Hundermak: An Underground Mining City

Hundermark is located in the far East of Lamara, quite close to its coast, and is just bustling with human rights violations... not like "human rights" is even a concept in Lamara: The Nation of the Gods' Gift Peninsula.

Food, equipment and workers, almost all of them slaves, go in and corpses, human excrement and the highest productivity of raw ore in all of Lamara comes out.

Coal doesn't really work all that well in the Afterlife, plus nobody's comfortable with putting the means to turn those ores into weapons right there with the slaves, so the ores are instead sent across much of Lamara to be smelted and smithed into tools, weapons and armour. This means it's common for the ores to be sent miles upon miles away only to return right back to the city in the form of a pickaxe or a sword for the guards.

The city and the surrounding area is ruled by the Paggini family, who are currently mostly Krysa, meaning they can grow vast amounts of crystal from their bodies, due to generations of close ties with Monarchs, who are also Krysa, who often look to Hundermark for the ores needed to equip vast armies for wars.

The enslavement of the Brijilds - their thing is fire freckles - has been greatly enjoyed by the Pagginis, who use Brijild fuel for explosives in the mines. It has also somewhat devalued other fuel sources like coal and oil (which aren't great fuels in the Afterlife anyway. Simply put magic is in the air and when it's in contact with coal, oil and other high-energy fuels the odds of spontaneous combustion get very high).

The Pagginis being Krysa is a massive advantage in these caves as the crystals can be used to prevent cave/tunnel collapses, rip apart rock or block ways in and out of places, whether what they're blocking is water, horrific underground creatures or they're trapping poorly behaved slaves in a tunnel section without any airflow to make an example for the other slaves.

Demographics

Well, slavery comes from either being the child of slaves, being taken captive in war, being punished for a crime or being sold by your parents/kidnapped as a child. So, disproportionately many people of ethnic groups that normally only come into Lamara via being taken captive (*cough* every ethnicity outside of Lamara *cough*) and very high rates of childhood abuse and the like.

Around 85% of the population are slaves. Most of the rest work in buying ores to transport and sell elsewhere, as guards overseeing the slaves, prostitutes who are often paid by slaves in ores they successfully hid on themselves rather than handing in as well as guards and others with actual money, various craftsmen and traders needed to keep the city running at all and of course the nobility.

Male slaves are mostly preferred over child and female slaves due to the difference in physical strength, so 70% of the slaves are male. The female 30% are mostly born right there in the city, in comparison to more of the males being brought in from outside. Life expectancy for slaves is very short. Many of the slaves that are born in the city have a non-slave parent, which should grant them freedom, but their non-slave parents do not claim them, including some slaves actually having noble blood.

It's generally not considered a good place to raise children, so very few people other than the slaves who can't leave or have access to contraception and nobles, who have private areas and guards, actually have kids while living there, with most guards and the like intending to leave once they've gotten enough money.

Government

It's more of a business than a government since the rules are being imposed on personal property via being allowed to do what they want with them rather than with actual laws and courts, but under the current system slaves mine and mine and mine and the more and better ores they bring in the more and better food they're given.

Because gangs of slaves taking ores from those who actually mined them is harmful to productivity (the ones actually mining lose incentive when it's just gonna be taken from them when they're too exhausted to fight back, or they fight back and get hurt making them less effective workers, so less gets mined) it's punishable by death to hand in ores you didn't mine or assist in mining.

Gangs are always immediately hunted down and killed, often personally by the Pagginis who are a very martial family (generally a non-magic noble family will not have members who will personally fight alongside their forces, but it's an expectation and simply practical if a noble family is magic). In addition to hurting productivity, gangs that take ores can become the building blocks for the organisation of slave uprisings, which can be difficult to quell when 85% of the city's population are slaves and most of the remaining 15% are craftsmen and the like who are gonna run away rather than fight.

Infrastructure

The area the non-slaves live in is heavily fortified and deliberately designed so that the hordes of slaves would have to funnel through relatively thin passages that prevent them from being able to overwhelm guards and nobles, instead turning uprisings into brutal wars of attrition.

Lots of shared rooms and utilities for the slaves. There are toilets, the excrement from which is collected and sent up to the surface to prevent buildup and used as fertilizer. More than a few slaves have left the city in this dung, either as corpses disposed of into it or by hiding within it.

The corpses in the dung are always stabbed with spears by guards to prevent anyone who tries to escape from doing so alive, and even if someone manages to stay quiet and still despite, say, being stabbed in the arm well they've been stabbed in the arm with a spear that's also just stabbed corpses and human excrement (a lot of these guards like to stab the poop before stabbing the corpses, y'know just to be real assholes to anyone trying to escape), so good luck not dying from an infection and disease cos Jogodi's Grand Temple is a long way away and it generally refuses treatment from escaped slaves.

Assets

Lots of ores and the slaves to mine it. Also a lot of wealth from these ores to spend on whatever the Pagginis please.

History

The town was found during the Krysa Empire's expansion across Lamara. The locals surrendered upon seeing a fully equipped army with 12 times as many soldiers as they had people and animals put together waltz in, but many of their homes were looted and burnt down anyway.

The town leader was made the overlord of the surrounding villages and placed as a subject of Lord Kulfire, a Tummen. The ore potential of the cave leading miles upon miles underground with endless exposed ores lead to more slaves and craftsmen being sent in and the Kulfire and Hundermark families merged via marriage.

This family was ousted for opposing the Monarch in a civil war, being replaced with the Pagginis, who were permitted to marry Krysa - Crystal Magic Family to make their family a Krysa family and use the Krysa powers for their running of the mines, which only continued to become more and more important as more underground tunnel and cave systems were found and more ores accessed.

Tourism

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAH

Not really, no. Some nobles come here to sell slaves and stuff, as well as some who bring their kids to make a "this is how the world works" point, but that doesn't exactly count as tourism.

Architecture

Very ugly. Only the area inhabited by nobles and their retainers looks particularly nice, the rest is straight up dystopic.

Geography

Located in a mountain range near the sea. Forests are quite sparse and rivers large and fast-flowing, but with many sharp rocks sticking up. The rocks sticking up from these rivers are magnetic and themselves made from an ore, the metal particles having pulled together back when the land they were in was made of lava, and later now that they're solid rock the weaker, non-metallic rock around them has been worn away by the rivers, leaving them sticking out and as a huge hazard for anyone seeking to get in or out of the area by river.

Natural Resources

ORES

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Founding Date

Unknown. The area is fairly isolated and villages were already found in the area, with the city being a town among them, but the people didn't record their history by any means that gave a clear founding date.

Alternative Name(s)

Meat grinder, corpse factory, etc.

Population

300,000ish. Very big when you remember what kinda technology they're working with.

Inhabitant Demonym

Pagginis, guards, traders, prostitutes, slaves.

Owning Organization

Krysa Empire, or "just Lamara": It rules Lamara