Terranis

Built into a mountain on an island, the mountains here have immensely rare metals, gems, and minerals, which the empire dredges up in huge numbers for its war efforts and to further grow its wealth.

Demographics

Dwarf (43%), Human (27%), Halfling (14%), Gnome (7%), Dragonborn (7%), Elf (1%), Half-Elf (1%)

Government

Governed by a council that oversees the numerous operations of the city, appointed by the local military governor who answers to the emperor directly.

Defences

Sitting on an island range and being built into a mountain give this city what some may call more defense than any city realistically needs, as it has faced very little threat in war, and is rumored to be the fallback point in case all other cities in the empire were somehow to fall. Roughly 300 guards stand ready at any time, mostly facing threats from inside the walls.

Industry & Trade

Miners and Smiths are the most notorious, with prestigious families heading guilds and businesses where they hire the poor to work for paltry wages in bleak underground tunnels hauling rock and stone, or pouring molten metal into bars to be transported.

Infrastructure

Large blast furnaces built into the mountain itself use the stone as their framework and spew fire into the sky, and deep caverns dig into the roots of the mountain to pull out the wealth that lies beneath. Wind powered grinders crush and mash stone into small gravel that can be sorted through and the ore-laden chunks pulled out for refining.

Districts

Castle Quarter

A small castle sits here in the heart of the city, where the council rules the city from, keeping strict ledgers on imports and exports, and all the city's production of metals. Deep within the heart of the castle lies a mint, where much of the coins kingdoms are cast and sent into circulation.

Duskyard

Named for the fact that nearly no-one who lives here comes back until dusk, this is the residential part of town, where miners live in stone and wood hovels and houses filled with soot and the smell of the earth.

Silver Ferry

Small and large furnaces sit along the narrow and smoggy roads here, but despite the dirt and grime, this district is the economic heart of the city. The rarest ores are brought here and smelted down, be it steels or other metals for armor, or precious metals for coins and bars. Guards are exceptionally active here to ensure no thieves interrupt business. Once ready for export, boats that have crawled up the river from the ocean sit in wait to carry the finished goods back to the mainland.

Spirit Ferry

Mining is dangerous work, and many die, whether from cave-ins or other accidents, or from miner's lung, mortality rates among miners seemingly never drop. Due to issues with beasts that ransack graves for meals, and from a mysterious phenomenon causing the dead to become undead, bodies are not buried near the city, and are loaded onto ships to be brought down to near the mouth of the river, at the edge of the ocean, where a graveyard sits, poorly maintained, with cheap gravestones sat haphazardly on hastily-dug graves. Aside from this, there are many doctors in this district, although very few truly qualified, a poor miner with a fatal ailment would take any chance over none to see himself cured.

Silkhill

A small hill, with a few trees providing shade. It is tradition for one who has a wish to engrave it onto something, be it paper, stone, metal, or anything between, and to tie it to a tree using only a single thread of silk. If it survives the next storm, and the silk is unbroken, it is believed the wish shall come true.

The Lodge

A few fine houses on the outside of the city's wall, the rare noble or high-class trader that comes through here is given accommodation here to avoid making them face the squalid conditions of the city-center.

Hotgarden

Whereas the Silver Ferry is where all the high quality ores go to be processed, Hotgarden is where the rest go. Furnace and Forge churn bubbling brass and bronze, steel and copper, brimstone and fire heat the streets so that ones very vision is distorted by the heat. The work here never stops, day or night, as the need for metals is always ever-expanding with the continual growth of the military.

Ashsong

One needs something to heat a forge, and it's too expensive to ship coal overseas, so massive charcoal piles and kilns stretch out from the city, where workers carefully take branches and logs, and turn them into the charcoal necessary to keep the forges running all day and night.

Miner's Heath

Another district for the poor and desolate, when the Duskyard could no longer hold enough miners, the Miner's Heath was hastily thrown up to support even more poor souls who have come here to try and make a living hauling earth.

Catbridge

While not a lie, the "cats" far beyond this bridge are not the kind you would want to pet. The bridge, and road leading from it and out of town, leads to a forest in the northwest. This forest is heavily populated with what are now known as Displacer Beasts, which were once known, in an old tong, as "Myrkur-katts", Dark Cats. They still roam the forests of the north, waiting for any poor fool to wander far enough to become food.

Dark Meadow

One of the few nice areas of Terranis, Dark Meadow is where the richest miners, those who own their own men live. They shut up their curtains tight and leave their homes dark, so that the inside can't be seen, and they are less likely to be robbed.

Assets

Large stores of metals and minerals waiting to be moved or as a stockpile for the Afrington Military sit heavily guarded.

History

The Mountains that lie on these islands were long rumored to be home to deep stores of gold and gems. the gold part was even more true than the gems part was, but it was also home to large veins of iron and coal, once seen useless, then becoming a valuable asset during the onset of the Age of Metal, giving the newfound Afrington Empire an edge in war, allowing them to claim much of their territory.

Points of interest

Tavern: The Merchant's Brothel

The only store in the city that one can hope to find service from, Valtana Rockeye, an older dwarven woman, runs this raggedy bar in the center of the Miner's Heath. The walls are dimly lit by old sconce, and cheap candle, and a dusty hearth arches over a sooty fireplace. The food is almost as bleak as the faces that come here, and the food is naught but cheap swill paired with cheaper beer.

Architecture

Cheap stone and wood hovels line the streets, giving barely enough protection from the smoke and smog to allow most to sleep without the foul smells of the forges singing their nostrils.

Geography

Set on a river that comes from the mountains, it is a mere few hundred feet from the mountain's base at the eastern edge of the city, and lies in a somewhat sizable plains between the forests.

Natural Resources

The metals in the mountains are what the city is known for. Gold and steel and gems, and much more. Much of the economy of the empire is propped up by the vast amounts of rare and expensive materials dredged from the deep.

Founding Date

749

Population

9,594

Owner/Ruler

Emperor Philarion Pendleton

Owning Organization

Afrington Empire