ok so i know i wrote the other post about rewriting throné's story and i put a crossed paths between her and osvald in it but im gonna be real i literally wrote that in 5min and am no longer happy with it so heres a version of it that incorporates the cloudy mirror. if i was gonna do this i would also definitely have to rewrite tem/now partitio's crossed paths if i did this but thats another post

Throné and osvald come across a washed-up corpse on the shore of the brightlands clutching a strange locked box. Throné recovers the box but cant get the lock open, osvald finds it strangely familiar and they agree to work together on trying to find out what it contains. After scrutinizing some townspeople osvald discovers that a scholar recently disappeared who he identifies as an old friend of his who was obsessed with religious relics and remembers that the seal on it means it has something to do with vitalists, a religious sect who believe that vide and aelfric are actually twin gods and that the church of the sacred flame has tried to depose vide in whats essentially a biblical succession battle, but that the scholar would have been the only person who really had the resources or motivation to learn anything else and any information would be in their workshop in montwise. Throné says she honestly cannot tell if theyve gotten their hands on something very valuable or complete junk. Osvald says that’s most of what being a scholar is, and throné jokes that actually being a thief isn’t too different

they arrive in montwise and osvald finds the scholars hidden workshop has been ransacked. They deduce that this happened within a few hours and decide to try and find the culprit. Throné recognizes a blacksnake and is immediately like. Oh… This idiot. She reveals it’s scaracci, a blacksnake who is both lazy and incompetent but treasured by Mother for being so mindlessly loyal that he’ll do literally any job, although he might not… yknow… succeedat it. scaracci is pissed and reveals that he did successfully recover what mother asked him to steal even if he did kinda sorta mess up a little on the job in new delsta, osvald mugs him and recovers the key to the box, which turns out to contain a strange, cloudy mirror. Throné wonders why the hell a blacksnake was tasked with retrieving this and assassinating a weird religious scholar, leading osvald to ask if the blacksnakes have any religious investments she knows of. Throné says that Mothers orphanage is actually officially associated with the Sacred Flame and staffed by nuns(one assumes they’re Just registered as an orphanage and the “running a school for your indentured thief-child-gang” is unofficial), but thieves generally only worship the one god. Osvald is like hmm. You know, my scholar associate was always very interested by aeber, especially the theory that he was originally the god of kindness who was demoted for insisting on sympathizing with and helping criminals condemned by the church. Throné is like ah, like you and i. osvald pauses and then is like…. Yes. Like you and i.

Alternatively if you want to have her already have realized the blacksnakes are connected to vide since it could be completed after her chapter 5, you could have her say that and simply speculate about how the blacksnakes meant to use the mirror, I just think it’s lame to have throné be connected to a completely different god than her patron and not do Anything with that, so he at least gets a mention and also this allows that thing where osvald and throné are both criminals against their will to also be at least said once

how they meant to use the mirror is that ori hired them. Her investigations led her to figuring out that the mirror can be used to change flames of vide to flames of aelfric and vice versa so she wanted it out of the picture completely lest some travelers hypothetically use it to undo a century’s worth of work in about an hour. Hypothetically.

She found this out from harvey which preserves their working relationship and allows the structure of the leadup to their torch to be mostly the same.