E11 — Carpentry Shed – The Price of Prophecy (Production)

Reiver's Right — Location 11

Carpentry Shed

Built for Somewhere Below

The carpentry shed smells of sawdust, pitch, and freshly cut pine. Workbenches run beneath racks of handsaws, augers, mallets, planes, and measuring jigs. Offcuts cover the floor, and several unfinished pieces remain clamped exactly where their makers left them.

Most of the finished lumber is strangely uniform. Short heavy beams are stacked beside thick braces, wedges, cribbing blocks, and square frames built to the same few measurements over and over again.

Whatever these pieces were made for, Reiver's Right needed a great many of them.

The Carpentry Shed provides some of the clearest physical evidence that the camp's timber was being diverted into the Lower Works. The pieces being produced here are not furniture, building trim, wagon parts, or ordinary logging equipment. They are standardized structural components designed to be carried into confined spaces and assembled quickly.

If the party has already concluded that Reiver's Right contains a hidden underground excavation, no check is required. The purpose of the lumber is immediately obvious: these are tunnel supports, braces, cribbing, and framing components.

This location should reward players for connecting earlier clues. Once they have identified the pattern, do not make them roll simply to confirm what they have already reasoned out.

Challenge: Understand the Carpentry

Characters who have not yet identified the Lower Works can study the dimensions, cuts, and repeated construction patterns to determine what the components were intended to support.

Primary Check Crafting DC 15, Engineering Lore DC 14, Mining Lore DC 14, or Labor Lore DC 15

Critical Success The character immediately recognizes a complete system of underground support components: short beams for confined passages, angled braces for resisting lateral pressure, cribbing blocks for supporting unstable loads, wedges for tightening frames in place, and standardized timber sets designed to be installed repeatedly as an excavation advances. Clue: Reiver's Right was not merely reinforcing a cellar or repairing foundations. These pieces were being produced for sustained tunneling or underground excavation.

Success The dimensions and repeated patterns make sense as structural supports intended for confined underground spaces. Clue: The camp was fabricating tunnel or mine shoring in significant quantities.

Failure The character can tell that the pieces are structural rather than decorative, but cannot confidently determine where they were intended to be used.

Critical Failure The character assumes the standardized pieces were intended for ordinary retaining walls, dock repairs, or heavy camp construction.

The repeated dimensions matter as much as the shape of the lumber. Measuring jigs have been nailed directly to several benches so workers could reproduce the same pieces quickly without marking each one individually.

Bundles of completed braces are tied together in identical sets. Chalk marks on the wall record batches rather than individual projects, suggesting continuous production over a long period.

This was not a carpenter improvising supports for an emergency repair. The shed had become a small production line supplying a recurring need.

Challenge: Estimate the Scale

The amount of waste lumber, completed components, and repeated batch markings can reveal how extensively these supports were being used.

Primary Check Crafting DC 16, Engineering Lore DC 15, or Perception DC 17

Critical Success The character determines that the shed has produced far more shoring material than any visible structure at Reiver's Right could require. The batches indicate continual replacement and expansion rather than a single construction project. Clue: The hidden work site must be extensive and was still growing shortly before the camp went silent.

Success The volume of finished and consumed timber greatly exceeds the needs of the visible camp. Clue: Large amounts of structural lumber were being sent somewhere else.

Failure The shed was clearly busy, but the character cannot estimate how much material it produced or where it went.

Critical Failure The character underestimates the production volume and assumes the excess material accumulated over many years of ordinary repairs.

Several finished bundles are marked only with simple chalk notations such as L.W., Lower, or batch numbers matching the abbreviations found on repair tags in the Smithy and assignments in Hendrick's records.

If the party has already connected L.W. to the Lower Works, this requires no additional check.

The evidence here should feel cumulative. Hendrick's records describe the work, the Storehouse supplied it, the Smithy repaired its tools, and the Carpentry Shed manufactured the timber supports needed to keep it operating.

The Carpentry Shed works best as an investigation location rather than another combat scene. Its purpose is to let the party look at something mundane and realize exactly what it means.

If you want an environmental hazard here, an unstable rack of heavy finished beams can serve as a separate Level 1 collapsing-lumber hazard. Keep the hazard in its own HTML card so it can be added or removed without changing the investigation scene.

The Carpentry Shed should confirm that the timber camp itself was being used to support the concealed excavation. Reiver's Right supplied more than labor and cover: its logging operation provided a constant source of beams, braces, cribbing, wedges, and frames for the underground work.

By this point, a party that has followed the evidence should no longer be asking whether something was happening beneath Reiver's Right. The remaining questions are where the entrance is, how large the Lower Works are, and what the Golden Hand was trying to reach.