Overview
The Lower Works
Hidden Excavations Beneath the Logging Camp
The air below Reiver's Right is colder than the camp above and carries the stale mixture of wet clay, old lamp smoke, cut stone, and timber shoring. Rough galleries push into the earth beneath the logging operation, too broad and deliberate to have been dug for storage alone.
Cart ruts and drag marks score the floor. Drainage trenches follow the walls, iron brackets hold spent lamps, and gray clay clings to boots and timber supports. In several places, roots have been cut away, exposed, or deliberately followed deeper into the ground.
The Lower Works should gradually reveal that this was a sustained excavation hidden behind legitimate logging activity. The party can piece that conclusion together from the engineering, supplies, hauling routes, work areas, and the condition of the roots.
- Use repeated gray clay, shoring, drainage, and hauling marks to connect separate areas.
- Let records or discarded equipment suggest work continued in shifts and involved more labor than the camp's official purpose required.
- The deeper the party goes, the more the excavation should feel like it was following something rather than simply digging for space.