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The city of Crowley was built around the lumber and fur trade. The lumbering of Hemlock Forest began with a man named Barnagor Arley who had a minor logging operation under way. Barnagor’s luck changed one day when he found a small gorwood beetle. Barnagor had a revelation that day that changed his fortune (and the fortune of his heirs), and eventually put Crowley on the map. It was to domesticate and train the gorwood beetle to log lumber. It took three years for the beetle to become large enough (about the size of a horse) to do any serious logging, but in that time Barnagor had the beetle trained to bite the tree off with it’s huge pinchers, eat the branches and leaves, and then allow Barnagor to strap a gurney to it to haul the lumber back to the mill. Two years later the beetle was at it’s full size (a bit larger than a killer whale) and able to cut almost any tree in the forest with it’s huge front mandibles. Ten years later the elderly Barnagor turned the aging beetle and the business over to his son, who captured two more beetles, built the present mill, and put the city on the map – despite growing tensions with the wood elves, druids, and rangers of the Hemlock Forest.
Today a distant grandchild of Barnagor harvests the forest with five beetles. His name is Goldwood Arley and he is a spoiled, cruel, and viscous tyrant who uses orc slave labor in his mill because that will make him richer (and he can treat the help any way that he wishes to). Goldwood’s present goal in life is to extinguish the wood elf, druid, and ranger population in the area. Currently Goldwood has a 15 gp bounty on the head of any wood elf brought in, 25 pg bounty for any ranger brought in, and a 40 gp bounty on any known druid brought in (but only if brought in dead – live captures don’t count). From time to time Goldwood even finds adventurers foolish enough to go bounty hunting in the Wildwood Forest. Though the town doesn’t particularly care for the wood elves, they have nothing against druids and rangers, and they look down on Goldwood’s bounty. Unfortunately, no one is bold enough to tell the ill tempered Goldwood that to his face.
Due to the constant battle for the forest, a wall has been built around the lumber mill, and the tannery with guard towers. There are five guard towers with 2 guards per tower. They are the same guards from the barracks (building 31) who rotate shifts on their days off to earn extra money.
The building is enclosed within a stone fence with 5 guard towers. A large wooden gate opens on the fence at each end of the mill. The mill itself is made of wood with a cedar tiled roof. A bay door is on each end of the building facing the fence gates. A stream runs next to the mill where a large water wheel powers the saw within the building. No grass grows within the walls and the dirt is heavily mixed with sawdust. The odor is terrible from the smell of wood sap and the stench coming from the tannery that is also within the walls.
This is the area where the orc slaves and gorwoods stay during the night when they are not working. This is a huge trench that is dug out of the earth below the saw mill with an iron grate as a roof (and almost half of the floor of the mill) where sawdust can be swept down as food for the gorwoods. A large wooden door with a padlock allows access to the trench. A ramp leads to the bottom.
The last thing that happens in the afternoons when work is about to stop is that the sawdust is swept down through the grating in the floor for the gorwoods to eat and then a few of the tower guards make sure that everyone gets into the underground cage and it gets locked up. At night the orcs are careful to sleep away from the sawdust. More than one orc has disappeared in the middle of the night while sleeping in a soft bed of saw dust. Often the new orcs will disappear on his first night in the trench because his fellow slaves made him a pallet of sawdust. That little joke really angers Goldwood, but the orcs get too much of a kick out of it to stop trying the joke on the new orcs.
At any given time there will be 1d12+8 orcs working for Goldwood and 5 gorwoods.
The blade for the saw is made of iron and gets replaced every three months by the town blacksmith. The blade is powered by a stream that flows next to the mill and a water will hooked to a gear box that is maintenanced by Klacktoc Gearticker the gnome engineer that works for Goldwood. Three orcs load the log onto a ramp that leads to the saw. They then push the wood through the spinning blade and two other catches the lumber when it comes out the other side. The logs are stacked up and ready to go down the ramp by the gorwoods and the lumber is stacked next to the other bay door ready to be picked up by lumber merchants. Up to 3 other orcs will be sweeping the sawdust into the trench through the grating. Between 1 and 4 orcs will be at each of the bay doors to either help the gorwoods bring in the raw lumber or to help merchants load up the finished lumber.
Bounty Hunting:
Gorwood Capture:
Present
Building Description
1. Gorwood/Orc Pen
2. Saw Blade
Adventure Suggestions
The bounty on wood elves is 15 gp per head. The bounty on rangers is 25 gp per head. The bounty on druids is 40 gp per head. Goldwood does not accept live captures because he will get into trouble with the high priests if it is ever discovered that he was killing men within the city. Goldwood will readily accept wood elf head for it will be obvious that it is a wood elf, but druids and rangers will have to bear some sort of proof of what they are or Goldwood will not pay. In most cases the bounty hunters will have to go to Goldwood and ask for specific names of druids and rangers that he knows.
Goldwood will pay anyone who captures a gorwood egg, or a gorgood larvae. He will offer 250 gp per gorwood, but he is willing to pay as much as 1000 gp per young gorwood if the players bargain correctly.NPC Listing
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