evidence of your tampering, and the latch will hold it shut. But you may enter at your leisure.
+5 Twilight, unlocks Enter the Chantry, You've opened the door of the Chantry
Failure: No luck
You slip along corridors whitened by moonlight. Bats rustle in the ceiling. You settle to work at the lock with oil and a selection of tools: you struggle and curse, but the lock defeats you easily. If only you had a locksmith you could trust. Or a thief. Or a bard...
+ 2 Twilight unless Twilight > 19
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| 2.
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Order your household guard to break down the door
(Requires 4 Authority)
You can swear your Chevalier-Commander to silence. Perhaps.
Difficulty: Rulership*6/5
Success: Iron discipline
The Chevalier-Commander is horrified: but she does her best to hide the horror. "As you command, my Lady/my Lord," she says.
She hand-picks two guards - one mute, one her own adopted son - to guard the entry to the Chantry Wing: she borrows tools from the chateau's smith. The door is heavy oak and gold-plated steel, but the lock, though triply-complex, will succumb to a hammer and a chisel with time. She muffles the chisel and sets to work. You watch warily.
A half-hour passes. The commander's face is grey with fear. One lock fails: another. When the third fails, the door swings a half-inch open...a tremor! A susurration rises from the chateau cellars. The vestibule vibrates. With a sharp crack, the stained-glass Andraste scene opposite the door fractures neatly across the middle. The tremor subsides. All is quiet again.
The lock-plate will hide the evidence of your tampering, and the latch will hold it shut. The Chevalier-Commander leaves without a word or backwards glance. You may enter at your leisure.
+ Twilight, -2 Authority, -5 Dignity, +10 Rumors of Revolution, You've entered the Sealed Chantry
Failure: Tight-lipped refusal
The Chevalier-Commander stands her ground. "Please, my Lady/my Lord," she says. "This would be a crime against the Maker. Do not dishonor yourself so. I would die in your defence. I would die rather do this thing." She is pale and trembling, but firm.
-3 Authority
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| 3.
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Ask the Wayward Bard to assist you.
(Requires The Wayward Bard as Lover)
He lies with you. Perhaps he even loves you. Can you trust him?
Result: A delighted chuckle
"The Chantry! I never thought it of you, my love. Very well. Tonight..."
Together, you navigate the moonlit corridors. You stand watch while he hums a bawdy Ferelden ditty and fiddles with the lock. The first takes him only minutes. He grins with pleasure. The second is more of a challenge. He stops humming, and begins a commentary on the lock's internals. Twenty minutes, and it's open.
He keeps up the commentary for the third: but his cheeriness curdles, his speech slows, and eventually he falls into sullen silence, tinkering with its internals. A shadow moves across the window: you drift a little way down the corridor to investigate. Just a hunting owl, you hope.
A sudden crash! You wheel, and find the Bard juggling the lock in one hand and a hammer in the other. He shrugs. "It wasn't playing fair. So I didn't either."
A tremor! A susurration rises from the chateau cellars. The vestibule vibrates. With a sharp crack, the stained-glass Andraste scene opposite the door fractures neatly across the middle. The tremor subsides. All is quiet again.
The Bard's eyes are wide. "I think I'm going to bed now," he says eventually.
The lock-plate will hide the evidence of your tampering, and the latch will hold it shut. But you may enter at your leisure.
+5 Twilight, You've opened the door of the Chantry
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| 4.
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Enter the Chantry
At night might be more politic... but after all, you don't know what might be in there. Post the guards elsewhere, don a hooded cloak and enter in the afternoon when the chateau is drowsing.
Result: Clean stone and autumn sunlight
The Sealed Chantry is more chapel than cathedral, but it's the size of most barns: a gorgeous space of white marble, pillars inlaid with malachite. Andraste stands in pride of place, three times the height of a man, watching you with compassion in her stony eyes. In her left hand, she carries a bow.
Perhaps you expected dust, desolation, spiders' webs. But the room is well kept and softly lit. The floor is clean, the pews are clear of debris. A shaft of light from the glass of the roof-lantern illuminates the statue... and wax candles stand unlit. Who has been here? How did they pass the locked door?
No footprints on the well-swept floor. The door to the robing chambers is more than locked - it's wedged in place by decades of rust. No clue to who has been here. Doves coo in the chateau cots, two floors up: all else is silence.
You prowl that soft and polished space. What else is there of interest? No journals, no mysterious stains. Andraste's face is bare, but the bow is the symbol of the heterodox cult of Masked Andraste. In the cabinet beside the statue, you find a substantial collection of priestly regalia. Very substantial indeed.
+2 Twilight, unlocks Sell the regalia and Search the Chantry, You've entered the Sealed Chantry
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| 5.
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Sell the regalia
On the one hand, it is certainly sacrilege and it might invite all kinds of curses. And you'll need to make certain the secret never gets out. On the other hand, you have a Divine to entertain, and that costs money. There would be a certain irony to subsidising the feast thus... This will gain Bags of Royals, but at who knows what price?
(Uses 1 action)
Result: A goldsmith of discretion
Your father was justifiably terrified of your mother. But he had his mistresses. Once, in his cups, he mentioned the name of the goldsmith he visited, to buy jewellery for them: a man of absolute discretion. You visit Serault Town in the guide of a travelling merchant, with a single mute masked guard and a mule laden with chalices and candlesticks.
The Discreet Goldsmith's eyes widen as the gold spills across his table. 'Maker!', he whispers. 'Don't tell me where this came from.'
The gold vanishes into his furnace. You receive a hefty stack of coin in return. You tread very carefully on your way back to the Chateau.
+5 Twilight, +10 Bags of Royals
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| 6.
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Search the Chantry
Someone has been in here. How did they get in? Are they watching you now?
Difficulty: Scholarship*6/5 (uses 1 action)
Success: Clues out of history
You exhaust your search and sit on the steps before the statue to ponder.... behind the statue, a retable bears the inevitable panel-series showing the prophethood martyrdom of Andraste. Your brow furrows. There, where the Archons condemn her. The foremost, who must be Archon Hessarian - his face is turned towards the viewer, not towards Andraste. He's smiling. That's unusual.
You look closer. The face is familiar. It could almost be your own, or your mother's...
The Shame? Did he have Hessarian, who condemned Andraste, painted in his own likeness? It would be dancing with blasphemy, and it would be utterly in character. But does it mean something more?
You reach forward and push the panel. It recedes: and with a sound like tearing silk, the statue swings ponderously to one side. Steps lead down. Unlike the chantry, they're thick with dust - but a single line of footsteps has disturbed them.
+2 Twilight, unlocks Beneath Andraste's feet, You've found the hidden passage behind Andraste's statue
Failure: A smiling prophet
Andraste watches you: from the pillar-carvings, from the frescoes, from the towering statue. Her serene smile begins to look a little smug as you look under the benches, behind the altar, tap flagstones, peer inside vases... nothing. Could they have entered by magic? Would anyone dare try that in the Shame's own chantry?
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| 7.
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Beneath Andraste's feet
A passage leads into darkness. There are candles near at hand. There is a mystery that needs uncovering. On the other hand, there is no way you can take anyone else down there with you. And you may be lord of Serault, but you're no adventurer. Is it wise to go down?
Difficulty: Derring-Do*6/5
Success: Something clinging
You descend, candle in hand, a leather sack filled with spare candles, and your second-best sword sheathed at your belt. Just in case. You wish you'd paid more attention to the stories of adventurers that the Wayward Bard so loves. They would know what to bring. A hound? A donkey? Climber's boots? But you never really paid attention. Grubbing about in the earth after gold is not a fit pursuit for a de Serault.
The dark ahead of you is thick, and the floor uncertain. You return a scavenge a broom from the Chantry: strip it of its bristles, so you have a long wooden pole to test the moss ahead of you. You doubt any "adventurers" ever thought of that.
Down, and down and down. The stone around you grows damp. You must be under the river. A way into the Applewoods from under the chateau? Your mother would have turned blue with rage. Did the Shame pay the stone-masons off? Murder them? Or was the whole thing dug by demons?
Again and again you struggle to retain your footing on the moss underfoot. You kick and skid...and drop the candle.
Another! You fumble with flint and steel... and the dark comes rushing in, pressing at your eyelids, prying at your mouth nose. You gasp in shock: you master yourself. It is only the night underground. Nothing more. You fumble the flint and drop it. Silence around you. The distant drip of water... and the dark, roaring in like a noiseless storm, wrapping you like a nest of constricting snakes.
You light the candle at last, and the dark retreats... only a little way. But far enough. There's something here, some force in the tunnel, that would bar your passing. But you are of the blood of Serault, of the blood of the Shame for that matter, and you will pass. You raise the candle and stride into the darkness.
You realise afterwards that you must have been nearly at the exit, though it seems a very long time before the steps rise before you, grey with daylight. You rise, and emerge, gasping, through a stone archway into an open forest glade. Leaves rustle. A magpie chatters. The sun is warm as the touch of a hand.
You've passed beneath the Last River and found a shrine to Masked Andraste in the Applewoods
Unlocks The Shrine in the Applewoods
Failure: Damp stones and darkness
You descend, candle in hand, a leather sack filled with spare candles, and your second-best sword sheathed at your belt. Just in case.
Down, and down and down. The stone around you grows damp. You must be under the river. A way into the Applewoods from under the chateau? Your mother would have turned blue with rage. Did the Shame pay the stone-masons off? Murder them? Or was the whole thing dug by demons?
You nearly lose your footing twice on the moss. The third time you do, and go down with a painful bump. The candle skids away into darkness.
Another! You fumble with flint and steel... and the dark comes rushing in, pressing at your eyelids, prying at your mouth nose. You gasp in shock: you master yourself. It is only the night underground. Nothing more. You fumble the flint and drop it. Silence around you. The distant drip of water... and the dark, roaring in like a noiseless storm, wrapping you like a nest of constricting snakes.
You light the candle at last, and the dark retreats... but only a little way. You are shaking. What happened there? A ghost? A fear-spell? You've never been afraid of the dark. But whatever the Shame left to guard his passage, it's defeated you today. You return to the surface, smeared with moss and mud. No-one dares question you as you pass them on the way to your chambers.
-10 Health
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| 8.
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The Shrine in the Applewoods
The Chantry passage exits through a little rocky knob in the forest, like a miniature version of the crag where the Abbey of the Bans sits. The landscape looks like it might be near the Abbey, in fact: but 'near' in the Applewoods is deceptive.
Immediately in front of the exits, a standing stone has been carved into a crude likeness of Andraste. It must be Andraste: it has the rayed crown, the outspread hands. But a bow is carved on her back, and her face is hidden. This is Masked Andraste, the huntress-aspect worshipped only in Serault, whose cult is neither entirely permitted nor entirely forbidden.
Someone has garlanded the statue with aster and cuckoo-flowers. They're fading now: it must be a few days old.
Who has been here? Where did they go?
Difficulty: Woods-wise*6/5 (uses 1 action)
Success: A path of flowers
There are no tracks in the thick grass. You cast about uselessly. The sun is hot. That might be a distant stream...
You recall your herbary. Your visitor garlanded the statue with cuckoo-flowers - and cuckoo-flowers grow best at the water's edge!
Now you push through the undergrowth in that direction, towards the sound of running water. Small beasts flee your passage. Here's the stream... and here, in the mud at its verge, fresh footprints. Sandalled feet. You follow them. You are close. You keep your hand close to your sword-hilt. These are the Applewoods.
Abruptly the ground slopes under you. You grab at a bush: branches tear off in your hand! You half-slide, half-fall, down a scree-strewn slope...
You are in a secret place, You've passed beneath the Last River and found a shrine to Masked Andraste in the Applewoods, Unlocks Return to the Anchoress' Dell, →The Anchoress
Failure: No trace
Birdsong. Undergrowth rustling with life. The sun beats down: you rest in the shade of a wild apple-tree, and cautiously nibble at its fruit. Too much can be intoxicating. No sign of tracks, no sign of visitors.
Distantly, across the river, the sound of Chantry bells. In all likelihood your absence has been noticed by now. You should return, before the Bailiff worries and orders a search.
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| 9.
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Return to the Anchoress' Dell
Slip through the Chantry and visit the odd old woman again.
This will clear your hand: you'll miss visitors and events during your time away.
(Uses 3 actions)
Result: Back through the dark
It's familiar territory now; but never quite safe territory. You emerge with relief into the sunlight. Follow the stream; slip down into the dell with caution.
You are in a secret place, →The Anchoress
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