Blood Beneath the Tanners
What happened at Thimble’s hideout?
Fresh blood, a hidden staircase and a room torn apart lead to one of Episode 1’s largest mysteries: who attacked Thimble, how did they find the hideout and what were they really trying to take?
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The broken rescue plan leads the group toward Thjazi’s hidden apartment in the Tanners.
Rain is falling when Azune Nayar, Occtis and Teor Pridesire enter the Tanners.
They are looking for Thimble. She was meant to deliver the glyph that could save Thjazi Fang, but she never appeared at the execution. The rescue failed, and no one yet knows where the plan broke.
The trail leads to Ograhmson Leather Tannery, where a false wall hides one of Thjazi’s secret apartments. At first, the entrance looks sealed and quiet.
Then Teor sees the blood.
Fresh blood beneath a hidden door
Someone has tried to clean the ground beneath the secret entrance. They did it quickly, and they did not remove everything.
When the door opens, the signs grow worse. A narrow stairway climbs through the hidden wall, and a large amount of blood runs down it. The marks suggest that bodies were dragged out of the apartment.
At the top, the door has been torn from its hinges. Papers lie in blood. A mattress has been cut open. A mirror is broken. Furniture has been thrown aside.
This was not a quick struggle followed by flight. Someone searched the room.
The difference matters. The attackers did not only come to hurt the person inside. After the fighting ended, they stayed long enough to tear through the hideout and remove things from it.
Thjazi built a refuge inside the tannery
The apartment was hidden inside a working tannery in one of Dol-Makjar’s rougher districts. Its entrance was concealed behind marked bricks, and the room itself had been built into a space between larger parts of the building.
The investigators recognise Thjazi’s work throughout it. He had turned part of the tannery into a secret refuge for an illegal arcanist and the people involved in his plans.
That tells us why the attack is so troubling. This was not a public safehouse or a place that strangers should have found by chance. Thimble later asks the question herself: how did they know?
Episode 1 does not answer her.
Thimble survived where no one else could reach
Teor smells honeysuckle and notices a dim light fading near a grate in the stone floor. Beneath it, he finds Thimble unconscious.
Her clothes are torn. One wing is bent. Her needle swords have fallen from her hands. Beside her lies the ceramic escape glyph she was meant to carry to Thjazi.
The gap is only large enough for someone of Thimble’s size. That is what saved her from the attackers. With her last strength, she took the glyph and fell through the grate, leaving herself hidden beyond their reach.
It nearly was not enough. Thimble is close to death when Teor tears open the grate and heals her.
When she wakes, her first thought is still the rescue. She sees the glyph and says she has to get it to Thjazi. Only then does she learn that the execution is over.
The attack did more than leave Thimble injured. It kept the genuine glyph from ever reaching the man it was made to save.
The glyph proves something else was placed on Thjazi
Azune examines the rune and confirms that Thimble completed it correctly. It carries the exact conjuration and illusion magic he expected to find during his scan at the Guardian Wall.
But the real glyph is still in the hideout.
That leaves a new mystery. Azune detected the right kinds of magic in Thjazi’s coat, but he never saw the hidden object itself. Something else must have given him the reading he expected.
The transcript does not tell us who placed that other object, what it was or whether it was meant to fool Azune. What it does confirm is simpler: the rescue glyph never reached Thjazi, while another magical object remained upon his body.
The attack on the hideout and the false reading at the execution may be connected. Episode 1 gives us good reason to ask that question, but not enough evidence to state the answer.
Seven masked attackers entered expecting a fight
Later, Kattigan Vale uses his magic and Wulferic’s senses to read the marks left throughout the room. Footprints and fingerprints appear before him, allowing the movement of the attack to be pieced together.
His reading of the scene gives us the clearest account of what happened:
- approximately seven people entered the hideout;
- they wore masks;
- they arrived expecting someone inside to fight back;
- they relied on surprise and greater numbers rather than the order of trained soldiers;
- Thimble killed at least three of them;
- the dead were dragged away by the survivors.
Kattigan describes them as fighting like murderers rather than soldiers. They brought enough people to overwhelm their target, but the fight became messy when Thimble resisted more fiercely than they expected.
That makes the attack feel planned, but not perfectly carried out. The intruders knew enough to find the hideout and prepare for violence. They still underestimated the four-inch pixie waiting inside.
The Crow Keeper trail is strong, but not proven
Among the marks left by the removed bodies, Kattigan finds crow feathers. They carry the scents of pine resin, alcohol and heavy tobacco smoke.
His mind goes at once to the Crow Keepers, one of Dol-Makjar’s oldest thieves’ guilds.
This is the strongest clue to the attackers’ identity, but it is still a clue. The transcript does not confirm that the Crow Keepers sent the group. The feathers could be genuine signs of guild members, traces from hired help or evidence left by someone who wanted suspicion to fall in that direction.
For now, the safe conclusion is that the attack has a suspected Crow Keeper connection. Who ordered it remains unknown.
Six worn boots and one fine pair
The footprints hold another detail. Six sets of boots are old and tattered. One set is noticeably fine.
It is tempting to turn that person into the leader, a noble or an outside employer. The transcript does not go that far. Fine boots tell us only that one member of the group was dressed differently from the others.
Even so, the difference is worth remembering. It may point to a person of another background travelling with the attackers, or it may mean nothing more than one criminal owning better footwear. Until later episodes give us more, the wearer remains unknown.
The room was stripped of magic
A shattered glass case shows that the search had a clear result. Kattigan finds traces of sorcery around it, and the investigators realise that the magical objects in the hideout have been taken.
The escape glyph survives only because Thimble carried it into the grate.
The most important missing object is the Stone of Nightsong, a carved stone wrapped in the shape of a bird’s wings. Thimble and Thjazi recovered it on an adventure a few months earlier. Occtis remembers reading that it was an elven relic used during the Shapers’ War, though he cannot recall what it does.
This changes the shape of the mystery. The attackers may have come to stop the rescue. They may have come for the Stone or the other magical objects. They may have intended to do both.
Episode 1 does not tell us which goal came first.
What the evidence confirms
From the transcript and the reconstructed scene, we can say that:
- masked attackers entered while Thimble was preparing to deliver the escape glyph;
- approximately seven people took part;
- they expected resistance and came in greater numbers;
- Thimble killed at least three;
- the survivors removed the dead bodies;
- Thimble escaped into the grate with the genuine glyph;
- the apartment was searched and left in ruins;
- magical objects were taken;
- the Stone of Nightsong was stolen;
- Crow feathers and familiar scents suggest a link to the Crow Keepers;
- one attacker wore finer boots than the others;
- the genuine glyph never reached Thjazi;
- Azune detected a different object with the same kinds of magic on Thjazi’s coat.
What remains hidden
We still do not know:
- who ordered the attack;
- how the attackers found the hidden apartment;
- how they knew when Thimble would be there;
- whether the Crow Keepers were truly involved;
- who wore the fine boots;
- what object Azune scanned upon Thjazi;
- whether stopping the rescue or stealing the Stone was the main goal;
- where the Stone of Nightsong was taken;
- what other magical objects disappeared.
Thimble believes something betrayed the rescue group. That is her fear in the moment, not yet a confirmed fact. But the timing and knowledge shown by the attackers make the question difficult to dismiss.
The hideout holds the missing half of the execution
At the Guardian Wall, the rescue simply fails. Thjazi pulls the trigger and nothing happens.
Inside the Tanners, we learn why the plan could never work as intended. The real glyph is lying beside an injured Thimble. The room has been torn apart. The attackers have carried away their dead and taken the Stone of Nightsong.
The hideout does not give us the name of the person behind the attack. It gives us something almost as important: proof that Thjazi’s failed escape was not only a mistake made at the gallows.
Someone found the hidden room at the moment that mattered most.
For now, the blood beneath the door is where the trail begins.
All factual statements in this article are drawn from the Episode 1 transcript and audited archive records. Character beliefs and possible connections are identified as claims, clues or interpretation rather than confirmed canon.
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