VEL-ASH-KHAR-JUGUM

The Farming Levels  ·  Level Minus-Five  ·  The Agricultural Terraces  ·  Varakh-Vel

“The farming level at Karneth was the most affecting thing I saw in eleven days -- not the atrium, not the Skar-Duum Vel, but the farming level, where the hold feeds itself without sunlight and has done so for eight centuries. I imagine Varakh's equivalent has been doing the same for eleven centuries. Eleven centuries of an underground civilisation feeding itself is a fact that Roman agricultural scholarship has not yet found the correct framework to think about. I intend to provide one. I have not yet decided how.”

— G.C.P.S.A., Descriptio Aethermarchae, 1197 A.P.

The farming levels at Varakh occupy level minus-five and the surrounding agricultural corridors, feeding the hold's population of two hundred and ninety thousand through eleven centuries of refined underground agriculture. The Jugum population is the second largest in the seven holds. The farming caste has developed, in the western range's specific geology, cultivation techniques that differ from the other holds' equivalents in ways that have not been shared externally. The water management system here serves a dual function that the farming caste manages without distinguishing between its two purposes.

Demographics

The Varakh farming caste shares the general Varakhi awareness of the external world. Even at level minus-five, the farming families understand what the commercial activity above them requires from them and calibrate output accordingly with a directness that the farming castes of the more internally-oriented holds do not possess. The Jugum handlers at Varakh are, by Thane Bera's account, the best-tempered in the network -- eleven centuries of consistent handling producing a herd with the particular quality of calm that comes from knowing, over many generations, exactly what to expect.

Points of interest

The western agricultural corridor extends further into the mountain than the equivalent sections at other holds, following the water table westward through eleven centuries of expansion. The westernmost section is the oldest continuously cultivated underground agricultural space in the known world. The fungus varieties grown there have been selected and refined across eleven centuries into strains found nowhere else. Thane Bera, on her diplomatic visit, was shown the standard farming sections. The western corridor was not offered.

DM ONLY

The western agricultural corridor connects at its furthest extent to the cave surveillance network's northern spur -- the passive monitoring system tracking giant movement in the taiga belt. The farming caste manages this connection as part of standard water infrastructure, without being told what the surveillance team monitors. They know the team uses their corridor. They have never asked what for. The farming caste's Jugum Master, Brak Vel-Ash-Farrow, 89, has been noticing for two years that the surveillance team's visits to the westernmost corridor have increased in frequency. She has logged this in the farming caste's operational record without comment. The surveillance team has not explained the increase. She has not asked. Both parties find this arrangement satisfactory.

Architecture

Built to the same functional standard as elsewhere in the network -- wide corridors, smooth floors, combined gas and fungus-bank lighting. The Jugum pens at Varakh have a modification absent from other holds: observation slots at giant-scale height carved into the outer pen walls approximately eight centuries ago during elevated northern tension following the Bellum Glaciale. The slots now face solid rock. The farming caste left them in place. Removing structural elements that are not causing problems is not how one manages an eleven-century agricultural system.

Geography

The western range geology at Varakh has a slightly different thermal character from the central massif, producing temperature and humidity conditions in the farming corridors that have driven the development of different fungus varieties from those cultivated at Thalgrimm or Karneth. The water management system connects to the cave surveillance network's northern channels -- both functions running through the same physical infrastructure, the distinction between agricultural water management and intelligence monitoring existing only in the Vel-Ash household's records, not in the corridors themselves.

Type

District

Population

~15,000 farming caste and Jugum handlers.

Owner/Ruler

GORUND VEL-ASH