Blest Mining Town

Native Gold by USGS

The Island of Karte has the biggest and longest mountain range in the archipelago, providing lots of minerals and metals to the kingdom. However, the kingdom has had a shortage of gold for their coinage for several decades, until, mostly by chance, a large deposit of it was found on an extremely remote area on the south of it.

The independent settlement

This place, known as the town of Blest, was occupied until the 2980 E.Alz decade by small groups of scalies, originally nomads, that settled in the coast of the river Tismasul. This group grew into a small town of a few dozen people, that lived out of the resources they got from the riverbank and were in general out of the sphere of influence and control of the kingdom.
The town was known to be there due to the scientific and military expeditions that sometimes went by it, but it was mostly ignored as it was too small and insignificant to pay it any attention. However, during 2976 E.Alz, an expedition that went through the town was surprised to find that most of the inhabitants were adorning their bodies with golden jewellery. After asking around with the locals, they found that they were picking up a lot of gold nuggets while panning the riverbed for resources.

The mining town

News travelled fast when the expedition went back and reported to the kingdom and in a matter of seven years, the town was "acquired" by the king and transformed into a profitable mining town, complete with a small port for the merchant ships to travel back and forth to the capital.
The king immediately put in place big incentives for people to move to Blest and work the mines, getting many impoverished families to move their whole lives to the other end of the island, sometimes in caravans organized by the state to get things going on as fast as possible.
The small settlement has turned into a mining town four decades ago, with more than 600 citizens. It has quite a gloomy reputation, as it is an almost completely disconnected place very far from the rest of the country (being the southernmost non-hostile settlement of the archipelago) seen as a last resort option for many. Its inhabitants are known with many equally gloomy names, from "the ones who left" to "Middle-of-nowheres".

Where Tismasul takes us

The native inhabitants of Blest were told again and again that the miners and machinery were taken just to explore the mountain and to add to what was already there without any intention of disturbing their lifestyle. However, the once close-knit, small, remote, almost hunter-gatherer tribe got soon pressed with pollution, taxation, regulations and, again and again, they were told that they just needed to "move" this or that structure to put it out of the way of the miners.
None of the native inhabitants of Blest are left in the mining town. On a matter of a year, they had picked up their now filthy possessions and walked their way south, with their eyes always locked into the Tismasul river east of them, and terrible sadness in their gaze. There had been no reports of them or their whereabouts ever again.

"The Civil War doesn't reach here. I am making the money the best I can. I am feeding my family."

— A miner living in Blest

Founding Date

2983 E.Alz

Alternative Name(s)

The Middle of Nowhere

Type

Town

Population

~650 people

Location under

Karte Island

Owner/Ruler

Rastapuj

Owning Organization

Kingdom of Karte

The Haan Archipelago

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Danae by Naelin

The cartographer Danae from the City of Birdland in Thaur was commissioned to draw a map of the Haan Archipelago for the second edition of The Book of the Habits and Beasts, published in the 3rd of Birthing, 3 E.Ru.
Danae took advantage of the enclyclopaedia's team of researchers to gather precise information and went himself into research expeditions to survey remote areas. His work resulted in what is considered the most accurate and widespread map of the Archipelago to this day, which details even most of the coasts of the Savage Isles.