The Rock Sea

The steam engine changed everything. Now so much more was possible. Even a small steam engine could do the work of 4 mules or 10 men. Putting steam engines onto ships made them able to carry enormous loads even when the wind was changeable. The gnomes could clad their warships in iron armor and still maneuver. The challenge was finding the resources necessary for all the commerce and industry they dreamed of.

But the coal and iron they needed was in the hills right across the water. The Rock Sea was what the local human tribes called the area south of the Monai River. The area was rolling grasslands broken up by long ridges of rock in such regular intervals they seemed like waves in the earth.

The local humans had never been forced into cities like their northern cousins, who they called the Broken Tribes. Each tribe’s lifestyle varied, some nomadic, others keeping flocks or tending simple farms in small villages. They often traded with the gnomes, and both groups were proud that they had never worn the yoke of the Sylvan Empire.

When the gnomes began to explore the area for coal and iron deposits, the tribes became concerned. When they started blasting apart the hills digging it up, they protested. When the gnomes began destroying villages, they went to war.

The confusion arose because to the gnomes, all the human settlements were just provvisos. They could never find the fissos and so they concluded that the humans didn’t believe in keeping anything. Seeing that the humans needed help, lest they lose everything to a natural disaster, they began taking those human tribes that opposed them into their protection to teach them the way to survive.

Of course, these “wards” of the Republic were put to work in the mines, because how else could they repay the kindness the gnomes were showing them? When the humans rebelled or ran away, it just showed how backwards they were and how much they needed help.

Ironically, some humans are worried that the gnomes might come to our city-states and take our lands just as they took those of our southern cousins. However, when gnomes see our stone cities they see only fissos and no provvisos, which confuses them even more. But they would never destroy permanent structures.

Their control of the Rock Sea, like an echo of their homeland, is made up of islands of control around a mine or other outpost, surrounded by lands they do not control. It would be a precarious position if their steam engine weapons didn’t discourage raiders so effectively.