Kohankivi

When just about every war, wind, and wave comes your way, you do need some ways to handle it.

— local stonemason

  Kohankivi knows, intimately, the pain of losing everything. Many times in the town's history has it been razed to the ground through warfare or wildfire, washed away in avalanches and riverine floods, decimated by furious storms, and in one strange incident, filled with thousands of small pink slimes. In the wake of these countless tragedies (and oddities), the town's infrastructure has become extremely flexible in what it handles.   Most important and chief to the town's infrastructure (and defence plans) are its evacuation points and shelters. While day-to-day industry and trade are more important nominally, everyone who lives in the town understands the risk disaster poses.     Their industrial districts are largely along lower areas of the river to take advantage of hydropower for turning water wheels, as the high winds often break the settlement's few remaining windmills and flood events are more easily managed.   The town is ringed by tall walls with jutting supports, which many houses are built into to increase stability of both the walls and the homes. Its guardhouses flank its entrances, offering traders a sense of safety. By each gate are also a number of services for travellers: populous inns, carriage maintenance services, stables, small warehouses, adventurer request boards, and the like.   Shops tend to line the three main streets that begin at each of the entrances and join somewhere in the centre of town, with the town square itself dedicated to a monument of remembrance and to official announcements.

You can't just go ask the Oivio lad to make you a tool. You'll upset the Niniisto brothers across the street again.

— exasperated father

  Naturally, any town so heavily stacked with trade and industry is going to be chock-full of political problems. Many industry guilds, both native to Vuorenmaa and spreading out from other areas of Xin-Jiyu or Valathe, have ended up with small workshops crammed into the town's industrial sections and trading areas packed along the main streets for visitors and locals to enjoy.     For example, the swift action of locals to protect a small religious group hailing from Tsukirai from flash flooding contributed greatly to a trade treaty between Tsukirai and Vuorenmaa that still stands today.

Here, we shall be prosperous. Here, we shall risk ruin. I think the balance is worth it - can't get bread this good from the cities.

— trader settling in Kohankivi

  Kohankivi stands in a desirable spot for any group to settle. It has good access to clean water, lumber, and caves, with many sites along the river being perfect for reasonable amounts of crop growth. It is naturally sheltered on one side by the mountains, and on the others by forest or river. Over the years, it has had many names as different tribes or nascent groups have attempted to settle there.   The caves hold the evidence of their passing. A museum stands near the centre of the town with the most significant of the archaeological finds regarding their shared past, for there is no documented evidence of many of these societies. There are occasional records: Galasthin once maintained a military outpost here early in the Era of the Divine, and Meihua ran lumber operations in the area for a few centuries during the empire's reign, for instance.     The current iteration of Kohankivi has no true founding date. Village lore suggests that in the chaos of Meihua's dissolution, folk naturally settled in the ruins of the abandoned lumber mills and gradually built up a village, which over time formed into a town.   When Vuorenmaa itself was founded, Kohankivi's name was formalised and the town joined the nation. The name itself is apt: it is drawn from words meaning adaptability and stone, indicating that the town may change, but that its roots are as solid as mountain-rock itself.