Laemehō
Laemehō was a small mining town in Nīwulā Valley's higher hills nearing the World Mountains. The people mined copper ore to send down the river to other settlements, where it could be made into arms and armor, along with a host of useful tools.
The settlement stood on suffered frequent raids and attacks by the Azēgo, who considered the land beneath the buildings sacred and theirs. Time after time, the Azēgo would burn down the settlement before new people from the lower Nīwulā Valley came to rebuild the place and continue the mining of copper, which the lower valley greatly depended on.
Industry & Trade
Laemehō depended on supplies, particularly food, traded for copper ore and brought from the Lower Valley where the fields were greenest. Beyond imported grain, the people were determined to survive on their own. They hunted and fished and crafted most of their own tools and clothing, with infrequent trade with some people from Na Tahō Wīme, whose furs, roots and herbs they considered superior to anything the Lower Valley could provide.
History
The earliest mentions of Laemehō came from the age after Sō-Thadi Soyaewa's death, where it was already regarded by the Wīzoha Empire as one its best sources for high-quality copper ore. Dust-covered clay tablets revealed frequent attacks against the small settlement and repeated requests for more and better defenses until after Sō-Thadi Tēhlebao began his assault and conquest of the Upper Valley.
Unrest continued after the region was secured, though any information of the source for the difficulties was found strangely destroyed, tablets scratched over text to make certain words indecipherable.
Many settlements of Nīwulā Valley were destroyed in a great flood at the end of the third millennium of the First Age. Laemehō survived the flood itself, but as a settlement highly dependent on food sent from the Lower Valley, it began to wither once supplies ran out.
The last mention of the settlement declared the mines shut down and the entrances blocked before the last people would leave, scattered into the wind and all corners of the world. For many ages to come, Laemehō became a forgotten ruin lost in the high hills of Nīwulā Valley. Abandoned by the people who once most desired it.
Geography
The foothills of the World Mountains climbed high and steep in many places. Laemehō stood between such cliffs and hills on a small piece of somewhat even land. Nearby, hills and cliffs and hidden gorges block sight to entrances to caverns and tunnels snaking through the underbelly of the great mountains ever hovering above the humble settlement.
Most of the copper mining operation happened within the caverns, where veins were rich in quantity and easily identified. These hidden corners of the earth twisted and turned akin to a dry, hollow river, with an eerie echo inviting only silence.
Reborn and Rebuilt, Over Again
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