Infrastructure: Part Two Hundred and Forty Eight

As a child Vlan Forth of Anya had heard stories from her mother about the land her father lived before he was taken as a slave. Such talk was done in secret, for it was a sin to desire the chaotic unbound lands not yet claimed by the pinnacles of creation. What he heard of it gave him no inclinations of doing so, but there were those who would have taken it the wrong way. In the last few years he had heard some rumors circulate about the Coldlands, most of them far fetched. He did not think about it much however, mostly he focused on his job as not doing so was a good way to get maimed.

Like many unskilled slaves Vlan had exchanged owners a couple of times, two years ago he was bought by House Galxrath where he was put to work building and then manning an expansion on their foundries helping lay brick, setting up scaffolding, mixing mortar and other such jobs. They were the largest in Cendoliath and remained that way even though their rivals in House Celizoth had and were expanding theirs. The new furnaces were a bit different than the old ones according to those who'd been here such as iron engines that pumped the furnaces. There had also been argument among the masters about such devices, some wanted to add more of them while others did not, but considering such decisions was not his place.

In any case after their completion he was tasked with bringing in loads of Coal, Iron and rubble from the warehouses to the new great furnaces where it would be carried up by a treadmill powered affair that lifted up buckets and fed into the huge volcano like tower (a comparison praticularly common on the Obsidian Isles) to begin it's transformation into iron. Some involved huge cauldrons which spat sparks and others involved secondary furnaces, forges and a few odd contraptions, but all of them involved being close to burning sparks, red hot metal and a nasty combination of ringing noise, sooty darkness and blinding lights. If nothing else he was glad to be away from that with his wheelbarrow, though a few of his fellow wheelbarrow pushers had been reassigned to the foundry floor to replace those that accidents had claimed. What all that Iron was to be used for he did not know, though he did know that some of it became cannons and that a lot of it was going to the shipyards.

However for the past few weeks he noticed something strange, the huge warehouses that contained the materials he was to feed the furnaces with were slowly emptying out.  He never saw the huge rooms filled to capacity, but they always had a huge pile of iron rich rocks or black coals in them which he could see being replenished as carts emptied more in. However day by day the once daunting heaps became smaller and smaller as it was topped up less and less. Now the iron stores were almost entirely empty with an old man sweeping up what scraps he could to a few pitiful piles that he doubted would last the day. Coal was not as bad, but the stores were dwindling. Even so he did his job, filled his barrow and made his way hoping that he would not be blamed for this or be caught in the rage of a frustrated ironmaster.

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