Shard

The town of Shard sits just north of the Derathaini archipelago in the southeast that gently wraps around the broken bay. While Miers City and the trading village of Midway are also on the coast near the archipelago, Shard has the distinction of being the first to uncover the fragments of malerite from the islands. Though Shard has never grown to the size of Miers, it has steadily continued mining, shaping, and selling Malerite.

Demographics

The elder families of Shard are all human, some with long-diluted goblinblood but others from old and as they see it respectable Derathaini families. As the bulk of the residents are members of this family the town is likewise nearly entirely human. A few gobs and bogs have made their homes in Shard, working the trade caravans and mines, and are generally treated as fellow members of the community if not entirely welcome friends. As one might expect in Derathain though, such individuals hold little sway over how the town is run. The trade caravans that pass through the town are largely human as well, though a handful of various goblinkin and tangre come through as well. These caravans bring most of the essentials that the locals cannot craft themselves and run the circut from Derath City down to Miers City with Shard being a required stop along the way. Many of the fasions and trinkets in vogue in the capital pass through Shard, but the peoples of the town tend to ignore such trends. There's little call for finery in a town of sailors and miners.

Government

The town is led by a group of elders rather than a single lord, each representing one of the major families that helped to build Shard into what it is today. The elders hold no expressed political authority granted by the crown as a regional lord would, but they control the Malerite trade so in effect the town is under their rule.

Defences

Shard is poorly defended, but a small band of mercenaries maintains a contract to defend the town from outside threats. Rarely is more than one of their number present in the town, but as yet they've been a comforting if unnecessary source of security. This is perhaps mostly thanks to the trade caravans who routinely travel through and who prefer to keep things along their major routes nice and calm. In times of danger, the town does have a very small militia, but they mostly act to help the town and local farms prepare for dangerous weather rather than for some enemy force.

Infrastructure

The town itself is simple and efficient. Most of the town is dedicated to the refining, working, and trade of Malerite, but there is a general trader, smithy, shipwright, and a number of fishmongers. Most of the structures in the town are simple, wooden buildings with the nicer ones reinforced with clay bricks. Only the Malerite refineries are of more sturdy material, mostly stone. The town sits a short ways from the shoreline, but the docks are treated as part of the main town. Here many of the small, sturdy boats used to ferry miners and ore from the islands to the mainland can be found. Beyond this a small number of farms dot the surrounding area, all of which bring their excess to the town and contribute it to the community stock in exchange for other goods and services they require.

Assets

The town would be little more than a fishing village if not for the trade of Malerite. The raw shards are often unstable and must be extracted from the rock in which they reside and refined into a more usable state. Working raw Malerite can be tricky though as the shards, if mishandled, may explode into coundless, razor sharp bits of shrapnel. This is perhaps, more than any other reason, why Miers and Midway have not sought to overtake Shard as purveyors of the valuable ore.

Type

Town