Canyon City

Harsonian explorers of old who traveled westward through the Breakcliffs found the great canyon ruins built into the rock walls of a ravine nearly 700 feet deep, with the swiftest part of the Stonybank rushing below. Four levels of round buildings, each supported by the roofs of the lower ones, descended down into the ravine on both the west and the east sides, with great stone causeways spanning the gap. This abandoned metropolis was remarkably well-preserved, and shortly after its discovery, the Harsonian nobles of House Colliar quickly claimed the area for their house, and began the great work of restoring the city and opening it for Harsonian settlement.

During the great restoration, workers in the lower levels found natural pathways along the walls of the canyon that led a short distance away from the city. At their ends were various cave entrances which dug deep into a network of tunnels, though the vast majority of such caves were shallow and uninteresting. However, during one of their surveys, a prospector from House Colliar named Jerrod Cook stumbled upon a vast vein of copper running through the rock. House Colliar sent workers to begin excavation immediately, and the deeper they dug, the more copper they found. At Cook’s urging, House Colliar began to explore the other, previously thought unimportant, caverns. Sure enough, to Cook’s excitement and the House’s delight, great veins of copper, tin, and even silver were uncovered. Canyon City soon exploded with activity, with hundreds of people flooding into its four levels looking for work as miners.

After the fall of the individual houses and the forming of the Covenant of Harsonia, Canyon City still operates much the way it did in the past. Many of the mines have run dry, yet digging for precious metals is still prosperous work. The city has mild Covenant presence, and is largely considered to be operated and governed by the Harsonian House of Merchants, which has created a very distant gap between the wealthy and the lower class. Yet, as long as the House of Merchants maintains order and peace through their modest force of well-trained constables, the Covenant sees little need to establish a stronger presence in Canyon City other than a handful of diplomats to oversee the forming and enforcing of policy, and sworn Covenant judges to preside over the larger-scale sentencing. Cases of petty theft and assault, being too small for the Covenant judges to worry about, are instead handled by the constables, who can be quick to dole out a swift and severe punishment. Through providing adequate work and the threat of great punishment, the House of Merchants has maintained order in Canyon City for the three generations since the Covenant has been formed.