Infusions: Black powder, barnacles.
Specific locations:
- Kegham (or keggum or keggim?)
- Kennerit town co-op: straddling the border between the Blackpowder coast and Felletoum, on the Ruserinap River (which is navigable as far as the town), this farming co-op lives a peaceful yet poor existence by paying protection money to the raiders of Port Rutinap down the river. They collect mussels from the river, graze salt-tolerant sheep on the Blackpowder heathlands, raise gooseberries in Felletoum, and once a year collect peaches that are borne downriver from the Runep peaks to the northeast.
- the warped gardens: simultaneously the pleasure-gardens and defence for the palace of a merchant-noble during the first Blackpowder Cartel, this encircling garden was extensively reshaped by a team of Cyanflame Mages over a period of years and at great expense. it contains a river that flows in an eternal loop, and is filled with beautiful plants and statuary. it is also virtually impossible to navigate without secret knowledge only given to a few. the gardens have endured for millennia, passing through a long period of abandonment and wilderness, being inhabited by raiders, and resettlement by more recent cartels. located on the horn of Caracar.
History:
The Blackpowder age was defined by the expansion of the Blackpowder Coast to occupy large swathes of coastline around the
Bindkelp Sea, the result of massive deliberate seeding of blackpowder barnacles that infused the surrounding lands and canny mercantile manoeuvring by merchants, both of which roughly coincided with the rise of the first blackpowder cartel. this growth was precipitated by, and interfered with, the development of the
Gyrist trade routes. With trade by sea almost entirely moderated by the Cartel, and quantities and prices of blackpowder kept artificially high even as demand increased, the coast became one of the pre-eminent powers of the age, able to enforce their will with galleons and tamed broadside whales. They also grew enormously wealthy off of piracy and protection rackets. Cannons and guns, while still costly, became a common feature of the world's battlefields.
During this time the arquebus became common and widely available, with fancier firing mechanisms (often using fire-infused materials) for the wealthy, powerful, or ingenious.
However, after a few centuries the first cartel began to show cracks; prices dropped, and blackpowder became even cheaper as a race to the bottom commenced. The blackpowder barnacles were over-harvested, resulting in the retreat of the blackpowder infusion along much of its territory. Even many broadside whales were harvested, a desperate get-rich-quick scheme that merely exacerbated the problem.
Over the coming centuries, the coast continues to decline in importance, and gunpowder returned to being a scarce resource. In the modern day, isolated patches of blackpowder coast are periodically united under new Cartels, almost like royal dynasties, that tend to be short-lived and unstable. Nonetheless, the Coast still has a great legacy of power, and is able to throw its weight around on the global stage even as its decline continues – comparable to the "sick man of europe", the ottoman empire circa WW1, though over a longer time-scale.
spyglasses are popular here - originally traded up from
Verdigris Plains, but now a known technology in these regions - though expensive.
Questions:
- Where is the originating heartland, if anywhere - Isthmus?
- is there a slave trade? is there indentured servitude?
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