Mazal-Maram

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In the Lith-Crillion Era, Ilagandam prospectors found rich gold veins in the Bandu cave complex. They established Mazal-Maram, a mining camp for the workers and a stronghold to protect their claim. Like what they had to do at Felak, Urbal Nabad and other places along the Earth Seam, they signed a trade relationship with the elementals.

You can never get a complete buy-in with the elementals. There are some that are just too chaotic to deal with, others evil, tainted from the environment around them.

The strategy for securing passage, trade, and protection along the Earth Seam, or near it, is to make a treaty with the majority of the area's elementals. Most of the time, these elementals are unorganized, so they will usually choose protecting their own interests, "toll fees", over joining with others of their kind. It ends up being a good relationship for all.

- Khalgab, excerpt from Felak Trade Archives - "Seam Elementals"

In the settlement's early years, there were no smelting areas. They had no place to exhaust the smoke, so the gold ore from the Bandu mines was taken to Mazal-Maram on pack lizards, then packed on barges and shipped down the Earth Seam. It then went through the Underdark town Urbal Nabad, up tunnels and elevators to the surface town Ilagandam where it was refined. After a couple decades of this, relations between these two towns began to sour. Ilagandam had become a commercial rival. Mazal-Maram had prepared for this. It's leaders figured it only a matter of time before Urbal Nabad would raise toll fees to make their mining unprofitable, possibly leading to war between Urbal Nabad and Ilagandam. Most of Mazal-Maram had families in Ilagandam, but some were in the other, a recipe for civil war. To protect against these potential problems, they extending some of their dead mines towards the surface. These were expensive operations, but the trade that they would open on the surface would cover these costs in time. It would also have benefit of drastically reducing shipping costs - the elemental tolls for using the Earth Seam, tolls for passing through Urbal Nabad. Mazal-Maram also knew it was only a matter of time before Ilagandam enacted their own tolls. In 481 LE, two centuries after the digging started, they reached the surface, founding Tholig-Mizin. This surface settlement became the new smelting works for Bandu gold.

In the Kilth Deeps War (614 LE - 623 LE), Mazal-Maram found its trade greatly slowed. This was a product of two things, the war, and the once rich Bandu veins drying up. Unable to pay the elementals for Mazal-Maram's "proximity fee", being close to the Earth Seam, they attacked. By then Mazal-Maram was a town of 20,000 souls. The elementals were too small in numbers to be a major threat. This changed when they begin working with the Reds of Kilth. By war's end, the old gold barges had become slave barges. The settlement was depopulated, then in the area near the Earth Sam, elementals reduced the town to piles of rubble.