The Foundry
Once called the Ironheart Foundry and a symbol of dwarven power and ingenuity, it was taken by the orcs following Belkzen's revolt and became an abandoned site after multiple clans looted and pillaged the site due to its remote location in the Kodakar Sky Islands not allowing seed clans to use it as temporary encampment before a raid.
However, in -3602 AR, a witchless clan of orcs came to settle in the abandoned Foundry exactly for those same reasons. The isolated and fortified nature of the Foundry provided the clan with enough defense capabilities as to be able to prolong their existence and form a legacy clan.
In a matter of a few generations, the orcs managed to adapt to and reverse engineer much of the surviving dwarven infrastructure and together with the vaults of dwarven-mined iron and coal and dwarven-refined steel, the clan took to engineering and forging orc-made weapons and established themselves as the Steel Eaters.
Demographics
The Foundy's primary demographic is orcs from the Steel Eaters clan, which counts a couple hundred of orcs at any given time. However it is also a hotspot for other orc clans who trade with the Steel Eaters, which can often inflate the population of the Foundry by upwards of a hundred orcs for a temporary period.
Government
The Foundry has no governmental structure to speak of. The Steel Eaters adopted a decentralised structure and the only vertical hierarchy exists between smiths and their apprentices.
Defences
The Foundry is naturally defended by its location in a volcanically active area of the Kodakar Sky Islands where it lies backed against a steep cliff. Besides that, it is built with three layers of thick rock walls which all share the same point of contact with the cliff the Foundry is backed against, upon which defensive troops and weaponry could be stationed.
Each different wall is built with only one access point in the form of a massive gate, each with two heavy portcullises which slide in opposing direction to one another due to being linked together and to a pulley system, making them look much like jaws closing and opening. They are still functioning.
Industry & Trade
The Steel Eaters trade orcish weaponry and armour against food which they cannot as readily produce for themselves. They also commonly recycle looted armour and weaponry from raids which are useless to orcs and as such the mines near the Foundry itself see rare use and many have gone into disrepair or collapsed, even as the Foundry remains in nigh constant use.
Infrastructure
The many forges of the Foundry are built to harness the natural heat from the underground volcanic activity.
A few would-be forges are notably different as they are not connected to the underground volcanic heat and instead have wide open circular roofs, the orcs having not understood their use have mostly left those in a state of further disrepair.
The dwarves had also built infrastructure for agriculture but due to the orcs not knowing much agriculture, even by the time the Steel Eaters settled, this infrastucture had gone into disrepair.
However the sewer system still sees every day use.
Assets
The Foundry has vaults containing the dwarven reserves of grain or food, raw material and ore which were not salvaged by the dwarves nor looted by the multiple raids of orcs following the Foundry's taking. Some of those vaults are still sealed shut, the Steel Eaters having not found means or interest to open them.
Architecture
The Foundry was built as a dwarven fortress and like many others, it shares the same dwarven architecture style and testament to their ingenuity, though it has a few notable differences.
The outer walls of the Foundry seem made out of black volcanic rock with a slight sheen over it, however its patterning resembles columnar jointed rock formations, likely basalt.
It is notable for it's sheen, giving it a slight iridescence as one approaches it. This implies that the dwarves who built the fortress not only used or recreated the preexisting volcanic rock formations and shaped them into the fortress but also fused the outside layer of basalt to turn it into obsidian, to give the rock the eye catching sheen.
The technology the dwarves used in order to do this is either lost to memory or the orcs of the Foundry haven't found a way or need to reverse engineer its use.
Geography
The Foundry resides on the eastern side of the Kodakar Sky Islands, a range of mountains which functions as a natural border between the Hold and Varisia to the West and the Realm of the Mammoth Lords to the North and contains a few still active volcanos.
Alternative Name(s)
The Ironheart Foundry (formerly)
Population
400 orcs
Related Ethnicities
Inhabitant Demonym
Steel Eater
Location under
Owning Organization
Characters in Location
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