At dawn, shouting rises near Highmere’s quarry road. Farmers and miners face each other across a dry gulley, fists clenched, voices raw. Where once a narrow stream fed both fields and sluice troughs, now the water runs thin — blocked by a cave-in upstream.
“You’ve dammed it for your silver-pans!” cries Mara Tannell, her voice sharp with grief.
“And your livestock have been drinking us dry for weeks!” a dwarf shouts back, beard bristling with fury.
Before blows can fall, Brokkar Stonevein pushes through the crowd. “Enough! The stream’s gone, aye, but no dwarf or farmer did this. We’ll need proof — or this valley’ll drown in blood.”
Whispers stir of sabotage. Brokkar takes the party and Rogan Marrick upstream to reveal the truth: a collapse — not natural — has diverted the flow. He points out several qualities of the construction and the stone and some marks that he claims are picks or claw marks. “Could be Coalsnouts,” he mulls, “we’ve had tussels with ’em before but not lately.” Rogan scoffs saying he hasn’t heard of any ‘kobolds’ around here.
Quest Givers
- Mara Tannell (Flan farmer): pleads for water for livestock and crops.
- Brokkar Stonevein (dwarf foreman): insists his miners didn’t sabotage the stream, and quietly urges PCs to prove it.
Objective & Obstacles
- Calm the crowd before violence breaks out (DC 13 Persuasion/Intimidation).
- Investigate the streambed and collapsed banks.
- Confront the Coalsnout kobolds tunneling nearby.
- Decide: restore the flow to farmers, miners… or negotiate a compromise.
Encounter Areas
- Dry Stream Gulley: Farmers and miners shouting match; violence possible if not diffused.
- Collapsed Banks: DC 12 Investigation finds claw marks, pick marks and crude props, kobold handiwork.
- Kobold Tunnel Camp: Kobolds with stolen tools diverting water to cisterns. If the party is formidable, Flindertyn may try to talk claiming they were driven here by “burning-eyed masters” and only wanted to survive; they claim mines north of here and if the party has no qualm with their land, further talk may be warranted. Flindertyn is lawful evil, not lawful stupid.
Scaling Encounters (APL 2–4)
- Level 2: 4 Kobolds.
- Level 3: 5 Kobolds + 1 Kobold Inventor.
- Level 4: 6 Kobolds + 1 Kobold Scale Sorcerer.
Condensed Stat Blocks
- Kobold (CR 1/8): AC 12, HP 5, Dagger +4 (1d4+2), Pack Tactics.
- Kobold Inventor (CR 1/4): AC 12, HP 13, Sling +4 (1d6+2) + alchemical contraptions. Basically good at demolition.
- Kobold Scale Sorcerer ‘Flindertyn’ (CR 1): AC 13, HP 27, Spellcasting (Fire Bolt, Mage Armor, Scorching Ray, Shield). Speaks Common.
Rewards & Arc Impact
- Reward: Farmers and miners pool resources (goods worth 30 gp) if peace is kept. If PCs broker a solution, Brokkar arranges an extra gift — a rune-marked mining hammer (counts as a light hammer, advantage on stonework-related checks).
- Arc Impact:
- If PCs slay the kobolds, they earn temporary peace, but tensions deepen as each side still suspects the other of involvement.
- If PCs negotiate with kobolds and reveal their story, both sides are shocked. The true enemy becomes clearer — someone (cultists, emissaries) is driving weaker races into conflict zones. They will say, if asked, that there has been conflict in the past but the dwarves and big-dwarves have stayed out of their way (they actually found better veins to the north and ignored the dwarves hitting deeper veins just as rich) so the peace has been a convenient coincidence.
- PCs gain breadcrumb: kobolds mutter about “the eye tells us we need to mine here (gesturing around here) or else we suffer” pointing to WH9.4.
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