A Contract of the Bellmarch Reach

Alderfen & the Sunken Warding

what the wood keeps, and what it costs to keep it
4 sessions·market village·engine: The Ambition·theater of the mind
The Region

The Bellmarch

Forest, foothill, and tidal fen meet here, at the western edge of the Marches. The local holder is Ser Ossian Vane, a petty lord with three villages, six armed men, and a tower inside a walled yard that borrows two sides from a standing imperial fort. He taxes this stretch and defends none of it — not from malice, but because he cannot. His own liege, the Countess of Greywater, has not been seen in the Bellmarch in eleven years; she is at court, where the succession is being decided. The villages here govern themselves in every way that matters.

The Village

Alderfen

A market village of roughly one hundred and eighty souls, built close and high on a low rise above the fen, palisaded in sharpened alder. Eel-weirs and logging camps ring the outskirts; the deep wood — the Bellwood proper — starts less than a mile past the last field. Timber and eel-harvest keep it from poverty, and a chartered market day each month brings the circuit cobblers and tinkers through.

At the center stands the hall, imperial stonework with a timber roof three centuries newer, which has been the tavern since anyone's grandmother was a girl. Alderfen can muster perhaps sixty with billhooks and boar-spears, and rather more real weaponry than it will admit to owning — most of it under floorboards, where the assessors don't look. What it cannot do is go into the Bellwood after something.

Reeve Osgar Thane
village headman, pragmatic to a fault

Wants this handled fast, quiet, and cheap. Doesn't trust marked folk any more than tradition requires him to, and won't pretend otherwise.

Mag Fenwick
the Marker

Holds the liturgy for this stretch of the Marches. Knows more of the old grove-lore than she's ever volunteered to anyone, including Osgar.

Ysolde Crane
hedge-healer and keeper of the grove — inherited, not chosen; corresponds with the Thornwake but has never gone to them

Genuinely, uncomplicatedly good: rationing medicine, tending the wounded, and quietly carrying on her grandmother's duty of tending the old alder at the grove's heart. She's noticed the grove sickening and has no idea why.

Master Corvin Ashgrave
academy-trained wizard, arrived six weeks ago

Claims to be studying "ley disturbances" on the frontier. Openly dismissive of Ysolde's "hedge superstition." Polished, plausible, and evasive the moment the grove comes up.

what the hunter finds, not the village Corvin's dismissiveness of hedge-magic isn't just professional snobbery — it's cover. He found a reference to the ward-stone in an old survey and came here to harvest it, certain a "real" wizard could handle a "farmer's charm" more safely than a hedge-witch ever could. He was wrong.
The Ritual

The Marker's Contract

Mag Fenwick, before the gathered hunters "In summers of yore, the king would gather his lords on the marches to push into the wild and settle the lands. We await the king and his lords once again. Until that day when they arrive again, we hire marked adventurers to keep the wild at bay. Adventurers, we ask that of you now."
the bounty, read plain "Iron-banded raiders strike from the deep wood — disciplined, not desperate. Three farms lost, two logging camps burned, no bodies recovered. Fifty silver crown, and Alderfen's welcome for a season, to whoever ends it."
What the Village Believes

The Raiders

Hobgoblins — organized, patient, clearly campaigning rather than pillaging. Sentries posted, retreats covered, nothing taken that can't be carried fast. Whatever's leading them knows their business.

what's actually happening They're not invading. They're fleeing. The Iron-Tusk clan held stable ground deeper in the Bellwood for generations, under an old arrangement with the wood itself. That arrangement is unraveling — the same crack Corvin put in the ward-stone — and the deep wood is turning hostile even to things that used to belong there. Skarrga Bonecrest is trying to save her people, not conquer anyone's farmland.
Skarrga Bonecrest
Iron-Tusk warleader

Disciplined, exhausted, and out of good options. Will fight if cornered, but would rather not — she's lost enough of her people already. A party that tracks her down to talk, rather than to kill, finds someone worth listening to.

Session One

The Muster and the Marks

Arrival
establish the village, the threat, and the wrongness underneath it
  1. The tavern muster and the Marker's ritual open the session before the road; the party arrives at Alderfen already known to be marked, already half-trusted.
  2. Osgar walks them through the raided farmstead — trampled fields, a burnt granary, tracks that show discipline no common raiding band bothers with.
  3. Ysolde asks, almost in passing, if any of them know anything about sickened trees — the old grove's leaves are turning out of season.
  4. Corvin is polite, helpful with maps and directions, and visibly uncomfortable the moment the grove comes up in conversation.
  5. Tracking the raiders' trail leads to the treeline by dusk — and the deep wood beyond it feels wrong in a way none of them can quite name.
Session Two

The Wrinkle

Into the Wood
complicate the enemy, introduce the fey wildcard, sharpen the choice ahead
  1. Tracking the raiders to a forward camp reveals discipline, sentries, and — if the party watches before acting — starving refugees, not conquerors.
  2. A parley option surfaces: Skarrga will talk, warily, if approached without weapons drawn first.
  3. An elegant stranger meets the party at the wood's edge or in a dream — the Herald in Grey, offering riddles, warnings, and interest in one member specifically.
  4. Back in Alderfen, Ysolde reports the grove is worse — animals won't go near it, and something in the roots has started to weep.
  5. The party must choose a next move: press the hobgoblins, investigate the grove, or corner Corvin about what he isn't saying.
Session Three

The Descent

The Sunken Warding
the dungeon proper — see full key below
  1. Ysolde leads the party into the hollow beneath the great alder, the first time she's ever taken anyone else down.
  2. Room by room, the warding beneath the tree reveals both the pact's history and the fact that someone recently tampered with it.
  3. Evidence surfaces — a dropped tool, a page torn from a journal — that names Corvin plainly, if the party is looking.
  4. Old Mother Fen, the grove's guardian, meets them as something closer to a wound than a person now, and tests them before anything else.
  5. Alderheart is found bound into the cracked ward-stone — taking it is possible, but not free.
Session Four

The Reckoning and the Parting

What Gets Fixed, and What Doesn't
resolve the three threads — the ward, the hobgoblins, and Corvin — and close the ritual
  1. Repairing the ward-stone is possible but costs something real — Alderheart's return, a binding sacrifice, or Old Mother Fen's own remaining strength.
  2. Skarrga's people need somewhere to go if the wood won't hold them anymore; the party can broker passage, land, or nothing at all.
  3. Corvin can be exposed to Osgar, quietly dealt with, or allowed to simply leave — none of these are clean, and he has a lord's court to run to if pressed.
  4. The Marker's closing ritual and a grudging, short payout send the party back to the tavern, richer in reputation more than coin.
  5. A last rumor — carried by a peddler, a refugee, or the Herald himself — names whatever's stirring in the mountain or coastal reach next.
The Dungeon

The Sunken Warding

Small, low-magic, and mostly non-combat — the roots of the great alder hollow into a five-chamber warren where the founding pact was struck. Run it theater-of-the-mind: no map is needed, only what's described and what's felt.

I. The Hollow Root

The tree's base opens into a root-choked stair descending past worked stone that follows the grain of the land rather than cutting across it — elven work, older than the Empire, and not recognized as built by anyone in Alderfen. The air hums faintly, like a held note nobody's singing.

II. The Weeping Wall

Water seeps from root-veins in shapes that resolve, briefly, into faces — touching the wall plays back a memory-echo of the pact's founding, in full, if anyone's willing to listen.

III. The Guessing Ring

Three root-archways, only one leads onward — the ring reads intent, not riddles, and seals shut on anyone who means the grove harm.

no DC — a ruling, not a roll. judge by stated intent and honesty of purpose, not by class or alignment.
IV. The Bonevault

Old offerings and older bones — coins, a child's toy, a hunter's blade — proof the pact has been paid for before, and not always cheaply. Nesting vermin (giant rats or stirges) are the only real combat in the dungeon, and easily avoided.

V. The Ward-Heart

The cracked ward-stone, Corvin's dropped tools still beside it, and Old Mother Fen — no longer entirely herself, and no longer entirely safe to approach empty-handed.

running old mother fen She isn't a monster to be killed for XP — she's a guardian pushed past what she was meant to bear. Combat should be a last resort she forces on the party only if talked-past or attacked first; the better outcome is earning her trust long enough to learn what actually happened here.
The Wildcard

The Herald in Grey

Not bound to any scene — weave the Herald in wherever it serves the table: a dream, a crossroads, an uninvited seat at the tavern fire. Elegant, unhurried, and dangerous in the specific way that fair folk are dangerous — never lying outright, never quite telling the whole truth either.

Play the interest light and opt-in. A raised eyebrow, a riddle answered well, a small gift that costs more than it looks — build the rapport across sessions rather than forcing it in one. It should feel like something the table could lean into or quietly let pass, not a plot requirement.

who the herald really is A scout for a fey court with its own stake in the ward's failure — not the cause of it, but very aware something old and useful has come loose, and curious whether these particular mortals are worth cultivating.
Reward

Alderheart

Alderheart
blade, grown rather than forged — the pact's original proof

Cut from the first alder's heartwood and bound with a shard of the same fey-iron worked into the ward-stone. It cuts true against both mortal and fey flesh alike, dims faintly in the hand of anyone about to betray whoever they're standing beside, and murmurs — just below hearing — the names of everyone who's carried it before.

This is the only named magic item in the adventure, and should feel like it — treat its recovery as a session-defining event, not a loot drop.

Notes for the Table

Running It

OSR bones under modern rules

Use 5e's character options freely, but run encounters OSR-style: describe before anyone rolls, let a good plan bypass a fight entirely, and reserve real lethality for moments where failure is genuinely interesting rather than punitive. Skarrga's warband should have morale — they can rout, retreat, or surrender, not just fight to the death because the stat block says so.

Class rivalry, played through Corvin

Corvin is your template for the wider world: academy-trained casters tend to view hedge magic, druidic tradition, and fey pacts as unreliable at best, dangerous at worst — and this adventure's entire crisis exists because that condescension led one of them to touch something he didn't understand. If a player runs a warlock or druid, let NPCs like Corvin needle them a little; it's free characterization and it reinforces the theme without a lecture.

Magic scarcity

Alderheart should be the only magic item this adventure offers. Treat that as a feature — when magic is this rare, finding any of it is the story, not a mechanical upgrade.

Branching

Where This Leads