Leaves-Amid-Glass

Leaves-Amid-Glass is a mining town in West Jirithkae that is the nation's largest exporter of viridian salt.

Demographics

Most residents either work in the nearby Viridian salt mine or are employed by the Saltworks Company.

Government

The town is headed by a governor and a small elected town council. In actuality however, the town is run by the Saltworks Company who own the mine and employ most of the town’s population. The governor and the council can make most decisions about how to run the town, but if a house needs to be repurposed into a company distribution site, then the townspeople don’t have much of a choice.

Infrastructure

Pixabay Image by qiye

The small town is made up of single story wooden buildings that were hastily constructed for mine workers when the Leaves-Amid-Glass mine first opened up. Some of the buildings have been improved over the following years, but quite a few are still in poor condition.

The town is built far from the mine itself. It takes about a half hour to drive a wagon between them. Since viridian salt is highly explosive, most industrial technology is banned from the mining site to prevent setting off the powder. All cooking and open flames are kept back at the town.

History

The first settlers in the area discovered large green crystals that grew throughout the small jungle region. They named their town Leaves-Amid-Glass after the strange translucent crystals. After several decades, a plague swept through the area and killed most of the residents. The few that survived abandoned the town, and the decaying Leaves-Amid-Glass became a local legend rumored to be the haunt of malevolent spirits.

During the early years of the Jirithkaen Reformation, the largest standing building in the abandoned town was reclaimed by Redcrow and his band of thieves. However, the Crows too eventually abandoned the town after their leader died.

In 1882, a method was discovered to harness the explosive power of viridian salt and control it enough to use it as a fuel source in industrial machinery. The Saltworks Company was quickly formed by several investors in the idea, and they set out to build a mine on the largest viridian salt deposit in the empire.

Leaves-Amid-Glass was rebuilt by the mine workers and one again became a functioning settlement.

Geography

The town is located in a small section of the Scarlet Jungle. The local area is much lower than the surrounding land and is scattered with large crystals of viridian glass. Geologists believe that a large natural disaster occurred thousands of years ago that destroyed much of the landscape and caused enough pressure to crystalize the top layer of the viridian salt deposit. However, much of the salt was left undisturbed, and the jungle eventually grew back to heal the landscape.