The Death Mask Leaves the Party

The morning after Elmyra joined, Greta asked the question QUEST always came back to. Did the party have items? This time, Ash and Jonah did. They turned in Paulus Levius's Death Mask and the Cloak of Billowing, and the choice carried more weight than the numbers on the ledger. The mask had brought out the worst in Maine. It had been useful, powerful, and soaked in exactly the kind of temptation that made keeping it feel like an argument the party would lose eventually. So they removed it from circulation. The value was enormous: the death mask counted as twelve thousand LEV, with the Cloak of Billowing adding another hundred. Everyone earned one hundred twenty-one void dust, enough for one void diamond plus twenty-one dust. On paper, that more than satisfied a normal QUEST payment. Greta still treated the team as behind. That was QUEST in miniature. The party had given up one of its most dangerous tools, earned a serious payout, and still stood under the pressure of ongoing quotas. At least Maine's murder tool was no longer waiting for the next bad day.