The Lost Apprentice

Quest · Chapter 2 · Swamp Camp

Route

  • Cor Kalom sends you to find his missing apprentice, Caine. Search Caine's hut first; the drawing you find there points toward a ritual site and the Abandoned Mine.
  • Get the mine key from Orry—he asks 400 nuggets if you cannot talk your way in—then follow the trail into the mine.
  • Caine is dead after an encounter with an undead orc. Take the magical amulet from his body and report the truth to Cor Kalom.

Quest Parts

  • The Lost Apprentice:
  • I gotta find out which hut is Caine's and search it.:
  • Maybe someone recognizes the drawing.:
  • I gotta get access to the abandoned mine.:
  • I gotta find Caine.:
  • I should report back to Cor Kalom.:

Outcome

Caine's amulet and vision become important evidence in the Brotherhood route.

A missing apprentice nobody wants to investigate

Cor Kalom notices that Caine has not arrived, but his first explanation is that the apprentice is sleeping off another smoke roll. The alchemist's indifference leaves the hero to do the work of finding him. In a camp preparing for a sacred ceremony, even a missing apprentice can be treated as a minor inconvenience when the leader is consumed by experiments.

The search begins in the novices' nearly identical huts. A drawing found among Caine's belongings points toward a ritual site and the Abandoned Mine, suggesting that his disappearance followed a vision rather than an ordinary errand. The hero has to turn a fragment of private imagery into a route through the colony's forgotten places.

A trail that ends with the dead

Orry controls access to the abandoned mine and is willing to demand four hundred nuggets for the key if the hero cannot persuade him. The price is another reminder that every gate in the Colony belongs to someone. Once inside, the trail leads to a tomb and an undead orc, where Caine's visions end in death.

The magical amulet found on Caine's body gives the discovery a second life. It is evidence that his journey was connected to forces beyond the camp, even though the hero cannot yet explain what those forces want.

The beginning of a larger mystery

Reporting the truth to Kalom should close a simple search, but the amulet and Caine's account instead become useful to several factions. Lares and Raven see the object as a way to enter the Brotherhood's confidence, while Kalom's reaction places the hero closer to the ritual he has been preparing. Caine's disappearance therefore becomes the point where camp intelligence, religious expectation, and the supernatural crisis begin to overlap.

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