Diamond Lake
Diamond Lake nestles in the rocky crags of the Cairn Hills, three days east of the Free City to which it is subject. Iron and silver from Diamond Lake's mines fuel the capital's markets and support its soldiers and nobles with weapons and finery.
This trade draws hundreds of laborers and artisans, all hoping to strike it rich. In ages past, Diamond Lake boasted an export more valuable than metal: treasure liberated from the numerous tombs and burial cairns crowding the hills around the town. These remnants of a half-dozen long-dead cultures commanded scandalous prices from the Free City elite, whose insatiable covetousness triggered a boom in local economy.
Those days are long gone, though. The last cairn in the region coughed up its treasures decades ago, and few locals pay much mind to stories of yet-undiscovered tombs and unplundered cairns. These days, only a handful of treasure seekers visit the town, and few return to the Free City with anything more valuable than a wall rubbing or tool fragment.
In the hills surrounding the town, hundreds of laborers spend weeks at a time underground, breathing recycled air pumped in via systems worth ten times their combined salaries. The miners are the chattel of Diamond Lake, its seething, tainted blood. But they are also Diamond Lake's foundation, their weekly pay cycling back into the community via a gaggle of gambling dens, bordellos, ale halls, and temples.
Because work in the mines is so demanding and dangerous, most folk come to Diamond Lake because they have nowhere else to turn, seeking an honest trade of hard labor for subsistence-level pay, simply for lack of other options. Work in Diamond Lake is the last honest step before utter destitution or crimes of desperation. For some, it is the first step in the opposite direction: a careful work assignment to ease the burden on debtor-filled prisons, one last chance to make it in civil society.
Government
Governor-Mayor Lanod Neff is the ruler of Diamond Lake, and lives in the Lord Governor's Estate on a low hill overlooking the wealthier side of the Vein. The governor is known as a lecherous philanderer eager to solidify his own power by keeping the scurrilous mine managers in line.
Law and order in Diamond Lake are enforced by the grandiloquent Sheriff Cubbin, a man so corrupt that people thought his appointment was a joke until he began arresting people.
Garrison Commander Tolliver Trask is the leader of Diamond Lake's militia. Having distinguished himself in recent war, he has the respect of his soldiers and the community at large. He encourages his soldiers to stay out of local politics and focus on protecting the town, but is a supporter of Neff out of respect ofr the political process that put him in power, if not for the man himself.
Industry & Trade
Diamond Lake is a mining town. Once, it gained sizeable income from adventurers who came to plunder the cairns in the hills. But the hills are largely held to be picked clean, and now the town crawls along selling iron to the Free City.
Guilds and Factions
Diamond Lake's politics are largely split between three dichotomies: The Governor vs the Church of St. Cuthbert, Smenk and his goons vs. the Old Alliance, and the poor vs. the wealthy.
Governor-Mayor Lanod Neff resents the populous church's admonishions against corruption and wealth-hoarding. Given the church's popularity with the people, its doctrine forces him into a delicate balancing act between public favor and personal pleasures. The church's charity helps to keep the poverty of Diamond Lake just satisfied enough to prevent open revolt, however, and so he cannot easily afford to dismantle it.
Smenk moved to town around ten years ago when the Deepsipike Mine Collapse forced the Perrin family into financial ruin. Smenk bought their properties and manor at a pittance, and began buying up other properties left and right by any means necessary. Rumours among mine management suggest that Gelch Tilgast, a strict but efficient mine manager who held power in Diamond Lake long for a long time, is gathering allies to stop Smenk from taking over the town altogether. Which manager is on which side is heavily debated, but those who openly oppose Smenk often find themselves beset with troubles soon after that opinion comes to light.
Lastly, Diamond Lake suffers from a severe class divide. The Vein cuts through the town, dividing the flophouses and delapidated docks district from the city's defunct fishing days from the opulent manors and gaming-houses of the mine managers. Many of the town's poorest residence are working in the mines as an alternative to life in the Free City Prisons, others simply have nowhere else to go. Meanwhile, the managers who live on their sweat and blood continue breezily traveling between their in-town estates and their country houses near the Free City.
Maps
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Diamond Lake
A small mining settlement in the Cairn Hills, Diamond Lake's eponymous lake became too polluted to swim or fish in long ago. The southern end of the town is similarly delapidated, while the wealthy mine managers live opulently in their manors on the northern side of the Vein.
Type
Town
Population
752
Location under
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Characters in Location
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