Ben Bison Brugh, being a Seelie barony under House Fiona's rule, sees little need for gloomy dungeons wherein to incarcerate criminals of faerie society. By order of the Countess Rosamund, detainees awaiting trial are confined in pleasant quarters, albeit under guard, while the punishments most often decreed for those who violate her laws involve community service to the County. Some fae are, however, more dangerous than others, or unwilling to submit to service elsewhere. For such as these, a time spent laboring at the roots of the mountain is the penalty decreed.
Far below even the deepest inhabited halls of the freehold are the tunnels and shafts delved into the dreaming stone over a thousand years in pursuit of dreamstuff ores. Dim will-o-wisp lanterns provide minimal light only to the most well-travelled tunnels and in current diggings, hanging from rough timber supports that even as thick as tree trunks seem inadequate to hold the crushing weight of the mountain at bay. In the wider tunnels, rails are laid along the floor for the conveyance of ore-carts bearing the pulverized stone to alchymical refineries at Tinker's Dam. Narrower accessways lead to the spartan barracks where laborers are housed. Other tunnels, blocked off with timber barricades, wind lightlessly into the depths. Although freelance nocker prospectors, golem overseers and cantrips of protection keep the working areas and chained laborers safe, those who stray from these regions do not often return, and those who do come back are often lost to the deepest grip of Bedlam.
It is said that one cannot light a candle without casting a shadow. If Ben Bison Brugh has been a shining beacon of the Dreaming for years uncounted, then surely the shadows beneath are as old, or older. The fae of Rowan-Oak do not like to speak of the mines. Such talk is considered unlucky. Indeed, they lie in a deeper region of the Dreaming than the Brugh above, which lies nearly in the Autumn World. Perhaps it is fortunate that those sent to the mines remember little of their time there.
The mines are not supported by their own chat room. Scenes set here may be played in the Dreaming chatroom instead.
Go back to the south stair or return to the Ben Bison Vestibule