FreeHolds Adventure, Cycle 2 Part 1a
Part 1) Adwin
Adwin woke from a dream in which he had been living on the streets of GreensBridge, trying to survive and begging to get by. In the dream he would encounter his companions and friends from back home and he would ask for food or coin and it was as if none of them could recognize him. It was not the first time he had the dream and he suspected he was not going to get back to sleep. He lay in the darkness of his room, staying under the blankets to avoid the chill and thought about poverty in the worlds greatest city.
It was essentially a crime to be poor in the city. It was also a crime to beg for coin or food in most of the city’s districts. The northeast corner of the city, one of the smallest districts, was home to much of the city’s impoverished, foreign and nonhuman citizens. Known as the Grey District, nearly a third of the city’s population lived there, securely walled off from the rest of the city and often enough from each other as in the case of the dwarven and goblin populations. People lived shoulder to shoulder, one a top the other. Winter sickness, hunger, and street violence killed more people every year in the Grey District than lived in the rest of the Eastern Freeholds, or so it seemed to Adwin.
Though, despite the comparative poverty within the city, even the folks of the Grey District were richer than most freeholders outside the city. It was one of the strange facts he had not been able to wrap his head around at first. How an unskilled labourer could work from spring through autumn in the suburban farms outside GreensBridge, make what he considered a decent amount of coin while doing so and then spend the winter in the Grey District, barely able to subsist. Why would a person give up their agency to be able to live in the city?
After fretting about this for many an eight-day and listening to a number of different opinions on the subject, he had concluded that the main reason for these people to subjugate themselves to an abusive system was due to the fact they did not know differently. Or, as his friend Lit-Mot-Tow often pointed out, humans were generally stupid.
He had met with Lit, as they had planned, on the autumn equinox. It had been the first time he had gone into the Grey District, so called due to the fact that the buildings and walls in the district were grey or in some cases nearly black from a lack of cleaning and the use of coal for heating. GreensBridge’s goblin population lived within a walled off section of the city in the northern most part of the Grey District. A place most humans tended to avoid. The buildings were old and poorly maintained and in some cases in a state of near collapse. The area was only a few blocks long by a few blocks wide but the city’s census claimed that over five thousand goblins lived there.
Lit had laughed about the official census and claimed that most of GreensBridge’s goblin population lived under the city and numbered over fifty thousand. Adwin still found that claim hard to believe but had no evidence Lit was lying or even exaggerating. The goblin woodworker also claimed that when the Eldra had first built the city all the races had been welcomed and treated with respect and like the elves and humans, goblins had also been invited to share the knowledge of the ancient race.
These days it was different. The majority of the official goblin population of GreensBridge were employed by the city as garbage pickers and for sewer maintenance. Like the unskilled human labourers who worked the farms, the goblins thus employed barely made enough to live in the city. Unlike the impoverished humans of the Grey District, the goblin population was more stable, less prone to violence or sickness and had much more freedom of movement. Though the later fact remained mostly unknown or unacknowledged by the humans.
Lit and he had met a few times in the early autumn. Adwin had been paraded around the above ground goblin community and introduced to a number of prominent goblin citizens and the local Historian. Often enough it seemed to Adwin that he spent half of such visits retelling his encounter with the crazy bog witch and verifying Lit’s claims about Heart-Tree-Valley. The local goblins seemed to treat him with respect. He also noted that the local goblins dressed differently here in GreensBridge as compared to his two previous encounters with the creatures. Their clothing tended too imitate human styles as well they had capped gloves and sandals that covered their claws and many of them wore a veil or partial mask across their face, hiding nose and mouth.
Adwin’s latest visit with Lit had been two eight-days ago, one of the first truly cold days of the season. His friend had been heavily bundled in layered clothing and was not at all happy with the cold. He found out that Heart-Tree-Valley had never had a winter, the magic of the tree or the crazy witch had kept the season at bay. This was the first time Lit had experienced the natural cold of autumn, he did not approve. It was also the first time Adwin had discovered that goblins generally went underground for the cold season or gathered in large halls and spent much of the winter sleeping. Lit was retiring to the underground of GreensBridge for the winter and would not be visiting with Adwin again until the spring.
Adwin’s thoughts drifted for a while, the rooming house where he stayed remained mostly quiet. He had almost drifted back to sleep when he heard the clatter of the furnace door being opened and Jabert tossing in three pieces of wood before closing the door again. Then a similar clatter came from the kitchen as the stove was similarly stocked and the property owners started their day.
Adwin could hear some of the other tenants getting up; like most of the people living here, they had jobs in the market or elsewhere within the North Trade District. About a quarter of the house was off to work before breakfast, well before the sunrise. Adwin, as well as most of the others, typically were expected shortly after dawn, unless there was a big storm. There had been no big storms yet, but he was looking forward to seeing one this year. According to tradition everyone cleared snow and only after the main streets had been cleared were people expected to return to work. Though it was just the end of harvest time, so it would be another month or so before winter started settling in.
Adwin waited in bed long enough for the temperature to noticeably warm, the smells of breakfast wafting through the house. So, he only had to break away a little ice from the basin he washed from and typically by that point most of the others were done in the shitters. It did not take him long to get ready and he came down into the common room as people were sitting down to breakfast.
Meals here were a noisy affair. Single men ate crowded around one table and it was a bit of a free for all with eight to twelve men wolfing down their food as fast as they could before heading out to work. Single women had a table about the same size but there were only five or six of them typically sitting down for breakfast. From the jostling chaos of his table Adwin thought the lady’s setting always seemed to be calm and serene. There were two young couples that roomed here as well, but they ate after the single folk. The food was simple, common as the folk who ate it, of so Jabert had been heard to comment on more than one occasion.
After breakfast most folks made a hasty departure, heading to their work, today was the third of eight however and Adwin did not work. Most of the poorer people in the city worked seven or eight of eight, while a few followed the more traditional work cycle of having the forth and eighth day off. Adwin worked for Roburns Trading Company and they were doing business twenty-five hours a day, every day. Yet they made sure their employees had two days off each eight-day.
Adwin had not really wanted to work for Roburns, but after having spent over two eight-days looking for other work he had been faced with the fact that a lot of other people were also looking for jobs. He had learned that the best time to look for work in the city was the spring, when all the field hands returned to their regular farm jobs outside the city. He had even worked up the nerve to seek out Councillor Bane, true to his word the councillor would have put him to work on the east docks as part of a labour crew. Not that different from what he would have been doing for Roburns. Except Roburns paid half as much more and he had been told that if he could read well enough there was other types of work available within the shipping company.
So despite the risk of condemnation from Tipper, he had gone to work at Roburns Trading Company and had been amazed at the size and diversity of their operations. He had also learned pretty quickly that it was not just Tipper and her kin that had something against the Maldorn company, seemingly about half the city’s population had reason to dislike them.
Adwin however was very pleased with his work situation. Besides being one of the better paying jobs available to him they had also provided a change of clothing and winter wear; boots, gloves and a long coat. He could have stayed at one of their bunkhouses as well, but thought it would make his life less complicated if he was living closer to his friends. As it turned out Adwin’s literacy was considerably higher than the average freeholder and he ended up being transferred from warehouse labourer to the main administration office as an assistant clerk after his second eight-day with the company. The new position paid a bit more and came with another change of clothing and shoes. It also meant he was in the office where most of the Maldorn people worked, he was quickly learning to speak and read Maldorn. He had also developed a bit of a crush for the senior clerk he had been assigned to, she was a different sort of person than Adwin was familiar with.
After breakfast, dressed in his own clothing with his green poncho over top, he headed south instead of to the north docks. He had arranged to meet Mokha today and although it was many hours until their midday rendezvous, Adwin, as he often did, planned on taking the long way to explore the city a bit more.
He had heard that an old lady by the name of Heklertha told a story from her youth of an encounter with a wild elf and the hidden heart tree at the centre of the city.
He was looking for Dohporra Courtyard near the east side of the Inner Quarter, an area of town where the indentured clan of Brv-rocht had raised new buildings. The place he was looking for was dwarven built, he was pretty sure he had seen their buildings all over the city, but this was a residential development, incorporating some of the original Eldra structures. As usual, he was curious.
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