The Debt Enforcer's Tally Book

Searching the wreckage, your crew recovers a debt enforcer's waterproof logbook listing dozens of valuable items confiscated along the river and locked inside the Collector's impound yard. The back page features a map of the walled impound compound on a mud island, complete with guard shift times.

The Collector's impound yard is a walled compound on a mud island with a single iron gate. Through the bars, you spot forty confiscated barge wheels, anvils, fishing nets, and workshops' tools—guarded by two armed debt enforcers and a massive beast pacing on a chain behind the wall.

As you walk down the office steps, the young clerk hurries after you with the seizure logbook hidden under his coat. "You didn't read this, captain, but I did—item nine is my mother's seized weaving loom!" He shoves the book back into your hands. "I can't leave my desk without being arrested, but every hour on the hour, both impound guards go to the back wall to feed their chained guard-beast, leaving the front gate on a simple latch. Break in and take those goods back!"

With the impound yard clear, you check the shelves against the seizure logbook: forty unbolted barge wheels, crates of tools, and—sitting alone inside a lead-glass case—a loaf-sized brass clockwork escapement ticking steadily. According to the log, it was seized from clockmaker Ilsa Marrow, who fled to the next region owing nine silver.

Ilsa Marrow runs a small workshop beneath a town clock tower whose hands have stood frozen for two years. She opens the lead-glass case and listens to the ticking brass escapement. "Still keeping perfect beat—and the Collector seized it over a nine-silver tax debt!" She glances up at the dead clock tower, then at your ship. "The town council wants their clock running again, but I built this mechanism, and I can gear it to regulate your ship's weapons instead."

By dawn, only one iron-bound oak steering wheel remains on your deck. According to the logbook, the barge captain who owned it died in debtors' prison last winter. On the pier stands his daughter, a tall young river-pilot with rope-calloused hands. "I can steer any vessel on this river, captain, but I don't have a hull left to bolt my father's wheel to. Keep the wheel for your ship—or take me aboard to steer it."

Moored in the reeds below the impound island is a black-market fence's barge. The fence—a wiry man with a jeweler's loupe—looks over your loot on a blanket. "Anvils, fishing nets, and a wooden cradle with an impound number chalked on it? Who buys a hot cradle?" He leans back. "I'll give you seventy silver for the lot—unless your quartermaster brought me something better."