Dragon Falls
From Ardesia
| Population | xxx |
|---|---|
| Denizen | Faller |
Dragon Falls is a town within the Serpent Wood, where the Serpent River passes through the ridge separating the Swift Valley from the basin of the Serpent Wood. The denizens are generally foresters, and fishers. Merchants, millers, engineers, and soldiers find their home in Dragon Falls in lesser numbers.
It is a town divided into two parts: the Upper Dragon Falls between the Teeth of the Dragon and the banks of the Silvermere, and Lower Dragon Falls at the foot of the final waterfall. They are joined by a network of steep-but-maintained forest trails, a wandering road of many switchbacks, and a system of gondolas. The gondola system was built fifteen years ago, and presents a much faster route. As a result, travel along the Dragon Falls Road is much less frequent than it once was, with only large cargoes being transported by that way.
A constant stream of denizens and goods, as well as a peppering of cottages and other holdings on the slopes, unite the two centres. A bowyer labouring in Upper Dragon Falls during the day may have a leisurely late-afternoon walk to a home and family in Lower Dragon Falls. Meanwhile, a merchant just finished carting crates of wood mushrooms down the gondolas to a warehouse in Lower Dragon Falls might catch a ride on the empty Up-bound gondola towards her cozy home on the lake shore.
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[edit] Character
The denizens of Dragon Falls are generally friendly, but fiercely independent. Visitors who can't take care of themself is likely to be left to their own devices, and a wastrel is the most shameful sort of person. Their loyalty to the Queen is unquestioned, but some say that this is rooted more in her lack of intervention than in any action on her part. The soldiery is respected and expected to keep the peace. The town is alive with activity from dawn to dusk, and maintains a genial night-life as the harvesters, woodcutters, merchants, and hunters retire from their labours and fill the inns and taverns.
[edit] Industry
The great watermills of Dragon Falls provide plentiful motive power, and early in the town's history this was harnessed for a number of engineering projects. The greatest watermill, the False Tooth, was built in Queen's Year 87. It interrupts the flow of the Serpent through one of the gaps in the Teeth and drives the brass chains of the gondolas. Smaller watermills drive grinding stones or presses for producing flour, mustard, filbert butter, and amaranth oil. Yet others drive looms or paper presses, and much of the cloth and paper put to use by the craftsmen of Rightspear are produced in Dragon Falls. Sawmills refine the logs harvested from the Serpent Wood.
[edit] Lower Dragon Falls
Lower Dragon Falls is a built on a collection of terraces, spreading out from the last fall of the river and upward along the cataracts. An ever-present fine mist pervades the air in Lower Dragon Falls, spray from the cataracts. Most of the watermills are here, where the lower cataracts are strong enough to push a waterwheel and there are enough shelves and gentle slopes to permit building close to them. The majority of trading activity goes on here as well, with merchants and farmers arriving from the flats of the valley to buy and sell goods or to use the mills. Of note is Baram Lashhand's copper mill, where sheets of copper are pressed into a variety of useful shapes and vessels.
[edit] Upper Dragon Falls
Upper Dragon Falls sits snug between the banks of the wide Silvermere and the up-thrust Teeth of the Dragon. Apart from the False Tooth, a few small watermills turn here, powering lathes, looms, and paper presses, and other work that is unsuited to the damp atmosphere of Lower Dragon Falls. Most of the foresters and fishers of Dragon Falls spend their time here, and as such it has more of a frontier atmosphere than the mercantile Low side. Small silk farms are also found in the wood skirting Upper Dragon Falls.
The heights of Upper Dragon Falls are on the ridgeline itself, and have a commanding view of the Swift Valley. The gondolas are attached here, where the False Tooth rises above the surrounding dwellings and workshops.
