The Mountain That Eats Men

 

   So my name is Benny Barlow, pleased to meet ya. Reckon I am a good person for you to talk to, since I worked that mine for over two years. Which means I stayed alive a lot longer then most, longer then anyone else at this camp anyway. And that was mostly, luck I gotta say. My momma always said I weren't smart nor pretty but The Gentleman favored me. Staying alive for two years ain't no mean feat here either, they don't call Cerro Rico "The Mountain That Eats Men" fer nothing. Many don't make it three months, between the cave-ins, bad air, cholera, dead-lung and the crazies, or just plain being worked to death. There are a lot of ways to die here.

    The Vetrini don't give two shits who dies neither, they just keep new bodies rolling in to replace the old ones, and as long as the silver and mithril keep rolling out, they are happy as clams. Old, book learned fella I knew once said he did the math and based on how much fresh meat rolls in every year he figures a half million people have died in that mountain over the last hundred years. Maybe more.  

    Escape? Good luck. The Vetrini kinda discourage that, they'll kill ya if they catch ya. Painfully and publicly. And besides escape to were? You ain't getting home from here excepting you're one hell of a swimmer. And unless you really know what yer doing, even if you do get away, the jungle will get ya. But honestly, pretty quick most folk just get too tired and too sick to even try.

        Anyway, my story is pretty typical I'm from Haven Towne, got into debt with the wrong people, judge ordered me ten year indentured to pay it back. The Vetrini bought my indenture, shipped me here, and next thing I know I'm a miner. A lot here like me, from all over The Thousand Isles. Lotta Pressed Men too, convicts mostly, and a lot of First People and folks from backwater Mbo even, that are straight up grabbed by the Vetrini. I know slavery is technically illegal in these Isles, but I swear there ain't much difference between being indentured and enslaved that I can see, and when it comes to First People no one gives a shit. The Vetrini grab whole villages, and this far out in the The Northern Reach no one ever hears about it.  One fella I talked to said the Curari have even taken to selling folk from other tribes to the Vetrini, made a business out it. Nice and civilized. 

    But anyway I'm sure you didn't come this way to hear about me, so let me tell ya what happened.

    I was outside the mine when it blew the first time, bringing an ore car out. That's the only reason I lived, pure luck. My crew was mostly digging coal, we'd been having some trouble keeping those new Deep Workings ventilated, those air blowing machines the dwarves built are marvels, but always hungry for the black stuff. Never saw any of my old crew again. Well, actually, that's not quite true but I'll get to that.

    I hears a 'boom', sounded like it was from far underground but still hella loud, so loud I couldn't hear right, afterward, everything shakes, almost like an earthquake. A big cloud o' dust shoots out of the entrance of the New Drift, wind so hot and hard that it nearly knocked me over. A shard of rock hit me shoulder and busted it all up. Hurt like hell. Still can't really move that arm right.

    It gets quiet and then someone comes running out yelling that there was a big explosion down in the New Mine.

    Now we have explosions every now and then in the mines, that's the nature of it, some people get killed, the overseers don't care, and the ones that live clean up the mess. This one was a lot bigger then anything I ever seen though.

    So the word was a lot of the machines down in the New Mine were wrecked, and a bunch of folks were trapped down there. Not to mention those poor souls down in the Deep Workings. Pretty soon the air was gonna go bad, so we had to get 'em out quick.

    Pretty much everyone that could work was sent down into that mine to dig out the survivors. The only reason they didn't send me was I got hurt in the blast and couldn't do much digging with one arm. So they had me running around upstairs, running messages and such.

    Things were a real mess down there I heard, shafts and drifts collapsed, machines all wrecked, hundreds of men trapped. About eight hours in, a bunch of folk from the town showed up to see if they could help, they heard the boom all the way back in Potsio, and came straight away. Everyone knows a mine explosion is bad. The overseers sent them all down too, Overseer Lucius Vetrini was mad as hell, said this shit was gonna set his timetable back a month and it would be worse if he lost all them workers. Didn't give much of a shit about the people but he sure cared about his timetable. The dwarves kept telling him he needs to be careful, all that coal dust the first explosion stirred up was still dangerous. Coal was still kinda new to Lucius, we'd just started mining it hard a few months ago to feed the new engines, so he didn't take 'em seriously. 

    Coal? It's a black rock that burns. Newt that brainy dwarf really liked the stuff, used it to run all those crazy things he built. The dust from it can be explosive though. Reckon that's what go us.

    That night the mine blew again. And the second one was BAD. Collapsed the whole New Drift, was so loud I couldn't hear right for a week. Most everyone was down in the mine when it happened, even Lucius, they hadn't been running shifts since the first explosion, was all hands on deck down there. Reckon they shoulda listened to those dwarves. 

    No one came running out of the mine that time. Not a soul. New Drift was collapsed but still some of them should have been able to get out through the Old Mines. No one got out that first night anyway. The few of us left didn't really know what to do weren't many of us up topside and no real leader. There was talk of an expedition through the Old Mine to try to rescue folk but I don't think anyone really thought anyone was still alive down there. I'll admit it, we was afraid. It weren't just the danger though, something felt WRONG about that mountain, it was always creepy as fuck but after that second boom, well even looking at it made my hairs stand up. Half a million men, that leaves a mark.

    The second night the crews came back though, some of them. Burned and broken, but still walking and talking, bodies so hot the meat sizzled. God the smell. First they talked to us, saw my buddy Jim, known him for years, and he knew me too, called me by my nickname and everything. But that was just a ruse, when they got close they started killing, so we ran. They followed us all the way back to Potsio and tried to kill us there. More and more kept coming.

    Dragon? Dragon didn't have nothing to do with any of that stuff, least that I know. He came later, the third night. We had the town fortified some and were starting to hold back those walking dead, and then HE came flying over and that was the end of that.

    The few of us that lived ran off into the jungle, we had heard some folk escaped and lived out there. We found them eventually, or rather they found us. Kaelina found us, saved us. Been hiding out there ever since.

    So you gonna take us home right? Cause this island is cursed and we all want off.