xarrul rework

storylines/house-of-scales.md

@@ -2,7 +2,7 @@
 
 This subplot has two floors. Sevra thinks she's hunting a traitor; she's right, but she's standing on top of something worse. Let the players climb down at their own pace — most tables will crack the traitor and feel finished, and only the ones who keep pulling will find the rot underneath. Both floors are optional; the traitor floor is a clean, satisfying subplot on its own, and the rot floor is the "evil within the guild" the night is built to reveal.
 
-- **Ground floor — [The Traitor](#the-traitor-floor):** Dace has been selling guild kills to the Lambent Order for money. Mundane, provable, resolvable. This is what Sevra can see.
+- **Ground floor — [The Traitor](#the-traitor-floor):** Dace has been selling guild kills to the Order of Mending for money. Mundane, provable, resolvable. This is what Sevra can see.
 - **Basement — [The Rot](#the-rot-floor):** Thera "Even-Hand," the guild's most honoured blade, harvests the souls of her marks for something beneath the city. Invisible, because she breaks no rule of the codex. This is what Sevra is missing — and what braids the two floors together: **Dace's crude soul-trafficking is drawing exactly the attention Thera needs to keep buried, so she has come to end him.**
 
 ---
@@ -15,7 +15,7 @@ A guild contract. A noble named **Lord Harath** was marked for death by a busine
 
 Before the guild could act, Harath turned up dead. But not cleanly — his body was found in his study with ritual burns on his chest, his heart removed, and symbols carved into the floorboards. The city watch called it "cult activity." The guild's client wants a refund. The guild says the contract was accepted, the fee stands.
 
-**What actually happened:** Dace sold the contract details to the Lambent Order. The cultists needed a specific type of kill — a death performed at a ley line intersection (Harath's study was on one) with the heart preserved as a binding component. Dace arranged access. The cultists performed the kill. Dace got paid twice.
+**What actually happened:** Dace sold the contract details to the Order of Mending. The cultists needed a specific type of kill — a death performed at a ley line intersection (Harath's study was on one) with the heart preserved as a binding component. Dace arranged access. The cultists performed the kill. Dace got paid twice.
 
 This is the surface of the guild's problem. The deeper rot is Dace himself — and, deeper still, the thing that has taken an interest in Dace.
 
@@ -23,7 +23,7 @@ This is the surface of the guild's problem. The deeper rot is Dace himself — a
 
 ## The Real Problem: The Traitor
 
-For six months, Dace has been selling kills to the Lambent Order. The arrangement:
+For six months, Dace has been selling kills to the Order of Mending. The arrangement:
 
 1. Dace identifies guild contracts where the target's death could serve a dual purpose — the client gets their kill, the cult gets ritual components.
 2. Dace passes target details, location, and schedule to Haddon through dead drops and meetings in the tavern's private room.
@@ -65,7 +65,7 @@ Tallow knows Dace has been meeting "a scholar type" in the private room:
 
 ### Through the Private Room (Physical Evidence)
 The private room contains:
-- Ward-sigil diagram scratched into the table (DC 14 Investigation, DC 16 Arcana to understand)
+- Old summoner-sigil diagram scratched into the table (DC 14 Investigation, DC 16 Arcana to understand)
 - A dropped cultist pin under the bench (DC 13 Perception)
 - Faint traces of ritual chalk on the floor (DC 15 Investigation) — from when Haddon demonstrated binding patterns to Dace
 
@@ -138,7 +138,7 @@ Full character detail, tells, the soulcoin, and her stat block are in **[the ass
 
 ## Why She's Here Tonight
 
-Dace's dealings with the Lambent Order have dragged soul-death into public view — ritual kills, missing hearts, city-watch whispers about "cult activity." That's the one thing that gets people *looking* at what happens to souls in this city, and looking is the only thing Thera fears. She has come to resolve the Dace problem, and she has **already marked him** (see [The Mark on Dace](../npc/assassins.md#the-mark-on-dace-dm--the-braid-to-thera)). She is also privately disgusted by the cultists — amateurs desecrating something she considers sacred.
+Dace's dealings with the Order of Mending have dragged soul-death into public view — ritual kills, missing hearts, city-watch whispers about "cult activity." That's the one thing that gets people *looking* at what happens to souls in this city, and looking is the only thing Thera fears. She has come to resolve the Dace problem, and she has **already marked him** (see [The Mark on Dace](../npc/assassins.md#the-mark-on-dace-dm--the-braid-to-thera)). She is also privately disgusted by the cultists — amateurs desecrating something she considers sacred.
 
 ## The Trail Down (how players find the basement)
 
@@ -224,7 +224,7 @@ There is no clean win here — that's the point. Options, in rough order of how
 
 The assassin subplot feeds the murder mystery and the fiend arc:
 
-1. **The brawl was engineered.** Xarrul whispered to Kael using Voice Thief to push him over the edge. The brawl gave Xarrul cover for the murder. Understanding this requires talking to Kael about *exactly* what triggered him ("I heard one of them laughing about it. Clear as day." — but no cultist was laughing. It was Xarrul).
+1. **The brawl was engineered.** Kael's grievance was real, but the laugh that tipped him (Rennt's) was twisted in his ears by Xarrul (Voice Thief), which layered a fabricated confession under it. The brawl gave Xarrul cover for the murder. Understanding this requires asking Kael *exactly* what triggered him ("One of them laughed and said the noble squealed. Clear as day." — Rennt did laugh; he never said that. The rest was Xarrul).
 
 2. **Dace's meetings map the wards.** The diagram in the private room was made during a Dace/Haddon meeting. The cult was mapping the wards — which Xarrul was also breaking. The tavern's defences were weakened from both sides at once: Haddon from inside (mapping), Xarrul from the Ethereal Plane (scratching).