E1 — South Gate (North Road) – The Price of Prophecy (Production)

Reiver's Right — Location 1

South Gate

The North Road Entrance

The North Road ends abruptly at a tall timber palisade thrown across the shoulder of the river bluff. Sharpened logs rise in an uneven line above the road, weather-darkened and bound together with heavy crossbeams. At their center stands the south gate: two massive timber doors reinforced with broad iron straps, pulled fully shut beneath a rough wooden sign bearing the crossed axes of Reiver's Right.

Deep wagon ruts churn the road before the gate into dark mud. Boot prints, wheel tracks, and the impressions of heavy draft animals overlap near the entrance, remnants of the traffic that once passed regularly through here. Faded logging banners hang from the gateposts, their cloth lifting and settling in the breeze. Above the palisade, the roof of a watchtower rises among the surrounding trees, but its platform appears empty.

The forest presses close around the abandoned road. Wind moves through the Palakar canopy and brushes the sharpened tops of the palisade, but from the other side comes nothing: no shouted orders, no ringing tools, no creak of machinery, not even the ordinary murmur of a working camp.

No guard challenges you. No bell rings.

Reiver's Right is sealed shut, and whatever waits inside gives no sign that it knows you are here.

The gate and surrounding palisade are intact. There are no obvious signs of a siege, forced entry, fire, or organized evacuation. Reiver's Right looks less like a settlement that was abandoned and more like a working camp whose routine simply stopped.

Challenge 1: Read the Approach

The road outside the gate preserves several days of wagon, animal, and foot traffic. Most of it is badly overlapped, but careful examination can reconstruct the final movements through the south entrance.

Primary Check Survival DC 15 or Perception DC 16

Critical Success The character separates the newest tracks from the older traffic. The last heavy wagons left Reiver's Right roughly four days ago. Afterward, only a handful of individual boot prints crossed the entrance, and there is no evidence that dozens of workers, draft animals, or loaded carts departed together. Clue: Whatever happened to the camp, its workforce did not conduct an organized evacuation along the North Road. The character also notices that the final wagon traffic looks routine rather than hurried—no overloaded carts, panicked animals, or chaotic movement.

Success The newest heavy wagon tracks are approximately four days old. Nothing in the road suggests that Reiver's Right's roughly fifty workers left together afterward. Clue: The camp stopped communicating at about the same time its normal road traffic ceased.

Failure The overlapping traffic is too churned and weathered to reconstruct precisely. The character can tell that wagons and workers used the road heavily until recently, but cannot determine the camp's final movements.

Critical Failure The character mistakes several older impressions for recent traffic and cannot establish a useful timeline. Further evidence elsewhere in the camp can correct this conclusion without penalty.

Characters who already learned that commercial traffic from Reiver's Right stopped approximately four days ago do not need a check to recognize that the newest heavy wagon tracks fit that timeline. The challenge above determines what additional information they can recover from the road.

Challenge 2: Inspect the Gate

The gate itself provides another clue. Its iron straps, hinges, locking hardware, and surrounding timbers show no obvious battle damage. Characters who examine it closely can determine whether someone forced their way into or out of the camp.

Primary Check Perception DC 15, Crafting DC 15, or Warfare Lore DC 14

Critical Success The gate was deliberately secured from the camp side and has not been battered, pried, chopped, or repaired after an attack. Even the ground immediately outside lacks the concentrated tracks expected from attackers gathering at the entrance. Clue: Whatever ended normal operations at Reiver's Right almost certainly did not begin with an assault through the south gate.

Success There are no signs that the gate was forced or attacked. The doors appear to have been closed normally and left that way.

Failure The character finds no obvious damage but cannot determine whether the gate was secured before or after the camp fell silent.

Critical Failure Weathering, old axe scars, and ordinary maintenance marks make the gate difficult to interpret. The character reaches no reliable conclusion.

The closed gate is an obstacle, not a required skill check. Allow any reasonable method of entry. Characters might climb the palisade, force the doors, manipulate the interior bar through a gap, reach the gatehouse, or find another route around the enclosure.

Climbing the Palisade: Athletics DC 15. The sharpened upper timbers make careless climbing dangerous, but failure should cost time or position rather than block entry entirely.

Forcing the Gate: Athletics DC 18. Success opens the gate violently and produces considerable noise. This may justify advancing a random event or alerting anything still active within the camp.

Careful Entry: Thievery DC 16 or another plausible method can manipulate the gate's securing mechanism without damaging it. Particularly clever plans may succeed automatically at the GM's discretion.

Once inside, characters can open the gate normally from the camp side. Do not make entry into Reiver's Right depend on a single successful roll.

The South Gate should leave the party with three useful conclusions: Reiver's Right was operating normally until very recently, its workforce did not evacuate through the main road, and the camp was not obviously overrun from outside.

Do not explain the disappearance here. Location 1 establishes the mystery; later locations should progressively reveal what happened inside the palisade.