It is at this point, when the group leaves the relatively safe walls of Morville, that their path swerves from the wide and sunlit to the narrow and choked with weeds. It will be months before they return to Morville.
The trip to the Peterson Foundry really starts in the hamlet of Swanvale, named after the Swan river that serves as it’s lifeline. The Swan River is hardly a river by any standard – a simple tributary to the River of Three Pines to the south, but it is large enough to support the fishing and transport that these small villages require. Swanvale itself is hardly much of a community. It is too small to warrant the direct involvement of the Empire, too isolated to be a stop for wayfarers, too quiet to notice. That is exactly why Ark-Amedes was sent down. Mackie prefers clients who are quiet, small, and isolated. It keeps his nose clean.
Swanvale happened to be on the way to Peterson Foundry, so stopping over was not any sort of inconvenience. The group arrived in good time, and Ark-Amedes handled his transaction quickly, and procured a shipment (guarded by an obedient clay golem) from an elderly gentleman named Janus. The two hit it off well enough, and the old man gave Ark-Amedes a bit of a clue as to what they might expect later.
They didn’t spend too much time in the small community, but instead traveled downriver to Grant’s primary destination, the foundry. The foundry itself was small and it was rather isolated, but had historically done good business with Morville to the north. The group was not immediately impressed with the foundry, because it did not look particularly active, but they strode in and began to investigate.
Their immediate discovery was that the foundry was dead, that is completely operated by the dead. The workers had somehow been killed, but then forced to work as the undead. They first encountered an undead woman who had no free will and only spoke through some unknown magicks, and only to welcome the group to the foundry. They uncovered a ledger in what seemed to be an office, and the group also discovered the reason for the poor quality steel. In short, it was zombie-made.
The group entered the furnace building and found that there was a group of undead loading separated iron ore and crushed charcoal into the furnace. Grant noticed that the poor soul responsible for adding coal to the eventual mixture was unintentionally adding too much. He teachings reminded him that too much coal made for very brittle steel. He carefully corrected the creature, and the process improved, and the next batch of steel was quality.
The group explored a bit more, with Sho Tao finding a large chained ogre’s skeleton pounding out steel ingot, and also found several bodies of workers near the compound’s well. It was clear that there had been some sort of foul play that happened at the foundry, but the group could find little evidence at first as to what had caused it. Through Grant’s insistence, the group thought it best to halt the workers. Things are sometimes easier said than done.