Damatian Cliffs

Overview

The Damatian Cliffs are located near Damata in the Freeborn territory of Kahraman. Custodianship of the Damatian Cliffs grants an Imperial title; a seat on the Imperial Bourse; and a seasonal bounty of valuable white granite.

The Resource

The mountains of northern Kahraman are rich in stone and ore, and site of the richest white granite quarry in the Empire. Damation granite is easy for an expert to spot, because it is usually flecked with faint silver marks. These impurities are purely cosmetic and do not lessen its value, but a skilled stonemason who can extenuate them and work them into a structure can create breathtakingly beautiful buildings and statues.

Almost every significant Imperial fortification has foundations of Damatian granite, and it has been a point of pride for Seats down the ages to ensure that new fortresses and castles from Wintermark to Urizen use at least a little of their stone. It is traditional for those who have worked the cliffs here to be dismissive of the longevity of any major structure that does not use Damatian granite. Perhaps the best known fortification built with Damatian granite is Fort Braydon, built in the earliest days of the Brass Coast with the first granite quarried in Serra Damata. There are also three smaller castles built into the sides of the mountains overlooking the great quarries, each garrisoned by Freeborn soldiers.

There are several armed camps, small-scale fortifications, along the mountains above the Cliffs that protect both the quarries and the rest of Kahraman from the bandits and outlaws who dwell in the hills and mountains along the borders with Mournwold and Liathaven. There are five fortresses in all, each built of granite quarried nearby. The five garrisons are named for distinctive patterns of silvery inflection on their walls, which are said to take the form of one of the constellations. They are, from east to west, the Key, the Oak, the Chain, the Mountain, and the Web.

Inacia i Correrro i Riqueza was the architect who designed four of the five small castles (the Fort of the Key was built a hundred years after the other four as the quarries were expanded). She was paid a small fortune by the dhomiro of Kahraman for her work, but died shortly after the last castle (the Fort of the Web) was completed. She died without other family, and her fortune was never accounted for. Inacia also drew many of the designs for Fort Braydon, and for several other structures both in Kharaman and beyond, and in addition to silver was regularly paid with small amounts of ilium, which she wore as jewelry on her fingers and in her hair. Always eccentric, rumours quickly surfaced after her death that she had concealed the bulk of her fortune somewhere in the mountains near the Damation Cliffs, and barely a year goes by without someone claiming to have insight into the likely location of Inacia's Trove. Such treasure seekers are figures of regular mockery to the hard-working quarry workers, of course.