Stormhaven
Good and Evil
Stormhaven and its sister-city Tarantum are separated by only five and a half miles, but poles apart in almost every other way. Both cities have been founded inside two-mile-wide impact craters from an object that fell from the heavens thousands of years ago, splitting into two at the last minute.
Legend had it that the object was made from both good and evil, explaining why the cities were so different in their characteristics; Stormhaven, the capital, was the epitome of a civilised metropolis with an established democracy, laws and judicial system while Tarantum was a corrupt den of thieves, a sanctuary for outcasts and a cesspit run by criminal gangs, the type of city where a man without a shadow could live without fear of being reported.
The Drops
Stormhaven's people strip-mined their home for the ore that lay beneath. They dug tunnels with streets and pathways branching off from them and beneath these mined openings had created cities within cities. It was the lower classes of society who lived in the deeper levels of these subterranean cities, known as the Drops.
The Rails
Travel between the cities involves going by road across the barren terrain of the Pholôs desert and then entering through the main city gates; or by the Rails: two tunnels that were dug between the cities eight hundred years ago to guard against either one being besieged.
The City of Stormhaven
With clean promenades and perfectly manicured boulevards Stormhaven could not be more different from its sister-city of Tarantum. Marble townhouses and grand temples line paved streets while armed watchmen patrolled gated communities ensuring that the entitled remained free from danger.
Excavated into the bedrock at a five-degree angle from each city, the Rails were a feat of engineering renowned throughout the Northern Realms. Each Rail started at the highest level of its city of origin and then ran downwards, emerging at the lowest level of the neighbouring city.
The tunnels were fitted with a set of rails along which pump carts were placed, allowing people to be propelled along the decline for the five-and-a-half mile journey. At the end of the line, the carts were raised from the lower platform to the higher one of the adjacent tunnel using counterweighted cranes, ready to be sent downhill again.