06:00 a.m. - At Technologia Workshop, Dawnspire
The city woke to the small, honest noises of industry. At the old lumber shed that now bore the narrow sign of Technologia, benches smelled of heated metal, oil and ink, the line moved with the quiet urgency of men given a task rather than a spectacle. Lira checked nib after nib against the brass template while Sariel stamped batch numbers into the ledger, Elara tallied the morning receipts and mouthed figures that would be sent as a tidy parcel to the Guild. They spoke in short orders and shorter jokes—Ryan's name threaded through the talk only as an occasional good‑luck charm: he had ridden to Frosthaven, and the shop ran on the cadence they had built without him.
Outside, the market felt the same small convulsions of change. Technologia's tins and waxed boxes had become the little thing everyone brought to their counters: a scribe who had worn his quill through three winters, a clerk tired of blot, a messenger tired of replacing shafts. Demand turned fast for anything reliable. Within a week the market that once supported half a dozen quill‑makers had shrunk: orders that had gone to older houses now went to the shed on the lane. The old houses felt it in the clink of the till—customers stopped entering where they once did, and Odrik's foundry, the cheapest voice in the trade, found its stables quieter by the hour.
That quiet bred unease. Rivals did not merely grumble, they moved. Merchants who had once traded at Odrik's now crossed the square with private ledgers and tight faces. Rumour ran: customers defected overnight to Technologia, the registry placed standing orders for nib sets, even garrison clerks drew from the new packs. In taverns and under arches competitors plotted undercutting, copying, discredit. Bench talk in the shed heard names—Stoneveil, Blackridge—paired with curses and careful measures. Bromar only grunted and set another nib to the polish wheel, bread must be bought before vengeance could be paid.
While the market turned, another current of news hit the city with a colder note. The crier carried reports about the Drakensvale general taken in recent fighting — initial accounts conflicted: some dispatches said the prisoner had been spirited away, others that she had been rescued in the woods. Whispers tied the latter to the nights, naming Seraphina as the one who brought Lyscia back, but official accounts were muddled and slow.
Aurelthorn's public claim — a diplomatic concealment we learned of only last night — had already seeded doubt in Dawnspire's market.
At the council tables and among traders the effect was the same: Aurelthorn's bargaining hand looked weaker than it had a fortnight before. The narrowly focused prisoner‑swap collapsed under confusion even as the broader pause — the truce — held, for a city newly balancing bought hours and frayed trust, the disappearance and its contradictory reports read like a line item in every ledger of risk.
Inside the shed they kept to work. Batches were packed with the Guild Mark and Technologia's counter‑stamp, warranties were folded into waxed wrappers, a clerk pinned an extra page in the public ledger explaining replacements and traceable lots. The employees listened to the market and the council in turns: the political rumour made shopkeepers glance at stalls and quicken their hands, while the steady tasks of grind and polish went on. A rival ran a finger along a cooling tip outside the alley and muttered a vow, inside, under lamplight, a smith laughed and hammered another pin true. Dawnspire would feed itself on both politics and product in the days ahead, and the employees at the little factory found themselves on a new kind of front line.
07:30 a.m. - At Dawnspire Market
Dawnspire woke to the sound of small machines and the thud of leather on wood rather than to the drum of banners. At the old lumber shed that now wore the proud, narrow sign of Technologia, the workday smelled of heated metal, oil and ink. The benches were full and the line moved with the kind of quiet urgency that comes from men who have been given not a spectacle but a task. Lira checked nib after nib against the brass template while Sariel stamped batch numbers into the ledger, Elara tallied the morning receipts and mouthed figures that would be sent as a tidy parcel of numbers to the Guild. They spoke in short orders and shorter jokes, Ryan's name circled in their talk only as an occasional, distant good luck—he had gone to Frosthaven, and the shop ran on the rhythm they had built without him.
Outside, the city felt the same small convulsions of change. Technologia's tins and waxed boxes had become a little thing everyone now brought to their own counters: a scribe who had worn his quill through three winters, a clerk tired of blot and ruin, a messenger who had spent last season replacing shaft after shaft. Demand turned fast at the sight of something that reliably worked. Within a week the market that had supported half a dozen small quill‑makers had shrunk: orders that had once gone to older houses now went to the shed on the lane. Those old houses felt it in the clink of the till—customers stopped entering where once they did, and Odrik's foundry, the cheapest voice in the trade, found its stables quieter by the hour.
That quiet bred unease. The rival smiths and established suppliers did not merely grumble, they moved. A group of merchants who had once traded on Odrik's readiness now crossed the square with sour faces and private ledgers. Rumours circulated—loud as a whisper—that a cartload of customers had defected overnight to Technologia, that a steady bureau in the registry had placed a standing order for nib‑sets, and that even the garrison clerks were drawing from the new packs. The competitors met in taverns and under arches, and their talk hardened into plans: undercut, copy, or discredit. The bench talk inside Technologia heard the names—Stoneveil, Blackridge—paired with curses and careful measures. Bromar only grunted and set another nib to the polish wheel, bread had to be bought before vengeance could be paid.
While the market rotated on its small axis, another current of news struck the city in a colder key. The papers—those little hand‑run sheets that still caught the eye of magistrates—carried a story that kept officials muttering in the council rooms: the captured Drakensvale general, the one whose detention had been central to the recent truce bargaining, was said to have disappeared from custody or to be on the verge of escape. Dawnspire's crier had announced conflicting accounts all morning: one dispatch claimed the prisoner had been spirited away and another that she had been rescued in the woods in the nights prior. The net effect was the same at the council tables—Aurelthorn's hand looked weaker than it had a fortnight before. Men who had come to bargain with hard proofs found those proofs frayed, the prisoner exchange that might have been a narrow victory narrowed further still, and Aurelthorn's negotiating leverage was shown, at least in the market of opinion, to be diminished.
The employees inside Technologia heard it as they sharpened and oiled: the city's diplomacy was now a thing that affected ledgers as much as it affected banners. "If Dawnspire can't be trusted to produce what it promises," one of the apprentices said under his breath, "then men will buy what works, and fast." Lira only checked the nib's flow and, with the steadiness of someone who knew how small acts kept men alive, marked the batch ready for packing. The news of the prison—of Lyscia's capture, of Seraphina's later movements, of the muddled exchange—was a political echo that made shopkeepers glance at the market stalls and then quicken their hands. For a city newly balancing on bought hours and frayed trust, a missing general was no mere scandal, it had become a line item in every ledger of risk.
So the shed worked on: batches were packed with the Guild Mark and Technologia's own counter‑stamp, warranties were folded into waxed wrappers, and a clerk pinned an extra page in the public ledger explaining replacements and traceable lots. Outside the alley, a rival ran his finger along a cooling metal tip and muttered a vow, inside, under the lamplight, a smith laughed softly and hammered another pin true. Dawnspire would feed itself with both politics and product in the days ahead—and the employees at the little factory found themselves a new kind of front line.
09:00 a.m. - At Dawnspire Market Square
The square smelled of hot bread, damp wool and turned ink. At first light the city's traffic moved in practiced arcs: carts, boys, bellmen. The new tins from Technologia were a small bright thing on market tables — a single box, wax wrapped, counter‑marked. Word did not travel; it migrated. A clerk would buy one and then three clerks the next week, and the next day a messenger who had sworn by quills his whole life returned with a praise‑filled note for the shed.
That redistribution of patronage was the kind of disturbance that makes old tradesmen irritable. Odrik's forge, which had always survived by being the loudest and cheapest, felt the change first: fewer repairs, quieter horses in his yard. He swaggered through the square with his jaw set and his mouth set to mock, then went to his back room and began sketching dies. Speed, he decided, would pay for the gap in craft. Down by the docks, Stoneveil's foreman chose the opposite tack. He met merchants in the Black Gull and proposed quantity over quality — a flood of cheap tips, stamped and pushed so fast the Guild would watch volume and not always the fine print.
Tavern corners hummed with plans and wagers. "If they're taking registry orders, the rest follow," one merchant said, leaning so close the other could smell the beer. "And if the garrison moves on those, the Guild will close an eye for stability." A purse clinked; a voice low as ash promised a courier who would feign innocence while the die was pressed in a hidden yard downriver. The square kept turning: customers drifted from stall to stall, but this new churn now had teeth — someone would try to break the trust and reap the short, ugly profit.
Inside the shed, the team watched the square through a narrow window and heard the rumours as if they were rain. Bromar tightened a rivet and spat, not surprised. Lira set one nib to the brass template and did not look up. The apprentices learned not philosophy but craft: make so well that the market cannot afford to forget you.
11:00 a.m. - At Technologia Workshop
The courier came with red thread and a guild seal, the kind of envelope that made clerks' hands go suddenly exact. Sariel slit it open on a corner of the bench and read aloud: an inspector from Dawnspire Guild would attend in seven days; the review would ask for packaging proofs, the public ledger, and a live demonstration at Grimoire & Quill. Questions for the inspector were due within forty‑eight hours.
Three days after Varrik departed for Aldric's hall, the inspector's notice arrived at the Guild: seven days' warning, and questions due within forty‑eight hours.
The announcement ate the room's air. Elara ran a finger along the margins of the ledger — overhead costs, the loan amortization, the small reserve she had kept for emergencies — and her face shifted in the way ledgers make sensible faces shift. "We'll need to show a perfect chain," she said, already thinking in columns. "If we have any weak lots or returns, the inspector will see them and ask why the Guild mark let them leave in the first place."
Sariel's response was practical: transparency. "We pin the public ledger by the door, print an annotated copy for the Guild table, and ensure every wrapper has our counter‑mark and a trace number. If anyone says we were sloppy, we'll show the chain: who stamped, who packed, who signed the test." Bromar wanted steel to do the talking. "We won't beg for mercy," he grunted. "We will make it so good they can't call it out."
They sketched the test schedule on a clean board — ink‑line trials, a tip‑wear check against the brass template, a salt‑mist rust test. Lira outlined the step‑by‑step demo so apprentices could rehearse. The urgency was quiet but fierce: this was the thread the rivals would tug if they could.
01:00 p.m. - At Technologia Workshop
The returns began small and stubborn. A woman from a distant parish returned a nib; "It scratches the vellum," she said, and the mark on the tip looked like someone had ground it with a file that left rude teeth rather than a smooth edge. Then a courier came back with a dozen boxes flagged for complaint — thin hairline scratches across long strokes, a pattern that no honest temper could explain.
Sariel cross‑checked batch numbers and felt the floor move beneath her. The wrappers carried C‑27, the ledger showed C‑27 had left the shed pressed, tested and stamped. But the counter‑mark on the returned wrappers bore a microscopic difference — a nick in the stag's curl that Bromar swore he had never made. Someone had learned how to mimic the mark.
Under magnification Sariel noticed the nick's precise angle — the same careless gouge Odrik had shown off at the Black Gull; for a heartbeat the tavern's boasting came back to her like a threat.
They stopped shipments. Bromar ordered every C‑27 off the shelves. Apprentices who had been humming at the grind line went still. Lira ran 1,000‑stroke ink tests until her knuckles ached and pulled scores of nibs onto a rework bench. Elara tallied immediate losses — replacement cost, overtime, courier fees — and recalculated the emergency reserve lines. If the inspector walked in and saw a forged lot presented beside their genuine goods, the shop could be shut down pending inquiry.
The response was methodical: a public recall notice pinned to the door, every wrapper re‑examined under the brass template, photographs taken of the forged impression to lodge with the Guild. Sariel posted a new ledger column: "Rework status / trace comments." They rewrapped publicly in daylight, placed counter‑marks in the customers' sight, and promised replacements.
Morale sagged. The apprentices whispered about being swindled out of the dream. Still, the sabotage welded the crew to a simple truth: make the fix in daylight, make it visible. Bromar's voice at the bench had the iron steadiness of someone who had been burned and would not burn again. "We'll show them workmanship, not words," he said. "We will take this into the sun."
03:00 p.m. - At Guild Hall / Council Quarter
Politics bled into commerce. The city's small talk kept folding back on the larger story: the captured Drakensvale general who had been central to the recent truce had, so the rumor said, either vanished from custody or been spirited away. Many named Seraphina as the rescuer; others, hearing different dispatches, spoke of a disappearance that left both crowns with a thinned hand. Traders, who priced grain and risk, listened and altered their calculations.
"If Aurelthorn cannot produce the prisoner when it counts," said a merchant at the registry stall, "who will trust its proofs tomorrow? People will move their grain, secure wagons. Then prices spike and small sellers die." That was the arithmetic of panic: when the perceived reliability of an authority faltered, merchants priced in buffer and reallocated inventory.
Technologia sat in the middle of that strain. Military demand — crossbow orders and field packs — rose with talk of raids and tightened borders, but civilian purchases — school supplies, municipal ledgers — wavered as two‑week credits were pulled and officials marked a higher margin for transport risk. Elara updated her contingency sheet: increase reserve funds for wages, stage alternate routes, cancel a nonessential expense. "If the truce is only a pause," she said, "we must treat it like a test of whether the city can feed its own."
That evening a clerk returned from the castle steps and related a council whisper: Aldric had been told at the talks that the prisoner could not be produced. Whether by fear, by calculation, or by deliberate concealment, the claim had weakened Aurelthorn's bargaining posture. The truce as a whole remained in place — for now — but the failure of the prisoner‑swap had left a residue of distrust that now showed in the market as a premium on safety and a call for visible proof. For the little factory on the lane, that meant their public ledger and their durably stamped boxes were not only product quality; they were a political argument.
05:00 p.m. - At Technologia Workshop
After the discovery of the forged wrappers, the crew did not disperse to quiet homes. They gathered by workbenches and drew plans on the chalkboard. Bromar listed practical measures: double‑stamp every wrapper in daylight, publish the batch ledger at the stall and take a copy to Grimoire & Quill, rehearse a public demonstration for registry clerks and the Guild inspector, and issue a no‑hassle replacement warranty for anyone affected by C‑27. Sariel agreed to maintain a running public log by the door showing rework actions and who performed them.
Elara allocated funds for the demo and drew emergency lines in the ledger. "We have margin for one demonstration," she said. "We need to make it count. If the inspector sees live tests and a visible chain, a rumor does not become judgment." Lira refined the QC checklist and assigned apprentices to the rework line; training became practical, not ceremonial. They decided to rewrap all suspect lots in sunlight the next morning and invite a neutral scribe to witness the stamping.
The plan was defense by openness: if anybody wanted to challenge their standards, the shop would meet them in daylight with records and tests. It was expensive and it would cost time they could not easily spare, but the trade-off was clear — trust regained in public could be the difference between survival and a long shutdown.
09:00 p.m. - At Technologia Workshop
There was a small, human victory before the night swallowed the street. Master Scribe Corvin arrived, brought his vellum and his careful eye, and tried the nibs. He wrote slow, read the lines, and nodded. "Thirty dozen for the chancery," he said. "Pack them with care. If these hold, I'll send another order." A cheer, a loaf shared, hands clapped for the apprentice who had polished the winning edge.
They allowed themselves the hour. The shop felt lighter as the order went into the ledger, the sale moved the needle and steadied the cash‑flow for the next week. But late that night Sariel did one more check before locking the shelf: she picked up a freshly prepared parcel and, by habit, examined the counter‑mark. The stag's curl had the nick again — the same microscopic nick they had traced earlier to the forgeries. Whoever had made it had managed to reproduce a near‑perfect fake and, worse, to place it in their wrapped goods after the shop had signed and sealed them.
Sariel set the parcel down as if it had burned her palm. Outside, in the lane, a rider's shadow crossed the shuttered shopfront. A courier, heading for the Guild Hall at speed. If that parcel reached the inspector's hands tomorrow, the demonstration might end with questions the team could not answer on their own. The small triumph glinted briefly and was gone. The night closed; the ledger remained open.