Encounter

E10 — Sawpit / Sawyard

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Reiver's Right — Location 10

Sawpit & Sawyard

Where the Blight Becomes Visible

Long timber frames surround the sawpit, built for stripping bark and rough-cutting trunks before shipment downriver. Sawdust has hardened into damp ridges across the floor, and several unfinished logs remain clamped in place exactly where the workers abandoned them.

The machinery, timber racks, bark piles, and marked shipment stacks leave little doubt that this was a working sawyard.

Then one of the unfinished trunks catches the eye. Its fresh-cut grain is streaked with thick, oily black sap.

The Sawpit provides an important counterpoint to the conspiracy beneath Reiver's Right: the logging operation was genuine. Trees were actually being felled, processed, marked, stacked, and shipped from this camp. The Lower Works were concealed inside a legitimate and productive logging enterprise rather than replacing it.

Only a small number of logs show visible corruption. Those affected match the black-sap timber already encountered at Karland's Sawmill, directly confirming that the blight was present in the wood before the logs ever reached Macridi.

Automatic Discovery: A Real Logging Camp

No check is required to determine that Reiver's Right genuinely processed timber. Cut marks, sorting piles, shipping stamps, bark waste, sawdust accumulation, repair work, and unfinished trunks all show years of ordinary logging activity.

This matters because the Lower Works were not hidden behind an empty shell company or abandoned camp. The Golden Hand used a real commercial operation as cover, infrastructure, and supply.

Challenge 1: Examine the Black-Sap Timber

The fresh cuts provide one of the clearest opportunities to determine whether the corruption began after the trees were felled or while they were still alive.

Primary Check Nature DC 15, Crafting DC 15, or Forestry Lore DC 14
Critical Success The surrounding grain is structurally sound, with no evidence of ordinary rot, storage contamination, or fungal decay. More importantly, the black staining follows the tree's living growth tissue inward from the rootward end of the trunk. Clue: The corruption entered the tree through its living root system before the tree was felled.
Success The black sap is embedded within healthy-looking growth rather than coating damaged or decayed wood. Clue: This is not something that contaminated the timber after cutting.
Failure The staining is clearly abnormal, but the character cannot determine whether it appeared before or after the tree was felled.
Critical Failure The character initially mistakes the black material for an unusual pitch, fungus, or storage contaminant.
Prior Evidence

Characters who already established at Karland's Sawmill that the affected timber was alive when corrupted do not need to repeat that deduction here.

Instead, the Sawpit confirms that the same phenomenon occurred at its source: the black sap was already present when the Reiver's Right crews cut into the logs.

Something Beneath the Sawpit

Beneath one of the work platforms, sawdust and loose bark conceal a section of exposed root. The root is thick enough to have lifted part of the timber framing slightly out of alignment.

Its upper surface appears almost normal. The underside does not.

Oily black sap beads along narrow cracks, while faint reddish-gold angular lines run beneath the bark. Several smaller rootlets descend into the soil beneath the sawpit rather than spreading horizontally across the yard.

Challenge 2: Follow the Corruption

The exposed roots can reveal something the affected logs alone cannot: the direction from which the corruption appears to be reaching the surface.

Primary Check Nature DC 16, Survival DC 16, or Perception DC 17
Critical Success The character determines that the most heavily affected portions of the root system lie deeper below the sawpit. The smaller surface roots show progressively less corruption farther from the buried root mass. Clue: The blight appears to be rising from below through the living root system rather than spreading across the surface from contaminated lumber.
Success The deeper portions of the exposed roots are visibly more corrupted than those nearer the surface. Clue: Whatever is affecting the roots seems to originate somewhere beneath the yard.
Failure The character can confirm that the roots are infected but cannot determine how the corruption is spreading.
Critical Failure The character assumes the nearby corrupted logs may have contaminated the roots after being brought into the sawyard.

The root beneath the platform gives a slow, wet creak.

Then another answers from across the pit.

Sawdust shifts as two small tangles of root and ember-scarred bark tear themselves free from beneath the timber frames. Their hooked limbs scrape across the boards as oily black sap threads between their roots.

Above them, something larger unfolds from behind a rack of unfinished timber. A taller mass of thorn-covered bark drops onto the cutting frame, long claws closing around the wood as it turns toward you.

Combat Encounter

Thorn Among the Roots

One Infernal Thornling (Creature 1) and two Infernal Rootlings (Creature 0) have gathered around the infected root system beneath the sawyard. The rootlings remain partially buried beneath sawdust and loose bark, while the thornling lurks among the elevated cutting frames and stacked timber.

For a party of five 1st-level characters, the encounter is worth 100 XP: 40 XP for the Infernal Thornling and 30 XP for each Infernal Rootling. This is a Moderate encounter for a five-character 1st-level party.

The creatures should fight as different stages of the same corruption. The two rootlings scamper through the sawdust, around the pit, and beneath the timber frames, using their reach and eruptions to interfere with movement. The thornling moves more aggressively between lanes, platforms, and stacks, using Thorned Rush to pressure exposed characters while the rootlings occupy the rest of the party.

Spotting the Creatures Early

Before the creatures reveal themselves, the two rootlings resemble tangled masses of infected roots beneath the saw platforms. The thornling is harder to mistake for ordinary vegetation, but it remains folded tightly among the dark timber frames and hanging scraps of bark above the work area.

A character who succeeds at Perception DC 17 or Nature DC 16 before approaching closely notices subtle movement: roots tightening around support posts, black sap dripping against gravity, hooked limbs shifting beneath sawdust, or a thorn-covered shape repositioning itself above the cutting frames.

On a critical success, the character identifies the positions of all three creatures before they reveal themselves, allowing the party to prepare for the attack rather than discovering them only when they move.

Using the Sawyard as a Battlefield
  • Sawpit: The recessed work trench is roughly 5 feet deep. Characters can climb in or out normally, but the pit can separate combatants and restrict movement.
  • Clamped Logs: Large unfinished trunks provide cover and create narrow routes through the work area.
  • Sawdust: Thick, damp accumulations can count as difficult terrain where appropriate.
  • Elevated Frames: Timber platforms and cutting frames provide slight elevation and alternate paths around the sawpit. The thornling favors these positions when possible, using them to approach or disengage without moving directly through the party.
  • Root-Choked Ground: When a rootling or thornling uses Hellroot Eruption, describe the roots as bursting directly through the sawdust and timber flooring rather than appearing from nowhere.
Creature Tactics

The Infernal Rootlings are the less developed creatures and behave accordingly. They stay low, dart through gaps beneath the work platforms, and harass whichever characters move away from the group. They use Hellroot Eruption when they can catch multiple creatures or obstruct an important route through the sawyard.

The Infernal Thornling is the dominant combatant. It initially remains near the elevated frames, then uses Thorned Rush to attack characters who become isolated or are slowed by the rootlings. It uses the sawpit and stacked timber to avoid becoming surrounded.

These creatures are manifestations of the same spreading blight, but they do not demonstrate military discipline or sophisticated planning. Their coordination should feel instinctive: the smaller growths interfere with prey while the larger thornling attacks anything that becomes vulnerable.

After the Fight

When destroyed, the two Infernal Rootlings collapse into loose tangles of blackened roots, cracked bark, and oily sap. The larger Infernal Thornling remains more intact, its fused limbs and thorn-covered frame slowly curling inward as its internal root fibers dry.

Thin ember-red and reddish-gold markings remain visible beneath the creatures' damaged bark. Cutting into the remains reveals the same oily black sap found in the corrupted timber, along with small deposits of gold-colored mineral growth embedded through their tissues.

Their remains match the corruption seen elsewhere at Reiver's Right, but the creatures themselves are not the source. They are mobile growths produced by the spreading blight, apparently representing different stages of its development.

Killing them makes the Sawpit safer, but the infected root mass beneath the yard remains alive and corrupted.

What This Location Should Establish

The Sawpit should establish three things. First, Reiver's Right was a genuine logging operation, making the Golden Hand's cover far more convincing than a purely fraudulent camp.

Second, the corrupted logs confirm that the black-sap blight existed inside living timber before those logs were shipped to Karland's Sawmill.

Finally, the infected roots, two Infernal Rootlings, and the Infernal Thornling show that the corruption is not simply scattered across the camp. It is pushing upward through the root system from somewhere below Reiver's Right and producing mobile creatures as it spreads.

By the time the party leaves the Sawpit, the connection between the spreading blight and the hidden underground operation should feel increasingly difficult to dismiss, even though the true source remains somewhere deeper beneath the bluff.

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