Specula Caverns
The Specula Caverns is in actuality a whole city and countryside beneath a mountain range. Discovered centuries ago as massive caverns beneath the earth, groups of talented inventors and artificers developed a range of mirrors around the mountain range to direct and channel sunlight down into the caverns below. Now the cave serves as a city as well as farmland.
Melt water is channeled into the fields of crops, able to be increased with the use of the mirrors during cold seasons to keep year around produce flowing. This makes the Specula Caverns one of the main providers of food for the continent of Ithirion despite being located entirely beneath the mountains. The large terraced fields form a large horse shoe around the inventive city at the cavern's center, where silver work is mastered and practiced here due to the rich silver viens running through the mountains.
Demographics
The majority of the civilians in the caverns are dwarven and gnomish in heritage, although any race is welcome in the city. The primary trade for the city is food and silver, so anyone trained in farming, mining or metallurgy of some kind are more than welcome in the city.
Government
Specula Caverns are run by an elder council who represent each faction within the city. These are the Farmers, Miners, Jewelers, Artificers and Builders. Each faction appoints their own representative and they deal with the relationships between them, such as the miners insuring they get good rates when supplying the other factions and trade flows smoothly in and out of the city.
Industry & Trade
The main two produces from Specula Caverns are Silver and Rice. They abundant snow-melt and terraced design of the city makes growing rice easy and practical while being an easy trade good to store and deliver over long distance. Meanwhile silver is commonly traded due to the rich ore veins running beneath the cavern in various mines and tunnels through the mountain.
The term "worth a grain's weight in silver" came about due to silver being smuggled from the city hidden in rice shipments, although the guilds do their best to stop this from happening.
Infrastructure
The main city in the Caverns is sounded by the waterway canals that separate if from the terraced farmlands that fill the rest of the cavern. Water flows down from irrigation lines from the top terrace down each layer of the terraces to the canals which are used to ferry goods around the city. Due to this most manufaction work and trade is done on the outside of the city near the canals while the middle of the city is more residential.
The great crystal mirrors in the roof of the cavern is controlled by artificers to ensure that light is spread evenly across the city where possible and in darker conditions focused on the essential farmlands.
Guilds and Factions
Each of the main trades in the city has a Guild to ensure that all are treated as expected in the city and processes and protocols are followed. These are as follows:
The Farmers
In charge of maintaining the food supply of the city, the guild ensures prices are kept fair and balanced as well as handling the import and export of the foodstuffs grown for sale.
The Miners
Handling the mining operations through the mountains, the guild's primary purpose is to continue to find and extract silver deposits. They primary deal with the other guilds to sell their wares although do export some of their goods directly to the rest of Ithirion.
The Jewelers
Specula Jewelry is well known for being some of the best crafted silver pieces in the world. Due to the close early connections of the Artificer's Mirror building work and Jewelers own skills, several long family business form the backbone of the guild, being able to sell their wares with family marks dating back to the founding of Specula Caverns.
The Artificers and The Builders
These two guilds used to be one but split when the more mundane form of construction decided they were getting a worse deal to the rest of the guild in exchange for their work. These two guilds now split the focus of their work, the builders primarily focusing on the infrastructure of the inner city, such as canal repairs and dwelling construction, while the Artificers focus on maintaining the mirrors and waterways that give the city its life. Despite the builders now demanding more pay, the Artificer's are happy to not need to focus on "boring" and mundane construction and can focus on their inventive constructions.
Comments