Kaduma

Cold Timber, Hard Rock

Boreal forest surrounds Kaduma: spruce and fir standing close and dark, thin sour soil beneath them, snow-quiet winters and a short working summer. Farming was never the point here. The town was placed for what lies under the trees, and the trees are the second half of the arrangement, cut and squared into props, hauled down the shafts, burned for the charcoal the work consumes. Ore comes up, is sorted at the surface, and goes out along roads that freeze hard in the cold months and turn to mud in the thaw, which sets the rhythm of the year as firmly as the seams do.

What Kaduma Answers To

The people are Ashanar who came with the third wave of expansion, when the easier ground was long taken and the forest was what remained. They are a self-contained sort, used to distance and to doing without. The town's allegiance is given to Nurazar; the faction that rules it is seated at Saradir, whose name the wider bloc also carries, so that Kaduma's obedience runs outward through two names before it comes to rest.