E1 — Meeting Danum Karland
Background art
Karland's Sawmill
Blighted Timber, a Silent Logging Camp, and a Job Downriver
This location supports Karland's initial briefing and the expedition to Reiver's Right. Run the briefing before presenting the investigation details below. The sawmill can also be visited independently for timber purchases, freight arrangements, or local information.
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 waterwheels, belts, winches, and saw frames turn raw Palakar timber into carefully sorted lumber.
Stacks of freshly cut boards rise beneath long, open-sided sheds, separated by size, grain, and quality. The scent of wet bark, sawdust, river water, and fresh-cut wood hangs heavily in the air.
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, then moved onward to craftsmen, builders, merchants, or river barges.
One log, however, has been dragged well away from the others.
A dark stain runs through the fresh-cut wood.
Where pale sap should bead along the grain, something thick, black, and oily slowly gathers instead.
Karland's Sawmill is one of Old Macridi's largest and most recognizable commercial operations. The mill processes timber harvested under Macridi's long-standing agreements governing the use of the Palakar Forest.
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 throughout the southern Palakar mark selected felled trees with magical lights and send them into Profit's Flow. A late-night collection crew at the mill secures the glowing timber at the river piers and stages it for processing the following day.
Other logging operations transport timber along established forest roads and smaller waterways feeding the main river. These routes connect remote harvesting areas with Macridi's timber trade, allowing wood to reach the mill without requiring every logging crew to work directly beside Profit's Flow.
Waterwheels provide much of the mechanical power needed to operate the mill's gang-saws, hoists, belts, and other heavy equipment. This allows a relatively small workforce to process substantial quantities of timber during daylight hours without operating the sawmill itself around the clock.
The system is efficient, and generations of workers have refined it around Macridi's conservative logging agreements with the Palakar Forest. Darkwood is among the mill's most valuable materials, though supplies are carefully controlled and much of the finest lumber is already committed to long-standing commercial contracts.
The mill is owned by Prophet Danum Karland (LN male human expert 2/ranger 4), an experienced timber merchant whose practical knowledge of the Palakar extends well beyond lumber prices. He knows its logging territories, river routes, seasonal conditions, old agreements, and the habits of the crews who work beyond Macridi.
That experience is exactly why the timber arriving at his mill concerns him.
The sawmill is a working industrial site rather than a traditional shopfront. Visitors are expected to remain clear of marked work areas, moving machinery, suspended timber, and the river intake platforms. Workers can usually direct visitors toward the appropriate clerk or foreman for purchases, custom milling, freight arrangements, or questions about timber.
Commercial business continues despite the troubling discovery. The black-streaked log has been isolated
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Sawmill Challenges
Challenge 1: Examine the Blighted Timber
Karland has set aside several affected pieces for examination. From the outside, the logs appear healthy. Only fresh cuts reveal dark streaks and thick black sap running through otherwise sound wood.
A character can examine the timber to determine what the corruption reveals about the trees before they were felled. Other characters can Aid when appropriate.
Challenge 2: Compare the Logging Records
Karland keeps careful records of where contracted crews cut timber. He has already noticed enough irregularity to become suspicious, but the characters can compare collection marks, crew assignments, cutting areas, and delivery dates to determine whether the affected logs share an obvious source.
Challenge 3: Negotiate the Contract Terms
The party can negotiate for additional compensation by emphasizing the uncertainty of the mission, the disappearance of the Reiver's Right workforce, and the possibility that they are entering an unknown wilderness hazard.
Challenge 4: Question Karland About Reiver's Right
The party can question Karland about what he remembers of Reiver's Right and its return to operation. Karland knows the commercial history better than the legal details, and he is careful not to pretend otherwise.
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Before the party leaves, Karland points them toward several useful stops in Old Macridi. These options are available automatically and do not depend on the results of any Sawmill Challenges.
Iron-Root Apothecary — Morwenna Iron-Root
Veridical Scriptorium — Records of Reiver's Right
Fanciful Inquiries — Maps & Routes
The Gilded Ledger — Secure River Passage
Once Karland is satisfied that the party understands what he actually knows—and, more importantly, what he does not—he formally offers the job.
Travel to Reiver's Right. Determine why the logging camp has gone silent. Find out what happened to its workforce. Look for any evidence connecting the site to the strange corruption appearing in Palakar timber. Return to Karland with what you discover.
Karland does not ask the party to cure the Palakar Forest.
He does not ask them to identify the ultimate source of the blight.
He does not know that anyone at Reiver's Right is involved in a conspiracy.
At this stage, Reiver's Right is simply the strongest unanswered lead he has.
Karland's Sawmill establishes the question. It should not provide the answer.
The characters can establish two important facts here:
First: the strange black sap was present while the affected trees were still alive.
Second: the affected timber comes from multiple cutting areas rather than one isolated grove or crew.
Karland then gives the party a concrete frontier assignment: investigate the newly silent logging camp at Reiver's Right.
The Old Macridi locations deepen that investigation without solving it. Morwenna can examine the physical sample. Fanciful Inquiries provides maps and route knowledge. The Veridical Scriptorium reveals the important history of Reiver's Right's ownership and contracts. The Gilded Ledger provides the most direct route toward Captain Sella and transport downriver.
Those discoveries belong later.
The intended progression is:
Karland sees enough to know that someone needs to investigate.
He does not know what they are going to find.
That is why he hires adventurers.
The problem did not begin as a crisis.
First there was one strange log: healthy-looking darkwood with thick, oily black sap buried inside the living grain.
Then another appeared.
Then several more arrived over the following deliveries.
The numbers are still small compared with the enormous volume of timber passing through Karland's mill, but the affected logs are appearing often enough that he can no longer dismiss them as an isolated curiosity.
Worse, his records indicate that they do not all come from the same cutting site.
Karland does not know whether the number of affected trees will continue increasing. He strongly suspects it will.
That uncertainty worries him more than certainty would.
Karland does not believe he has proven that Reiver's Right caused the blighted timber.
Most of the affected logs currently reaching his mill originated from other cutting areas in the Palakar.
Reiver's Right matters because it presents a second unexplained problem at exactly the wrong time.
The logging camp was reopened in 4723 AR, roughly three years ago, after several years of closure following the blight of 4719 AR and has since operated as a substantial commercial cutting site downriver from Macridi.
Now its shipments have stopped.
Messages have stopped.
Its workforce has stopped appearing in town.
Karland does not know whether the silent camp and the black sap are connected. He wants someone competent to go there and find out rather than allowing Macridi's merchants to assume that two strange events must be unrelated simply because that explanation is convenient.