Diamond Lake
Diamond Lake nestles in the rocky crags of the Cairn Hills, three days east of the city of Greyhawk, to which it is subject. Compared to nearby Blackstone and Steaming Spring, Diamond Lake is the smallest and most remote of the three towns. It services the largest number of mines, over a wider territory than the other towns, but these mines tend to be much smaller than those among the lower operations.
The town stretches along the shore of a lake whose clarity once must have inspired the community's (and the lake's) name. Now it is as stained and muddy as the water around the other towns, soiled with the cast heaps of mine tailings and churned by the busy commerce along its shore.
A great earthen road called the Vein bisects the town. With few exceptions, those living north of the Vein enjoy a much better life than the wretches living below it. All of the town’s social classes congregate in the Vein’s central square. Roughly every two weeks, someone in the town upsets someone else so greatly that the only recourse is a duel to the death at the center of a ring of cheering miners. The bookmakers of the Emporium and the Feral Dog do brisk business on such occasions, which tend to draw huge crowds. On less violent nights, the square is still home to a thousand pleasures and poisons; if Diamond Lake is a creature, the Vein’s central square is its excitable, irregular heart.
Government
The town of Diamond Lake, similar to the other working communities in the Cairn Hills like Blackstone and Steaming Spring, is governed and protected by the Free City of Greyhawk.
The city’s chief man in the region is Governor-Mayor Lanod Neff, a lecherous philanderer eager to solidify his power and keep the mine managers in line. Neff exerts his capricious will via the agency of the grandiloquent Sheriff Cubbin, a man so renowned for corruption that many citizens assumed the announcement of his commission was a joke until he started arresting people.
The alliance between the governor-mayor and his pocket police might not be enough to cow Diamond Lake’s powerful mine managers, but Lanod Neff holds a subtle advantage thanks to the presence of his distinguished brother, the scrupulous Allustan, a wizard from the Free City who retired to Diamond Lake five years ago. None dare move against Neff so long as Allustan is around.
Defences
A garrison of sixty militia soldiers stands ready to defend the mines of Diamond Lake from bandits and rogue lizardfolk from the southern swamps. Rival cults share the same flock of potential converts only because the timing is not yet right for outright warfare. They muster their forces for the coming battle. Things are not safe in Diamond Lake, and a right-thinking person would have every reason to want to get out of town as soon as possible.
Despite its squalor, however, Diamond Lake is crucial to Greyhawk's economy. The city’s directors thus take a keen interest in local affairs, noting the rise and fall of the managers who run Diamond Lake’s mines in trust for the government.
Industry & Trade
Iron and silver from Diamond Lake’s mines fuel the capital’s markets and support its soldiers and nobles with the raw materials necessary for weapons and finery. This trade draws hundreds of skilled and unskilled laborers and artisans, all hoping to strike it rich.
Guilds and Factions
Instead of scheming against the government, Diamond Lake’s six mine managers plot endlessly against one another, desperate to claim a weakened enemy’s assets while at the same time protecting their own. While they are not nobles, the mine managers exist in a strata above normal society. They consider themselves far above their employees, many of whom are indentured or effectively enslaved as part of a criminal sentence. The miners’ loyalty tends to map directly to the working conditions, pay, and respect offered to the miners by their wealthy masters.
The most ambitious and manipulative mine manager in Diamond Lake is Balabar Smenk, a disquieting schemer who hopes to gain a monopoly on the town’s mining patents by forcing his enemies into bankruptcy and offering to buy their claims at the last minute for coppers on the gold piece.
History
In ages past, Diamond Lake boasted an export more valuable than metal in the form of treasure liberated from the numerous tombs and burial cairns crowding the hills around the town. These remnants of a half-dozen long-dead cultures commanded scandalous prices from the Free City elite, whose insatiable covetousness triggered a boom in the local economy. Those days are long gone, though. The last cairn in the region coughed up its treasures decades ago, and few locals pay much mind to stories of yet-undiscovered tombs and un-plundered burial cairns.
Tourism
These days, only a handful of treasure seekers visit the town, and few return to the Free City with anything more valuable than a wall rubbing or an ancient tool fragment.
Architecture
The oldest buildings pack the lakeshore, where fishing vessels once docked and stored their impressive catches. That commerce has abandoned the town entirely, for the shining waters that once gave Diamond Lake its name are now so polluted as to make fishing impossible. Many old warehouses have been converted into cheap housing for miners and laborers, and no one is safe outdoors after dark. As one walks north along the streets of Diamond Lake, the buildings become sturdier and the spirits of their inhabitants likewise improve.
Natural Resources
The mines of Diamond Lake are owned by the city but are leased to various individuals for life. These mine managers are usually industrious individuals who are responsible for the business of mining. Fully half of the product of each mine is the property of the city, but many mine managers, Governor-Mayors, and prospectors have made good fortunes on the other half.
Diamond Lake crouches in the lowland between three hills and the lake itself.
Founding Date
Unknown
Type
Town
Population
1,023 (96% Human, 2% Halfling, 2% Other)
Location under