Cha'im, the Ash-Harvest
Fortune and misery can be found here in equal measure.
The town Cha'im squats among the ash and blight of the Aschar region, burrowed into a once-verdant valley like a tick. Driven by green and the labor of slaves, Cha'im harvests the fertile volcanic ash from the many eruptions and exports it as a potent fertilizer. Collecting the ash is dangerous, backbreaking work that claims many lives, from ash-stalking predators to poisonous vapors or lungs choked full of black dust.
Geography
Cha'im is centered in a circular canyon at the tail end of a valley. Though shielded from the worst of the storms of Aschar, the town drowns in the debris of storm and of its own waste which must always be shoveled away before the town is buried. Every surface is covered in ash and junk is piled in heaps across the empty space. There's a pillar in the middle of the canyon called 'the Pen', surrounded by water. The water has long since turned black as pitch from ash-storms and pollution. Only the desperate or lowest ranking slave drink from it.
Cha'im can charitably be described as having a rank smell, with human waste and acrid ash competing with each other.
To the town rulers, it is the smell of fortunes being made.
The citizens of Cha'im make their homes inside the valley walls, digging deep into the stone to make rooms, tunnels and chasms. The wealthy live deeper within the stone, further away from the wretched ash and perils of the Surface. The poor and the enslaved are forced to make do with shallow dug-outs along the valley wall, covered by bars and sometimes tarps. The interior of the valley-wall is divided between the commoners, the ruling elite, a wing for visiting merchants and their cargo, and a vast descending tunnel that connects Cha'im to the Outer Shell.
Most of the time, Cha'im is drenched in a hazy grey as ash covers the run and drains all color from the world around them. Nothing remains clean for long outside and everything sooner or later become clogged by black ash.
From the Ashes
The way they talk about their bold enterprise, you'd think they dig the ash out themselves instead of forcing some other poor bastards to do it.
Cha'im was founded by explorers into Aschar around a century ago, once the ash was found to be a potent fertilizer. The small outpost quickly grew to match its wealth as more flocked there for a part in the boom. The success made the founding family of Cha'im very wealthy and that wealth made them very keen to keep what they had. When too few wished to journey to Cha'im only to work the dangerous ash-fields, Cha'im turned to slavery.
Since then, Cha'im has become reliant on its slaves. Isolated from the rest of Araea on the Surface, Cha'im has become a world onto itself, where cruelty is the norm. The ash exported from the town is valued more than the people who harvest it.
With death waiting in a thousand forms, Cha'im is always looking for new workers. The city-states of the deep who need the ash to feed themselves are only too happy to provide them.
That need has allowed Cha'im more influence than its size or military might would otherwise dictate. It is a fact that has made its rulers brash and arrogant, assured of their importance. Even city-states that would normally balk at the way Cha'im treats its slave like chattel raise no protest, so long as the ash continues to flow.
Culture
Cha'im has become a society of slavers and slaves. With a near-constant trickle of new slaves arriving in Cha'im, order is maintained through brutality. Control, repression, fear and profits are the pillars on which Cha'im stands. No one lives in Cha'im for any length of time without becoming implicated in its traditions of slavery, from raising the whip to turning a blind eye. More than anything, greed is what drives the town forward.
The slaves can come from anywhere in Araea, usually transported from the Slaver's Gate. They often lack even a common language with which to coordinate a resistance. But they try - often to bloody results.
From a thousand different sources, often the only thing they share is their suffering.
Some slaves become overseers or snitches, recruited by Cha'im's' brutal mercenaries to help maintain order.
In exchange, they get more food, better shelter or other comforts, but they always live in fear of being caught by the other slaves.
Government
Cha'im is ruled by a single extended family of merchants who claim direct lineage with the first settlers. They are the Chasum, a fractured and quarrelsome clan, constantly at odds with one another and competing to see who can garner the greatest glory or the most wealth. These contests take the form of everything from hunting expeditions to bragging about their fortune, but they almost always come at the expense of the slaves of Cha'im.
by Dive Store Exile
The clan still has enough elders to keep the town functioning and the trade going, but only barely. The other merchants in Cha'im watch for any sign of weakness and would replace them if able. For now, Chasum owns enough mercenaries and enough wealth to maintain their grip on the town. Cha'im is their fief and they are free to do with it as they wish. So far, the desire for more coin and control has made Cha'im one of the more well-run and well-organized settlements of the Surface.
Industry
Most of Cha'im is focused on harvesting, packing and exporting the fertile ash around it. It is packed in bins and crates, then loaded onto Khtam convoys that descend back underground. There are a few other industries, manufacturing either utility for the work or things of pleasure for the elite of Cha'im. The most recent and successful have been the obsidian-sculptors. Aschar is full of strange wonder that is harvested and sold, but few are predictable enough to become a full business.
All of Cha'ims food and water come from underground, in garden pits and small springs. Bugs are ranched in compact tunnels, fed with the detritus of the town and the corpses of dead slaves before being in turn turned to slop for the slaves to eat.
Among the slaves, going without food and water is a fact of life. They eat last and the least, sometimes forced to drink the black water from the valley moat.
Even the wealthy must sometimes go hungry and rumors persist of banquet feasts bolstered by the meat of slaves.
Cha'im supplements its own meager production by hunting and foraging across Aschar, with unpredictable results. Trade is the vital lifeline of the town, both to keep it supplied with food, tools, weapons, slaves and luxuries, as well as selling its harvest of ash. The path down is guarded at all times, from rebellion and jealous rivals within and creeping monsters from without.
Guilds & Factions
There are four main factions within Cha'im:
Chasum Clan
Divided into feuding families, jealous relatives and angry siblings, the Chasum Clan has ruled Cha'im as long as anyone can remember. They claim the lineage that dates back to early explorers, and none have true reason to doubt it if it had not been they who claimed it.
The elders of Chasum rule the town efficiently and brutally. They are despised by almost everyone but control everything.
The Merchants
A smattering of other merchants and businesses cling to Cha'im. They maintain the tools, bring in slaves and make what profits they can. Despite the Chasum's best efforts, they are growing in power and influence, but not enough to challenge them.
Stealing and smuggling ash is a common but dangerous thing for the other merchants to do, for which the punishment is enslavement.
Most who visit Cha'im come away with the impression of a place waiting for disaster - that it is a question of when, not if.
Mercenaries
Cha'ims enforcers come from a wide range of mercenaries, some from as far as the Inner Shell. Most are employed by the Chasum to keep order and commit atrocities, but the wise merchant keeps a guard nearby.
Even among mercenaries, the ones employed at Cha'im are a particularly cold-hearted kind that is welcomed in few other places.
The Slaves
Beaten, abused and worked to death, the slaves of Cha'im is a sad and forgotten lot. But they are not broken. Many keep their homes with them in their hearts and others wait, enduring today for a chance of vengeance and freedom tomorrow.
And most think the day is coming soon. As the mountains rumble and the sky bleeds fire, Cha'im trembles and waits.
by Dive Store Exile
Military
Hired hands aren't always the best at catching you when you fall.
Other than a small number of armed family-members, Cha'im is largely kept secure by mercenaries. They are outnumbered several times by the slaves and dwarfed again by the monstrosities that roam the Surface. Some mercenaries join together once in Cha'im while others keep to the groups they arrived with. So far, no single group of mercenaries have grown so large as to threaten Chasum's power.
Of particular note are:
The Impalers
Feared and loathed even by the other mercenaries in Cha'im, the Impalers are the most brutal and vicious enforcers of order that the town has. They are correspondingly favored by Chasum and afforded the highest pay and best lodgings in exchange for their loyalty.
If such bribes remain enough remain to be seen, but the Impalers have little doubt of what would happen to them should the town fall to a slave uprising.
The Flickering Blades
A motley crew of hunters, trackers and scavengers, the Flickering Blades are a recent addition to Cha'im. They were hired after Surface beasts hunted and killed many slaves and a few Chasum nobles, specializing in hunting and killing such prey.
The Blades are not impressed with their patrons or what they've seen of Cha'im. If they will leave or aid in its fall remains to be seen.
The Aschar Region A barren world of angry earth and wandering fire, Cha'im lies deep within the Aschar region on the Surface. It is the volcanic fury of the land here that provide the settlement with its wealth and its most common source of death. Read More About Aschar Region
The 'Pen'
The pillar in the center of the Cha'im valley has been burrowed through like an ants nest with tunnels and little rooms. From its walls hang gibbets with dead or dying slaves as a warning to other and terrible screams are heard from within. Few are sent to the Pen and emerge alive. Those who do are never the same.Ash-Lungs
Working day and night with ash cause a range of terrible affliction, the worst of which is ash-lungs. It occurs when the lungs become so coated in ash that the unfortunate soul can barely breathe and every cough comes out as thick, black phlegm that smells like tar. It isn't immediately deadly but so debilitating that any slave so afflicted is already dead in the eyes of their overseer.Ashen Skies
Aschar is home to some of the most violent storms of the Surface. Winds whip the ash into vast tidal ways of darkness and drown the world. Those caught outside can't even see their own hand in front of them and sometimes suffocate in the storm. When Cha'im is struck, everyone is herded inside and all doors are bolted shut. Once they are, the door will not open until the storm has passed, no matter who pleads from the other side.If it isn't storms, it is earthquakes and volcanic eruptions that threaten Cha'im with destruction. Already, part of the valley has been shattered by tremors. There's very little they can do about it, so the people of Cha'im go about their days as if it wasn't there.
The Sprawl
Cha'ims subterranean connect to the Sprawl, an Outer Shell region that bind many parts of Araea together. It is through the Sprawl that most of Cha'ims ash wanders further down into Araea and to city-states like Ahumahi and Mharaji. Read More About The Sprawl
by Dive Store Exile
I'm not surprised that those who bring more horror to Araea are not the monsters but the humans.
It's a bit of a running theme :D
Creator of Araea, Megacorpolis, and many others.