Thinking about factories in Coalridge from the perspective of the people working there.
Working conditions have got to be the worst. Cramped (to make more room for the work), hot (because of all the machinery), dark (minimal electroplasmic lighting), dangerous (tons of dangerous machines, jagged edges, open flames). I can imagine old Skov songs being sung to lighten the conditions and Akorosi foremen afraid the songs were insulting them (probably true) reacting poorly.
The wages. Silver slugs or something that forces people to stay in the area like food and rent vouchers? Better or worse pay if your Akorosi or Skovlander? Differences in pay for adults vs. children? Based on gender? Affected by disabilities (I imagine a lot of injured workers who have to work just the same)?
Working hours. How long is a slogger’s shift? 12 hours? 16? I think the work shifts probably are named after the hour they start, yeah? Sixes and Pearls maybe? Fours and Thread?
Do folks work every day? I’m thinking there is a break, not out of any kind of sympathy for the workers but because they machinery gets too hot, too greasy, too irradiated by the low grade electroplasm that they use to power the machinery? I’m imagining four or six days of work and one day of cleaning? Maybe just one shift of cleaning? Seems like a lot of ways to game that system.
What about the work itself? We know they’re working on repairing leviathan hunters. Also that there is a design facility for the sparkwrights. I’m sure they also did steel work to support Gaddoc Rail as well. But other products of industrial factories were textiles (a big one, both cotton and silk), glass making, agriculture, mining, building supplies, steel processing (to remove impurities), batteries, matches, waterproofing, and probably a ton of others that I’m missing. What all do you think is produced in Coalridge?
I was singing a song about coal miners to myself this weekend and was thinking about Coalridge and how you’d constantly hear the sound of someone coughing.
So many possibilities with colaridge. Since the world is dark, I envisions large green towers that illuminate the area and signaling shift changes. There are always people working on something.
Maybe the shifts are short, but the workers migrate to different factories to work enough hours to subsist. You work first shift in the leviathan hunter factory, second shift making lanterns and maybe sleep during a third shit. And maybe they will work in the completely new place the next day. A district of working nomads.
Also I’d imagine there be several leviathan blood refineries in the area.
And sometimes in the dead of night, one might spot a tiny flame, another factory becoming the victim of Lost One sabotage.
There is also some small work that gets done without the overlords knowing, or caring. Cash or barter only.
Things like fishermen needing a small generator repaired to run a charge going through their hull below the waterline to keep Seekers away. Grimy kids bringing in buckets of electroplasm-encrusted rocks they scavenged from the beach in exchange for a few potatoes or some smokes.
Lots of street peddlers selling snake oil cough remedies. Lots of people out of work looking to make an honest buck.
Eelskin tanneries giving off terrible smells.
Union organizers trying to get things together…
We can surmise a lot based on real-world history. The 8-hour workday, for example, was secured through the efforts of laborers and organizers over a pretty stunning swath of history from just before 1900 to right around 1940. That’s four decades of struggle! When the US first started tracking labor hours in 1890, the average factory worker put in a staggering 100 hours per week. Per week. This was also a period of high child labor populations and extremely low working conditions. Injury and death were commonplace.
Compensation was usually inadequate too. Tennessee Ernie Ford popularized these conditions in Sixteen Tons (a song originally by Merle Travis), which rails against the scrip-and-company-store system used by coal companies to secure what was essentially slave labor:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUpTJg2EBpw
In fact, pretty much anything about the West Virginia Coal Wars would be fertile ground for a story about Coalridge factory workers. Info on The Battle of Blair Mountain usually condenses a lot of the story into a digestible format:
https://www.history.com/news/americas-largest-labor-uprising-the-battle-of-blair-mountain
For a longer (but still captivating) look into real-world labor history, I’d recommend a graphic novel I just finished reading called Wobblies!, which recounts the history of the Industrial Workers of the World union:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/384897.Wobblies_A_Graphic_History_of_the_Industrial_Workers_of_the_World
The comic pointed out to me not just the history of labor but also of inequality in labor. Several unions, for example, only wanted to recruit white men who were already in relatively comfortable, well-paying jobs. Women, minorities, and children had far, far fewer rights and privileges in the workplace, and of course the bosses sowed distrust among all workers to keep conditions inequal.
To answer your questions directly:
Work songs are almost certainly present in Doskvol in some capacity, although factories might be too loud to hear much singing on the job. A 12-hour workday seems like the reasonable minimum (considering Doskvol is probably more dystopian than our own Industrial Revolution), and a 16-hour day seems like a likely average. Six days of work and one day “to let the machines rest” makes sense, but I’d be inclined to think the bosses probably try to find ways to keep the workers busy on that off day. Payment in scrip is almost certainly the norm.
The tinkerers of Coalridge are rumored to source specialized mining tools, such as spillhooks, an ancient tool that extracts rare ore from “devil’s oysters.” Alchemists in the district are known to specialize in formulas to combat the dangers faced by underground delvers (darkness, hardened stone, extreme thirst, shortness of breath, etc).
Devil’s oysters are strangely poisonous rocks formed from the mixture of leviathan’s blood and void sea water. These are sometimes pulled from the bay, and often conceal valuable leftovers from leviathan hunts.
The lair for the crew in my campaign was in Coalridge & they got involved with labor politics & Belle Brogan early on. Great stuff.
Ulf Ironborn has enemies of the Citizens of Coalridge & the Billhooks. Given his clock of carving out gang territory & doing smash & grab operations I figured as Tier I he’s working local & surmised from that both that his HQ (The Forge) is in Coalridge and that going at the Billhooks suggests there are slaughterhouses in Coalridge near Brickston.
Add to the industrial stench of foundry coke the iron smell of blood through the district on the east side and the bleat of goats being slaughtered. Both the sea and the land kind.
Lightning field parts, certainly. Glass – lots of glass and whatever else is necessary to maintain the twisted version of agriculture in place.
Vouchers are interesting because it absolutely makes sense that there are forces pushing Coalridge towards becoming a full bore company town. I imagine the main forces against it have been the fact that there are lots of little robber barons rather than a unifying one.
It’s possible that some neighborhoods are company towns, but not yet the whole district, and the push to that would be an interesting clock because – frankly – it gives the whole labor movement a little bit more grippiness. Having the introduction of fiat currency happen in play could be a ton of fun.
Now, all that said, here’s a small counterpoint – Duskvol is an unhealthy hellhole, and I imagine there is always a shortage of skilled labor. There is no countryside for people to leave for the big city. That could reduce how much leverage the bosses have, or it could be the point of another sharp bit.
Lots of possibilities.
Saul Alexander asked about Coalridge last year. As well as all the great answers above, I have to think there are a lot of workhouses in Coalridge.
Menial work in workhouses: Removing hemp from electroplasmic wires, bone-crushing (for fertiliser) (good tidbit: “a government inquiry into conditions in the Andover workhouse in 1845 found that starving paupers were reduced to fighting over the rotting bones they were supposed to be grinding, to suck out the marrow”), doing mass laundry (with caustic chemicals and accidents), wood chopping, corn grinding, rope-making. It’s basically a lot of soul-crushing busy work that nobody else wants to do.
I also think there have to be canneries, which ties into Matthew’s suggestion about slaughterhouses above; you’d have a pipeline from slaughterhouse to cannery.
Two other things that come to mind;
– Self-medication by the poor, both alcohol and drugs, and an accompanying moral panic on the part of the rich about the behaviour of the poor. And an accompanying (hypocritical) strict crackdown on “dissolute behaviour” amongst the poor of Coalridge. The harshest, most brutal bluecoats in the city.
– Religion. Worksongs, definitely, and I think there would have to be a strong religious streak amongst the poor folk of Coalridge; it’s hard to imagine them getting by without religion. Festival days where the whole area is transformed by colour and even joy, lots of song, lots of humble churches and corner shrines, lots of strict moralizing, fierce internecine conflict between religious sects, a thriving cult scene. As in the real world, I imagine the one day of rest is claimed by the Church of the Ecstasy of the Flesh, and includes semi-mandatory duties to the church.
“And every day you’re in this place you’re two days nearer death.” youtube.com – The Chemical Worker’s Song by Great Big Sea
Well, colin roald has just given me the opening credits song for the second season of my game. Thanks!
I remember reading a book where the state provided proles with 4 person bicycles, too heavy for one person to operate, giving them the ability to commute to work, but limiting individual freedom of movement. Seems like Duskvol would be all over that kind of manipulation.
Actually, I need to write a post about Duskvol and bikes.
I copied a few of these post for later reading!