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Abandoned - Mountain Mines - Story 8

Started by Abandoned, January 14, 2017, 05:07:50 AM

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Abandoned

 This is the 8th story of the Smalllville series. This group of settlers did not set off on expedition from Smallville, but they are connected, in more ways than one.  (They're all connected!)  These are the 11 nomads who were turned away from Chattachoo, the 2nd Smallville expedition of story #4 and they are the settlers who came to the aid of the 4th expedition at the start of story #7, so the time frame coincides with Monkstown.  The location of this story is in the Great Smoky Mountains southwest of Chattachoo and northeast of Monkstown, somewhere between the two.   My first though was to connect to Chattachoo's choo choo with a tunnel to the east but the need for a small mountain map with a starting population of 11 did not generate a map suitable for building a railroad, that's another story.  (Oh no!)  So:

Mountain Mines  Map #610136413  Mountain, small, Fair, disasters Off, Medium start

Mods as always: some old, some new, some I have used before, and some I have not.  They are:

Vegetable Garden Start, Color Roads, CC Impossible Trees, (Kid's) Barn Storage, Better Fields, DS Storage, DS Fences & Deco, (Mathieuso) House Mod, Idle Small Fisherman, Log Cabins, Long Living Orchards, Market BBQ, Soup, & Puzzle, My Precious, More Iron, Wood, & Stone, New Flora (with wild bees, love these), Old Blacksmith, Hunter, & Tailor, One Stop All Mining, 1:1, Pick & Hen Tavern, Plimoth Plantation, Plymouth Houses, Sample White Chicken, Specialized Trading Posts, Storage Crates, Tiny, Vegan Scarecrow.

So, weary traveler,  we were nomads too, we walked many many miles in your shoes.  We will not turn you away, it is for you to choose to go or stay but first let me tell you a little bit about our settlement of Mountain Mines.

Abandoned

#1
Chapter 1

  We were a group of 10 children from the harsh north whose few remaining parents wanted a better life for their children than their day to day struggle to survive.  They taught us what they could about survival before sending us out into the cold cruel world alone.  They would remain behind to tend the sick and the elderly but would come and find us someday.  We sheltered in caves and hunted and fished as we made our way south.  We came across a few small mountain settlements comprised mostly of hunters or miners, none of them wanted 10 more uneducated hungry mouths to feed.  The cold north wind at our backs drove us further and further south.

   We were 10 young adults and 1 infant before we made it out of those rugged northern mountains and came upon a railroad town in a small mountain valley with a mild climate.  We hoped we had finally found a home but there was an outbreak of scarlet fever and they were short on food, they gave us some advice and a small sack of vegetable seeds and sent us on our way.

  We made our way west over the mountains, often heading south when the way was too steep.  Spring became summer and summer became fall and then winter was upon us again.  We were cold and hungry and alone.  In late winter we came over the ridge and saw the small mountain valley we would call home.  We saw 2 mountain streams and a small lake, and there were rocks and trees and deer and a small herd of wild mountain sheep.  The spring thaw had just begun but the grass was green and the sun felt warm.

  We set to work gathering building materials and immediately constructed a large barn and hunting lodge. There was a great deal of weathered wood that had washed up along the river, some years ago it seems, we would use that for houses.  We would have homes, nevermore would we roam.

  Our work was interrupted when a group of weary travelers attempted to cross the partially thawed river; we rushed to their aid.  All of them made it safely across but one of their supply wagons was lost.  We would have liked it had they stayed with us but they were on an educational expedition from Smallville and eager to be on their way.  They told us the weathered driftwood must be from the railroad loggers who jammed up the river years ago. They also taught us about the wild plants and herbs growing in this area.  With all the information they shared with us plus our own past experience we felt that now we were all well educated. We filled their wagon with supplies, gave them most of the mountain sheep, and were sorry to see them go.  We returned to the task of building our new homes.  We should have built a sheep pen, the few that we kept either wandered back up the mountain or followed after the others.

  My name is Nanne and my husband is Shedric.  As soon as the soil was workable I planted the vegetable seeds the Chattachooians gave us.  The weather was not as mild here as it was on that side of the mountains, but it was very pleasant, much warmer than up north.  The vegetable harvest was a good one, I had many bushels of colorful mixed vegetables waiting to be sorted and stored.  Once sorted they could go into the small cellar Shedric built for me or into the main storage barn.  Next year he would build a vegetable field cellar to store the bushels in, they could then wait to be sorted until the wild plants were gathered.  By early winter the storage barn was more than half full before the vegetables were even sorted, and the firewood chopper shack was built.  We would not be cold or hungry that winter in our Mountain Mines homes.
 

Abandoned

#2
Chapter 2

  Our homefires not only kept us and 3 newborns warm that first winter but provided us with pots of hot venison stew with potatoes and vegetables for supper and bowls of cooked wild oats with berries or rose hips for breakfast.  We needed both logs and firewood by early spring.

  We delighted in our small valley, it was beautiful, abloom with wild roses and little blue flax, they were so pretty we hated to pick them.  Golden little buzzing bees were busy making wild honey for us to gather.  Corter found the early spring fishing to be quite good in the little fishing hole and it was soon warm enough for Shedric to plant the vegetables for me. I would do some gathering as well as tend our newborn daughter, Sabriley.  I had the vegetables sorted and in storage long before the first snow, our stockpile had plenty of firewood, and there would be wild honey on our cooked oats for breakfast this winter. 

  Several building projects were underway.  The tiny town hall was completed first, storage crates made from scrap wood and root cellars began popping up all over town, they were soon full.  A forester was built south of town and a school was built even though it would be a few years before we would need a teacher for our first student.  By winter, construction of a bridge and our first trading post was well under way.


Abandoned

#3
Chapter 3

  By spring of year 4 our population had grown to 21, 10 adults and 11 children.  It would be 2 years before the oldest child, Franci, would start school and more years until she joined the workforce.  We needed workers; if any nomads came by we wanted them to stay so we decided to build an inn.  It took nearly a year to complete it, and the timing couldn't have been better.  In spring of year 5, a couple and their son came over the mountain from the north, stopped in at the town hall, then waiting at the well in the pouring rain.  Of course they could stay, we hoped that there would always be room at the inn.

After they settled in, we had a town meeting to welcome them to Mountain Mines.  Kamarcel and Stel were part of a large group of surveyors working for the railroad.  There were no plans for a railway through here, we were much farther south but we could expect more surveyors from the group.  The mountain valley to the north is still under consideration if the Chattachooians to the east can build a tunnel.  Their original plan was to get stone to Smallville by tunneling through the mountain west of Chattachoo, extend the tracks over the main river and then north as close to Smallville as possible.  Failure to build that tunnel plus the fact that this is not the main river could cancel those plans.

  Digging through rock is what we knew, our parents were miners up north, but we doubted we would be able to built a tunnel through those mountains to the north or the ones to the east that we crossed.  We did plan to dig into the mountains though, that's why we named our town Mountain Mines.  We built a placer mine beside the river next to the trading post. Marvid taught the surveyor's son, Olet, how to fish gold and silver ores out of the water.  He found some rough gemstones too.  We hoped for a good trade value when a boatman arrived. 

  It was early spring of year 6 when the first riverboat merchant arrived.  We were disappointed we did not have enough trade goods for the sweet potato seeds he had.  The gold and silver ores were only worth 3 trade units, the rough gemstones 5, far less than we had hoped. The boatman said we should have a gemsmith polish the stones to see what they were, they'd be worth more then. The gold and silver could be made into bars or coins.  He also confirmed that this was not the main river and it was not well traveled by boatman, there'd been trouble with pirates in the past, downriver, not here.  He would give us a good trade value for ale.  We had plans for a brewery and tavern but that was a long ways off.

  In spring of year 6, 5 nomads arrived in town and we welcomed them.  We built a church across from the school where our first student just began her education. We had saved the best pieces of driftwood for the construction of the church.  We all thought it was beautiful with the simple cross on the rooftop.  Maybe one day we would have a copy of that Holy Book the educational expedition spoke of.  We often wondered how they fared.  In spring of year 7, another 5 nomads came from the north and were happy to be reunited with the others.  Since we now had more workers, Ette, the hunter's wife, began making linen clothes from the wild flax.  Sadly one of the nomads who began work in the new multi-mine was killed by a cave in. We now had a population of 48, 26 adults, 6 student, and 16 children. 


Abandoned

#4
Chapter 4

  In late spring of year 9, 3 more nomads joined our population and in late summer the boatman brought sheep. We were hoping for wheat; it was a good thing we had our wild oats and honey.  We were happy to get sheep but only had enough trade goods for 4 of the 6 sheep the boatman had.  We probably could have traded more iron tool.  We now had a tiny mine producing coal.  The blacksmith began making longer lasting steel tool leaving the iron tools for trading.  Ette, who had run out of flax, led the sheep over to the foothills by the newly built tailor shop.  The pasture was fenceless, hopefully the sheep will not go astray.  Ette's husband, Myrone the hunter, said the livestock wouldn't roam very far from their food and water and if they did, they wouldn't get far, the mountains were pretty steep where they were.

We got a good trade value for some of the linen clothes.  The men, especially the miners and laborers preferred the hide coats that didn't seem to get dirty so fast.  We woman were hanging the wash to dry by the fire rather than outside where the coal dust in the air could get on it.  We didn't like the smell of the smoke from the mine when it blew across town and that was most of the time because the prevailing wind was from the west.  The coal dust seemed to settle on the roads and even on some of the trees near the mine, making them dark and dirty looking.  Rainy days were darker and drearier and smoggy, but when it snowed everything looked fresh and clean again, at least for a little while.

  In spring of year 10, 6 more surveyors arrived and like the others, they chose to stay with us rather than return to the railroad with their findings.  They chose hunting, fishing, and gathering over working in the mines. One planted vegetables in the newly cleared field and another replaced Eleandrea, the teacher who died in childbirth. Her first child was also her first student; Franci was the infant born before  we made it out of those rugged northern mountains. Eleandrea's husband, Marvid, was devastated by the loss.  He became the tailor in the new shop behind their house to be closer to home. They were such a nice couple, and like the others who had two fireplaces in their houses, they never took more firewood than anyone else, no matter how cold it got.  When not inside by our fires, we were a lot warmer that winter with the nice hide coats with wool linings that Marvid was making.

Abandoned

#5
Chapter 5

  In the spring of year 11, 7 nomads arrived from the east.  They passed through Chattachoo and traveled much the same route as we had to get here.  They too had come from the north, but not as far north as we.  No, they hadn't heard of anyone looking for their children.  We all had someone we left behind; parent, grandparent, sibling.  They said they would come and find us but it's been over 10 years.  How could they find us?  This is a vast land and settlements are few and far between, as you well know, weary traveler.  Anyways, 2 of the nomads became stone cutters in the quarry after the road diggers unearth some rare green rock, jade they called it.  It might be worth something. They also said our rough gemstones would be worth more if we polished them up to see what we got, so we built a workshop by the trading post and Dalling became our gemsmith.

  The quarry and gemsmith took up a good bit of land we had been using for garden shed forestry and food gathering.  We were most concerned with our food reserves which had been dropping.  When 7 more nomads arrived in spring of year 12, we decided the extra workers should be used for food production. Plum trees were planted and another hunting lodge was built.  We don't know what those builders were thinking when they built such a long bridge over the creek to where they would build a gatherers hut.  A cropfield was cleared for the wheat seeds the boatman brought that summer.  We most definitely needed more trade goods.

  Lucky for us, Corter, who was educated, decided he'd had enough of fishing out in the cold and would be the blacksmith making steal tools in the new shop, the old shop would continue producing iron tools for trade.  A new precious mine was dug in the mountainside by the inn.  We could extract gold or silver ores or more rough gemstones.  It was amazing the colorful assortment of gems the gemsmith was producing.  I opened a storage crate by the dock and thought it was a good thing there were no pirates hereabouts, it was like opening a treasure chest.

An assessment of our mine was discussed at the spring of year 13 town meeting, just after 7 more nomads arrived.  We could use more miners but we needed more food, and more housing, and our school and church were filled to capacity, and we had no hospital.  There was little buildable land nearby that didn't take away even more land from our foresters, hunters, and gatherers.  What to do?  What to do?


Abandoned

#6
Chapter 6

  Well, there was only one thing to do.  Okay, two.  We had to increase our food and build another school.  Make that three things to do.  Mothers didn't like the location chosen for the new school so a fence had to be built along the edge of the quarry.  Everyone however liked the market soup kitchen, especially those working outside or in the cold damp mines, and our sorted vegetables would go a little bit farther.

  In spring of year 14 we looked forward to our first plum harvest.  We planted another wheat field over by the other 3 cropfields and built a tiny new fishing pier.  Sadly, we lost another of our original settlers.  Corter's wife, Gearli, who had taken over for him fishing the small lake, died during childbirth. 

  A new bridge was built across the river, giving us access to more stone, iron, and wild foods.  If that wasn't enough, we build a tiny trading post to increase riverboat traffic in case we would need to buy food for our growing population.  We now numbered 105, 54 adults, 18 students, and 33 young children, with 2 more due any day; all basically happy and healthy.  We built a hospital, centrally located, in the hopes of keeping them that way.

  That summer 12 more nomads arrived after days of pouring rain.  It seemed to me that we were getting a lot more rain and thunderstorms than we use to.  I was probably more aware of the weather than most because of years of farming and gathering.   I thought the weather change was because of all the smoke and paved roads.  The men just scoffed at my silly notions.  All I know is there were a lot more coughs and colds and breathing problems then there were before especially among the children and miners.  It was a good thing we had plenty of honey and herbs and rose hips.  Soon we would have chicken soup; the livestock trader brought chickens.  The men said what they needed was a tavern and a good mug of ale.

Nilla

I'm glad to see, that your settlement still survives. We all know, you're a great story teller but you're also quite a survivor! All this uneducated workers, with a real time game play. That's not easy! Good work!

Abandoned

Thank you @Nilla, surviving does get tricky sometimes.  I had a hard time deciding where to put the hospital on this map, lucky not needed. I still haven't decided which is harder uneducated nomads or not enough workers.  I don't do well relying on the traders. Glad you are enjoying my stories.

Abandoned

#9
Chapter 7

  Shortly after the livestock merchant brought the chickens, a general goods merchant docked at the new trading post. It was not yet well stocked with trade goods, but the merchant had nothing we needed anyway.  Word spread fast around town about the cost of marble and ivory statues the merchant had.  One of the recent nomad arrivals said he had some experience carving wood and stone.  He had no idea where to get marble or ivory but we had plenty of jade. We built a small carver's workshop.  The merchant told our trader if we made jewelry with our gems he'd take the pieces off our hands for a good price too; diamond rings were a highly sought after item.  Too bad he didn't tell us we needed gold or silver bars to make rings and necklaces before we used up more of our land to build a jeweler's workshop.  We would need to start mining for gold or silver ore and build a smelter, but where?  The chickens took up a good bit of land next to the soup kitchen. 
 
  In spring of year 15, we were surprised when a group of nomads arrived from the southwest.  They did not want to stay, they were just passing through on their way north.  They left the south because it had gotten a little too hot for their liking and the people there were quite lawless.  They found a spot to settle not all that far south from here but they had several bad windstorms and then they kept getting flooded out by all the rain the last few years. They decided to move on.  Yes, they did pass through an educational town.  It was called Monkstown and seemed to be doing quite well, in fact, a monastery had just been built and a college begun.  The town must have had some troubles  with lawlessness there too because there was a big stone watchtower by the river. 
 
The group continued on their way and we continued our building projects.  A smelter was built by the tiny coal mine and began producing gold and silver bars.  Sadly, Sergil and Etherida's eldest son, Allard, was killed by a mine cave in.  Miners said all the rain that spring and summer made that mine tunnel unstable.  It was cool and damp and we needed more firewood.  A wood cutter was added to our workforce because the smelter and soup kitchen also required more firewood. 

  Spring of year 16 was more of the same, rain and more rain. The 12 surveyors that arrived said the rain was delaying work on the railroad, track laying now was almost impossible in the mud.  How our new orchard got planted and the tavern built I'll never know.  The tavern was certainly an impressive looking building and we were all amazed at the wide variety of beverages the brewer said he could make, but the men would have to wait for their ale.  We did not have nearly enough grain for ale but we did have plenty of plums for fruit wine.  Hopefully, there'd be enough wine to trade.

RedKetchup

so whats going on with that super black building ?
there is evident problem with that graphic.
> > > Support Mods Creation developments with Donations by Paypal  < < <
Click here to Donate by PayPal .

Abandoned

@RedKetchup that almost black looking building is the Inn.  It is from the mod by slink Mathieuaso Houses v3 which is the inn, 3 small houses and 3 medium from the Fountain Mod.  I have not used the Fountain Mod yet so I don't know how it looked to begin with.  The Inn looks dark brown when not raining, the medium house looks okay (pictured in next chapter), I did not use the small house.

Abandoned

#12
Chapter 8

  There was more than enough wine to trade plus gold ore and bars, jade and jade statues, sapphire necklaces, and diamond rings.  Shedric, my husband of over 16 years, said he would really like to get me one of those diamond rings.  I said I preferred rocks out in the sunshine with a babbling brook flowing over them.  He said he knew I was going to say that.  I said I preferred the scarecrow he made me with the wool coat he tailored.  He said he knew that too.  What he didn't know was that I'd never seen a crow in the vegetable field I was now farming again, or that I really liked that new house at the edge of the woods on the other side of town.  The town was just getting too built up and crowded for my liking. 

  The other side of town would be getting more crowded too though, especially with that Market BBQ being built across from the smelter. Everyone was just waiting for the first sweet potato harvest from the field over by that wood and stone house.  Then they could get a BBQ meal and go across the bridge to sit outside by the tavern to eat.  If it wasn't snowing or raining.  And it seemed to be always raining.  It rained from early spring well into spring.  The huge puddle of mountain runoff still had not dried up by late spring.  The wild roses didn't seem to mind all the rain and the wild bees were still managing to get the crops and fruit trees pollinated. 

  The new church on that side of town was also drawing a crowd, it was filled to capacity the moment the new cleric opened the door in early autumn of year 18.  Parishioners passing by thought the log cabins a perfect match for the tavern and brewer's house but wondered why the brewer had a wine cellar alongside his house.  He said it was because an extension was planned for alongside the tavern next year.

  Meanwhile, back on this side of town a new storage barn was built,  the overhanging roof was a nice shelter from the storm for those of us going that way to collect wild foods.  We did not want to miss gathering any of the wild foods since our food reserves were often low.  We were considering building a new dock to attract food merchants or shutting down production at the tavern.  That thought didn't go over very well.  I know I wouldn't want to give up my cup of mulled wine by the fire on a snowy winter night.  I just wish I had some of those good cookies we had as kids up North.


Abandoned

#13
Chapter 9

  So, after 20 years our town of Mountain Mines has done quite well.  We have a population of 155, 80 adults, 36 students, and 39 young children.  Our education rate and food supplies are on the rise.  We have a wide variety of food and drink and  no shortage of clothes or tools.  Our mines and quarry are quite productive and profitable.  So, weary traveler, you are welcome to stay if you so choose.  We have 43 houses and only 42 families so there is one house available and in Mountain Mines, there's always room at the inn.
 

Nilla

You certainly use the small space well! :) I guess it will be too crowdy in the town for me as well!