You turn Northward up the road thinking that the rumors of a new mine are too good an opportunity to pass up, and hey, even if it's false you don't mind spending an extra week or two on the road.


You pull out some of your dried meat and start eating as you walk, thinking you should probably set some traps and snares when you make camp that night to stock up some fresh meat. You spend an uneventful day walking North and see no other travellers. An hour or so before dusk you start looking for a place to camp. You can camp on the roadside, head into the trees to the east for cover while you sleep or walk an hour or so to the foothills west and hope for a spring or cave.

You there's a good chance of catching food in the trees, head East

You decide a night under the trees and a good chance of catching food are too good an opportunity to pass up so you head east into the trees till you're well away from the road. You set up a small camp and fire and set up snares out in the trees.


Not long after darkness closed in you hear some noise in the direction of the road and go investigate. You caught a Hare! you quickly skin and gut it and are about to head back to the fire when you hear noise from further towards the road. You walk quietly closer to investigate and see a large group setting up camp on the roadside.


You're about to leave the cover of the trees to go greet them when you over hear their leader telling a small group to go on ahead and prepare the mine camp. They are the workers sent to open the mine your looking for! You do a fast headcount and realize about 50 workers are camped there and many look experienced.


You decide that they must be the main team sent up to get the mining started and realize that they will have enough skilled workers to fill most of the mining jobs there, but unskilled labor is nearly always welcome- if on a much lower pay.


You think about it and you decide that you can either try to join up with them and risk the lower pay, or, you can try and beat the group sent on ahead and try and secure a better job at the mine site before word reaches them of their workers being so close.

You race them to the camp!

You slip away from the workers camp fires and move quickly to your own, you kick dirt over your small fire and quickly collect in your snares. You wrap the hare in some leather and put it into your pack with everything else, you'll have to cook it later.


You set out at a jog through the trees, you know the road keeps straight for more miles than you can see ahead so you move until you can just see glimpses of it through the trees and settle into a fast jog.


You keep your pace up for several hours, you know it must be after midnight now and your pretty sure you passed the men on the road so you take a short rest below an old oak tree and hope they break for sleep too.


In the morning you wake with the first light and quickly set off, you set a more measured pace, walking fast but not quite jogging yet. You walk as fast as you dare through the day barely taking breaks apart from to eat some dried meats. An hour or two after night sets in you decide if you haven't put some distance between you and them by now you never would, so you build a fire to cook and eat your hare then settle down to sleep.

The Search

You rise at first light again, and quickly cover your fire with dirt. You head onto the road and search carefully for any sign of other men passing but find none. You must still be ahead of them, but you don't know by how much. You set off North again keeping your eye on the hills and woods to your left looking for any sight of a camp entrance or track leading away from the road.


After a few hours you come across a small track leading into the hills through a copse of trees and on into the bare foothills. Its a very small track and could easily just be an animal trail but you can never be sure as people are always loath to leave any large signs of a new mine until the have laid full claim to it and got a fair number of guards in place. You spend a few minutes trying to check for other clues but in the end cant decide if it was made by men turning off the road of just some animals.


You could follow it further into the hills and check it out but it would be slow going and if it turned out not to be the mine it would loose you most of a days walking.

You risk the trail

You decide the trail is worth the risk, its a little bigger than most animal trails and with the lengths some claimants go to to hide new mine sites it could well be the one.


You strike off onto the trail and after about half an hour it widens a little and you start to get more confident that you've made the right choice. A little more walking brings you to a man leaning against a tree and you think you can see a small amount of smoke over the hill behind him.


You approach the man as he hails you and asks your name and reason for being here. Its not the politest of greetings but you explain about coming off another mine job and hearing rumor of one here. The man looks at you for a while then tells you to follow him.


You follow him for 15 minutes or so till you've passed round one of the larger foothills and you come across a very small camp build around a very shallow mine entrance. You smile to yourself- Its the new mine, barely started and with only 10 or so men in sight you've beaten the others here!


Your led up to a large man standing over a fire and are introduced to the Overseer of the new mine.

The Overseer

You approach the Overseer who looks you over and repeats the questions about who you are and how you turned up at his mine entrance. You explain to him that you were a Skilled Laborer on a mine further south and that your old overseer had directed you here. Your a little liberal about the the date you left there and the amount of detail you had been told so he wasn't suspicious about your spring ahead of his expected workers. he thinks for a while and you think he has believed you. He presses for some details about your previous boss and the mine you were at then asked a lot of technical questions and posed several hypothetical situations about building mines and construction issues. It takes nearly an hour for him to be satisfied that you are who you say but finally tells you that he is from the same guild as your own boss and knows him well, since you convinced him of your ability and that your old boss recommended you he says he might take you on as a mid level skilled worker since he was a week behind and the men he had been expecting still hadn't turned up. 


He walks off to a large, nice looking tent set up beside what looks like a half constructed stone house set off to the side of the mine entrance, he goes inside briefly then returns and tells you that the owner had agreed and you were hired, he takes you to the tent and you meet a middle aged but still fairly youthful looking man studying charts of the area with rock samples spread around the desk in front of him. he looks at you quickly and smiles


"So your the man who may get my mine back on schedule?"


"I didn't know you were behind sir but I will defiantly do what I can if that is the case."


he smile again and re-arranges some of the rocks before replying. "what do you make of this then?"


You look at the arrangement of rocks on the table laid over part of a map showing your camp. the ones near where you were standing and the mine entrance were a mix of broken granite, shale and other unimportant rock but two of the rocks lying over the hill the mine was starting into had a definite shine to them, you life them to look closer then after replacing them see there is a piece of normal granite placed between them.


Your about to say that there is defiantly silver in the hills when you stop to think why he would want such a simple answer so instead you reply


"You believe there are two main lodes of silver running into the hill and plan to open them both up from a large forked main tunnel instead of  a single straight entrance with branches?"


"Ha! got it in one! its going to be harder on the crew building the supports but I think it will get both lodes producing ore much faster and if my hunch is correct the lodes are going to diverge more the further we get into the hills, I'm betting that our short entrance tunnel will be running the equivalent of two normal by the time we are fully up and working. Right since your here you can start today, sign this contract then get over to the loggers behind the hill and started on directing them to make the struts, Slarn there will give you the initial measurements."

You beginning the mine

You immediately sign the contract put in front of you after a cursory glance confirms that its a skilled labor contract for a good wage and lasting at least until the mine is fully operational. You follow the Overseer out and round to where the three man logging team has stacked a small pile of trees ready for cutting and shaping into the mines first struts.


The overseer turns to you "Right then these three have cut enough trees the past week to get us a good five meters into hill down both of the primary forks off the entrance shaft. But since we haven't had any skilled workers here apart from myself they haven't had the directions to get the struts started, so while I get back to the entrance shaft you get them moving double time."


He hands you a slate with the tunnel dimensions chalked on it and you quickly see the man knows what he is doing, he has laid out precise numbers and details of the style and shape of Strut he needs for each section. You quickly head over to the workers who had heard the entire conversation so to save your self time you quickly tell them your name and take the straight over to the logs. You set two of them to separate them according to diameter and wood type and keep the other with you to measure out the wood ready for cutting.


You've gotten the logs organized and marked out which ones to use for the braces and struts when you hear a small commotion from the camp at the mine entrance, guessing that this is the guards arriving you carry on working and get the men sawing the first struts according to your markings. The days work goes well and by evening you know you've pushed the men a bit hard but you have several well cut lengths of wood ready for final shaping in the morning.


You head back into the camp and have your suspicions confirmed, the guards have set up tents near the entrance to the camp but they pay you little heed as you retire to one of the shacks set up for workers for the night. The next morning you get your small team working right after breakfast because you now that the full work group should be arriving that day or the one after at the latest and you need to make a good impression first. You get them ready and you join in so your all sawing and shaping the logs while its still dawn and by noon you have 2 sets or struts with lintels cut, shaped and ready to put it place. you know they aren't smoothly finished or treated but you've been told the gear to do that will be arriving with the main workforce so just before the lunch break you and your team take the first two sets round to the mine entrance and stack them just to the side ready to be used when needed.


The Overseer comes over and after inspecting the wood and the shape he admits he didn't expect you to have any ready until tomorrow but inquires about your choices. You tell him that you knew he wanted to get the entrance shaft in deeper as soon as possible so you chose the easier to work wood to make the temporary supports so the shaft could be continued in safety while your team cut and shaped the stronger woods for the permanent supports meaning they could be fully treated before being put in place, you also give a lot of credit to you small team for how hard they worked. Your fast work, choices and ability to give credit to your men where it was due seems to make the Overseers mind up about you and he gives you a pat on the shoulder before turning to walk back towards the mine, he calls back for your team to take a break, the main workforce will arrive any minute and he will be transferring you to the tunnel construction crew now that there are struts able to be used.


You know you've done well and that he will be giving you good jobs now you've proved yourself so you head over to the mess area to grab lunch with your team as you see the main workforce approaching the camp.

The yours well underway

The day the mining company men had arrived you had been called into the owners tent, the owner, Overseer and leading men of the main work group were there and you appeared to be the topic of discussion. They were objecting to you being hired since according to their contract they should be filling all the skilled labor positions They were also trying to bring your abilities and experience into question.


You arrived as the overseer had just vouched for your knowledge and stated that you had the backing of a second guild overseer so even if they weren't happy about it that your skills and experience were accepted as fully capable for what you had been hired to do. As you entered the owner paused the discussion and called you over, then asked if the overseers description or your work with the small logging team had been accurate. You relay what had happened again and the owner seemed very pleased. The mining group however didn't and stated that even if you were good at the job, the owner was breaching the contract to give you a position over one of their men.


The owner clearly tired of the discussion by this point started casually questioning the work group leader.


"When exactly does our contract state that your group would arrive and begin construction?"


The man was smart enough to see were this was going to lead so carefully answered "One week ago today sir."


"So considering that I paid a hefty deposit to your company in advance, how much money have I lost and how far behind is my mine's construction due to your lateness?"


"The mine is almost a week behind sir, but the company will of course refund any loss of wages due to our late arrival. We were forced to wait while our supplies and gear was prepared for us."


"Never the less a full week is a pretty serious loss of coin and time for me and could easily be considered a breach of contract by your company, one that would enable me to cancel it for a full refund of deposit and hire someone else correct?"


The man, now clearly sweating looked like he was trying to find a way out but could only answer "That could be technically correct sir".


"So considering that point; can you really argue that it is outside my remit, that during the week you were not present and my mine was not being constructed that I hired a single skilled worker to aid in my mines initial opening?"


"No sir we wont object further"


"Perfect, now that this is settled don't worry because he hasn't stolen any of your men's jobs. I'll hire him as an assistant to my overseer so that wont be a problem will it?"


Obviously relieved that he didn't have a man out of a job he readily agreed and left the tent.


The owner and overseer finally turn to you and ask "well now that the work group is happy and you have suddenly been promoted you have a nice choice ahead of you. You did a good job with your decision about the struts so I'd be happy for you to oversee the logging operation, but most of your experience lies underground and putting the struts in place, which job do you want?"

You pick the logging operation as overseeing it will keep you out of the way of the work group and you've already made a good impression there

You picked to run the logging group and have twelve men under your supervision plus the three who were there already. You send one of the experienced wood cutters to join your three and after briefly showing him what you had been doing there he quickly understands your system and gets started cutting and preparing the wood. The rest you organize into work teams and get them working on different stages of the process, some felling new trees, some stripping them and others cutting them to length for you final team to prepare, you make one experienced man in each group in charge of his team and your operation practically runs itself. You leave the small choices to the group leaders and spend your time ensuring that the final struts are up to specification and that you meet or surpass you daily quota of cut and treated supports for the mine. The overseer and owner seem happy with your work and leave you to make any decisions you feel necessary, just getting weekly reports and whatever you discuss directly with the overseer during the day.


As the weeks pass you all steadily work away and start logging smaller groups of trees near the mine to ensure a continuous supply of wood, you leave the choice of site up to the team leaders you assigned but you always take a cursory glance over them to make sure the trees are up to standard.


The mine has been progressing well, the main shafts are already going deep into the hill and side tunnels are being opened to chase any small seams off the main two. You've heard that a couple of the unskilled laborers have been tasked with digging out a particularly weak section of rock and your glad you above ground and not risking you life in a weak tunnel prone to cave in.


As the days pass you see one of your team bringing a tree over from the other side of the hill to your normal operation, you stop them to ask which trees they are felling and learn that its a small group of oak on the far side of the hill from the mine entrance. Realizing that some of the tunnels may have gone under in that direction you rush over just as two more trees are about to fall, as the smaller one hits the ground you feel it shaking and moving in an unnatural way. You break into a sprint and call for them to stop but its too late and the large oak falls and as it hits you hear a loud rumble and the whole hill shakes.


You realize you team has called a cave in. You run with them to the entrance as the whole camp arrives to asses what happened. Two workers were in the weak tunnel when the trees came down right above it, they were both crushed inside.


You weren't blamed for the incident and were just told to carry on, that accidents happen, but two men had died due to a mistake made by one of your teams. For the rest of the time you kept your head down and works as hard as you could making sure no more mistakes were made.

You finishing the mining work

You kept your head down and worked hard for the rest of the time and not a single weak strut or badly treated piece of wood got past you after the accident. You were never blamed for the accident but you held yourself accountable and though your works was praised you didn't take as much enjoyment in it as you had before.


As the final day approached the Overseer called you into his now finished residence. You find him sitting behind a nice desk still covered with maps and charts and see a pretty girl who must be similar age to yourself sitting in a chair by a small log fire reading a book.  You begin to wonder if she is the overseers reclusive daughter that the camp is full of rumors about when he waves you over.


"I'll be leaving for the city in two days, the day you will all be paid for your work. You did a great job for me and worked harder than any other man here although I know its because you've been blaming yourself for the accident in the tunnel. Your pay has been arranged for what was agreed but a generous personal bonus has been included. Now take tomorrow off as I know your teams are set up to run smoothly enough without you hovering over them for their last day."


You thank the owner and head back out into the camp, The overseer is waiting outside and gives you a nod


"Don't worry I'll keep an eye on you teams for you, you've worked yourself too hard these last weeks so enjoy your paid day off."


You thank him as well then wander over to the packed breakfast tables. You chat to the workers there, many of whom you've become passable friends with and inquire about their plans now the mine is about to close.


One group is planning to leave on the day they are laid off and make good time down to the city because they want to get back to family there, while the other south bound group plans to stay until all the small jobs are finished around the camp for a few extra coins then has a much more leisurely trip with stops off at way houses and farms along the way. The second group will turn up to the city nearly two full weeks after the first but you're in no rush yourself.