DeadlandsGreatMaze

The Great Maze The Fast Country | Back to Main Page |

THE FAST COUNTRY The residents of the Great Maze refer to it as 'Fast Country,' and they say that living a day in Gomorra is like living a week, elsewhere. A year in the Maze will age you ten - but it's not because of some strange quality in the water. Life is hard in the Maze, and rough. Miners are the major occupants of the Maze - from the '49ers who've managed to survive this long, or the new arrivals who've worked a claim, everyone who's lived a year in the Maze knows at least ten folks that haven't. Life in the Great Maze carries a lot of risks - the Maze is a harsh mistress. First and foremost is the lack of potable water. Most folk collect it by the panful when it rains, but rains in the Maze are few and far between. Add in that large amounts of potentially drinkable water is flowing down cliffs and ruined by the seawater, huge tracts of arable land are going fallow, and the widespread presence of disease and famine, and you can see why the 'Fast Country' gets its name. That, and there's an abundance of folks looking to make their living on someone else's back - raiders, pirates, brigands and worse. The Confederates and Unions have large blocs of their Naval forces stationed around the Maze, but President Grant and Davis alike seem ready to fire every new Admiral who doesn't 'Secure the Maze' within six months. The miners, for the most part, choose to live wherever they happen to find themselves a stake. Travel through the dangerous currents of the Maze is never safe, even with a skilled Captain and an experienced crew. The vast columns and walls of rock have a tendency to collapse - particularly when miners have a penchant for blasting it with dynamite to expose more fundament. A passage that was deep and slow one week can be lined with jagged rocks the next, and there's no predicting the changes. LIVING CONDITIONS There's no such thing as 'hospitable weather' in the Maze. In the daytime, it's hot enough to parch a throat - and at night, it's cold enough to die from exposure. Gusts of wind get channeled by the Maze until they feel fit to cut a man to the bone, and there's just enough humidity to keep most folks sweating through summer, spring and fall. Most rainstorms result in mudslides, and there aren't many rainstorms that come unaccompanied by thunder and lightning. With all this nasty weather, every miner needs a plan as to how he intends to survive while he works a claim. The three most popular methods are below. CAVE DWELLERS There's plenty of folks who just sleep down inside the shaft of a mine. It protects folk from things like wind and rain and lightning - but on the other hand, if your mine collapses while you're sleeping, there ain't much to be done for you. There's also a few other hazards - come bad weather, plenty of critters like looking for a nice warm spot to cozy up in, too. There's also the vapors given off by ghostrock - they tend to addle the mind, and the process only goes faster for those working and sleeping in their mine. See 'ghostrock fever,' below. BOAT RATS Some miners choose to invest in a boat, and work the low-hanging fundament that's closer to the Maze's channels. They don't mine, so much as they scavenge and pick off anything clear on the surface. Boat Rats face their own perils - surges in the channels, usually created by a mesa collapsing somewhere else, and they're hardly exempt from the various critters that like to make snacks out of 'the other white meat.' Maze dragons and Maze sharks both eat good off of boat rats. Boat rats also gotta contend with pirates, and their ships tend to be cheap and relatively undefended. Boat Rats and Mesa Towners tend to despise one another - more than one mesa's collapsed because an enterprising Boat Rat was a little too liberal with his dynamite, and more than one Boat Rat's become shark food because they were unaware the Towners overhead were taking a corner off a mesa, and the rockfall sank their vessel. MESA TOWNS The last group prefers to live atop the mesas, and are usually fairly well equipped, comparatively. They use painted ladies to descend the sides of the mesas, or excavate directly down into the mesas themselves in search of ore. Mesa Towners also tend to work in groups - it takes three men to operate a painted lady - and they almost always have the advantage of high ground. THE PERILS OF MINING Before speaking to the physical dangers of mining, it's worth a mention that the biggest hazard to miners comes from other miners. While the contraptions, explosives, and beasties that plague a miner's life are no small risk, more miners in the Maze lose their lives to claim jumpers, accidents, and deliberate sabotage than any other cause. Every miner carries a loaded pistol, and even among groups that have spent weeks and months together in the maze, greed and paranoia run rampant. Shootouts between partners who've worked the same mines for months and years are the stuff of saloon gossip. THE PAINTED LADY When miners aren't trying to kill one another, their equipment surely is. One of the most common sights while sailing down the channels of the Maze are Painted Ladies - hanging buckets big enough for two men, suspended over the waters of the maze by levers and ropes. Painted Ladies are usually given names, and treated with superstitious respect. 'Angered his old lady' is a miner euphemism for a snapped rope and a hundred foot fall onto shallow rocks or the waters of the Maze. MAZE DRAGONS Maze Dragons are a more limited danger. The beasts never surface completely, but most are estimated to be thirty to fifty feet long. Little is known about the biology or mating habits of the Maze Dragon, though the people of Dragonhold apparently have a 'domesticated' Maze Dragon that tourists, photographers, and mad scientists trek hundreds of miles to see firsthand. Sadly, the 'wild' Maze Dragons are not so friendly - they frequently snack on miners in low hanging Painted Ladies and Boat Rats. Maze Dragons are known to be fiercely territorial. As they grow older, their bodies grow too wide for the channels of their youth, and they are forced to seek out larger channels, usually battling older Maze Dragons for a channel wide enough for them to survive. The roars of these confrontations can be heard echoing up and down the Maze for miles, and wise Captains steer clear. BLASTING THE BLUFFS Most miners don't have the time or equipment to dig mines, so one of the most common means of excavating new fundament - after the surface of a channel wall has been picked clean - is to drill a small hole, stick dynamite in it, and sail, paddle, or turbine like crazy away from the blast. This method carries obvious risks - aside fro mthe dangers of mismanaged explosives, few miners have the knowledge of structural engineering to accurately gauge a mesa's resistance to such a blast. Add in that many mesas are riddled with natural holes, manmade mines, or are otherwise unstable, and bluff-blasting is as likely to take down a smaller column of rock as it to expose new fundament. THE ROCKIES The Greater Maze Rock Miner's Association, known by the miners of the Great Maze as 'The Rockies' or 'The Devil Incarnate' is a regulatory agency that has been adopted across the Great Maze. The Rockies has the unenviable position of regulating claims, and arbitrating disputes between miners. This is not an easy task, but most miners are willing to abide by it for one simple reason - if something happens to them, the Rockies ensures the family of the miners receive the deed to their mine. This may not seem like a great benefit, but with the short lives of miners and the frequency of claim being jumped, being able to assure some kind of benefit to a family or friend is a powerful motivation for miners. STAKING A CLAIM Any man with ten dollars can stake a claim in the Maze, provided he can prove two things - first, that the land isn't owned by another, and second, that he has the means and ability to work the claim. The second rule was installed to to prevent corporations and countries from buying up the Great Maze wholesale; if a year passes without a claim being worked (by the claim's owner, a foreman, or an employee) the stake and the ten dollars are forfeit. CONTROLLING THE MINERS Secondarily, the Rockies posts bounties on claim jumpers. Any man who jumps a claim has a hundred dollar fine levied on him, and a fifty dollar bounty placed on him. Most of these bounties go unanswered, but bounty hunters can often round up a handful of claim jumpers at bigger boomtowns in the Maze with an afternoon of work. This is a form of forced social ostracism, and anyone who thinks a miner can survive long without access to a town hasn't been in the Maze long. Not only that, but a miner needs access to the Rockies because they are the only licensed sellers of ghostrock. GETTING TO MARKET The Rockies chief power comes in the form of its last right - it is the only entity in the Maze allowed to sell ghostrock. As a practical matter, this is all but ignored - miners pay for rooms and equipment and whores all the time with chunks of ghostrock, but on the scale of purchases made by the CSA, USA, and the rails, the only entity the make purchases from is the Rockies. Any miner who actually strikes a decent sized vein is going to need to be in the good graces of the Rockies in order to make good on their newfound wealth. BUT WHAT ABOUT GOMORRA? In Gomorra, the Rockies have authorized Sweetrock to act in their legal stead. Given the Rockies headquarters in Lost Angels, and the relative distance to the northern Great Maze, Sweetrock serves functionally in the stead of the Rockies. That means they're responsible for dealing with claim jumpers, ensuring claims are passed on to families, and purchasing the ghost-rock from large strikes. Much of the anger directed at Sweetrock is their perceived abuses of this system; although miners have the recourse of travelling to Lost Angels to formally complain, a day long journey through the Maze (or perhaps two days) to the Greater Maze Rock Miner's Association to lodge a formal protest has so far accomplished nothing against Sweetrock's formidable control over ghostrock rights. LOST ANGELS Without a doubt, the largest city in the Great Maze is Lost Angels. Situated in a lowlying area of the Maze, and built directly upon the water, Lost Angels is the major trading hub for ghost rock in the Maze. While some smaller cities and towns (Like Shan Fan and Gomorra) manage a tidy export, nearly eight percent of the ghost rock mined in the Great Maze eventually finds its way through Lost Angels, is taxed by Grimme's church, and is sent on to the East by coach. (Two ghost rock trails' exist from Lost "Angels - one over the Mojave to the City of Gloom, and the other cuts south and East to Tombstone, then up to Santa Fe.) Lost angels, despite its income, has a massive problem with drought and famine. The area is largely baked mud, nearly impossible to grow food in, and the areas fish and aquatic reserves have been hunted to near extinction. Add in the constant boat traffic, the periodic naval engagements between North, South, French, British, Chinese and MExican navies, and you can imagine why it might be difficult for a man to get a loaf of bread. A single meal in Gomorra can often cost a week's wages, even at the inflated prices of the Great Maze. Only Grimme's Sunday Feast keeps much of the population alive at all, but hardship, famine, poverty and starvation are a way of life in Lost Angels. So, too, is the theocratic government, priests named Guardian Angels who act as lawmen, and nigh-tyrannical authority over the area. Grimme sermonizes regularly against the evils of the East, the corruption and decadence of the rails, and the grand salvation of the spirit such hardship promises for his flock. Despite all his sermonizing, Lost angels has one of the highest murder rates in the entire west - but that matters very little, as the majority of new faces coming to the Maze from the East head to Lost Angels first, heeding its reputation as the hub of mining throughout the Great Maze. SHAN FAN It's a small bit of irony that Kang, the Butcher of San Fransisco, doesn't hold particularly close relationships to the gangsters that now run the city. Shan Fan's population is ninety percent Asian, of which some eighty percent are Chinese immigrants - the majority of them brought by force. Most of Shan Fan's population, and most of the Chinese laborers in the West are legally held slaves, imprisoned by rival warlords in China and then sold to finance military campaigns. Since slavery in the West is little different than the treatment they would receive under the warlords currently feuding over China, most of the Chinese population is relatively indifferent to their predicament. Those that do muster resistance often break free with relatively little effort on their part. A number of band of free Chineee brigands wander the Great Maze, sometimes battling with one another when not robbing coaches in the area. High-minded idealists often join forces with the outlaws in Kwan's Province, to the southeast of Shan Fan. Shan Fan itself looks more and more like a Shanghai with each passing year - traditional construction methods have begun to be used as homes and buildings are erected. Gangs of Triad soldiers roam the streets, fighting one another on behalf of their leadership and in search of status of their own. Despite the relative brutality of Shan Fan, the gangsters who lead the city meet peacefully nearly every day. Two Triads bosses can enjoy a game of Mahjong in peace and comfort while their underlings fight to the death feet away from their contest. THE CIVIL WAR The Civil War rages more fiercely in the Great Maze than it does back East, at times - although there are no battlefields or great engagements of armies. Both North and South have sent fleets of ironclad ships into the great Maze, with orders to 'secure the Maze' for the USA and CSA, respectively. Both Presidents have no idea just how impossible a task that is, or how insufficient the navies they have provided are for such a daunting task. Not only do the miners and settlers and townsfolk of the Great Maze crave their independence, but the British, French, Mexicans and Chinese all have vested interest in seeing the worlds richest deposit of ghost rock stay independent of any one nation, and selling freely to the highest bidder. Ironclads from all six countries clash regularly in the canals of the Great Maze, but no one claims any more of the Maze than they keep their eyes on - and given the twists and bends of the Maze, that isn't much. For the most part, every town and settlement in the Maze has learned the lesson taught by San Fransisco - when a greater power comes into an area and claims the surrounding area, you nod and bow and wait for them to move on, then go about your business. It's the folsk who resist that get made an example of, and the warlords never seem to come around twice. | Back to Main Page |