The Hollowrun¶

Where Hollowrun Falls pours off the Ore Road, the water does not stop being interesting - it starts. Below the falls the Hollowrun has cut a gorge the whole way down off the highland shelf: a stair of pools, boulder-jams, and mine-era timberwork descending from the road's cold country to the feral apple rows outside Emberford, where the stream finally flattens out and hands itself over to the Emberrun.

The gorge hunts from level 12 to level 18, rising roughly as you climb. It is a through-route as well as a hunting ground: enter at either end, walk the whole of it, and come out the other - if the dark stretch in the middle does not make its point first.

The dates, for reference: the works in the gorge - flume, wheelhouse, stamps - were built to serve the silver-lead mine (struck 1149 SR, sealed 1187), and fell idle when it did. Most of them stayed idle. See below for the exception.

Getting there: DOWN the spray-slick stair at Hollowrun Falls on the Ore Road (between the Burnt Mile and the Gorge Bridge), or NORTH from the Old Orchard Gate in the orchards north of Emberford. Bring a lantern either way: the gorge's middle passes through the Undercut, and the Undercut is dark in the way cellars only wish they were.

The gorge, top to bottom¶

Stretch	Levels	What lives there
The Falls Foot & the Spillway Ladders	14-15	gorge sabrecats on the ledge-walks and pool-rims - premium pelts, ambush habits
The Undercut	16	undercut creepers combing the dark cave-bank; their green-glossed chitin sells to armorers and jewelers both
The Old Flume	12, 18	flume rats on the plank-walks (dense water-glass pelts) - and the flume's tenant, below
The Chokes	13	scree-wretches, the feral pickers of the boulder-field: they carry coin, tin scrip, and locked boxes
The Dipper Pools & the Gorge Mouth	14	dipper herons at their fishing stations; plumes worth honest silver at the furrier's

All of it is aggressive, none of it is sanctuary, and everything skinnable pays best at Emberford's Furrier's Hall, a short walk south of the mouth.

The Undercut¶

Mid-gorge, the whole river slides under a boulder-jam and the path follows it: eight rooms of cave-bank with no daylight at all. Unlit travelers are blind there, and the things that comb the gravel are not. A lantern, a lit companion, or a good reason to stay home - pick at least one. The pickers' rule for the crossing is older than the pickers: tap twice going in, count your party coming out.

The Flumekeeper¶

The mine's timber water-flume still strides down the east wall on trestles - patched, swept, greased, and running water eight centuries after its last payday - because something maintains it. The Flumekeeper (level 18), a crag-troll of mill-wheel shoulders and terrible neatness, keeps the works from its lair at the flume's cistern: single spawn, long respawn, coin, a locked box more often than not, and a moss-backed hide worth 260 silver before the furrier's rate. It does not leave the cistern. Things that interfere with the works have historically not needed chasing.

Walk the flume deck with respect: the repairs are load-bearing, and so is the repairer's opinion of visitors.

Practicalities¶

Two doors. Ore Road at the falls (north, high) and the Old Orchard Gate (south, low). The south approach is the gentler ladder: herons, then wretches, then cats, then the dark.
Boxes. Scree-wretches (tier 3) and the Flumekeeper are the gorge's lockbox supply; Emberford's tinker sells the picks.
Rain. The Hollowrun rises fast in wet weather and the jams knock like dropped beams. The shingle bars are not load-bearing opinions.
Loot the locals ignore. Polished agates turn up in the cauldron pools and the spoil-heaps, and the pickers' tin flume tokens still trade - the assayer and the curious pay for both.

The wages¶

The works closed in 1187 SR. The company clerks went south, the stamps went for salvage, and the flume should have followed them into firewood inside a generation. Instead: the sag is re-planked, the breach is bridged with barked logs, the penstock screw turns in fresh tallow, and in the cistern the scrip tokens stand in counted towers of ten - wages, at the old rate, for every day since the gate last opened.

Nobody in Emberford will say the obvious thing out loud, which is that somewhere in the gorge's books the north still owes one employee eight hundred years of back pay, and that the employee is patient, and keeps the receipts, and has never once missed a shift. The carters just call the white thread under the bridge the falls, and keep the toll of the old joke: the mine failed; the water works.