Karland's Sawmill

Old Macridi Locations

Profit's Flow, Blighted Timber, and the Bodies Beneath the Logs

The eastern edge of Old Macridi is dominated by the steady percussion of saw teeth, turning gears, and timber striking timber.

Karland's Sawmill sprawls beside Profit's Flow, its broad processing sheds opening directly onto a timber collection basin. Workers guide enormous trunks from the water with hooked poles while belts, winches, and saw frames turn raw Palakar timber into carefully sorted lumber.

For such a large operation, surprisingly little raw timber waits in the yard. Nearly everything that arrives during the night is processed during the following day's single shift.

Near the water, however, one newly recovered trunk has been pulled away from the others.

A length of soaked rope disappears beneath it.

Something pale is tied to the other end.

Karland's Sawmill is one of Macridi's most iconic commercial sites. The mill deliberately accepts only enough timber to maintain a single work shift running from dawn until dusk. During evening and nighttime hours, logging crews in the southern Palakar place magical lights upon selected felled trees and send them into Profit's Flow. A late-night crew at the mill collects the glowing timber and stages it for processing the following day.

The system is efficient without requiring the sawmill itself to operate around the clock, and generations of workers have refined it around Macridi's conservative logging agreements with the Palakar Forest.

The mill is owned by Prophet Danum Karland (LN male human expert 2/ranger 4), an experienced timber merchant whose knowledge of the Palakar extends well beyond lumber prices. Karland understands that the forest's waterways, root systems, fungal networks, wildlife, and old magic form an interconnected whole.

That belief has recently put him at odds with Macridi's more bureaucratic elites.

The mill has recently received a small number of darkwood logs whose otherwise sound grain is streaked internally with black, oily, foul-smelling sap. The material gums saw teeth, ruins blades, and appears to have affected the trees while they were still alive.

More disturbing still, Karland's staff has uncovered several drowned bodies—both locals and fey—tied beneath lumber arriving from upstream.

The bodies and the blighted timber do not prove that the same thing caused both problems. Karland is careful not to claim that they do.

What they prove is that something is badly wrong within the Palakar, and the official explanation that an isolated downriver camp cannot possibly matter strikes Karland as dangerously simplistic.

Reiver's Right lies downriver of both New Macridi and Old Macridi. The blighted commercial timber and the bodies beneath incoming lumber are arriving from upstream.

This is precisely why New Macridi dismisses Reiver's Right as unrelated.

Karland disagrees. Rivers are not the only things connecting a forest. Roots cross watersheds. Fungal networks spread beneath the soil. Underground water moves independently of surface currents. Old magic follows neither roads nor commercial boundaries.

Karland does not know that Reiver's Right is the source of the problem. He believes its sudden silence is another symptom that cannot responsibly be ignored.

Mill Services

Common Lumber — Market price by grade and quantity
Seasoned Hardwood — Market price
Custom Milling — 5 sp and up
Timber Identification — 2 sp per sample
River Freight Loading — 5 sp per commercial load
Darkwood — Limited availability; existing contracts take priority

Sawmill Challenges

Challenge 1: The Bodies Beneath the Lumber

Before formally offering the Reiver's Right contract, Karland gives the party an opportunity to examine one of the most recently recovered victims and the timber beneath which the body was concealed.

Characters choose what they investigate. Different approaches answer different questions, and other characters can Aid when appropriate.

Check Medicine DC 16

Critical Success The victim drowned, but bruising around the wrists and shoulders clearly predates death. They were restrained while alive and deliberately placed into the water. The character also determines that the body was attached to the timber shortly before or around the time the log entered Profit's Flow, rather than after days of drifting.

Success The character confirms that the victim was alive when placed in the water and bears injuries consistent with forcible restraint.

Failure River damage and prolonged immersion make the sequence of injuries difficult to establish.

Critical Failure The character initially believes several postmortem injuries occurred before death, producing an inaccurate reconstruction of the victim's final hours.

Check Sailing Lore DC 16 or Survival DC 17

The character examines the knots, rope wear, and placement of the body beneath the floating timber.

Critical Success The arrangement was deliberately designed to keep the body completely submerged while allowing the log to ride normally in the current. Whoever did this understood river transport well enough to conceal the additional weight. The knots are not those normally used by Karland's night collection crews.

Success The character confirms that the body was intentionally concealed beneath the lumber. This was not an accidental entanglement.

Failure Waterlogged rope and repeated strain have distorted the bindings too badly to reveal much beyond deliberate attachment.

Critical Failure The character mistakes an unfamiliar knot for a mill-worker hitch and briefly points suspicion toward Karland's own crews.

Check Fey Lore DC 16 or Nature DC 17

A character familiar with the Palakar's fey examines clothing, living-wood ornaments, plant markings, and other signs of affiliation.

Critical Success The character recognizes signs suggesting that the recovered fey do not all come from the same local community. The deaths therefore cannot easily be dismissed as one isolated feud. One victim carries a symbol associated with the old accords between Macridi and the Palakar's inhabitants.

Success The character identifies at least one victim as a local, non-hostile fey whose death could become a serious diplomatic matter.

Failure The character cannot confidently identify the victim's community or allegiance.

Critical Failure The character initially associates the victim with the wrong fey court or community.

Challenge 2: Audit the Night Collection

Karland invites the party to observe the mill after sunset. Upstream, magically marked timber enters Profit's Flow one piece at a time. From the collection platform, the lights drift through the darkness like slow-moving stars.

Karland wants an independent set of eyes on the process. If someone is tampering with the timber, he needs to know whether the problem begins with the logging crews, somewhere along the river, or after the lumber reaches Macridi.

Check Perception DC 16

Critical Success The character notices one log riding fractionally lower than comparable timber before it reaches the collection boom. Workers isolate it and discover another concealed weight beneath the surface. The log can now be examined before the mill crew disturbs the scene.

Success The character notices irregular movement among several incoming logs and helps the crew isolate suspicious timber for examination.

Failure Reflected magical lights, current changes, and accumulated timber make small differences difficult to distinguish.

Critical Failure The character identifies an ordinary snag as suspicious and temporarily interrupts collection while the crew retrieves an entirely innocent log.

Check Arcana or Crafting DC 17

The character compares the magical lights and physical markings on suspicious lumber with those used by Karland's regular logging crews.

Critical Success The original collection mark is genuine, but it has clearly been removed and reattached after the tree entered the logging system. Someone tampered with legitimate Macridi timber rather than simply introducing an unmarked log into Profit's Flow.

Success The character finds evidence that a legitimate collection marker was disturbed after its initial placement.

Failure The collection mark appears legitimate and continues functioning normally.

Critical Failure The character accidentally damages the marker during examination, destroying some potentially useful evidence.

Check Survival DC 17

Using collection times, current speed, logging schedules, and Karland's knowledge of the southern Palakar, the character attempts to narrow where the suspicious timber originated or could have been intercepted.

Critical Success The character eliminates several legitimate logging zones and narrows the suspicious timber to a smaller upstream corridor where multiple crews' routes overlap. This does not identify the culprit, but it gives Karland a concrete place to investigate later.

Success The character narrows the timber to a general upstream region rather than the entire Palakar logging network.

Failure Variations in river speed and collection times prevent a reliable reconstruction.

Critical Failure The character miscalculates the current and initially identifies a logging area that could not have produced the timber within the observed timeframe.

Sidequest

Macridi has already dispatched couriers seeking answers from the Court of Endless Revelry, the Cedar Court, and the Court of Seasons. None have returned with a response.

Karland does not ask the party to abandon the Reiver's Right investigation and search the entire Palakar for them. Instead, he gives the party the names and identifying marks of the missing couriers and asks them to remain alert during their travels.

Objective: Discover evidence concerning any of the missing couriers while investigating Profit's Flow and Reiver's Right.
What to Look For: Each courier carried a brass Macridi message tube bearing both the settlement seal and the sigil of the court they were sent to contact.
No Detour Required: This sidequest should reward attentive exploration rather than demand a separate expedition. Evidence can appear naturally at later Palakar locations.
Reward: Returning reliable information about a courier earns 10 gp from Karland. Discovering the fate of all three should qualify as a larger story accomplishment later in the adventure.

After hearing the party's conclusions—or once Karland is satisfied that they understand the seriousness of the situation—he formally offers the investigation.

Travel downriver along Profit's Flow to Reiver's Right. Determine what happened to the workforce. Investigate the spreading blight. Report directly back to Karland.

New Macridi considers the camp's location evidence that it cannot be connected to the problems upstream. Karland considers that assumption exactly the sort of comfortable conclusion that allows a forest-wide problem to become a catastrophe.

He encourages the party to prepare before leaving: Fanciful Inquiries knows the Palakar, the Iron-Root Apothecary can prepare them for wilderness hazards, and the Veridical Scriptorium contains older records concerning Reiver's Right and Profit's Flow.

Karland should be the character who pulls the Macridi material together without solving it for the players.

The tannery suggests something is affecting animals. The saunas suggest something has reached underground water. Best Fit Furnishings shows that living trees can become corrupted through their roots. Fanciful Inquiries knows the fey have grown strangely quiet. The Assembly Institute can demonstrate that the disruptions make little sense as ordinary commercial sabotage.

Karland sees the pattern.

But there is an important complication: someone is also tying murdered locals and fey beneath legitimate timber. The environmental corruption may be natural, magical, deliberate, or some combination of the three. The bodies demonstrate that at least one intelligent actor is exploiting—or participating in—the wider crisis.

Karland does not know the answer.

That is why he hires adventurers.

Karland's Sawmill