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Reiver's Right — Location 4

Foreman's Hall

Payroll, Work Crews, and the Foreman Who Stayed Behind

A long meeting table occupies the center of the camp hall, surrounded by benches pushed back at uneven angles. One wall is covered with logging maps, crew assignments, wagon schedules, and chalked production totals. Several marks have been circled or crossed through, but nothing suggests the room was deliberately cleared.

Beyond the meeting room, the foreman's office is cramped with ledgers, correspondence, rolled work orders, and stacks of invoices. An ink bottle lies on its side beside an unfinished page, its contents dried into a black stain across the desk.

Then something moves behind the desk.

A man rises slowly from the floor. His work shirt hangs in torn strips around a body threaded with black roots. Oily sap runs from splits along his neck and arms, and thin ember-red lines pulse beneath his skin. One hand closes around a heavy logging axe.

For an instant, his eyes seem to focus on you.

A scraping sound answers from either side of him. Two small tangles of blackened roots crouch behind the office desk, ember-red light showing through cracks in their bark. Thorned tendrils drag across the cramped floor, one creature wedged toward the doorway side and the other beside the wall storage.

Then the roots beneath his skin tighten, and Foreman Hendrick grips his axe. The smaller things stir beside him, their tendrils probing for a path around the desk.

Combat Encounter

Hendrick and the Infernal Rootlings

Foreman Hendrick — Creature 2 remains inside his office, transformed by the infernal blight. A hardened fragment of corrupted seedling matter has taken root within his body and spread through his muscles and nervous system.

Two Infernal Rootlings — Creature 0 each lurk inside the cramped office, one to either side of Hendrick behind the desk. They attack alongside Hendrick, drawn to the concentrated blight within him. Use the attached 2× Infernal Rootling block for both creatures.

Hendrick is no longer fully in control of himself, but neither is he completely gone. He still recognizes parts of Reiver's Right, instinctively protects his office and records, and may briefly show recognition when addressed by name. His speech is incoherent: wet muttering and broken syllables rather than intelligible answers. Even in a moment of awareness, he cannot explain what happened; show his struggle through his eyes, expression, and faltering movements.

Use the custom Hendrick, Blight-Overrun Foreman stat block. In particular, remember his Moment of Recognition ability when a character calls him by name, mentions the missing workers, or presents something strongly associated with the camp.

Hendrick should feel different from an ordinary Infernal Blightling. He still fights like an experienced laborer and woodsman, using the office furniture, doorway, and central hall to control movement rather than behaving like a wild animal.

The rootlings begin beside Hendrick on the far side of the office desk. The desk and wall storage restrict their movement, and the narrow doorway limits how many creatures can engage at once. Use their 10-foot tendrils only when range and line of effect permit. Use Hellroot Eruption through the open doorway against clustered characters in the hall when there is a legal placement within 20 feet; walls block the effect. They act on instinct rather than following spoken orders.

Hendrick moves around the desk toward the doorway only along a route that fits. Use Foreman's Fury when there is room for its movement and axe Strike, pushing intruders outward when their positions allow it. The rootlings support from available spaces rather than crowding into the same doorway. Hold Seedshard Eruption until characters enter the office or Hendrick reaches a useful position: from behind the desk it risks hitting both rootlings while the wall shields the party. It affects every other creature in its area, including rootlings. Their Black Sap Reprisal reactions make close attacks hazardous, but each creature still has only its normal reaction.

Moment of Recognition affects Hendrick alone. If he hesitates or briefly regains awareness, the rootlings continue attacking. His momentary struggle against the corruption should remain visible amid the fight.

Do not explain how the seedling fragment entered his body. At this stage, the party should only discover that Hendrick's transformation is unusually concentrated around a piece of infernal plant matter embedded within him.

His transformation is a result of direct exposure to the blight, but the circumstances of that exposure remain part of the Reiver's Right mystery.

Quest Item

A thick leather-bound ledger lies open on Hendrick's desk. His name and title are written inside the front cover. It contains daily timber tallies, crew assignments, supply expenditures, wagon movements, maintenance orders, payroll notes, and brief comments concerning problems around the camp.

No check is required to recover the ledger. Once the characters can safely search the office, they find it automatically.

Contract Objective: Recovering Hendrick's ledger fulfills one of the primary pieces of evidence Karland specifically asked the party to secure.
Portable Evidence: The entire ledger can be returned to Karland or examined later by specialists in Macridi.
Important: The ledger does not openly describe a secret excavation. The concealed project is hidden among ordinary labor assignments, expenses, maintenance records, and supply movements.

Most of the paperwork describes a legitimate logging operation. Reiver's Right truly cut timber, paid crews, maintained roads, repaired equipment, and shipped lumber. The deception is hidden inside ordinary expenses and vague work assignments rather than a ledger conveniently labeled Secret Excavation.

Challenge 1: Audit Hendrick's Ledger

A careful comparison of payroll, crew assignments, supply expenditures, and maintenance records reveals that a significant amount of Reiver's Right's money and labor cannot be accounted for by the visible logging operation.

Primary Check Society DC 16, Mercantile Lore DC 15, or Legal Lore DC 16

Critical Success The character identifies a long-running pattern. Large recurring expenses appear under deliberately vague headings such as Lower Works, Site Stabilization, Drainage, Retaining Materials, and Special Maintenance. These expenditures are far too large and too regular to represent occasional repairs. Clue: Reiver's Right has been supporting a substantial secondary operation for years, and its costs were deliberately hidden inside the logging business.

Success Repeated expenses for labor, tools, structural timber, drainage materials, lamp oil, and hauling appear under vague maintenance categories. Clue: The visible camp does not account for everything Reiver's Right has been spending money and labor on.

Failure The records are dense and internally consistent enough to appear ordinary at first glance. The character notices high maintenance costs but cannot establish a meaningful pattern.

Critical Failure The character assumes the unusual expenditures reflect the ordinary expense of operating a remote logging camp. Evidence elsewhere in Reiver's Right can overturn this conclusion without penalty.

Challenge 2: Reconstruct the Hidden Work Crews

Hendrick's crew rosters list the expected cutting, hauling, mill, and maintenance teams alongside several recurring assignments whose names reveal almost nothing about their actual purpose.

Primary Check Society DC 16, Perception DC 16, or Labor Lore DC 15

Critical Success The character reconstructs several rotating crews repeatedly assigned to Lower Works, Bluff Stabilization, and Night Maintenance. These workers disappear from ordinary cutting and hauling schedules for days at a time while continuing to receive full wages and meals. Clue: A significant portion of the workforce was routinely diverted to another work site associated with the river bluff.

Success Several groups of workers repeatedly disappear from ordinary logging assignments while remaining on payroll. Clue: Reiver's Right maintained work crews whose true duties were intentionally obscured.

Failure The crew rotations are difficult to follow. The character can tell assignments changed frequently but cannot determine whether the changes were unusual.

Critical Failure The character interprets the irregular assignments as normal seasonal logging work.

Challenge 3: Follow the Money

Several invoices associated with the unusual work were routed through different suppliers, commercial factors, and holding companies. Their names differ, but the paperwork contains subtle similarities.

Primary Check Mercantile Lore DC 17, Society DC 17, or Perception DC 17

Critical Success The character discovers the same small mark on documents issued through several apparently unrelated companies: a golden hand curved around a coiled serpent. Different intermediaries were used, but the recurring seal strongly suggests a common financial interest behind them. Clue: Someone deliberately fragmented the paper trail to conceal who was financing the unusual work at Reiver's Right.

Success Several supposedly unrelated suppliers share identical accounting language, authorization marks, and payment routing. Clue: The companies are probably connected through a single concealed financial backer.

Failure The financing appears complicated but not necessarily suspicious. The character cannot establish a connection between the companies.

Critical Failure The character concludes that the companies represent ordinary subcontractors and suppliers.

Characters who uncovered the old Subsurface Reservation at the Veridical Scriptorium immediately understand the significance of the repeated references to Lower Works, drainage, retaining materials, and structural stabilization.

The old agreement specifically restricted deep excavation beneath the established root layer. Hendrick's records do not reveal exactly what was being excavated, but they provide strong evidence that Reiver's Right was conducting the kind of subsurface work those older agreements attempted to prevent.

Hendrick's handwriting becomes increasingly terse during the final days. Routine production figures are interrupted by references to damaged equipment, unexpected ground movement, delayed crews, and orders restricting workers from portions of the river bluff.

The final completed entry records another work crew being reassigned to the Lower Works. A later note begins beneath it but ends after only a few words, as though Hendrick was interrupted while writing.

Do not reveal the location of the hidden excavation here. The records should tell the party that another work site exists and that it lies somewhere around or beneath the river bluff. Evidence at the storehouse, smithy, carpentry shed, and hoist can progressively narrow that location.

Quest Clue

If the party is looking for Orvik Brasshand's missing assistant, a folded order sheet signed by Halven Dorr is tucked among Hendrick's recent correspondence. It requests several lengths of fully seasoned, finished darkwood for Orvik's precision commissions.

Halven's notes record the required dimensions, grain quality, and condition of the stock he inspected. Several pieces are rejected for dark discoloration beneath the grain; others are marked for further inspection before purchase. The sheet confirms that Halven reached Reiver's Right on legitimate workshop business, but does not establish his current whereabouts or explain the corruption.

Challenge 4: Examine Hendrick's Corruption

Once Hendrick is defeated, the extent of his transformation becomes easier to examine. Unlike the corruption seen in ordinary infected timber, the growth inside him is concentrated around a single hardened mass buried beneath his flesh.

Primary Check Nature DC 16, Medicine DC 16, or Religion DC 17

Critical Success The character determines that Hendrick was not simply infected through incidental contact with contaminated sap or soil. A physical fragment of infernal plant matter became embedded within his body and then rooted outward through living tissue. The surrounding growth resembles the same corrupted root structure seen elsewhere at Reiver's Right. Clue: Hendrick's transformation began from a concentrated piece of the blight itself.

Success The corruption is centered around a hardened fragment of blackened plant matter embedded within Hendrick's body. Clue: His condition is more severe and more localized than ordinary exposure to blighted sap.

Failure The character can tell that Hendrick suffered extreme blight exposure but cannot determine why his transformation progressed differently from other examples.

Critical Failure The corruption is too extensive to determine whether the hardened growth formed before or after Hendrick's transformation.

The hardened growth inside Hendrick is a fragment of an Infernal Blight Seedling. The characters do not yet need to know that terminology unless they have already learned enough about the blight to identify it.

Most importantly, do not explain how Hendrick obtained it or why it became embedded in him. Those answers belong later in the investigation.

The discovery should instead create a new question: if the corruption beneath Reiver's Right can produce something capable of doing this to a human being, what lies beneath the camp?

Foreman's Hall is where several strands of the investigation finally converge. Reiver's Right was a genuine logging camp, but part of its workforce, money, equipment, and supplies were being diverted into a concealed project connected to the river bluff.

The party should leave with Hendrick's Camp Ledger, evidence of the hidden Lower Works, a possible connection to the hand-and-serpent financial network, and the disturbing knowledge that Hendrick himself was transformed by direct contact with concentrated infernal blight.

They should still not know exactly where the Lower Works are located, what ultimately lies beneath the bluff, how Hendrick acquired the seed fragment, or what the project's financiers hoped to uncover.