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Strange Shipments

by RFmatt Posted on

Strange Shipments

Your eyes water as jet black smoke fills the air around an iron foundry. Workers appear focused on their task as they hurry around the facility and armed agents of The Royal Kralia are stationed strategically, keeping a watchful eye, not for external threats but on the workers themselves.

Description

The midnight stillness of the industrial district is shattered as the party rounds the corner to witness a brutal, clinical extraction. A laborer, broken by exhaustion, lies in the muck where he collapsed, having shattered a massive, unmarked crate in his delirium. As the dark, jagged fragments of military-grade iron hull plating spill across the frost-bitten earth, Royal Kralia agents descend with terrifying, wordless efficiency—not to silence a man, but to bury a secret. The laborer’s blood mingles with the high-grade alloy, staining the illicit steel that was meant to buy a king’s salvation. In the discarded satchel left behind in the struggle, a manifest lies exposed—a ledger of iron and blood that marks a midnight deadline at a secluded harbor, and a secret that, once seen, demands you either bury it or be buried by it.

Adventure Hook

To solve his military recruitment crisis, and protect the borders against growing civil unrest, Ondoros has established a covert supply chain. Ondoros has been secretly exporting large, black crates containing heavy, modular iron plating for ship hulls to Brynnmor in exchange for sellswords that answer only to him. The foundries across Liekia have been forced to work around the clock under the watchful eye of agents of The Royal Kralia to produce them as fast as possible. Large sums of coin have been funneled into this covert project, causing the Liekian treasury to deplete at an accelerated rate.

  • The Trigger: While near an industrial ironworks, the party witnesses Royal Kralia agents brutally beating an exhausted factory laborer who accidentally dropped and shattered a massive, unmarked black cargo crate, exposing specialized, military-grade iron hull plating.
  • The Objective: If the party intervenes or searches the laborer’s fallen satchel, they uncover an unredacted shipping manifest proving that these secret military exports depart from a secluded harbor inlet every Maorhi at midnight, giving them a time-sensitive window to plan a sabotage operation.

Adventure Progression

Time Limit: 14 days after the initial discovery.

  • If Opposing the Crown: If the party uncovers this operation and sabotages the midnight shipments, they halt the deal and can scavenge enough refined, high-grade military alloys from the wreckage to provide to a master blacksmith, allowing them to craft up to three pieces of +1 armor or +1 weapons.
  • If Assisting the Crown (or Actively Ignored): If the party secures the shipments or allows the timeline to expire, the transaction completes and Brynnmor sends a legion of 800 elite mercenaries to occupy the region. If the party actively allied with the king to protect the pipeline, these troops grant them legal immunity. If the party actively attacked the shipments and failed, or if the mercenaries reinforce the Redvakt guard presence after a passive expiration, it adds 1d4 CR 5 martial enemies to random encounters and increases the DC by 4 for all ability checks made to avoid arrest when caught committing crimes.

Major Players

Ondoros Rouis — King of Liekia
The Royal Kralia