Creature in the Mine

A ragnogue monster has invaded one of Lady Fontenay's mines and eaten all of its miners. To get rid of it before it eats anyone else and to reopen the mine before her country is ruined, she has no choice but to go down inside the mine all by herself and kill it. Down there, she comes upon her annoying neighbour and rival, who has decided to be "helpful".

The world

Geography and politics

This story is set in a world that is similar to France in the second half of the 19th century, except that the country is divided into smaller independent states that are part of a huge federal empire. The story is set in the north (equivalent to the North of France), in one of these states, the Duchy of Fontenay. The North is a region rich from trade and from the production of textile and metallurgy products.
There is no emperor of this empire. Instead, the states send their leader or a representative to a senate where they debate and vote federal laws and to regulate trade disputes. The states themselves are loosely allied together, but there is still a lot of tensions between them, and skirmishes and succession wars are frequent.
The Duchy of Fontenay has been lucky in the past centuries to have been mostly at peace because it is prosperous and it had a clear line of succession. However, tensions are increasing lately with some commercial rivals, as they are all developing a similar new technology and are rushing to be the first and the best in doing so.

Technology

They have trains linking together the big cities inside each state as well as all the capitals. They also have lifts in the mine. However, all of these technologies are powered with a mixture of coal and magic. Lately, a few people have started to develop an equivalent to electricity with the help of magic, as well as the devices that are powered by it.

The magic

Magic is a kind of energy that is produced naturally in the body of any living organisms. After their death, leftovers magic can accumulate in the ground and in some rock deposits such as coal, oil, or metals.
Magic is very hard to control beyond specific tricks that come easily to a given species as part of their defence or hunting strategy. Beyond this, human have develop a technology that allows them to control what magic do and that works similarly to a circuit card once someone "activates" it by feeding their magic into it. These are "amulets". Amulets need to be constantly consciously controlled by their wearer or their magic dissipates and they stop working.
The new magical electricity technology that is currently being developed would allow amulets to work independently.

Purpose	Example	Illustration
Detection	Amulets that glow in the presence of specific dangers or that increase their wearer's senses. For example, the Fontenays have a thin silver bracelet with a clear stone attach to it, and that stone gets a green glow when a ragnogue is nearby.
Defence	Shields reinforced with magic. Different types of shields protect from different dangers, with the most efficient being extremely rare and only used during war. In Fontenay, these shields are big rectangle made of bronze with a multitude of runes painted on their surface. Because of the long time since they have been truly used, everyone is lacking the training to use them properly with speed and dexterity.
Offence	Blades reinforced with magic.

The mines

The story is set in the mine of Walmines, in the Duchy of Fontenay.
Mine Vocabulary

Mine vocabulary	Definition
Shafts	The means of egress from the mine - a hole connecting several levels of a mine to the surface, with winding gear being used to transport a cage between the shaft station at each level of the mine.
Headframe	The machinery standing above a mine shaft, where the winding gear is located.
Tunnels	Standard mine galleries.
District	A specific section of the tunnels. Each district is given a name.
Adit	A horizontal underground mine tunnel that nevertheless reaches the surface (e.g. because of a hill), usually used for drainage.
Winzes	A hole connecting different levels of a mine, with a ladder used to travel between levels. Called a raise when going upwards and a slump when going downwards.
Drif	A road tunnel joining different section of the coal seam or different seams.
Gate	A tunnel leading to the face of a coal seam.
Face	The section of the coal seam that is currently being mined. Each seam is given a name (e.g. Cécile).
Corve	Woven wood basket used to transport coal.
Pillar	A section of unworked coal left to support the roof of the mine tunnel.
Damp	The collective name given to all gases (other than air) found in coal mines. Specific types of damp design specific gases, such as firedamp for methane.
Grisou hit / Firedamp explosion	A gas (methane, CH4) explosion inside a mine. Grisou hit is the French expression for it, with grisou the miners' nickname for methane gas, while firedamp is the English name for it.
Taffanelles	Dams to stop the propagation of explosions. Buckets containing water and non-inflammable dust (e.g. sand) are placed on top of planks in a fake ceiling, so that if there is an explosion they fall down and muffle it. A wall with a door is generally built in front of them to divide the tunnel and further contain explosion. A French technology invented by the engineer Taffanelle after the Courrière mine disaster.
Dust hit	An explosion caused by the inflammation of the dust in suspension in the tunnels of a mine.
Outburst	A sudden ejection of gas and rocks from the wall of a mine, caused by the gas pressure. Often preceded by a "bump", a sudden movement of the strata of rocks.

Mine Dangers

Dangers	Explanation
Darkness	There is, of course, no natural light in mines, and so magic is used to make portable lights for miners to carry. However, in some sections of the mine magic cannot be used safely as it interacts with the rocks. Instead, miners have to use a primitive technology: they put clay on their helmet and use it to make a candle stick there. The presence of an open flame then increases the risk of explosion
Holes	In the darkness of a mine, people can miss holes leading from one level of the mine to another and fall through them.
Rocks movement	Outbursts of rocks from the walls, a cave in because of weakened wooden beams or an explosion...
Bad air	Firedamp, CO, CO2, H2S, Rn... These gases are released by the rocks and can turn the air inside the tunnels unbreathable at any moment. Good ventilation through shafts, adits, and raises is important to avoid this.
Explosions and fire	The inflammable gases (mainly firedamp) and dust from the mine can explode at any time, especially in the presence of an open flame.
Heat	Even without explosion, mines can get extremely hot.
Flood	Storms, water infiltration... A good evacuation of water is important in the mines, and blocked tunnels can quickly become flooded
Contaminated waters	Stagnant waters absorb noxious gases from the mine and release it when disturb, and so retracing your steps after you walk through them is dangerous. Chemicals from the mine also seep into the water and can make it toxic and acidic or alkaline and burn you.
Biological life	Lethal moulds growing underground, diseases carried by animals like bats and rats...

The characters

The Duchess of Fontenay

Her grace Cécilianne de Fontenay is a young woman in her mid thirties. Since her parents died of disease a decade ago, she has been leading her duchy.
Her parents thought themselves above engineers and scientists and looked down at them and at nobles who mixed with them. This led to tense relationships with their neighbour, who in turn did everything in his power to inconvenience and annoy them.
Cécilianne does not share her parents' views and instead has always enjoyed tinkering with amulets and trying to enhance them. Now that there is nobody left around to judge her, she has gotten close to her own engineers and follow closely and encourage their research. This has made her state an unexpected competitor in the race to develop magical electricity.

The Fontenay people

The duchess' retainers:

Her general, the seigneur de Mortepierre.

The leader of her guards, the seigneur d'Anceau.

A couple of guards she has brought with her to the mine.

Civilians:

Her local representative and the manager of the mine, the count de Vauban.

A group of mining engineers, with their leader, Charles de Maurois, who is responsible for mining operations and the safety of the miners.

The family of all the miners of Walmines who have disappeared and who were presumably all eaten by the ragnogue.

The annoying neighbour

His Grace Julcéus of Alessain is Fontenay's neighbour. The two duchies have similar resources and industries and have both a robust trade with each other and a deep rivalry.
Julcéus is slightly older than Cécilianne. He is very clever, skilled with magic, and a charismatic politician. He has numerous spies everywhere in the empire and is nicknamed "the spider" because he seems to know everything that happens everywhere, even more so when it occurs in Fontenay.
He is personally deeply involved in his engineers' development of the new magical electricity technology and is the current leader of this technology race.

Monster: the ragnogue

Ragnogues are huge serpentine creatures that live in darkness and thrive underground. When not taking over mines and natural caverns, they can use magic to dig tunnels of their own to create a lair. There are lots of rumours of treasures found in there, either from the leftovers of the wealthy people they have eaten, or from their magic transforming the rocks around them to make them condense into precious stones.
Ragnogues are dangerous creatures that can roam far form their lair to find a huge number of prey before coming back to digest them for up to a few months. This makes it very difficult to find them and kill them. In the empire, concerted efforts over a few centuries have nearly driven them to extinction, and it is nowadays very rare to find traces of their passages.
Despite their rarity, most noble families on the continent still have old amulets that allow for their detection so that their wearer can be warned of their nearby presence and not jump straight into their open maws.
In Fontenay, Ragnogues have not been seen in more than 150 years. In addition, the mines of Walmines in Fontenay are rather young and not too deep, and so should not have attracted a ragnogue over that of their neighbours. One has to wonder how that ragnogue found its way there...