The Tarn Slums

Tarn, the Capital city of the industrious Prall people, located on the Southwestern tip of Teren. It is built around the base of the only real landmark visible for many, many miles, Cinder Hill. Cinder Hill is a round and flat topped mountain, now almost completely covered by the ever expanding Tarn. The city proper is surrounded by a large brick and clay wall snaking around its perimeter, interrupted only by the three main city gates to the north, south and east. The Tarn Wall was built by the Prallian Mining Company when it first opened its doors almost half a century ago as a gesture of goodwill to the Prall living in Tarn. In recent years the wall has provided less and less security to the Tarn residents, as the seemingly constantly expanding Slums Districts have spread well beyond the Tarn Wall, reaching slowly across the newly barren wasteland of Teren. The City of Tarn started off as a centre of trade and industry in Lumin, a bustling metropolis, a mechanical and technological force to be reckoned with. With the degeneration of the whole of Teren due to the constant Lumite mining of the Prallian Mining Company, the City of Tarn slowly started to lose its footing. The Lumite abuse, crime and poverty in the city only increased and the Prall people's relations with the rest of Lumin decreased in turn. The hard working Prall people started to lose their way. The marvel and splendor of the once greatly respected city has been lost somewhere in the past decades.

The Slums cover most of the ground area of Tarn, with many different districts surrounding the base of Cinder Hill and the outskirts of the city. The dry and dirty streets of the Tarn Slums are hardly an inviting sight, with thousands of small houses and shacks packed so tightly together that few can tell where one ends and the next begins. Some of the makeshift shelters are hardly even sufficient to protect from the sun or wind, let alone the harsh life of the Slums. During the day the Slums are a hive of activity with the constant flow of Prall in and out of the mines and the many peddlers and merchants from the Market District trying to make that little bit extra. With barely any free space in the Tarn Slums, the thin streets fill up easily during the day, most of them crowded and some seemingly impassable. At night, The Slums take on a different face, with hardly anyone willing to risk staying out on the streets after dark, only the usual beggars and drunkards passed out on many of the street corners and shady looking dealers on others. Unlike the Slopes or Market Districts the many Slums Districts have no Lumite streetlights to brighten their dark streets or alleyways. Out on the streets the only light one finds is either from the few guard posts bonfires in the areas or streaming out of one of the many Slums taverns open through the night. The majority of the districts in the Slums are controlled by Lumite gangs, funding their operations and staying in control by smuggling Lumite from the mines through one, or many of the countless mine entrances in the Slums. The entrances were built by the Prallian Mining Company to provide fast and easy access to the mines for its workers. As of late the Prallian Mining Company has started losing control of the entrances, sealing off many of them, as many as they can still reach. The Tarn Guards posted at the still active entrances to the mines hardly ever deny the more influential gangs entrance to the mines, when they do, it's often at the cost of their lives. Those same gangs process the Lumite into a consumable form through the use of condensing machines 'procured' from the Prallian Mining Company. Machines that were created with a different use in mind. They then distribute it throughout Tarn, mostly targeting the Slums and the Market Areas. The more opportunistic gangs even operate on the Slopes and Chapel Districts. With the Slums being as lawless as they are, the Lumite gangs claim entire districts of the Slums as their own. They offer to protect the residents of the districts from the crime and corruption of the Tarn Slums, for a fee, of course. The Tarn Guard has lost nearly all footing it ever had in the Slums, the only guards that remain there are either privately contracted by the Prallian Mining Company or they are Slums locals. They know to turn a blind eye when something bigger than them, bigger than their meager paycheck, is happening at their guard posting.

The Prallian Mining Company built its headquarters on the border of the Tarn Slums and the Slopes district, in range of the majority of its workforce but just out of range of most of the trouble in the Slums. The sheer size of the building is enough to make anyone nervous. Its perfectly smooth grey exterior walls and flat roof seemingly carrying on forever, interrupted only by the few windows the building has. At any time of day, stationed outside and around the Prallian Mining Company, you will find Enforcers, the Prallian Mining Company's elite guards. The Enforcers wear heavy suits of armor covering their entire bodies and wield huge two-handed swords and high powered Lumite-Rifles. In all of tarn, they are the only guards that still have any real authority.

At the western side of Tarn, bordering the Market and Slums Districts is the Docks District. This area has been unused and abandoned by the Tarn Officials for the last decade or more due to the constant gang activity. The Docks District consists mostly of heavily weathered wooden buildings, taller than those in most districts of the Slums and not as tightly packed. Most of which were previously owned by the many shipping companies that used to operate from Tarn. To those still brave or desperate enough to trade with the Prallian people, the Tarn Docks became far too unsafe to risk. Given the amount of Lumite the Prall unearth compared to the other races of Lumin, some are still willing to take the necessary risks to get their hands on some of the precious crystals. Most ships now drop anchor at the coastal village of Marog, northeast of Tarn. For that reason the Docks District was all but handed over to the gangs. The warehouses and storage facilities are now either full of homeless Prall, serving as headquarters to one of the numerous gangs of the Slums or converted into some form of entertainment for the locals. Soon after the fall of the Docks District one of the more opportunistic gang leaders converted a huge warehouse in the Docks District into an arena and tavern, known by all in Tarn simply as the 'The Fist'. Weekly fights take place in the arena with all the gangs pitting their best fighters against one another. Many Slums locals spend what little money they have betting on their favorites to win, only to lose it all in a heartbeat to the ever unpredictable arena. The victors in the Fist Arena are hailed as champions by the locals, famous, till the day their title is stripped by the next challenger. In recent years, with the rise of The Fist Tavern and Arena, the Docks Districts popularity grew, with more and more entrepreneurial Prallians finding ways to entertain the locals and empty their pockets in the process. The Docks District has become an entertainment hub for many Tarn residents. Though the old piers in the Docks District still remain intact, they are a far cry from what they used to be. Few Tarn residents still use the piers for fishing and even fewer have been able to hold onto boats. Any fish caught at the piers is well received; fresh food is always hard to come by in Tarn, and always yields a good price on the Tarn Markets.

An old man from Tarn once said "If you can survive in the Tarn Slums, you can survive anywhere in Lumin." He was found dead in a Docks District alleyway soon after.