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 — and cleared)

• 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 — thrown into a pit and burned alive as scapegoats when the mine was torched. The find effectively clears his name: the fire was set deliberately, not by a 45-year veteran torching his own livelihood.
• 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.

Threads

• Who set the fire? Now that Vara'nak is exonerated, the real arsonist is open; the cave hermit Pentuckle blames the drowned Mage-Man ("the last thing he did"), whose ghost can still be questioned (Session 50).
• The banshee machine. Vara'nak's journal and the recovered machine key point to a machine deep in the tunnels — unexplored.
• 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.