Sleeping Giants Game 19

Intro

Ford's Tracks

You find yourself back in the desert city of Shahz Inem. You are nearing the end of your first job for General Hector, which involves dispelling rumors about his cousin Lord Primo’s infidelity. You already have all the evidence you need, but you prefer to be thorough. And so you arrived at Hector’s personal study in the wee hours of the morning. A quick survey of the room reveals 3 points of interest: a mostly full bookshelf, a desk with several stacks of paper, and a large map hanging on the wall.

You immediately move for the desk.

Three stacks of paper sit atop the desk, neatly organized into piles. Resting upon one of the stacks of paper is a curious object that you’ve never seen before now: It is a small, silver metal cage with a mechanical bird inside. The three stacks are labeled “Weekly Reports”, “Delegations”, and “Operation Red Worm”.

• Weekly Reports: A stack of reports from Hector’s subordinates, with the most recent on top. They are mostly un-noteworthy, although there are some mentions of “Operation Red Worm” by a person named Aeneas. It seems to be proceeding according to schedule.
• Delegations: A stack of outgoing orders that have not yet been sent out. One of them makes mention of a Detective Ford, informing the subordinate to pay him what he’s due.
• Operation Red Worm: The first few pages in this stack make reference to the Shahz Inem Housing Crisis. However, they quickly switch topic a dozen pages in, and outline a series of underground tunnels that potentially reach all the way from Shahz Inem to its sister city, Sulta Ixen. According to the notes, Hector has assigned several individuals to not only scout the tunnels, but also outfit them with weapons, armor, and enough preserved foodstuffs to potentially last large groups several weeks.

Next you made your way to the large map on the wall.

The map on the wall is very large, easily 4 feet wide by 3 feet tall, and presents the entirety of Dormia. The map is marked up in several different ways, from small push-tacks to markings made in ink. In the bottom left of the map, there are a series of carefully drawn, winding lines that interconnect and stretch from Shahz Inem about halfway to Sulta Ixen. In other areas of Vesper, there are pins pushed into the map that you can only assume represent military bases. Some of the pins are located along the eastern coast, and have arrows, some straight and some winding, drawn from them to the Auroran coast.

And finally, the bookshelf.

The bookshelf is stocked full, and at a glance many of the books are related to general knowledge or military strategy. Two books in specific stand out, as they are largely unrelated to the rest:

• Navigation Under the Stars: A field manual to navigating while under ground.
• Arcane Through the Ages: A primer on the entire history of the Arcane throughout the past 500 years. There is currently a bookmark inside of the book, which is a hand written note on a piece of parchment. It reads: “Hector, Mitlargo requested we become familiar with the contents of this book, specifically the chapter titled ‘The Disappearance of Abjuration’. Please review and get me your notes. Primo.”

Confident that you’ve gleaned all there is to know from Hector’s personal study, you exit the same way you entered: through the open window. We see you from the outside, climbing out and disappearing into the night, and our view begins to zoom in on the window. If you knew you were leaving behind evidence of your intrusion, you would have surely cleaned it up. But nobody’s perfect. As we continue to zoom in, we can finally make out a small piece of hardened mud that fell off of your shoe, framed by the window. And stamped into the mud is a perfect outline of the tread of your shoe.