Sasha Verillas

• Full Name: Sasha Pont Verillas
• Gender: M
• Profession: Coal Baron
• Age in 1554: 39
• Birthplace: Tenpin
• Residence in 1554: Veil High, Tenpin

Sasha Verillas (verr-REE-yas) is a wood and coal baron in Sourwood. He travels the edges of darkness, logging the dead and dying forests of Sourwood along the shores of Green Lake. Sasha commands a small fleet of Darkskimmers, nimble deep-fog colliers built to withstand the trials of surveying in the dark.
There are shallow-buried layers of coal shale throughout the Sourwood, from a forgotten time when Tenpin was the center of a huge inland sea. To reach it, crews like Sasha’s “Hammer Men” clear large zones of their dead and dying forests, then use gigantic machines called fire oxen to strip the minerals from beneath the clearcut.
Monstrous, smoke-belching steam diggers toil away in the dark fog of Sourwood, lifted from one job to the next by quartets of massive LTAs. (An LTA, short for "Lighter Than Air," is a type of freight balloon that isn't very maneuverable but can handle a lot of weight.)
The sight of these gigantic digging machines would be terrifying, but oddly they are so large, and work in such deep fog, that even their own work crews seldom see them entirely. Sometimes a passing ship will see four freighters struggling through the heavy fog of Sourwood, hauling some unknown and tremendous load. But the ox itself stays buried in the cloud.
Sasha’s trade is filthy, of course, and pollutes the Sourwood seemingly beyond reclamation. But the dragon runs on burweed and coal, and the gears of industry grind ever onward.
For those few when days he escapes from the Sourwood, Sasha Verillas keeps a luxurious home in Veil High, Tenpin, where he dreams of one day retiring from the logging trade. He spends one week there every three months, bathing in perfume, eating well, and celebrating the delights of that complicated city.