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Description

Houses would rise and Houses would fall, that was the nature of Drow society. Families arising from the muck, forming alliances, breaking alliances, seizing what they could, holding on for dear life, outdoing their rivals and flourishing to gain power, status and standing. Most of which was denominated in Money, Slaves and Land. Usually Land would beg in scattered holdings during it's ascent picking up whatever it could, though it was normal for an ascended gradually consolidate much of it into a contiguous mass. In the thoroughly cultivated agricultural hinterlands of the Drow States this manifested in massive estates and in each state's central City as as Compounds with walls, manor houses, work-halls, factories, warehouses, offices, lodgings, guard houses, vast slave barracks, refectories, worship rooms and other such essential facilities. When a Great House went into decline it would usually retreat to such Core Holdings and hold onto them for as long as possible in hopes of holding out to arise anew, but for some that spring would never come and decay would continue until it became terminal and the whole thing fell apart. When that end came, farmland would usually be snatched up by rivals. Fallen compounds on the other hand would picked over for anything of value become Warrens.

The neglected and picked over remains of complexes were collections of rotting husks carved up by the lowest roughest of emergent minor houses and opportunists who saw cheap stepping stones on their rise to power and were colonized by the Houseless who could afford no better. New rough construction would be put up to squeeze in a few more rooms to replace a wall destroyed by fire or infighting. Even at the bottom of the heap there was bitter competition and rivalry and a clear hierarchy among the detritus that only a fool would ignore. The crumbling tenements, rough workshops and twisting alleys were not safe at the best of times and dead bodies turned up on the streets daily. Even so for many they were the only place they could go.

On a warm summer evening, in a small figure lurked behind a pile of mouldering timbers piled up against an ancient fence carefully monitoring an alley in a Valnothron Warren. It's gaze darted about, taking note of every movement or shift in shadow. A rat scampering about, an odd scrap of paper blown by the wind, a shadow from the comparatively open street down the alley and past a bend. Normal sights and sounds, but they could easily conceal predators.

A door opened and a couple figures walked out. A pair of slaves shuffled out with an Overseer behind them, hand on his scimitar. Not to intimidate his charges, but to calm them and scare off anyone who might jump them. Each of the slaves carried a full crate, which they deposited on the heap. They returned with two more crates for the pile and retrieved four empty ones from the pile and hurrying back in with the Overseer following behind them. The door slammed shut and was the clunk of heavy bolts being driven home and a massive internal lock clicking shut.

About a minute latter, the figure emerged from it's cover tentatively. It was a small Drow girl, a mere seven years old and scrawny. Clad in an ancient slave tunic and a single sock and carrying a battered basket, she advanced on the boxes quietly. Her footsteps light and her ears darting at the drip of water or the flutter of pigeons. She approached the crate pile quickly, occasionally fretting over a stomach gurgle. Once there, she began rutting about the refuse, carefully but quickly. There were old papers, rags and a few rusting iron cans. Those yielded a few quick morsels that she scraped up with her finger and ate on the spot, but mostly she searched for things to fill her basked with. The most common of these were vegetable scraps. Cabbage stalks, potato peels and pear cores. A couple bones with a bit of meat on them and the nub of a sausage.

As she gathered up a handful of carrot stumps she heard a clatter. She froze and looked around. She expected to see several older children advancing in on her. This was One-Eyed-Rat territory and they did not take kindly in people moving in on their pickings. She only came here because she hadn't eaten in two days. If they came at her, she'd have no choice to run away, hide, hope they were not serious in pursuit and if worse came to worse, do what she could with her knife.

To her relief, it was just feral cat pouncing on a rat. With a sigh of relief she returned to the crates. A little more rutting yielded some more scraps and, to her surprise and delight, a real treasure: nine Nhir buns. A little burnt and soggy from the garbage crate but still perfectly good regardless. She gathered up more scraps, filling her basked before slipping out and making her way to a small set of old crates and bricks that she called home. The bread was a joy pure and simple, the vegetables filled her stomach and using an old can filled with rainwater, an old can, a collection of splintered woods and coal dust and a quick fire spell, made a simple but serviceable soup out of some of the scraps. When she curled up beneath an old sack, she fell asleep full. The first time she'd done so in a fortnight. And she still had a few scraps left over for breakfast.

Her name, for all the world cared, was Mynajhan. Her older brother had called her that before he was killed two years ago after getting on a gang's bad side. Since then, she'd managed to scrape along as best she could in an uncaring world. She was not alone, there were plenty of orphans in the Warrens trying to survive in an uncaring world. The Strong Flourish and the weak are eliminated, thus the Drow kept themselves Strong. She knew the consequences of that attitude all too well.

Even so while the rules remained the same the board had changed. Over the past decade transportation had improved and price of food had been going down. Railways grew across the land, on which ran trains which were often loaded with grain, roots, vegetables and livestock to market. Newer cargo ships with iron hulls were being built that had quadruple the capacity of previous wooden galleons, bringing in loads of grain from the colonies. The supply of food rose, prices dropped and people took advantage of this. Houses Great, Middling and Minor eager to expand their operations and make the most of new machines took on fresh wards that they could now afford and it became easier for the desperate to get about their states or save up enough links for passage to the colonies. Over the last two months, the One-Eyed-Rat gang had lost three of it's seventeen members who were taken on as Wards, but had never less gained territory and moved up a level in the pecking order of Warren gangs. Now they rarely needed to pick through garbage crates for a day's meal. Year by year the margins of survival had been steadily widening, with a corresponding increase in the birth rate.

Mynajhan knew nothing of this. Children in general have a hard time with abstract concepts and a street urchin living from meal to meal generally is not a position to appreciate the grand macroeconomic or demographic situation. All that mattered to her now was that she drifted off to sleep without hunger pains.

From the Beginning...

Previous: Infrastructure: Part Four Hundred and Three
Next: Infrastructure: Part Four Hundred and Five

Description

Houses would rise and Houses would fall, that was the nature of Drow society. Families arising from the muck, forming alliances, breaking alliances, seizing what they could, holding on for dear life, outdoing their rivals and flourishing to gain power, status and standing. Most of which was denominated in Money, Slaves and Land. Usually Land would beg in scattered holdings during it's ascent picking up whatever it could, though it was normal for an ascended gradually consolidate much of it into a contiguous mass. In the thoroughly cultivated agricultural hinterlands of the Drow States this manifested in massive estates and in each state's central City as as Compounds with walls, manor houses, work-halls, factories, warehouses, offices, lodgings, guard houses, vast slave barracks, refectories, worship rooms and other such essential facilities. When a Great House went into decline it would usually retreat to such Core Holdings and hold onto them for as long as possible in hopes of holding out to arise anew, but for some that spring would never come and decay would continue until it became terminal and the whole thing fell apart. When that end came, farmland would usually be snatched up by rivals. Fallen compounds on the other hand would picked over for anything of value become Warrens.

The neglected and picked over remains of complexes were collections of rotting husks carved up by the lowest roughest of emergent minor houses and opportunists who saw cheap stepping stones on their rise to power and were colonized by the Houseless who could afford no better. New rough construction would be put up to squeeze in a few more rooms to replace a wall destroyed by fire or infighting. Even at the bottom of the heap there was bitter competition and rivalry and a clear hierarchy among the detritus that only a fool would ignore. The crumbling tenements, rough workshops and twisting alleys were not safe at the best of times and dead bodies turned up on the streets daily. Even so for many they were the only place they could go.

On a warm summer evening, in a small figure lurked behind a pile of mouldering timbers piled up against an ancient fence carefully monitoring an alley in a Valnothron Warren. It's gaze darted about, taking note of every movement or shift in shadow. A rat scampering about, an odd scrap of paper blown by the wind, a shadow from the comparatively open street down the alley and past a bend. Normal sights and sounds, but they could easily conceal predators.

A door opened and a couple figures walked out. A pair of slaves shuffled out with an Overseer behind them, hand on his scimitar. Not to intimidate his charges, but to calm them and scare off anyone who might jump them. Each of the slaves carried a full crate, which they deposited on the heap. They returned with two more crates for the pile and retrieved four empty ones from the pile and hurrying back in with the Overseer following behind them. The door slammed shut and was the clunk of heavy bolts being driven home and a massive internal lock clicking shut.

About a minute latter, the figure emerged from it's cover tentatively. It was a small Drow girl, a mere seven years old and scrawny. Clad in an ancient slave tunic and a single sock and carrying a battered basket, she advanced on the boxes quietly. Her footsteps light and her ears darting at the drip of water or the flutter of pigeons. She approached the crate pile quickly, occasionally fretting over a stomach gurgle. Once there, she began rutting about the refuse, carefully but quickly. There were old papers, rags and a few rusting iron cans. Those yielded a few quick morsels that she scraped up with her finger and ate on the spot, but mostly she searched for things to fill her basked with. The most common of these were vegetable scraps. Cabbage stalks, potato peels and pear cores. A couple bones with a bit of meat on them and the nub of a sausage.

As she gathered up a handful of carrot stumps she heard a clatter. She froze and looked around. She expected to see several older children advancing in on her. This was One-Eyed-Rat territory and they did not take kindly in people moving in on their pickings. She only came here because she hadn't eaten in two days. If they came at her, she'd have no choice to run away, hide, hope they were not serious in pursuit and if worse came to worse, do what she could with her knife.

To her relief, it was just feral cat pouncing on a rat. With a sigh of relief she returned to the crates. A little more rutting yielded some more scraps and, to her surprise and delight, a real treasure: nine Nhir buns. A little burnt and soggy from the garbage crate but still perfectly good regardless. She gathered up more scraps, filling her basked before slipping out and making her way to a small set of old crates and bricks that she called home. The bread was a joy pure and simple, the vegetables filled her stomach and using an old can filled with rainwater, an old can, a collection of splintered woods and coal dust and a quick fire spell, made a simple but serviceable soup out of some of the scraps. When she curled up beneath an old sack, she fell asleep full. The first time she'd done so in a fortnight. And she still had a few scraps left over for breakfast.

Her name, for all the world cared, was Mynajhan. Her older brother had called her that before he was killed two years ago after getting on a gang's bad side. Since then, she'd managed to scrape along as best she could in an uncaring world. She was not alone, there were plenty of orphans in the Warrens trying to survive in an uncaring world. The Strong Flourish and the weak are eliminated, thus the Drow kept themselves Strong. She knew the consequences of that attitude all too well.

Even so while the rules remained the same the board had changed. Over the past decade transportation had improved and price of food had been going down. Railways grew across the land, on which ran trains which were often loaded with grain, roots, vegetables and livestock to market. Newer cargo ships with iron hulls were being built that had quadruple the capacity of previous wooden galleons, bringing in loads of grain from the colonies. The supply of food rose, prices dropped and people took advantage of this. Houses Great, Middling and Minor eager to expand their operations and make the most of new machines took on fresh wards that they could now afford and it became easier for the desperate to get about their states or save up enough links for passage to the colonies. Over the last two months, the One-Eyed-Rat gang had lost three of it's seventeen members who were taken on as Wards, but had never less gained territory and moved up a level in the pecking order of Warren gangs. Now they rarely needed to pick through garbage crates for a day's meal. Year by year the margins of survival had been steadily widening, with a corresponding increase in the birth rate.

Mynajhan knew nothing of this. Children in general have a hard time with abstract concepts and a street urchin living from meal to meal generally is not a position to appreciate the grand macroeconomic or demographic situation. All that mattered to her now was that she drifted off to sleep without hunger pains.

From the Beginning...

Previous: Infrastructure: Part Four Hundred and Three
Next: Infrastructure: Part Four Hundred and Five