Old Macridi E.9

Old Macridi Locations

The Watchmaker's Loft

Precision Instruments, Survey Gear, and the Measurement of Things That Refuse to Stay Measured

You hear the Watchmaker's Loft before you find its door.

A hundred tiny mechanisms tick, click, chime, and whir behind the upper windows of a narrow timber building. Inside, the walls disappear beneath clocks of every conceivable size: brass-faced pocket watches, river gauges, pendulum clocks, surveying compasses, miniature waterwheels, and delicate instruments whose purposes are less obvious.

At the center of the workshop, a wiry dwarf peers through three stacked magnifying lenses at a device no larger than a walnut. Without looking up, he raises one finger.

"You're four seconds early."

A nearby clock immediately strikes the hour.

The dwarf frowns.

"Five."

The Watchmaker's Loft is the finest precision workshop in Macridi. Its instruments are used by river captains, surveyors, logging crews, engineers, and merchants who require measurements more reliable than instinct and considerably more defensible in court.

Its proprietor, Orvik Brasshand (LN male dwarf inventor), treats measurement almost as a religious discipline. To Orvik, distance, weight, time, and direction are not opinions. They are facts waiting for a sufficiently well-made instrument to reveal them.

That certainty has recently been shaken. Compasses brought back from the Palakar Forest no longer agree with one another. Survey chains measure the same trail at different lengths on different days. Three clocks recovered from Reiver's Right all stopped at exactly the same minute despite being built decades apart.

Orvik does not believe in omens. He believes in defective springs, warped housings, magnetic ore, operator incompetence, and—when absolutely necessary—magic.

Unfortunately, he has eliminated the first four explanations.

The instruments coming back from the forest suggest that the problem is not simply that travelers are becoming lost. Distance, direction, and even elapsed time may no longer behave consistently in portions of the Palakar. Orvik finds this professionally offensive.

Workshop Services

Surveyor's Compass — 4 gp
Precision Pocket Chronometer — 6 gp
Collapsible Surveying Rod — 2 gp
Waterproof Instrument Case — 1 gp
Instrument Repair & Calibration — 5 sp to 3 gp depending on complexity
Brasshand Trail Gauge — 8 gp; grants a +1 item bonus to checks made to detect whether a mapped route, measured distance, or physical landmark has inexplicably changed

Workshop Challenges

Challenge 1: The Reiver's Right Surveyor

Primary Check Crafting, Thievery, or Engineering Lore DC 18

Orvik produces a battered brass surveying instrument recovered from a supply barge that had recently visited Reiver's Right. Its casing is dented, its needle spins freely, and several internal gears have been forced out of alignment.

The strange part is that none of the gears are actually broken.

Critical Success The party realizes the mechanism was not damaged by impact. Several internal components were magnetized in conflicting directions at the same time, something ordinary exposure could not accomplish. After recalibrating the instrument, they discover that its secondary pointer consistently pulls toward a point beneath the river bluffs near Reiver's Right. The party gains a +2 circumstance bonus to one exploration or investigation check made while searching for the source of the disturbance there.

Success The party restores the instrument to working order and confirms that the damage was caused by a powerful, irregular magical influence rather than ordinary wear. Orvik allows them to borrow the repaired surveyor for their journey.

Failure The mechanism proves maddeningly delicate. The party gets it working, but the needle continues to drift unpredictably. Orvik grumbles that whatever affected it has left a permanent distortion in the metal.

Critical Failure A tiny retaining spring launches across the workshop and disappears into one of several thousand drawers. Orvik stares at the empty mechanism for a long moment before quietly adding 8 sp to a nearby invoice.

Challenge 2: Three Clocks, One Minute

Primary Check Arcana, Occultism, or Crafting DC 19

Orvik places three clocks on the workbench. One is nearly eighty years old, another perhaps twenty, and the third was manufactured in his own workshop last winter.

All three were recovered from Reiver's Right at different times.

All three stopped at precisely 2:17 in the morning.

Orvik wants an explanation that does not contain the words "coincidence," "prophecy," or "because the forest wanted them to."

Critical Success The party determines that the clocks did not simply stop. Each escapement bears microscopic wear suggesting the mechanism attempted to move backward for several seconds before locking. Whatever occurred at Reiver's Right briefly imposed contradictory temporal forces upon all three devices. The party gains a +2 circumstance bonus to their first check made to recognize or resist a temporal, planar, or Tearway-related anomaly.

Success The party confirms that identical magical residue exists inside all three clockworks despite the devices having been recovered decades apart. The repeated timestamp is almost certainly connected to the location rather than the clocks themselves.

Failure The party identifies several plausible mechanical explanations, but none account for all three devices. Orvik reluctantly files the clocks beneath a cabinet labeled UNRESOLVED AND THEREFORE ANNOYING.

Critical Failure While testing one clock, the party winds it too tightly. Every clock in the shop stops simultaneously for exactly one heartbeat before beginning again. Orvik goes completely silent, locks the three recovered clocks in a lead-lined cabinet, and announces that the experiment is over.

Sidequest

Three nights ago, Orvik discovered a mud-covered brass chronometer sitting outside his locked workshop door. He immediately recognized it as one of his own creations, commissioned six months earlier by a surveyor named Halven Dorr.

Halven was assigned to Reiver's Right.

He has not returned to Macridi.

The chronometer should still be with him.

Objective: Learn what happened to Halven Dorr and determine how his chronometer traveled from Reiver's Right back to Macridi without him.
First Clue: Fine gray clay is packed beneath the chronometer's rear plate. Orvik insists that soil does not occur anywhere near the logging camp's surface trails.
Stranger Still: The chronometer continues to keep perfect Macridi time—but each night at 2:17, its second hand turns backward exactly thirteen seconds.
Reward: Orvik gives the party a custom Brasshand Synchronizer. Once per day, while exploring, the party can use it to verify whether time, direction, or distance has been magically distorted in their immediate surroundings. It does not reveal the cause, but it unmistakably confirms that an anomaly is present.

Orvik is not a mystical watchmaker who secretly understands the universe. He is a very good engineer being forced to confront evidence that the universe has stopped obeying specifications.

He responds to supernatural events by measuring them harder.

If someone tells him that a trail moved overnight, he asks how many feet. If someone says time stopped, he asks for how long. If someone claims a compass pointed toward a ghost, he wants to know the ghost's magnetic bearing.

He may become one of the party's most useful allies precisely because he does not accept "magic" as an explanation. To Orvik, magic is merely another mechanism that has not yet surrendered its tolerances.

The Watchmaker's Loft

Precision Gear

Workshop Challenges

Challenge 1: The Reiver's Right Surveyor

Challenge 2: Three Clocks, One Minute

The Clock That Came Home