Event·Wasteland

The Wrong Cairn

Trail cairns dot the route - small stacks of flat stones that mark the path across featureless terrain. You've been following them for an hour when you notice something wrong. The last three cairns have a reddish stone on top instead of the usual gray. Someone has been re-stacking them.

You look back. The original trail is still visible if you squint - it curves north. These modified cairns point east, into broken ground.

Choices

1
Trust the original trail and head north. If someone moved the cairns, they had a reason you don't want to discover.
no requirement
Success
You correct your heading and follow the faded original trail north. It reconnects with the main route after a half-hour of careful navigation. Along the way, you find a stash of supplies tucked under a ledge - probably left by the last person who noticed the cairns were wrong.
Failure
The original trail is harder to follow than you expected. You lose it twice and spend an extra hour backtracking. You make it to the main route, but you've burned daylight and water.
2
Follow the modified cairns east. Could be a shortcut, could be a trap. Either way, you want to know.
no requirement
Success
The modified path leads to a small pre-war structure half-buried in a hillside - an old utility shed, its door jammed open with a rock. Inside: scattered tools, a few intact containers, and a bedroll. Someone has been using this as a waystation and marking the path to it. You help yourself to what's loose.
Failure
The eastern path leads into a maze of gullies with no clear exit. You spend two hours finding your way back to the original trail. The cairns weren't a trap - just bad navigation by someone who thought they'd found a shortcut and didn't bother to remove their mistakes.
3
That red stone on top of the cairns - you recognize the mineral. It's not local. Someone brought it here deliberately.
Mining Mastery lv 3
Success
The reddish stone is hematite - common enough in some areas, but not here. This is a prospector's marker, not a trail marker. The cairns don't point to a path - they point to a mineral deposit. You follow the line of markers to a small exposed vein of iron-rich ore in a canyon wall. Not a motherlode, but definitely worth noting for future mining.
Failure
You recognize the stone as hematite and follow the cairn line east, expecting a deposit. What you find is a dry gulch with iron-stained runoff streaks on the rock face - surface oxidation, not a workable vein. The prospector who marked this was either a beginner or an optimist. You've wasted an hour chasing rust.

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