Bellport Mines: Horgren's Mine, Pyre

About 600 miners work at each of the vital electrum mines. The miners are slaves, criminals, and captured demihumans, brutally treated by the orcs who carefully guard the mines. The orcs are given a percentage of the value of ores extracted, with payment in kind—which means weaponry. The garrisons of Imperial Highlanders here (150 at each mine) loathe this posting, and many would happily defect to join the bulk of their army to the west.

Horgren's mine is notoriously unsafe because of frequent flooding and the many sinkholes. Pit props rot swiftly here, and dozens of miners die in cave-ins each year. Pyre is so named because a strange stone formation atop the mine resembles the funeral pyre of some old barbarian tribes, and there are the usual tales of a curse being laid on the place. The highlanders have an additional reason for hating dispatch to this place. Both mines occasionally suffer monster attacks from xorn, horgar, and the like, but each highlander garrison has a small number of junior priests and mages among its number and can usually deal with such problems swiftly. There are also several unnamed, small slate and stone quarries in the hills northwest of Bellport. These are guarded by relatively large garrisons (400 or so orcs each). The laborers here are zombies, animated from those fallen in the wars. No living humans are allowed to enter these quarries, and as a result all manner of rumors have grown up concerning what fell evils lurk there.