The Menagoles Mines

The old tin mines of the Menagoles, dug into the Middle Tor north of town. The official story — pushed by Laewendas's guards, the local news and rumour alike — is that an orc, Vara'nak Gar-Galdar, burnt the mines from the inside ~a decade ago, killing the workers, after which they were sealed off; the town's economy never recovered. Eldrich the Elder distrusts that account and tasks the party with learning the truth. A competing story, from the ~600-year-dead mountaineer Ulda Golgain (Session 47), holds that monsters were kept sealed beneath the mines and that digging would let them out.

In truth the site is not a derelict ruin but a heavily fortified, forbidden Laewendas installation: barricades with out-turned spikes, palisades, a small guarded mine entrance with 5–10 troops, a dangling prisoner-cage for trespassers, a riverside ore route, and — tellingly — a fresh-ish path running toward Lambert's Crossing, strange for an abandoned mine.

The Helmnack family anciently claimed ownership of one of the Tors (Little, Middle, or a possibly-mythical "Greater" Tor) but never knew which; if they held the Middle Tor and this tin mine, they'd be rich — tying the mine to the missing blacksmith Horonir Helmnack.

Session 49 (reached)

• Set as Eldrich the Elder's top investigation priority (he names it four times). The party marches north on the 21st of New Summer (Lash threading the right trail on a 19 Survival).
• Found fortified and guarded, not derelict — barricades, spikes, a prisoner in a hanging cage, two smoke-break sentries on the road, and the suspicious Lambert's-Crossing path.
• The party slips past the sentries (Fenric half-spotted, then doubles back) and takes the south-east forest approach, fighting a silent battle against the cliff's badeedle brood before scaling the 50-ft cliff (partly via a fossil "dragon tail" embedded in the wall).
• They crest the rim beside a lone, miserable guard the GM dubbed "Private Thunt," who hates the posting and seems easy to slip past or turn. Entry into the mine proper is next session.

Session 50 (infiltrated)

• Not a ruin — a live crystal-mining facility. Over the rim the party finds a busy, guarded Laewendas operation: 4–5 buildings, a smithy (a half-giant and a badger-man under a whip-cracking overseer), an alchemy shed, a barracks, minecart tracks and an artificial ore-flume/panning line — all presided over by the noble Montague Fitzburg, who holds a public trial-and-beating of a cheating miner. There are no orcs here (fitting the "orcs burned it" cover).
• The disguise infiltration. Unable to fight or sneak past ~30+ guards, the party poses as labourers (miner/hauler clothes Lash steals from the barracks; Magra disguised out of her orc features; Jex hidden in a backpack) and simply walks in with the returning shift through the mine's three great doors.
• The intact upper mine & the deep shaft. The upper level is untouched by any fire and actively worked. A colossal cage-hoist (a 20×20-ft platform on a winch) drops a shaft Lash judges could run 10–30 miles deep, toward the Underdark — into the burned lower mine where the disaster actually happened. Descending needs Fitzburg's written orders.
• The glowing crystal = the Shard of the Autark substance. The faintly glowing ore hauled by the ton is not metal but a natural crystal growth; the GM confirms it is the same material Dr. Provostinalkov fabricates — a natural source of the god-slaying Shard substance. The mine exists to dig and refine it, with the kidnapped alchemist Snuffles trying (and failing) to cook it in the shed. This is what Laewendas is really after.
• The fire was set to trap them. Silithane buys the real, sealed decree of punishment off the beaten miner (40 gold), forges it into descent-orders, and the guards lower the hoist. It comes up fire-scorched — proof the blaze happened below, set to seal everyone in; the party may be the first to go back down since. Thalia's Primeval Awareness has already read the depths: burned undead miners and a wall-passing ghost below, plus fae, and — at the forge — an undead "giant" puppet (face replaced with a screen, an anvil driven through its ribs). The party rides the platform down.
• The burned lower mine. Below is a fire-gutted ruin, its dead swept into one pile — which animates into a trivial fight of charred miner-skeletons and a bull-skeleton (silver disintegrates them, hammers crush them; the party is far over-levelled). Past it, a flooded cavern — ~50,000 gallons fed by two springfalls, slowly drowning the mine — holds a whole ecosystem (blind cave-fish, tiny crabs, a shark, cave-birds) crossed on jury-rigged burnt-wood-and-rope bridges. An underwater aqueduct links it to a nearby city, reachable only by water.
• The cave hermits. Two friendly squatters live in the flooded deep: the pipe-smoking hermit-crab man Pentuckle and the bubble-speaking gilman Walter Gilman. They lay out the layout: a locked cage, the drowned Mage-Man's "office" and ghost (blamed for the fire), the "scary hole" at the very end of the track, and the underwater city.
• The scapegoat's grave. At the lowest level, past a fire-wrecked crane, Silithane picks a padlock into a cage guarded by the first orc skeleton the party has seen. It stands aside for Magra's Orcish mourning-rites and reveals the fire's real victims: Vara'nak Gar-Galdar and his fellow orcs, burned alive in a pit as scapegoats. His body yields his journal (naming a "banshee machine") and a machine key; the guardian passes its charge to Magra and finally dies. A "scary hole" at the track's end waits, unexplored. Session ends here. Still level 7.