Prospect

Prospect is a historic Petalcap Vale mining town in the rocky mountains of of Caudal G6.

Demographics

The population of Prospect is majority (>90%) Vale Verdial, though the 'old money' in the town likes to trace its ancestry back to the days of the Classical Verdials. Small populations of Blackthorn Verdial employed at the still-active mines and New Voxelians harboring romantic and Voluntarist sentiments also reside in the sleepy exurb.

Government

Prospect is part of the municipal Petalcap Vale political system, but it also maintains a mayor and town council as traditional positions to handle day-to-day affairs. The city hall is a historic landmark that also the courthouse, jail, and administrative office complex for the town.

Industry & Trade

Mining was, and remains, the primary industry of the region. Though the precious metal veins may have played out early in the history of the town (see Districts), other metals and minerals remain to be discovered and are now extracted by more advanced means. The wealth of the mines is exported back to the national core or, with the blessing of the Petalcap Vale Customs Authority, to foreign business partners for use in manufacturing.

Infrastructure

The rocky, steeply-sloped terrain of the Prospect environs means that roads leading into and out of the town have many switchbacks that tend to become blocked with snow during the winter months. Storehouses all around main street stow away copious amounts of emergency water and food rations for those times when access is difficult or impossible. The single local airship landing pad is a platform raised over the surrounding crags; this site is set a mile away from the town center so as not to clash with the aesthetics of the historic downtown area.

Districts

Prospect can be broadly separated into the downtown area and the mining areas outside of town, though this distinction is only appropriate above ground.
The downtown area consists mostly of commercial spaces, taverns, and limited residential accomodations. During a silver rush in the 9500's AR, miners from across the Vale's holdings came to town and won or lost vast sums of money by speculating on the mineral resources of the region. This commercial core served to siphon a bit of the income generated by these activities by providing useful goods and services to the prospectors for which the growing settlement was ultimately named.
The whole region of Prospect is criss-crossed with a vast system of naturally-occuring caves and mineshafts, the latter of which run the gamut with regards to age, profitability, and stability. During the rush, much of the region's precious metal reserves were plumbed out, but veins of useful heavy metals and other minerals have since been detected in the depths. Occasionally, one of the older shafts will collapse somewhere below the town proper, creating subsidences that threaten the structural foundations of buildings and streets there. Efforts are ongoing to identify voids at risk of collapse and either shore them up for better use (i.e. through the installation of an agri-mine or period museum spaces) or, should this prove impossible, fill them in with tailings and concrete to prevent collapse.

Tourism

Vale Verdial tourists in particular enjoy visiting Prospect to have an experience that hearkens back to an older, simpler time before contact with the rest of the Manifold Sky.

Architecture

While many of the smaller timber buildings in the town have long since collapsed under the weight of weather and time, many of the larger buildings or those constructed of stronger materials - usually red bricks and stucco - have survived to be maintained under historical preservation efforts. In a curious turn of events, these buildings often have the freshest and most vibrant paint in town due to the ongoing process of restoring them.

Geography

As a Caudal Tesseract location adjacent to the Ventral Tesseract, the Prospect environs are cold, rocky, and mountainous. Winters are long and snowy, with snow accumulations in the nearby edge and corner mountain ranges often stacking up before crashing down in avalanches. The town itself is protected by its elevation, sitting atop a lower peak in their own right, but these avalanches have the tendency of burying access roads with snow and debris that must be excavated to restore automobile access to the rest of the Vale. Numerous hotsprings produce steam that billows out through crevices, cave entrances, and mine elevators nestled throughout the terrain, sinking to form freezing fog during the winter months.

Climate

Prospect is cool year-round and gets an average amount of precipitation. Winds sometimes scour the valley floors, and flash floods sometimes accompany the summer rains and snowmelt.

Type

Town

Population

15,682

Inhabitant Demonym

Prospector(s)

Owning Organization

Petalcap Vale