Minton
Minton on the Rocks, the Perch
Minton, often called Minton-on-the-Rocks, or the Perch, was founded in 1210 around newly discovered silver minds. It now has a population of 8,500, and the local elites hastily procured a town charter in 1214. The town’s crest is an arch, gris, framing a grail, or, on a field of azure, on a field of sable.
The town is built along the west leg of Brighton Steet, with a mountain wall on the north side of the street, and the non-navigable Lyarth River on the south side. Minton is technically a river town, but the river is too wild here, so there is no river port. Rather, Brighton Street acts as the town’s economic and travel lifeline.
The stunning mountains above and raging white waters below conspire to make this settlement picturesque. Minton is in the County of Gwyfned, the Kingdom of Gwyfned, in the High Kingdom of Myddum. It is connected to Gwyfned City to the northeast, and Lyarport to the southwest, also by Brighton Street.
Minton is long and narrow. It is unwalled, although it maintains a tower at each end of town. The street parallels the north shores of the Lyarth River, and then the town proper extends upward along the mountainside with six terrace levels of buildings. This arrangement makes Minton look tall but shallow. On Brighton Street’s south side, a river deck extends over the Lyarth River, and the market buildings and stalls are erected here.
The town is unpaved, and its streets are carved from solid rock. There are more stairs in town than proper streets, and these lanes are limited to foot traffic and agile ponies, not carts. The settlement’s mines are hidden in the backs of homes and businesses.
Minton’s patron saint is Torrick the Unmoved, and St. Torrick’s Minster Cathedral grew from a roadside shrine that preceded the town and its mines. The church does not have a large footprint, but it is tall, lavishly decorated and cared for by Morlite Canons and their dean. There are other churches and shrines throughout the city, including one friary, and a humilitine satellite monastery. Minton’s primary religious claim to fame is that the church is the site of the miraculous Tripartite Prophecy, as channeld by Rev. Si/Mo. Jocossa DeSaranne, the head of a small but well-funded local nunnery.
The people of Minton are disciplined and hardworking. Wealthy mine owners have lavished money on this settlement, making it splendid, but the miners are its spirit. Women are not allowed into the mines or the buildings that front them, and the locals are notoriously superstitious. Deep underground, moaning sometimes may be heard and felt throughout the town, and charged earth lights sometimes are seen dancing overhead.
Miners have occasionally encountered trow, and this has led to inevitable violence. Some of the miners are secretly gnomide/human hybrids. Local mages sell charms to ward off cave-ins, explosions, flooding, and poisonous air. The screw pump dates from Karmithian times, but the Minton engineers have mastered its use for draining their mines.
As new as Minton is, it already has some literary leading lights. Anatole Grange is the author of The Great Deeds of Arms of Osrick Iron-Arm, and Werner Parkingham is the author of The Doomed Romance of Osrick and the Nightengale Queen.
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