VEL-KHAR-BEL-MAZAD

The Common Levels  ·  The Working Terraces  ·  The Stillest Hold  ·  Kharak-Bel-Khar

“Bera has visited all seven holds. She describes Kharak-Bel's common levels as the most distinct of any in the network -- not in their construction, which follows the standard pattern, but in their quality of stillness. She said this without further characterisation, which I have learned to treat as her considered judgment that additional words would not improve the description. I have accepted the description as complete. I find that I want to know what still means when Bera uses it as a quality of an underground city.”

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

The common levels at Kharak-Bel have the stillness Bera describes -- not silence, not absence of activity, but a quality that distinguishes a population that has been, for three centuries, the most isolated in the seven holds from any non-dwarven contact. The Kharbelii common population has no experience of Roman visitors, no commercial relationship with the giant trade (which operates at the Thane's level, not the common level), and no external reference point for what common life might look like differently. They live in a cold northern hold that is their entire world. Bera finds this the most instructive quality of the hold. Varro finds it the most curious.

Demographics

The Kharbelii common population is, by the account of every Thane who has visited, the most internally cohesive of any hold's equivalent population -- three centuries of isolation from external contact producing a community whose shared reference points are entirely internal. The watch caste is integrated into the common level's social life rather than forming a separate sub-population; the rotation system that sends watch members to the observation posts and returns them is experienced as a normal rhythm of common life rather than a distinctive assignment. Every Kharbelii family has watch service in its generational record. This is understood as the condition of living in this hold, in this position, facing the direction this hold faces.

Points of interest

The watch caste residential section at tier fourteen occupies a carved terrace section whose walls carry the observation post logs going back three centuries -- not the restricted intelligence analysis that goes to the Thane's Tier, but the raw observation records that the watch members file on return from post duty. These records are public within the hold: any Kharbelii resident can read three centuries of northern approach observation. The Kharbelii common population has been reading these records for three centuries. They know what the northern approaches normally look like. They know what the current observation logs describe. They do not discuss what the current logs describe in any communication that leaves the hold.

DM ONLY

The common level observation logs contain, in the past two years' entries, the same atmospheric anomaly data that Skarra's Thane's Tier restricted section holds in analysed form -- the raw sightings, the magnetic variation notes, the temperature and humidity readings that are inconsistent with standard northern spur weather patterns. The common Kharbelii who file these logs understand what they are describing. They are the watch caste; they have been reading these logs for three centuries and they know when an observation is anomalous. The last two years' anomalous observations are noted in the public record with the standard watch notation for 'conditions outside normal parameters -- logged for Thane's review.' The Thane has reviewed them. The common population knows she has reviewed them. No one has said what reviewing them means. The quality of the hold's stillness in the past two years is, by the account of the one Kharbelii diplomat who travels for inter-hold contact, slightly different from what it was before. She cannot say precisely how. She notes it as data.

Architecture

The common level stonework is three centuries old and has the quality of spaces that have been in continuous use long enough to acquire character without having had time to acquire the accumulated weight of the older holds. The gas lighting here runs at higher pressure than comparable levels at other holds -- compensation for the northern spur's thermal character producing a light that is warmer and brighter than standard, the common level's primary concession to comfort in a hold that otherwise accepts the cold as the baseline condition. The communal hearths are the largest structural feature of the common levels, their alcoves wider and the gas output higher than elsewhere, providing the warmth that the mountain does not.

Geography

The common levels occupy the mid-atrium terraces in the standard configuration, their width and height shaped by the northern spur's geology. The watch caste -- the dwarves who staff the eastern observation posts covering the northern approaches -- has its operational residential section at the common level, positioned between the forge depths below and the noble levels above in a spatial arrangement that places the hold's most externally-oriented function at the level that bridges the interior and exterior worlds.

Type

District

Population

~145,000 permanent residents of common, craftwork, gem-cutting, and watch castes.

Owner/Ruler

Skarra Vel-Khar