fractions rework

storylines/house-of-scales.md

@@ -9,7 +9,7 @@ This subplot has two floors. Sevra thinks she's hunting a traitor; she's right,
 
 # THE TRAITOR FLOOR
 
-## The Surface Problem: The Merchant Quarter Kill
+## The Surface Problem: The Robbed Closings
 
 A guild contract. A noble named **Lord Harath** was marked for death by a business rival. Standard job — clean kill, made to look like natural causes. Paid half upfront, 500 gp total.
 
@@ -17,7 +17,7 @@ Before the guild could act, Harath turned up dead. But not cleanly — his body
 
 **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.
+Harath is only the latest and most inflammatory example. Other sealed scenes have lost an old mirror, a planar travel diary, blood from a surviving relative, or memories no ordinary thief could take. A few perfectly clean deaths left no soul for priests to call back. Sevra has bundled every variation into one accusation against the Order. This is the surface of the guild's problem. The deeper rot is Dace himself—and, deeper still, the unrelated soul-harvester using the confusion as cover.
 
 ---
 
@@ -25,15 +25,15 @@ This is the surface of the guild's problem. The deeper rot is Dace himself — a
 
 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.
-3. The cultists perform the kill using ritual methods. The body yields what they need.
+1. Dace identifies contracts involving useful bloodlines, planar exposure, protected collections, rare memories, or relics.
+2. He passes the complete dossier—target, possessions, warning, assigned blade, schedule, and control of the scene—to Haddon through dead drops and meetings in the tavern's private room.
+3. Sometimes the Order performs the kill for a bodily component. More often it lets the House kill and uses the sealed scene as cover for theft. The known killer makes further investigation stop.
 4. Dace collects payment from both the guild (his cut) and the cult (a separate fee).
 5. The guild's reputation suffers because the kills are sloppy and ritualistic — the opposite of the codex.
 
 **Why Dace does it:** Money. That's it. He has no ideological alignment with the cult. He finds their beliefs ridiculous. He simply saw an opportunity for double income and took it.
 
-**Why it matters:** The guild's code is everything. Clean kills, no suffering, no collateral, every death sealed and closed. Dace's arrangement produces the opposite — bodies carved open, hearts removed, ritual desecration. Every botched kill damages the guild's reputation, which is its only real asset.
+**Why it matters:** A sealed death must end the grievance. No second blade, no looting, no punishment of the household. By turning the House's seal into cover, Dace makes the guild appear to rob its own dead and admits that its archive, operations, and honour are all porous. The shame is worse than ordinary poaching.
 
 ---
 
@@ -56,12 +56,13 @@ Kael is the easiest assassin to talk to because he's honest and angry:
 - He saw Bren go rigid during the brawl and stare at the bar — useful for the murder investigation.
 - **Ask him about Thera and he opens the trapdoor to the basement floor without meaning to** (see below).
 
-### Through Tallow (Transactional)
-Tallow knows Dace has been meeting "a scholar type" in the private room:
+### Through Haddon's Journal (Physical Proof)
+Haddon's ciphered journal contains a loose account page for the Harath job:
 
-- Won't volunteer this — it's worth money
-- **Price:** 20+ gp, or information about the cult that Tallow can leverage
-- "Your friendly assassin, the charming one? He's been having private meetings. Regular. With someone who reads too many books."
+- It names **Dace** as the source of the complete House dossier three days before the formal warning.
+- It records two payments and their next meeting in the tavern's private room.
+- Dace's personal field-sign authenticates the transaction; Sevra or Kael recognizes it automatically.
+- Once deciphered, give the players the **[printable journal page](../prints/haddonuv-denik-harath.md)**.
 
 ### Through the Private Room (Physical Evidence)
 The private room contains:
@@ -83,7 +84,7 @@ Dace is actively helping the investigation — steering it toward the cultists.
 When players have enough evidence to accuse Dace:
 
 ### Presenting Evidence to Sevra
-She needs at least **two pieces** of concrete evidence (the pin, Tallow's testimony, the private room meetings, or a confession). With two:
+She needs at least **two pieces** of concrete evidence (the pin found on Dace, Haddon's authenticated journal page, physical evidence from the private room, Kael's contract records, or a confession). The journal page is especially strong: it counts as one piece by itself and turns circumstantial private-room evidence into a second. With two:
 
 > Sevra goes still. Not angry-still — *cold*-still. The temperature at the assassin table drops ten degrees.
 >
@@ -106,7 +107,7 @@ Dace grabs the nearest vulnerable NPC (Vetch, Bren, or a player who isn't watchi
 - Let him go — Sevra won't allow it. The guild's justice requires an answer.
 - Talk him down — DC 18 Persuasion. Possible if players offer genuine protection from Sevra's justice (but can they really?).
 - Fight him — Dace is dangerous one-on-one but outmatched against multiple opponents. At half HP, he surrenders.
-- Cleverness — Players might use Whisper Chalk, Tallow's goods, or social manipulation to expose him without a direct confrontation.
+- Cleverness — Players might pass a private note, manufacture a distraction, or use social manipulation to expose him without a direct confrontation.
 
 ### Aftermath
 
@@ -224,10 +225,10 @@ 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.** 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).
+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 true statement beneath it: *„Haddon vybral toho šlechtice. Zeptej se ho.”* Haddon did select the victim; Rennt laughed but never spoke those words. Xarrul used the truth to give the brawl its final shove and create cover for the murder.
 
 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).
 
-3. **The guild intercepted Xarrul.** The fiend was originally sent by the cult to kill Sevra. The guild's people caught it in transit, broke the binding, and thought the problem solved. They didn't know what they'd unleashed. Sevra knows about this — she'll share it if the fiendish angle is confirmed and she trusts the players.
+3. **The House accidentally freed Xarrul.** The Order sent the fiend into the inner archive to steal the Severance Nail, not kill Sevra. The archive's automatic Final Closure severed every outside claim crossing its threshold, including the Order's command binding. Xarrul caught itself in the Border Ethereal instead of snapping home. Witnesses saw an Order-marked creature near senior rooms, three injured blades, false voices, and then smoke; the House reasonably misread the heist as a failed assassination and the disappearance as banishment. The assassins in the tavern know only hearsay.
 
 4. **Two hungers, one veil (DM texture, not a reveal).** Orenn died to a fiend crossing the veil; Thera feeds a debt beneath the city. They are unrelated predators — which is exactly why Thera can look at Orenn's brand and say *"not our coin."* The tavern is a thin place, and thin places draw more than one kind of appetite. Let attentive players feel that resonance; don't explain it.