Raphael's stolen chain

Raphael's stolen chain is a long, rune-covered chain once borne by one of the Chain Wardens, in the campaign Raphael Efsanesi ("The Legend of Raphael"). Derek Sunshield hired Raphael in secret to steal it.^{1 2}

Derek's commission

After Raphael had proved himself with three thefts and a duel, Derek drew his chair close and spoke to him alone. He wanted something guarded stolen; the guards were to be overcome quietly, and though killing them might be avoided, he set no limit on how it was done.^{1 3}

According to Derek, the chain had belonged to a Chain Warden now dead, the last of the order's warriors trained to fight not monsters but humans and other people who do evil. He drew on the Wardens' oath, which distinguishes devils, creatures, angels and humans, and said that such secret training had been abolished long ago, so that most Wardens themselves no longer knew of it. He did not name the former owner.⁴

Derek gave his reasons. If the thief of a lost and powerful book and this chain ever came into the same hands, he said, the result would be a catastrophe; a diplomatic request for the chain had been refused, and it was poorly guarded where it lay. He wanted it brought to Palantir Castle, which he thought safer, and faulted the Wardens for not having moved it to their Black Castle. He admitted his unease that the Wardens stand above the law, preferring the common sense of the realm and the emperor's orders to their whims, yet said the realm still owed them its gratitude. The Chain Wardens are indeed held to be beyond the laws of men and gods.^{5 6 7}

The commission was to stay secret. If it became known, Derek said, the people would split between blaming the Wardens and blaming those who had moved against them. Among the knights only those of the rank of the Rose and the Sword knew of it, and in the capital only Derek himself and a knight named Maksidus; at the Archon only Siyah knew, and Raphael was to get his equipment from him. If he were caught, his employers would deny him. In return Derek promised five to ten times what Raphael earned from his usual work, a changed life, and a realm kept safe from great danger.^{8 9 10}

The chain lay a week to a week and a half's journey from White City, in a place Derek described as inside his own lordship but outside the order's lands. A ruined tower in that country served as a landmark, but the chain was not kept there. Because the Wardens were few and wished to draw no attention, he said, it was guarded not by them but by a good band of mercenaries, perhaps with one or two Wardens at their head. Raphael was given two or three days to prepare, under watch, and could take Karas with him.^{11 3 12}

The theft

The chain lay in the abandoned tower in a grove, at the foot of a hidden stair some fifteen metres down, in clear, waist-deep water over a stony floor. It was longer than an ordinary Warden's chain Raphael had found on a skeleton higher up, and far more thickly covered in runes.^{13 2}

Searching for a way to lift it, Raphael settled on using a part cut from his own body, and cut off one of his ring fingers. He wound the chain about himself from waist to chest beneath his shirt and armour and kept it hidden there on the way back.^{14 15}

Back in the capital a legionary came to Raphael's inn, the Night Wolf, in Derek's name. He apologised that Derek could not meet him, since the knights had to be out of the city, and said he knew nothing of the task. He took the chain into his bundle, drew a hidden bag of gold bars from under a stone in the garden as the first payment, and said the rest would be settled with Derek.^{16 17}

Spoiler: What the chain was forRevealSpoils: Raphael Efsanesi #8; Starter Setting Guide · Say what you have read

Soon afterwards the emperor was murdered. A knight read out to the crowd a decree in the name of the new emperor, which claimed that a chain of the Chain Wardens' order had been found beside his father's body, and drew from a sack the very chain Raphael had stolen.¹⁸

The protection of the chain was only Derek's stated reason. He had it taken to serve the conspiracy around the usurper, the plot that carried Vaden II to the throne, and Raphael knew nothing of that purpose when he accepted and carried out the theft. It was claimed that the emperor's killer had been a Chain Warden; Derek, Grandmaster of the Palanthor Knights, backed Vaden II wholeheartedly from the first hours of that night, and his part in the plot stained the order's name.^{18 19 7}

When Raphael hinted that the knights themselves were behind the killing, Derek denied it, claiming they had believed the prince to be the target and had protected him. He ordered that the chain mission be treated as though it had never happened. In the six months of military rule that followed, two fortresses of the Chain Wardens were torn down and every Warden found was killed.^{20 21 22}