Marked on the horizon by plumes of flame and smoke, the industrial city state of Stahlfel is a wretched hive of scum and villainy, simultaneously serving as a massive mining complex and commercial prison. While it boasts a great many technological wonders, the city state is only frequented by those who seek to purchase a large quantity of star metal or offload a large quantity of law breakers.
History
In the times immediately following the Great Cataclysm, metal was in high demand and, among all of the world’s many mining communities, the largest that remained was the small city of Stahlfel. This alone would not have ensured the city’s continued existence, but as it happened, the massive meteor crater, upon the edge of which Stahlfel stood, was the sole remaining source of the ‘star metal’ (a metal that exhibits the properties of a liquid) in the world.
As the sole provider of this must sought after metal, Stahlfel’s emergence as a center of industry was all but guaranteed. When the House Warden seized control of the city some three aeons past, introducing their contractual labor program and offering to rid surrounding lands of their criminal populace, Stahlfel’s fate was sealed.
Social Organization
Ostensibly the top of Stahlfel’s social ladder is embodied by the Mayor of the city state, but he is merely a puppet whose strings are pulled by the corrupt politicians of House Warden who reside within the Iron Tower. The undisputed lords of Stahlfel, the many members of House Warden use a strict regimen of fear to keep the lower classes in line.
Just one rung down from the members of House Warden on the social ladder, one finds the engineers and geologists, those indispensable fixtures of industry in Stahlfel. These folk command a degree of respect from House Warden, for without them, the thralls would not know where to dig and the many machines of the city state would fall into disrepair.
One rung up from the bottom of the social ladder loom the sadistic overseers and slavers who man the many ore pits of the meteor crater, ensuring that the thralls do as they are told and administering them their daily dose of Khopri powder. In the eyes of Stahlfel’s upper classes, overseers and slavers are seen as little better than the thralls that they drive.
Finally, you have the thralls themselves, prisoners committed to the ‘care’ of Stahlfel’s overseers by neighboring realms. For them, life in the city state is a punishment - the only right that they have is to earn their freedom by fulfilling a contract, working a prescribed number of seasons in the ore pits. Thralls rarely live to fulfill these contracts.
Economy
Nearly all of Stahlfel’s wealth resides in the hands of House Warden who. Stahlfel alone, amongst all of the Twilight realms, is the sole source of the much sought after ‘star metal’, a condition that the members of House Warden exploit to their own ends, imposing a massive tariff on all exports of the liquid steel from the city.
Vital as they are to the city’s continued existence, both engineers and geologists live quite well in Stahlfel, while overseers and slavers are paid just enough to scrape by (that said, most of them don’t care - they work specifically for the thrill of torturing others). Thralls, of course, are paid nothing for their labor - they work to earn their freedom.
Currency
The official currency of Stahlfel is the voucher, a printed paper note that is redeemable within the city’s walls for goods and services. By law, only members of House Warden may deal in currencies other than the voucher - all foreign currency that an individual possesses must be converted into vouchers for the duration their stay in Stahlfel.
Religion
In a society such as Stahlfel’s, where technology and science drive the economy, religion has little place. The common citizen of the city state has no interest or belief in religious icons, although it is rumored that the members of House Warden are devoted to a foul god-thing that resembles a giant, three-headed, toad.
Thralls are expressly forbidden by law to engage in any type of god worship (much as they are expressly forbidden to engage in any activity that may distract them from their labor in the ore pits), although rumors persist of secret shrines dedicated to gods of old, hidden deep within the bowels of abandoned mine shafts.
Food & Drink
Diet varies wildly among the social classes of Stahlfel. Members of House Warden dine regularly on fresh meat and hard cheese, while sipping wine imported from nearby New Midran. The city’s middle classes, on the other hand, often enjoys salted meats and stout ale in the local taverns, while overseers and slavers subsist on a diet of hard bread and water. Finally, the thralls have a diet all their own....
Once per shift a thrall is fed a bowl of flesh that has been harvested from the dead bodies of other thralls and reprocessed into a thick, stew-like, substance that is then spiked with a heavy dose of Khopri powder. Finally, at the beginning of every rotation during a shift, the slaver in charge of a given work team distributes to each thrall in his charge a ladle of dirty water to stave off the effects o heat stroke.
Clothing & Dress
Sitting comfortably in their tower, high above the ore pits far below, the members of House Warden arraign themselves in velvet robes, tunics of white silk, and cotton breeches. When they must depart their tower, they dress as normal citizens, lest they be identified and attacked by a disgruntled underling or crazed thrall.
The city state’s middle and lower classes, on the other hand, dress for work. All, save the thralls, wear leather breaches, canvas tunics, thick boots, and glass goggles to protect themselves from the many dangers of the ore pits. To distinguish between the members of the middle and lower class citizens working in the ore pits, emblems denoting their station have been emblazoned upon their tunics in bright yellow dye).
Finally, thralls are each issued a pair of leather breeches and a grey cotton tunic upon their arrival in the slave pens of the city. Should any part of this uniform be rendered unwearable during the term of a thrall’s work contract, they may request a replacement garment by agreeing to work for another season in the ore pits.
Architectural Trends
The city state of Stahlfel is enclosed by a massive limestone wall measuring nearly twenty feet high and five feet thick, punctuated at eight points by the granite towers of the overseers, and dominated to the North by the iron-plated limestone tower of House Warden (the recognized nerve center of the city-state).
Within these walls and below the battlements of the high towers lies the city proper, a ramshackle tangle of single-storey limestone buildings, makeshift wooden dwellings, and poorly maintained gravel roads that haphazardly ring the ore pits and seem to shift position regularly, much as sand dunes in a desert do.
