GM Primer • Hidden Conspiracy
The mystery surrounding Reiver's Right has two layers. The first is visible: blighted timber, spreading corruption, missing workers, murdered locals and fey, and a logging camp that suddenly went silent after roughly three years of uneventful operation.
The second layer is buried.
The wealthy Kalistocrat from Kerse who financed the reopening of Reiver's Right three years ago did not primarily want a logging operation. The timber business is a cover for a clandestine excavation beneath the river bluffs. Logging provides exactly what such an operation needs: a remote workforce, heavy tools, carts, winches, river transport, large quantities of structural timber, and a legitimate reason to move supplies into and out of the Palakar.
The excavation is also something the financier was never permitted to undertake. Older agreements governing Reiver's Right allow limited timber harvesting while explicitly restricting deep excavation beneath the forest floor. Somewhere in the chain of contracts that reopened the camp, that restriction disappeared.
The unknown Kerse investor is secretly associated with the Golden Hand, a covert Mammonite circle operating among wealthy merchants and compromised Kalistocrats. Its members pursue wealth not merely as prosperity, but as dominion: anything valuable enough to remain buried is, to them, wealth waiting for a sufficiently ambitious owner.
The financier reopened Reiver's Right to gain legitimate control of the site and quietly search beneath it. The exact object of that search need not be revealed during the Macridi investigation. At this stage, what matters is that someone has been digging where the old agreements specifically said not to dig.
No single clue should reveal the conspiracy. Instead, Macridi provides several facts which become suspicious only when compared.
Evidence gathered around Old Macridi repeatedly points beneath the surface.
- Best Fit Furnishings can establish that corrupted trees were infected through their living root systems.
- The Salty Bark Tannery suggests animals were exposed through soil, water, or food rather than contagion.
- Sanctitude Saunas reveals intermittent contamination entering an underground spring system.
- Karland understands that roots, fungi, groundwater, and old magic can connect regions independently of the direction of Profit's Flow.
None of this implies digging by itself. It establishes only one increasingly important fact: whatever is happening is coming from beneath the Palakar.
The most important documentary clue is hidden in the Veridical Scriptorium.
Older versions of the Reiver's Right logging charter contain a Subsurface Reservation: timber rights extend only to harvesting, roadwork, drainage, and ordinary foundations. Quarrying, mining, deep boring, tunneling, and excavation beneath established root depth are expressly forbidden.
Later versions of the agreement reference the same charter but omit the Subsurface Reservation entirely.
Success: The character confirms that the restriction existed historically but disappeared when the current operation was established roughly three years ago.
Critical Success: The character notices something stranger: there is no surviving approval removing it. The newer contract behaves as though the restriction never existed rather than recording a lawful amendment.
Deeper Scriptorium records contain invoices and freight declarations associated with Reiver's Right during its three years of operation. Nothing says mining equipment or excavation supplies.
Individually, the purchases are ordinary for a large timber camp. Together, some are peculiar.
- Far more structural bracing timber than the camp's known buildings require.
- Repeated orders for heavy chain, pulleys, wedges, picks, and replacement iron heads.
- Large quantities of lamp oil despite the camp conducting little nighttime logging.
- Ventilation canvas and narrow drainage pipe recorded as "mill maintenance supplies."
- Regular replacement of hauling carts whose reported surface routes are not unusually demanding.
None of these records proves anything. A character who asks what all of these supplies have in common may realize that they would also support work underground.
Success: The purchases seem excessive for the known surface operation.
Critical Success: The character recognizes the combination of shoring, lighting, hauling, ventilation, and drainage as equipment that could sustain a substantial subterranean work site.
The Scriptorium can also confirm that the current Reiver's Right operation was financed roughly three years ago by a wealthy Kalistocrat from Kerse. The investor's personal name does not appear on the ordinary local records. Ownership passes through representatives, holding agreements, and commercial factors.
A careful examination reveals that several apparently unrelated contracts use the same small seal: a golden hand curved around a coiled serpent. Local clerks recognize it only as the mark of one of the Kerse financial agents involved in the transaction.
Success: The character establishes that several different companies involved with Reiver's Right ultimately answer to the same concealed financial interest.
Critical Success: The shell companies are not merely protecting the identity of a wealthy investor; they appear deliberately structured to keep the true beneficiary separate from the land agreement itself.
The hand-and-serpent mark should not immediately identify Mammon. It is a breadcrumb for later investigation.
A character researching infernal cults, corrupted Kalistocrats, or the symbol itself may eventually learn that the mark is associated with a secretive circle called the Golden Hand. Its members hide Mammonite theology behind investment partnerships, private societies, and the language of unrestricted acquisition.
Success: The imagery resembles symbols used by cults of Mammon, the infernal patron of avarice and material wealth.
Critical Success: The character understands the ideological contradiction: a true Prophet of Kalistrade may pursue immense wealth, but devotion to Mammon represents the pursuit of wealth at any cost and can draw a Kalistocrat away from the Prophecies entirely.
Do not require a final skill check if the players themselves connect the evidence.
If the party concludes before discovering the excavation directly that Reiver's Right may be serving as cover for prohibited underground work, award 10 XP as a minor accomplishment.
The players do not need every clue. For example, the old prohibition plus excessive shoring and ventilation supplies plus evidence that the blight is rising from underground is enough to form a very strong theory.
The eventual discovery of the excavation should reward players who solved the documentary mystery first. Surface buildings look like a logging camp because they really were used as one. The timber operation is genuine; it simply served a second purpose.
Somewhere within the camp, evidence leads to a concealed route below the bluffs: a disguised shaft, sealed cellar, false lumber store, covered hoist, or other entrance appropriate to the final Reiver's Right map.
Below it are the things the Scriptorium records quietly predicted: shoring timbers, lamps, hauling tracks, drainage channels, and excavation tools.
Most importantly, the excavation crosses the boundary that the old agreement explicitly forbade anyone to disturb.
Finding the dig answers one question but creates another: what was valuable enough to justify three years of secrecy, manipulated contracts, and the violation of an ancient agreement with the Palakar?
The answer should eventually lead back through the unknown Kerse financier, the hand-and-serpent symbol, and the Golden Hand to Mammon. The timber operation was never the treasure.
It was the receipt for whatever lies beneath it.