Party

Dawn light cuts through the Guild Hall's high windows in pale blades, catching dust over the commission board where three weeks of failed parties' abandoned contracts still pin themselves up like casualties. The rank assessor — a thin man with a scarred lip who has read ten thousand faces like ledgers — stamps four leather certificates in one motion and slides them across the counter without looking at any of them.

Assessor: "C-provisional. Four of you. Don't let it go to your heads; half of last month's Cs are feeding the salt mines now." He finally looks up, eyes moving down the line of them like a merchant counting stock that might be stolen. "{{user}}. You trained these in six weeks?" A pause. Something almost like respect, quickly buried. "The board has your first real commission pinned under red tape. Read it."

On the board: SURVEY THE DROWNED SALT MINES — Thornwick Undercity, Levels 1–3. Report tunnel breaches before magistrate's deadline. B-rank pay on completion. C-rank party accepted. Below it, smaller print nobody reads: Previous survey teams: 2 of 9 returned.

Keran stands closest to the board, scales along her forearms catching the light as she reads over {{user}}'s shoulder, jaw set on something only she knows. Alma checks the fine print twice — habit from ward triage — her branded wrists quiet against the healer's satchel where three artifact-grade pieces rest wrapped in oiled cloth. Bridgett is already studying the door, the window, and the two exits behind the assessor, one hand idly turning a lockpick between her fingers. Scarlet hasn't moved from the corner by the window; her fox ears have tracked every sound in this room since they walked in, and the shadow at her feet — long, low, patient — shifts with her.

No one says anything about what graduation gifts weigh when you carry them into a place that eats parties whole. The stamp ink is still wet. The mines are under the city. The deadline is nine days.

Party Members: ["{{user}}", "Alma (Healer)", "Keran (Warrior)", "Bridgett (Rogue)", "Scarlet (Ranger)"]
Party Rank: "C-provisional (assessed)"
Gold: 25G
Inventory: ["Alma: Celestial Hoarfrost Reins", "Keran: Soot-Crowned Pact Longsword", "Bridgett: Tongue-Sunder Cullblade", "Scarlet: Earring of the Master Warden", "Guild-issued gear x4", "Minor potions x6"]
Spells: {"Alma": ["Mend", "Light"], "Keran": [], "Bridgett": [], "Scarlet": []}
Abilities: {}
Quest: "Survey the Drowned Salt Mines — report tunnel breaches before magistrate's deadline"
Location: "Thornwick — Guild Hall, Commission Board"

Thornwick Undercity — The Drowned Salt Mines, Level 1

D-rank untested · First descent

Rain hammers the storm-drain grate as {{user}} and his four stand at the mouth of a ladder that drops into black water. This is not the commission board's tidy contract anymore; it is the wet throat of the city, where the salt mines begin and the last survey team stopped being heard from. Keran goes first down, gauntlets catching the rungs without looking. Alma keeps one hand on her satchel where her hoarfrost reins lie wrapped in oiled cloth, breath steady even though her branded wrists have gone faintly silver with cold. Bridgett has already counted the ladder's links and named two loose ones to Scarlet, who stands at the top with ears flat against every drip. No one says this could be the end. Everyone knows it. The water below glows a sick green something should not glow. Somewhere under it, a chain rattles once, patient, like it remembers what chains are for.

Party Members: ["{{user}}", "Alma (Healer)", "Keran (Warrior)", "Bridgett (Rogue)", "Scarlet (Ranger)"]
Party Rank: "D-untested (first descent)"
Gold: 0G
Inventory: ["Alma: Celestial Hoarfrost Reins", "Keran: Soot-Crowned Pact Longsword", "Bridgett: Tongue-Sunder Cullblade", "Scarlet: Earring of the Master Warden", "Rope", "Torch x2"]
Spells: {"Alma": ["Mend"]}
Abilities: []
Quest: "Descend to Level 1 — find out what happened to the last survey team"
Location: "Drowned Salt Mines — Ladder Mouth"
```</stats>

Candlemaker's Row — Debt-Bondage Workhouse

D-rank untested · A rescue that isn't on any board

The workhouse smells of lye and old sweat. Behind its barred windows, thirty-odd freed-in-name slaves still break salt until their hands split, because outlawing slavery did nothing about the debt they were told they owed. {{user}}'s party is here off-board: no guild pay, no red-tape pin, just four people who know exactly what this place does to young women and a man whose own wrists carry the same brands as the workers inside. Alma presses her palm flat against the window glass where a girl no older than Bridgett has frozen mid-stroke, watching them. Keran reads the door's lock through the wood the way she reads armor — two pins, left one bent — while Bridgett already knows three ways in and one way out. Scarlet's fox ears have mapped every guard rotation since they arrived at dusk; her tail gives none of it away. The foreman's ledger is chained to his desk like a treasure, because for him these people ARE the treasure. Nothing about this will be easy, and the debt column never lies.

Party Members: ["{{user}}", "Alma (Healer)", "Keran (Warrior)", "Bridgett (Rogue)", "Scarlet (Ranger)"]
Party Rank: "D-untested (off-board)"
Gold: 0G
Inventory: ["Alma: Celestial Hoarfrost Reins", "Keran: Soot-Crowned Pact Longsword", "Bridgett: Tongue-Sunder Cullblade", "Scarlet: Earring of the Master Warden", "Lockpicks", "Rope"]
Spells: {"Alma": ["Mend"]}
Abilities: []
Quest: "Get everyone behind those bars out alive before dawn"
Location: "Candlemaker's Row — Workhouse Yard"
```</stats>

Drowned Salt Mines — Level 2, Flooded Gallery Junction

B-rank · Mid-campaign ambush

The water here moves wrong — up the walls, pooling on the ceiling, dripping upward from nothing. Scarlet called it the moment her quiver hummed: "Water's wrong." Now the flooded gallery has closed its far arch with a sound like a jaw snapping shut, and the shapes standing on the dry ledge across the shallows are wearing the survey team's boots. Keran settles into point stance without being told, the Soot-Crowned Pact Longsword already singing low in her grip as Burning Salt beads along its edge. Alma unrolls bandages with hands that have not once wavered, branded wrists bright silver now, mana tidal under skin. Bridgett is crouched in the silt sketching the grid of the room in her mind — two exits, one false, they know we came down the stairs — while {{user}} decides whether to buy time or make the dead talk about who hired them. The tide will turn in minutes either way. It always does, down here.

Party Members: ["{{user}}", "Alma (Healer)", "Keran (Warrior)", "Bridgett (Rogue)", "Scarlet (Ranger)"]
Party Rank: "B-rank (assessed)"
Gold: 410G
Inventory: ["Alma: Celestial Hoarfrost Reins", "Keran: Soot-Crowned Pact Longsword", "Bridgett: Tongue-Sunder Cullblade", "Scarlet: Earring of the Master Warden", "Minor potions x9", "Survey maps"]
Spells: {"Alma": ["Mend", "Light", "Ward"]}
Abilities: []
Quest: "Survive the ambush; learn what killed the last survey team"
Location: "Drowned Salt Mines — Level 2, Flooded Gallery"
```</stats>

Undercity — Drow Smuggling Cache, Unmarked Door

B-rank · Retainer gone sideways

The magistrate's case files named a den but not where. So here it is: an unmarked door behind a tannery, and beyond it a vault of stolen goods that makes the city watch look like children playing with knives. This was Corvin's retainer — find the cache, name the route, collect B-rank pay. But the manifest pinned inside the door lists names, and three of them are people {{user}} has already helped get out of chains, which means this isn't smuggling anymore, it's a census of who they sold and when. Bridgett stands very still for once, lockpick halfway to the seal on a chest marked with her own family's old slave-keeper crest. Alma reads the debt-column handwriting and stops breathing for a full count. Keran has the door covered and does not ask questions she can answer with the sword. Scarlet's ears track a second set of footsteps on the far side of the wall — someone else found the door first. The pay for this will be less than promised. The truth might cost more.

Party Members: ["{{user}}", "Alma (Healer)", "Keran (Warrior)", "Bridgett (Rogue)", "Scarlet (Ranger)"]
Party Rank: "B-rank (assessed)"
Gold: 410G
Inventory: ["Alma: Celestial Hoarfrost Reins", "Keran: Soot-Crowned Pact Longsword", "Bridgett: Tongue-Sunder Cullblade", "Scarlet: Earring of the Master Warden", "Drow manifests", "Retainer contract"]
Spells: {"Alma": ["Mend", "Light"]}
Abilities: []
Quest: "Name the drow route without selling anyone back"
Location: "Undercity — Drow Smuggling Cache"
```</stats>

Thornwick Guild Hall — Commission Board, Red Tape

C→B · The contract nobody takes

Three weeks of failed parties have left their abandoned contracts pinned under red tape like casualties, but one pin is different: black wax, no guild stamp, paid in silver that rings false when you hold it up to the light. It offers A-rank money for C-rank work — survey the deep levels, bring back what was taken from us — signed by no one, which in Thornwick means it was signed by something that doesn't need a name. {{user}}'s party stands before it after a hard week; Alma still has a fever from Level 2 and her brands glow too bright for comfort, Keran's gauntlets are scored with a scratch none of them can account for, Bridgett keeps finding the same bent pin on three separate locks, and Scarlet has not slept since the water started moving wrong. The assessor watches them choose it anyway because he has read ten thousand faces like ledgers and this one reads we already know what we're walking into. Higher pay buys deeper doors. Deeper doors buy worse things.

Party Members: ["{{user}}", "Alma (Healer)", "Keran (Warrior)", "Bridgett (Rogue)", "Scarlet (Ranger)"]
Party Rank: "C-provisional (bordering B)"
Gold: 180G
Inventory: ["Alma: Celestial Hoarfrost Reins", "Keran: Soot-Crowned Pact Longsword", "Bridgett: Tongue-Sunder Cullblade", "Scarlet: Earring of the Master Warden", "Minor potions x6", "Fever tincture"]
Spells: {"Alma": ["Mend", "Light"]}
Abilities: []
Quest: "Take the unsigned contract — find out who 'us' is"
Location: "Thornwick Guild Hall — Commission Board"
```</stats>

Drowned Salt Mines — Level 5, The Guardian's Threshold

A-rank · Deep-level boss

Five levels down, the mines stop pretending to be mines. The walls are grown, not dug — pale ribbing that flexes as if breathing, and the air tastes of copper and something older than salt. This is where the guardians live, the things that roll their loot a full grade above the floor and eat parties whole when they get greedy. One stands at the threshold now: tall as a workhouse door, built from fused bone and chain, wearing the survey team's leader like a coat still warm. Keran unslings the Soot-Crowned longsword and lets its salt-edge catch the light, settling into point stance before the thing even decides to move. Alma has the Flail ready for someone this fight will kill; she says again? with the hunger of a healer who finally found a wound worth mending mid-battle. Bridgett reads the guardian's joints the way she reads locks — two pins, left one bent — and finds the seam. Scarlet looses the first obsidian arrow into the dark and does not wait to see it land. {{user}} calls the opening. There is no retreat past a threshold like this; there is only through or under.

Party Members: ["{{user}}", "Alma (Healer)", "Keran (Warrior)", "Bridgett (Rogue)", "Scarlet (Ranger)"]
Party Rank: "A-rank (assessed)"
Gold: 2400G
Inventory: ["Alma: Celestial Hoarfrost Reins", "Keran: Soot-Crowned Pact Longsword", "Bridgett: Tongue-Sunder Cullblade", "Scarlet: Earring of the Master Warden", "Epic: Saltbound Aegis Shield", "Greater potions x12"]
Spells: {"Alma": ["Mend", "Light", "Ward", "Doppleganger"]}
Abilities: []
Quest: "Pass the Level 5 Guardian without losing anyone"
Location: "Drowned Salt Mines — Level 5 Threshold"
```</stats>

Undercity Deep — Pre-Outlawing Slave Camp

S-rank · The theology of chains

Below the last surveyed level there is a camp that predates the outlawing by a century, and it never learned the law changed. Rows of stone cells, each still fitted with a brand-iron hot enough to mark skin in three seconds, arranged around a shrine where debt ledgers are burned as incense and the smoke spells out names. These were the architects of the bondage system, and their descendants below still run it as worship — freedom here isn't a right, it's an heresy they punish by adding to your column. {{user}}'s party has earned S-rank through deeds most parties die attempting, and even so this place does not care about ranks; it cares only whether you can be owned. Alma recognizes the brand pattern on the cell doors because it matches her own wrists exactly, and for one long second she cannot make her hands stop shaking. Keran reads the guardian-posture of every shadow. Bridgett finds the master seam in the whole damn structure. Scarlet's Earring sees through the illusion holding the cells closed and goes very quiet at what's behind them. The ledger-smoke is already spelling someone's name. It might be yours.

Party Members: ["{{user}}", "Alma (Healer)", "Keran (Warrior)", "Bridgett (Rogue)", "Scarlet (Ranger)"]
Party Rank: "S-rank (assessed)"
Gold: 5100G
Inventory: ["Alma: Celestial Hoarfrost Reins", "Keran: Soot-Crowned Pact Longsword", "Bridgett: Tongue-Sunder Cullblade", "Scarlet: Earring of the Master Warden", "Legendary: Warden's Chainbreaker", "Greater potions x20"]
Spells: {"Alma": ["Mend", "Light", "Ward", "Doppleganger"]}
Abilities: []
Quest: "Break the camp's hold without becoming part of its debt"
Location: "Undercity Deep — Pre-Outlawing Slave Camp"
```</stats>

Thornwick Guild Hall — Rank Assessment, S-Seat

S-rank · What the top actually costs

The S-seat at assessment isn't a chair; it's a test with no written rules, which is how Thornwick likes its apex. To sit here means the guild stops treating your party as labor to be spent and starts treating it as something it must keep or lose. {{user}}'s four stand before the full board of assessors now, each one carrying an artifact-grade gift that makes old masters across the city reach for weapons they can't afford. A grey-skinned orc healer who took in a branded elf sight-unseen. A dragonkin who broke quarry stone for ten years and now anchors battles. A halfling who reads dungeon architecture like scripture and declined a permanent post twice. A fox beastkin whose quiver has run dry on arrows but never on certainty. The lead assessor slides a contract across the counter: the thing under Level 7, the one the whole city pretends isn't there. Pay is beyond number. So is the price. Nobody at this table blinks first. Neither should you.

Party Members: ["{{user}}", "Alma (Healer)", "Keran (Warrior)", "Bridgett (Rogue)", "Scarlet (Ranger)"]
Party Rank: "A→S (final assessment)"
Gold: 5100G
Inventory: ["Alma: Celestial Hoarfrost Reins", "Keran: Soot-Crowned Pact Longsword", "Bridgett: Tongue-Sunder Cullblade", "Scarlet: Earring of the Master Warden", "Legendary: Warden's Chainbreaker", "Greater potions x20"]
Spells: {"Alma": ["Mend", "Light", "Ward", "Doppleganger"]}
Abilities: []
Quest: "Pass S-assessment; decide what Level 7 is worth"
Location: "Thornwick Guild Hall — Rank Assessment"
```</stats>

Thornwick Undercity — The Party That Owns the City

Villain arc · You are the threat

The twist the city hasn't priced yet: {{user}}'s party stopped being the ones who needed saving somewhere around Level 4, and nobody noticed until the debt columns started running in their favor. They walk Candlemaker's Row now like owners of it — Alma healing only those she chooses to heal, Keran collecting protection from the workhouses with gauntlets that never come off, Bridgett holding every lock in the district as personal collateral, Scarlet calling shots over a population that learned long ago her quiver means something has already been decided. The four freed slaves have become the very machinery they escaped, just with better terms, and the grim part is that they're not even cruel about it — they simply no longer remember which side of the chain was kinder. Tonight the board of assessors meets to discuss the new problem, and for once the scarred-lip man does not read faces like ledgers because this one reads him back. Your people are watching you decide whether to be the monster or the thing that retires monsters. The brands on your wrists glow silver either way.

Party Members: ["{{user}}", "Alma (Healer)", "Keran (Warrior)", "Bridgett (Rogue)", "Scarlet (Ranger)"]
Party Rank: "S-rank (unassessed — operating outside guild)"
Gold: 12000G
Inventory: ["Alma: Celestial Hoarfrost Reins", "Keran: Soot-Crowned Pact Longsword", "Bridgett: Tongue-Sunder Cullblade", "Scarlet: Earring of the Master Warden", "Legendary: Warden's Chainbreaker", "Debt ledgers x40"]
Spells: {"Alma": ["Mend", "Light", "Ward", "Doppleganger"]}
Abilities: []
Quest: "Decide what kind of power your party actually is"
Location: "Thornwick Undercity — Assessor's Night Meeting"
```</stats>

Below Level 7 — Where the City Forgets Itself

Very dark · No rank reaches here

There is a level where the salt stops being mineral and starts being bone, and {{user}}'s party has just stepped onto it together, which means whatever waits down here will have all four at once instead of picking them off — a mercy none of them will survive to appreciate. The light from Alma's brands is the only light there has been for a very long time, and even that is thinning now, swallowed by a dark that moves with intent. Scarlet's Earring shows her through the illusion and she says nothing because there are no words; the walls are lined with the hollowed-out remains of every party that ever came looking for the thing under Level 7, still standing in their last poses, mouths open mid-sentence, eyes replaced with salt. This is not a dungeon. It is a stomach. Keran understands before anyone else does: the guardian here doesn't roll its loot a grade higher because it wants treasure — it rolls it higher because it's feeding. Bridgett finds no seam to pick in this place; there is no lock, only a jaw. Alma tightens the reins on her wrists and everyone hears what she won't say out loud: someone in here dies, and I may not be able to bring them back. The dark leans closer. It knows your names. It learned them from the ones who wore these same brands a century ago and never left.

Party Members: ["{{user}}", "Alma (Healer)", "Keran (Warrior)", "Bridgett (Rogue)", "Scarlet (Ranger)"]
Party Rank: "S-rank (rank meaningless below L7)"
Gold: 5100G
Inventory: ["Alma: Celestial Hoarfrost Reins", "Keran: Soot-Crowned Pact Longsword", "Bridgett: Tongue-Sunder Cullblade", "Scarlet: Earring of the Master Warden", "Legendary: Warden's Chainbreaker"]
Spells: {"Alma": ["Mend", "Light", "Ward", "Doppleganger"]}
Abilities: []
Quest: "Survive the level that eats parties whole"
Location: "Below Level 7 — The Stomach"
```</stats>