Session 6 Player Recap - Broadbarrel Cache (2026-07-01)

Session 6 Recap: Broadbarrel Cache #

The caravan was still broken, but the investigation finally found something physical.

Recap #

Gash and Aurelia took Bianca Montelupo’s remains back to a nearby druid circle. The druids were expecting you. They had prepared a place for her, spoke of the knowledge she had carried and would no longer pass on, and marked her death as a wound rather than something neatly closed.

Gash received a small pouch of soil from the burial place. Aurelia offered a song. The night became more wake than ceremony, with food, wine, quiet company, and stories of Bianca as she had actually been.

Back with the Broadbarrel problem, the recovered ledger proved stranger than ordinary cargo paperwork. It smelled of wet ink, salt, and something bitter. It was written in code, referred to seals and linked documents, and pointed toward a handoff at Valdengratz.

Several phrases stood out:

• wet balance
• southern adjustment
• quiet jars

The ledger also showed the same wagon appearing against three different cargo references, with important linking details missing. When Fren and Aurelia studied the blank space where a name should have been, the page pushed back: pressure in the throat, wet ink where no ink should be, and a sign of the Silent Poet’s influence.

With Identify, Fren drew a hidden name out of the blank:

Esteban Caldera.

The caravan then gained a new complication. A nervous arithmancer named Magister Lio Greven arrived with a Styglian Enumerator named Nineteen. Wilhelm put them to work recounting cargo after the raid. Gash befriended Nineteen by feeding it and asking questions it could answer in numbers. Fren used the inventory work as a reason to stay close to the counts.

That pressure exposed a crack inside the Brazen Pike Company. Wilhelm said Marda Flint was responsible for records and tallies, but Marda had been pushed onto ordinary wagon-readiness work instead. She was angry, off balance, and no longer doing the job she was supposed to control.

Ishtara overheard Branka and Serak discussing Marda. They wanted Jessa Crow to keep an eye on her and keep her away from sensitive matters.

Aurelia got Marda drinking and talking. Marda revealed that about ten wagons had additional shock bracing even though they were supposedly carrying ordinary freight like wheat, yellow grass, and ale. One damaged wagon had already shown a hidden compartment near the front under the driver’s seat.

The party tested the pattern. Under cover of invisibility, music, camp noise, and distraction, Ishtara investigated another shock-braced wagon and found the same kind of hidden compartment. Inside was a locked wooden case. Rather than open it in camp, she removed it, buried it nearby, and marked the place for later recovery.

Jessa nearly noticed something wrong, but the party covered the noise and kept the search alive.

The next day, Fren used an unseen servant to trigger one of the magical wards on a compartment. Branka and Serak both reacted to the silent signal, and Branka checked the area with Detect Magic. The party used that information to keep probing the shock-braced wagons. At least one more box was recovered and buried, while several other compartments appeared warded.

The numbers are worrying. If one box holds about twelve vials, then ten boxes would only account for about one hundred and twenty vials. The Valdieri theft was much larger than that.

The next stop is Sankt Orn’s Rest, a market and church town associated with the sun god. The current plan is to use the postal system there to send Althric a secure message: a partial cache has been found, buried, and marked, and someone else should be sent to recover it.

What players would know #

• Bianca has been buried by her druid circle.
• Gash carries a pouch of soil from Bianca’s burial place.
• The ledger is coded and affected by record/absence magic tied to the Silent Poet.
• The hidden name Esteban Caldera was revealed from a blank space in the ledger.
• The ledger refers to wet balance, southern adjustment, quiet jars, and a Valdengratz handoff.
• Marda is supposed to handle records and tallies, but Branka has pushed her away from that work.
• Branka and Serak have assigned Jessa to watch Marda.
• About ten wagons have suspicious shock bracing.
• The shock-braced wagons have hidden compartments near the front under the driver’s seat.
• At least some compartments are magically warded and silently alert Branka and Serak.
• The party has removed and buried suspected cache boxes without opening them.
• The cache found so far is probably not enough to account for the full Valdieri theft.

Current working picture #

Broadbarrel is carrying part of the hidden cargo chain, but probably not the whole answer. The party has moved from suspicion to physical interference: boxes are now off the caravan and hidden for later recovery.

Branka’s side is protecting the compartments, controlling Marda, and watching for tampering. Marda knows enough to be dangerous, but she is being contained.

The next problem is time. The caravan is close to moving again, the next town offers a way to contact Althric, and every additional box removed increases the chance that Branka notices the pattern.

Active leads for next session #

• Decide whether to send Althric the secure message at Sankt Orn’s Rest.
• Work out how many more boxes can be removed before Branka reacts.
• Decide whether Marda can be used, protected, or turned.
• Learn who Esteban Caldera is.
• Find out whether the remaining stolen refined magic is elsewhere in the caravan, on another route, or already split into another chain.
• Keep Jessa from connecting the party to the missing boxes.