Session 6


Home


Continued from the last session...

Standing on the wooden slats that make up the front porch of the Goods Store, the party surveys this dreary place. To their right, they can see the trail going up the cliffs to the salt pits. To their left is the chaotic collection of tents and shacks where the miners live. Past that they can see the processing lines where the salt is separated from the waster material.

Mosholu heads to the processing lines, trying not to work in the pits. The foreman at the lines sends him away, but he bluffs his way in and gets a place on the second table, with his back to the stronghold. The processing area is four long low tables, lined on both sides by men. Miners dump the raw minerals from the cliffs above into a huge pile. All day the sound of falling rock can be heard. Carriers wheel the raw salt from the pile to the tables, where it is pushed from one end to the other by the flow of a diverted spring. Along the tables, the men must sort as fast as possible, separating out the larger rocks at the beginning and breaking the remaining salt into purer and purer pieces along down the line.



At the end of the line, packers form the clean salt into blocks, putting little loops of twine in the top and letting them dry in the sun. They are neatly stacked into pallets. The whole process is non-stop and exhausting. Solutions are used in the water to clean the salt and that combined with the salt itself wear away at the workers' hands, making them raw.



Click to see a larger picture





Angry Pipe, Linear and Garfer head up the hill, pick in hand. A foreman meets them and explains that they will be assigned to a pit with another miner. If they do their share of work, they'll get a chit at the end of the day which they can turn in for a copper at the bank.

They follow the trail higher up into the mountain and then bear left. Angry Pipe figures that their pits are almost directly above and a little to the east of the back of the stronghold. While working, he studies the land. It's a long and steep drop down and the surface is crumbly. It appears nearly impossible to climb down, though you could throw a rock and probably hit the stronghold if you could throw that far.

Back at the sluices, Mosholu makes a deal with the man working opposite him. He pays him a copper to switch places so that he can keep an eye on the stronghold. His excuse is that one of his eyes is sensitive and that's the side the sun is on. He notes many details about it.

At six, the foreman calls an end to the shift. The packers at the end put the last block on a pallet. The captain and a short fat man with a bloodshot red nose walk over to the pallets. Four guards join them and they all accompany the packers as the salt blocks are wheeled to the stronghold. The short man opens the outer door and two of the guards are station themselves outside while all the rest go in. They remain inside for 20 minutes and come out with the empty pallets.

The party meets at the line for the bank. There the workers take their chits and turn them in for a single copper. Two guards flank the window where a taciturn clerk hands out the pay. He never responds to any conversation, only sliding the single coin under the bars. At the cantina, there is a huge line and our adventurers take their food and slop back to a clear area where they make their camp.

Around their camp, they formulate various ideas to break into the stronghold. Linear, a questioning man of nature reveals a hidden strategic skill. The dissatisfaction and penury of the men around him arouse his sympathy as well as give him an idea for a plan. He suggests starting a campaign of innuendo and dissent agains the guards, bringing it to a head by day 75 and starting a riot. The chaos would be enough distraction for the party to enter the stronghold, assuming they had found out how to breach it at this point.

Mosholu spent that night searching the compound thoroughly, discovering it to be heavily guarded on the ground and on the walls. Through stealth and a narrow escape, he avoided the searching bulls' eye lantern of the gate guards. Around the back of the stronghold, he discovered a small caged door that led to a tunnel through the wall. Next to it was a pile of straw. He heard a brief snuffling coming from the other side of the wall.

The party spent the next couple of days fomenting dissent through the other miners. They made friends with their wine. They discovered the pain of salt mining, the sore rotting flesh of the hands. Linear went to work using his natural skills of healing to soothe the miners' hands and made many more converts. They pushed their slogan, "2 hands 2 coppers!"

Mosholu met a dipsomaniac clerk who was responsible for counting the salt inventory. He kept a key around his neck on a leather thong. With a gift of the ancient Tal'Kora wine, Mosholu was able to liberate the key from the clerk's unconscious body.

In a couple of days, Linear's plan began to show results. Open discontent grew in the camp. Men spoke out more in the bank lineup. Finally, one of the miners attacked a guard. He was put in jail, but there was a brief stand-off in the pits. Linear, Angry Pipe and Garfer were there and did their best to inflame the crowd. Things were tense until the cocked heavy crossbows convinced the miners to go back to their pits, though not without plenty of grumbling.

Because of his nocturnal activities, Mosholu took a day off to get some sleep. The next day when he went back to his post, the foreman told him that he had been replaced. "You think you can just take a day off and come back to the lines?" Mosholu complained and the foreman tried to dismiss him. He insisted vociferously, starting to cry about his rights. Finally, exasperated, the foreman called for a 'sluice-off'.

The men gathered around excitedly and Mosholu went head to head on the salt processing lines with Peters, the man who'd taken his place on the line. Both men sluiced furiously as more and more salt piled up on them. The crowd roared with enthusiasm. Mosholu took a strong lead when Peters seemed suddenly dazed, but lost it again with some bad fumbles on the larger chunks ("Classic large chunk error," noted the foreman.) In the end, it was a narrow victory for Peters, but even his line became too backed up and both men were dismissed from the line. They shook each others hands in the age-old tradition of sportsmanship seen in salt lines all over the world.



To be continued...