Mining & Tunnelling

Attributes: .................Strength & Constitution

Level: .........................DF: 3 BCS 40%; 500 Exp

The character is skilled in the driving of a tunnel through rock or other materials while making sure they are safely shored up. He can read the nature of the rock, fractures and fault lines understanding where and where not to excavate galleries and chambers.

Under normal conditions, in 1 hour a miner can remove a volume of hard stone indicated in the table Mining and Tunnelling Results. Two miners can work side by side to carve out a wider/taller tunnel but not a deeper one. There is only room for one person at a time to do the hacking and splitting of rock inward to the rock face.

The time involved includes the clearing of rubble and the correct shoring of the works to prevent cave ins. The figures assume that the miner has an assistant worker who clears the rubble, if he is not around then the production rate is half.

When tunnelling through soft stone like tufa the rate increases to 1 ½ times that of tunnelling through hard stone. If tunnelling through soft materials other than stone like earth the rate can be increased to twice that of hard rock tunnelling.

A cubic foot of hard rock has a weight of approx. 275 lbs and soft rock approx. 175 - 200 lbs and other soft materials 75 - 175 lbs. Depending upon what the material is and if it is dry, damp, soaking wet etc.

The table Mining and Tunnelling Results show the per hour productivity of mining. A work shift in those day would be 10 hours and even with rest breaks a minder expends 2 FP per hour of work.

A cave in under an ocean, lake or river will start to flood the excavation unless lady luck is on the side of the miners. The chance of such an excavation flooding is 110 - PSF% of the chief miner. If the flooding does take place then the crit die indicated the number of inches the water is rising per hour. A 10 on the crit die indicates that an inch of water ingress each 5 minutes has to be dealt with! In short the miners should get out as fast as they can.