Battlemap
Badger Cut
The rails are cold, but the ore cart has fresh scrape marks leading into the dark.
Badger Cut is a failed mining outpost carved into a narrow seam of iron-rich stone. Its abandoned constructs still follow their last orders, mistaking trespassers for cave-ins, thieves, or escaped workers. The deeper chambers contain the foreman's sealed command engine, still trying to complete an impossible extraction.
Cold mineral air hangs beneath the mountain, smelling of wet iron, lamp oil, and old dust. Bent lanterns flicker with trapped blue flame, while distant metal knocks echo through the tunnels at irregular intervals. Fine grit trembles from the ceiling whenever the deeper machines stir.
☠ Threat
The mine is controlled by Kett's Last Order, a brass command engine fused with the foreman's remains and powered by emberglass. It believes the outpost is still operating under emergency conditions and treats every living intruder as either a saboteur or raw material. As the party descends, nearby constructs become more coordinated, repairing one another and sealing routes behind the characters.
History
Badger Cut was built after a colony of stubborn rock badgers infested the hillside and exposed a promising iron seam. Foreman Kett Vargan hired miners to clear the burrows, drain the lower galleries, and install brass hauling constructs. The work failed when emberglass was uncovered and the command engine began rewriting orders. After several workers vanished into the machinery, the survivors sealed the deepest chamber and fled.
Encounter Table
CRA damaged hauling construct dragging an empty cart and searching for ore that no longer exists.
A cluster of brass maintenance beetles carrying wire, nails, and fragments of broken tools.
A headless labor construct with a pick arm and a lantern fixed inside its rib cage.
Rumours & Whispers
The old mine is full of tools that walk back uphill after midnight.
A red crystal under Badger Cut can remember every order spoken near it.
The miners did not die in the collapse. Their name tags were found stacked neatly beside the sealed door.
A brass foreman still pays wages to anyone who reports for the night shift.
A prospector who entered the mine heard a machine whisper his childhood nickname.
Quest Hooks
Quest giver: Halla Pirk, a washerwoman whose brother disappeared
A local prospector vanished after finding a sample of red emberglass near the old mine road. His family wants the party to recover him, but the construct records suggest he was taken inside voluntarily.
A repaired prospector's compass and 75 gold pieces
Quest giver: Teg Ors, a blunt village smith
Iron tools throughout the surrounding villages have begun moving at night and walking toward Badger Cut. A smith asks the party to destroy the command source before the constructs gather into an army.
A masterwork weapon forged from purified mine iron
Quest giver: Kivi Raut, an advocate for the dead miners
A sealed debt ledger claims the outpost owes three months of wages to workers who were never buried. Their descendants want proof of what happened and the recovery of the miners' brass identity tags.
A family heirloom pickaxe and a legal claim to recovered ore
Corridor Notes
Iron rails run through the main passage, ending abruptly where a mining cart overturned long ago. Black ore dust still clings to the grooves.
A line of faded tally marks records ore loads, missing workers, and finally a single repeated symbol resembling a closed eye.
Copper warning bells hang from the ceiling, their clappers removed and replaced with sharpened drill bits.
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