Vara'nak Gar-Galdar

The orc blamed for burning the Menagoles tin mines from the inside ~a decade ago, killing the workers — the official story pushed by Laewendas's guards, the local news and rumour alike (Session 48). Per the records he was "executed" — no how, where or why given (Session 49).

The scapegoat reading is strong: he was an orc in his mid-to-late 60s who had spent 45 years working those mines. Eldrich the Elder flatly doubts a 45-year veteran would burn his own mine and tasks the party with learning the truth (Session 49); Magra, an orc herself, suspects monsters or a cover-up. The competing account — from the ~600-year-dead mountaineer Ulda Golgain (Session 47) — holds that monsters were kept sealed beneath the mines and that digging would release them.

Session 50 (found)

• His grave, deep in the burned mine. At the lowest level of the Middle Tor mine, past a fire-wrecked crane, Silithane picks a padlock into a cage guarded by the first orc skeleton the party has seen — armour-clad, its pickaxe-head honed to a punching point, standing watch over a back corner.
• The real "execution." When Magra (an orc) descends with Orcish rites of mourning, the guardian stands aside and reveals the bodies: two burly orc luggers charred to almost nothing, shielding a third, leaner corpse curled around a parcel. This is Vara'nak and his fellow orcs — read at the time as thrown into a pit and burned alive as scapegoats when the mine was torched. That reading was right — his own journal names Brent Pallwath as the man who put them there.
• His journal & the machine key. The parcel he died shielding holds his journal (five entries; the latest mentions a "banshee machine that barely fit in the tunnels") and a machine key — the GM-flagged "axolotl key" — now carried by Magra. Also on the body: a well-sharpened pickaxe-head and ~7 gold.
• The guardian's charge. The animated orc sentinel steps to Magra, gently presses its forehead to hers to pass on its watch, then lies down and dies — its bones clattering loose, its purpose finally complete.

The truth, in his own words (Mine Journal 5/8)

His own journal page — GM handout, 2026-07-26 — overturns the "he burned the mine" reading
and names his killer.

• He was murdered. "Foreman Brent Pallwath, Sergeant of Laewendas' Army, Born of
  Lambert's Crossing… He has murdered me for saving us all."
• He begged for exactly what the party gave him. "If you read this, please clear mine
  name."
• He warned them. "'Never dig too deep' is the forewarning of ANY dig op. The idiots." And
  on the machine: it "barely even fit its individual parts down the second shaft… They didn't
  stop for veins, they dug deep for something."
• What he actually burned. "Whatever they found it screamed an unholy noise. I ran and
  broke the lift after myself. I burned the bridges." — sabotage to seal the deep, not to
  kill. This is the multi-point burning the party found in Session 52.
• The murder. "Brent put us in this hole and let a fire of his own." — the pit, and the
  fire that killed the workforce, are Brent Pallwath's. Vara'nak hid the journal and died in
  the hole Brent put him in.

Net: morally and factually vindicated. He lit fires — bridges and lift, to contain what the
dig woke — and was murdered for it by a Laewendas army sergeant who then lit his own. The
scapegoating was not a distortion of his act; it was cover for a murder.

(Correction: on 2026-07-26 this vault briefly recorded "he set the fire" based on the GM's
Session 52 line "I met the orc that lit the fire." That line is true and this page is the
precise version of it — he lit the bridges. The killing fire was Brent's.)

Threads

• The pit wrinkle — SOLVED. He ended up dead in the burned pit because Brent Pallwath put him there. Session 50's grave scene and Session 52's sole-survivor account are both correct; the missing piece was the murderer.
• The banshee machine. Vara'nak's journal and the recovered machine key point to a machine deep in the tunnels — found in Session 51: the colossal boring machine of the deep dig, which the key was likely made to operate.
• Burnt survivors. The fire left burnt survivors (Session 48); the party may already have met one (cf. the burned veteran at New Halfwood) — link unconfirmed.