The Mól parchment & key
A scroll in Imperial Taal that names "the resting Sun," and the key that came with it
Aldo woke in Ravenhold with a parchment he did not recognize, a ceremonial dagger, two rings, and a thick milky-metal key, none of it his, all of it taken from a woman he cannot remember and has never identified. One of the rings carried a brand he took for Glug Mug property, which is why his first thought on pocketing the key was to wonder whether their warehouses used a universal lock.
The parchment was the valuable thing, and he could not read a word of it. It took Elliot to say why: not merely written in Taal, but formed in the Imperial hand, the work of someone in the Empire’s own employ, seven centuries dead. He scraped a little of the ink off with a knife and tasted it. Somewhere in the text was a phrase about the resting Sun, and it pointed west into the mountains.
Nothing more of the text was ever written down. Aldo sold the parchment to Elliot the same night, wanting the mystery loot turned into coin or favors, and kept what mattered: the lead, and the job of assembling a crew to go and see whether an intact Mól ruin was still sealed out there.
The key he kept as well, and two seasons later it turned in the left lock of the Valley of Doom keep and pulled free again with a tug. The Mól metal tarnished where the charge went through it, for the first time in its life.