Forge: Varkgrum

[Target entity — the current file, to be filled]
{
 "id": "settlements.varkgrum",
 "name": "Varkgrum",
 "native": "",
 "type": "settlement",
 "subtype": "holdfast",
 "aliases": [
  "the Gate",
  "the Low Hold"
 ],
 "summary": "The outward-facing holdfast of Namuzdus, cut at the passes where the mountain meets the roads, and the only one of the three founding holdfasts where outsiders live in any number. Varkgrum handles everything the Dominion does not do underground — carriage, customs, embassies, negotiation with Tuzraag's relays — and is distrusted by Kurnumgrath for its foreignness and by Dôlmuzûn for its prices. It decided the Stonecrown Schism, and both of the others know it.",
 "tags": [
  "namuzdus",
  "kaetijul",
  "holdfast",
  "silgolt",
  "trade",
  "diplomacy"
 ],
 "content": {
  "description": "Varkgrum straddles the boundary between holdfast and town. Its upper works are conventional Kaetijul construction; its lower approaches are a sprawl of yards, warehouses, stables, and lodging that no other holdfast would tolerate and that Varkgrum's people regard as the point. It is where Deepmetal is weighed, sealed, and handed to the carriers, and where anyone entering Namuzdus with business is stopped, housed, and assessed.",
  "significance": "The Dominion's gate and its face. Every treaty Namuzdus has signed was negotiated here or by people from here, and every foreign delegation to the Stonecrown Council is received here first.",
  "economy": "Customs, carriage, warehousing, and provisioning; the assay-seal that certifies Deepmetal for export; smithing and finishing work aimed at outside buyers rather than at the mountain; and the accommodation trade, which is substantial and which the other holdfasts affect to find distasteful.",
  "politics": "Formally uncommitted and practically decisive. Varkgrum's Council delegation has swung between the Kurnumgrath and Dôlmuzûn positions more than once and holds the balance in most contested votes — a position it has cultivated deliberately. Its own interest is simple and rarely disguised: the gate is worthless if nothing moves through it, which puts Varkgrum against full isolation while leaving it happy to see the isolationists strong enough to keep Dôlmuzûn's terms honest.",
  "culture": "The most cosmopolitan place in Namuzdus and the least typical. Multilingual, commercially minded, and comfortable with outsiders in a way that reads to Kurnumgrath as dilution. There is a substantial resident foreign population — Tuzraagi carters, Súzyngoli factors, Izheim agents, and a long-settled Kaekreaedhel community that arrived during the diaspora and stayed.",
  "relation_to_namuzdus": "One of the three founding holdfasts of the Triple Spire pact, Fifth Age 721 (MV 10327). Holds the Dominion's customs and assay authority."
 },
 "relations": {
  "geographic_location": [
   "Namuzdus",
   "Silgolt"
  ],
  "related_species": [
   "Kaetijul",
   "Kaekreaedhel",
   "Medesjul",
   "Jaajul"
  ],
  "related_organizations": [
   "Stonecrown Council",
   "Namuzdus Dominion",
   "Republic of Izheim"
  ]
 },
 "timeline": {},
 "sources": {},
 "meta": {
  "status": "proposed",
  "note": "Named in history.events.the_gathering_at_three_spires; written as the swing holdfast in the Stonecrown Schism. Uses Medesjul, not the dead name Yukejulhel."
 }
}

[Schema template & register reference — Dôlmuzûn (settlements-dolmuzun). Match its SHAPE and VOICE; do not mirror its content.]
{
 "id": "settlements.dolmuzun",
 "name": "Dôlmuzûn",
 "native": "",
 "type": "settlement",
 "subtype": "holdfast",
 "aliases": [
  "the Vein-Hold",
  "the Paying Hold"
 ],
 "summary": "The richest of the three founding holdfasts of Namuzdus and the one that pays for the state: Dôlmuzûn sits on the Deepmetal veins whose discovery made the Deepmetal Accord possible and whose export makes the Dominion solvent. It carried the internationalist side of the Stonecrown Schism and won it, administers the Echoforge Compact with Izheim, and has never entirely stopped being told by Kurnumgrath that wealth is not seniority.",
 "tags": [
  "namuzdus",
  "kaetijul",
  "holdfast",
  "deepmetal",
  "silgolt",
  "echoforge"
 ],
 "content": {
  "description": "Dôlmuzûn is the working heart of Namuzdus — a holdfast built around the Kori-resonant alloy veins rather than around a hall, and expanded so often and so pragmatically that its plan is notoriously incoherent. It is loud, hot, crowded, and by some distance the wealthiest place in the mountain, and its galleries run further out toward the passes each generation.",
  "significance": "The source of the Deepmetal on which the Dominion's economy, its alliance with Izheim, and both of its wars with Revakgol have turned. What Dôlmuzûn decides to dig, the Council eventually ratifies.",
  "economy": "Deepmetal extraction above all, with the associated crafts: assaying, resonance-testing, the grading of stock, and the preparation of raw alloy for carriage. The holdfast maintains the export register and the standing contracts with Izheim, and the traffic that leaves through Varkgrum and down the Tuzraag relays is scheduled here.",
  "politics": "The seat of the trade faction and the architect of the Stonecrown Schism's resolution in favour of the gnome alliance. Its standing argument is unsentimental: the mountain has never fed itself, it did not feed itself before the Accord either, and independence that depends on nobody wanting what you have is not independence but obscurity. Dôlmuzûn regards the isolationist revival as a luxury belief held by a holdfast that no longer has to make payroll.",
  "culture": "Practical, acquisitive, and comparatively open — Dôlmuzûn takes apprentices from outside Namuzdus, which Kurnumgrath considers close to sacrilege. Status attaches to output and to the quality of a vein-read. The holdfast's craft-work is excellent and unromantic.",
  "relation_to_namuzdus": "One of the three founding holdfasts of the Triple Spire pact, Fifth Age 721 (MV 10327). Holds the largest single bloc of Council seats by master-crafter count."
 },
 "relations": {
  "geographic_location": [
   "Namuzdus",
   "Silgolt"
  ],
  "related_species": [
   "Kaetijul"
  ],
  "related_organizations": [
   "Stonecrown Council",
   "Namuzdus Dominion",
   "Republic of Izheim"
  ]
 },
 "timeline": {},
 "sources": {},
 "meta": {
  "status": "proposed",
  "note": "Named in history.events.the_gathering_at_three_spires; carries the Deepmetal economy established in the_deepmetal_accord."
 }
}

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