Yoluger

Yoluger Dwarven kingdom of unenviable position, historically being a place of sanctuary for exiles.

Sparkhammer, refuge, Suplex

In the time of elves, Lumthonom was seen as the height of a Dwarven kingdom that spread thousands of miles. The Mountain royalty and the high chieftains lived lives of honour and glory, concerned with the clans and how they conducted themselves within their society and in dealings with the elf folk. Complex codes of duty and civility increased greatly and those who found themselves in infraction were punished to maintain the high dwarven standard. Books of grudges were passed down, and for the most unforgivable transgressions of respect, the offender was banished. Some chieftains and nobles started accusing banishment offences of their political rivals, and soon caravans of the exiled nobles, their families, their supporters and their housestaff would become a regular occurrence. Eventually, as they were banished from the lands of the river Lum, the headed north east, some exiles acting as pioneers and map makers for those to come after. Territory around the mountain known as Yoluger by the elves was settled by the Dwarves, becoming a nation bearing the mountain’s elvish name. The centuries passed and the proud Lumthonom began to diminish, the inaction of kings leading to a loss of territory. Yuzem Hornfall, former champion of the mountain king was exiled when he refused to lose a contest of strength on purpose. Announcing that the king would try to engineer this dishonour, Yuzem amassed a considerable audience of nine thousand supporters that chose to follow him to Yoluger. This loss of a small army put an end to the exile policy, but Yoluger had already established itself as the second mountain of the Maligon dwarves.

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While the territory on the surface is a small mountain peak, Yoluger stretches further underground than its three small towns. Refuge is the capital of Yoluger, the first town established and home of the Yoluger democratic parliament, the current speaker being the highborn Bunnus Moltenfury. Before the ratification of bendattan, it sat on the edge of the Merec wilderness and became a place for those who had no where else to turn. Oppressed groups, outcasts and fugitives joined the Dwarves of refuge. Those who were able were put to work in the refuge mines alongside the exiled nobles who had commanded pits in lumthonom. The discovery that Yoluger was at one time a volcano on the cog face was met with equal parts delight and horror. While Refuge was now potentially endangered, it meant that they could harvest scores of Obsidian, Hyaloclastite and gemstones within the volcanic igneous rock. Modern Refuge is still wealthy due to harvesting and producing the volcanic glasses that have been prized for their beauty and magical potential. Refuge is also one of the only known towns where you will see birdfolk, or Aarakocra. While they live in the merec wilderness and places of high elevation across the cog, the Aarakocra at the top of yoluger mountain immigrated there after the Dwarves and there is enough shared trust amongst them to trade items and knowledge, although there is a struggle to have the birdfolk community accept the commonly accepted law of ownership. Embarrassingly, Refuge is perhaps best known for an unconditional surrender during the last war, orchestrated by Warmaster of labre Gaius Brange

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Sparkhammer was founded by the exiles of Yoluger after the discovery of the volcanic caverns within Yoluger. Nestled in a natural cove at the mountains base, Sparkhammer was chosen to be at a lower elevation than the core of the mountain. The town was partly the project of elderly craftswoman and inventor Jennwin Draenhirt was exiled because of a jealous competitor around the time of the founding of Yoluger. Draenhirt had tested a method of pressurising the lava flow and transporting it through insulated tubes so that with a cantrip of prestidigitation a forge could summon lava to work with and return the waste to the caverns below to be slowly reheated from the firmament of the cog. After ten years of testing this, an enormous version of her design was added to the mountain and Sparkhammer was founded. Forges and kilms can be heated with the distribution of lava flow from the Draenhirt device, known colloquially as ‘Rugar the molten’s spit.’ This gives the metal workers of Yoluger an advantage in producing quantity of fences, firebacks, gates, weapons and tools as the forge always blazes hot throughout a working day. After fifty years of the device in action, a filter was added with a retractable heat enchanted cage. This proved invaluable as when it was retracted, gemstones somehow dislodged in the flow were discovered. Over the centuries there have of course been accidents and injury, but the Draenhirt device is under the watchful eye of the clerics of kushinda’s forge and the dwarven arcane engineers who maintain it. The forges of sparkhammer have become some of the most expensive and desirable property across the entire cog, with most being rented from the priests of Kushinda rather than be owned outright. The temple of Kushinda in her dwarven aspect of Rugar the molten is expectedly small for a town with such connections to the goddess. It is entirely made of woven plates of metal, each inscribed with some tale of success and creation. Within its small and well guarded chamber sits one of the foremost treasures of Maligon, The tome of lost. The Tome is a large book, with pages around two square feet, bound in metal and rubies, enchanted against all damage for its protection. It contains a list of every major relic, magic item and technology that has since been forgotten across the cog. Some are very detailed with illustrations and speculation on where the last place it had been was, but others are descriptions of events and the effects of spells that the authors could not categorise. Devices that were used once by elves and never seen again, hundreds of pieces of technology recorded by ancient ancestors that had visited Verenpricipt, items of cog shattering importance that very likely have sat in a dusty chamber in gesurb for a thousand years or more. The tome of the lost is carefully guarded and needs special dispensation to view, even for members of the Rugar the molten chapel themselves.

Suplex, the third town of Yoluger is most easily accessible by going through the mountain at Refuge. It occupies another natural valley in the high hills that surround the Yoluger mountain and shares a boarder with the hostile nation of Oweib. Inside the mountain however there is an especially large cart track with carriages for transportation between Refuge and Suplex. The cart carriages are fast, reliable and run hundreds of services a cog day and night, so many workers of Refuge and Sparkhammer visit Suplex of a night to relax before returning home. As Yoluger was fashioned to be a protest of exiles against Lumthonom, Suplex became its most rebellious location. Theatres, drinking houses, bawdy poetry halls and the like litter the streets. Gold is spent freely and you are encouraged to enjoy life as if it were ending, something that is tantamount to heresy for the more conservative long living dwarves. The town is named after the common wrestling throw, where an opponent is fully lifted and deposited in a variety of ways. Its southern most tip that faces the peak of the mountain has a beautiful ten foot tall statue of Yuzem Hornfall raising his fist to the sky in defiance, as the name is a tribute to his grappling fighting style. The western quarter of Suplex is dominated by the ‘Academies of Rugar’ allied but privately owned training schools. Weapon training, swordsmanship, Ka-prit and oruti style martial arts, legitimate grappling and the most well attended are the ‘Goblin style’ wrestling are taught here. These institutions are considered to be some of the best across the entire cog, and almost every notable goblin style wrestler was initially trained here, or has taught here since. Some of the most popular pubs include ‘The seven of Zuge’ owned by Umideck Mountainspine. ‘The pump-handle tavern’ a large two story building covered in wrestling memorabilia which contains a permanently set up wrestling ring in its centre for goblin style theatrical wrestling. Owned by a former Orc wrestler and tag team champion Drorzokk ‘boar boy’ Dhag. ‘The hearth and homestead’ restaurant ran by Laslin Tanhert her husband Urmdan Ironguard and their twenty four daughters.

Yoluger has many of the mountain and hill creatures that can be found across maligon, including the trolls and ettins that live in small clusters amongst the peaks and the yetis at the very highest. Where the caverns meet the mountain side, Yoluger has more connections to beings of elemental earth and fire than any other area in Maligon, dust and earth Mephits, galeb duhr, bizarre but often friendly beasts known as Xorn, creatures of crystals, rock worms roam within the caves. In the lava of Sparkhammer creatures such as magma and fire mephits, archons and elementals of fire and strange lizardfolk like beings known as salamanders.