Miners are the loose group of people who prospect and mine for strange items in the mines of Eastern Folly, now Blackwick.
History[edit | edit source]
The first mining operation started soon after the nuns abandoned Eastern Folly. While mining is highly seasonal due to adverse weather, there were strange treasures from future and past to be dug up lucratively.
Unfortunately, there was a curse upon the town: around once a generation, the mines would close, with everyone inside at the time never being seen again. This lack of continuity meant that miners rarely were able to settle down and form families, contributing to a long-standing divide in interests between townspeople and those there seasonally. However, a mummer's play seems to have developed in order to keep successive generations miners safe: the townspeople are unable to say "Do not go in the mines", but the structure of the annual play attempts to convey this message, or to mark the miners as part of the town so that the mines will not take them.
Current state[edit | edit source]
In modern Blackwick, curse-free, business is booming. Due to the lack of a threat of extermination, miners have kept on coming, assisted by the new train line.
Dayward yon Vantzon-Estonbergh is well regarded by most miners, as he pays handsomely (in his own company scrip) for their finds. His Open Hand Trade Hall recently opened to provide yet another source for tools and everything possibly needed.
In Episode 3, the villagers found out that the Triadic Pyre had been branding miners with its symbol, and paying them to go deeper into the mines and stay there longer. While most miners were contemptuously satisfied with this arrangement, feeling that the priests don't know the first thing about mining, the Triadic Pyre are almost certainly trying to recapitulate the explosion of fire from the mines from many years ago; and if they tell you "now go another thirty feet deeper", you might sneer and also maybe thirty is the exact number of feet you should not be going deeper in. It is not established whether this practice continues in the present, a year later.
The Toll Collectors worked as miners at some point, but found that banditry was a career better suited to them and with richer advancement prospects.