Investigation Summary

What the Party Learns in Macridi

The evidence surrounding the Palakar blight and Reiver's Right begins to form a single, disturbing pattern.

The party's investigation across Old Macridi establishes that the corruption affecting the Palakar Forest is not spreading naturally along Profit's Flow. Evidence from the timber, affected animals, and underground water sources all points in the same direction: the blight is entering living trees and the surrounding environment from beneath the forest floor. Whatever is causing it appears to be moving through roots, groundwater, or some deeper subterranean source.

Records at the Veridical Scriptorium reveal an even more troubling pattern. Older agreements governing Reiver's Right explicitly prohibited mining, tunneling, deep boring, and excavation beneath established root depth, yet that restriction vanished when the current operation was established roughly ten years ago. No surviving authorization explains its removal. At the same time, years of invoices show the camp purchasing excessive quantities of structural bracing, heavy chain, pulleys, lamp oil, ventilation canvas, drainage pipe, and hauling equipment—supplies far better suited to a substantial underground work site than a normal logging operation.

Following the financial trail leads to a concealed Kerse investor whose interests are hidden behind representatives, holding agreements, and several apparently unrelated companies. Those companies ultimately answer to the same financial interest, and several contracts bear the same small seal: an open hand supporting a single gold serpent. Further research connects the symbol to the Golden Hand, a secretive circle associated with Mammon that conceals infernal beliefs behind investment partnerships, private societies, and the language of unrestricted [further details obscured].