02 - Iron Kingdoms W.. - Captain Spud Is Amazing

108.1.141.197
58 Iron Kingdoms
Other Industries
Textiles
The city of Tarna is named for the Thurian,
Gramslo Tarna, who built the first commercially
successful textile mill sometime around 810 BR.
The entrepreneuer Tarna established his self-named
mill town on the banks of the Dragon’s Tongue
and gathered unskilled workers from near and far
who set up in crowded housing. He appealed to the
landgraves—noble landowners—as far as the Warrens
for investment capital. Several of them sent emissaries
or went personally to observe his mill. Seeing the
mechanized looms and spinning machines, wealthy
families were quick to hand him the capital to embark
in the manufacturing of textiles.
Flooding destroyed Tarna’s mills in the 780s BR,
but by that time change was already in the wind. Mills
dotted Ord and Cygnar in the hundreds, turning out
bales of yarn by the shipload. By the mid 700s BR,
major operations in Berck, Carre Dova, Five Fingers,
and Ceryl produced sailcloth, and almost every town
with access to water and the necessary machinery
erected the tall textile factories.
Then came the steam engine. At first, steam served
as an alternate source of power during dry seasons,
but gradually as valves and power shut-offs improved,
steam power revolutionized the textile factories. By the
late 600s BR, improved mechanization forced textile
factories to adopt steam in order to survive. The mills
expanded rapidly, and mill towns began losing their
small, sometimes familial feeling and became crowded
and dirty.
In the Modern Era, conditions in and around
these mills have worsened over the past generation
as immigrants willing to work cheap have started
replacing the native workers. Fresh from the abolition
of serfdom in Khador in 546 AR, the Khadoran lower
class has no real standard of living for manufacturers
to meet. Like several of the other industries, workers
in textile factories consist of the lower classes,
immigrants, children, and sometimes prisoners. Some
of the factories are surrounded by their own shanty
towns where workers rise early and work throughout
the daylight hours. All they have to do after such
a day is wait in breadlines or drink themselves into
oblivion before rising for another 14 hour shift the
next morning. This scenario is especially accurate
in the larger cities and more than ever in the north
where immigrants and refugees seek any employment
they can find.
Printing
Though handwritten and illuminated manuscripts
had been the preserve of the learned few, the
invention of printing led to a proliferation of
information. Invented by Rector Janus Gilder circa
940 BR, the printing press and its moveable type
was restricted by the Sancteum for its own use. The
Sancteum and several Vicarate Councils used Gilder’s
press to produce religious tracts and decrees which
allowed them to distribute their rulings faster than
ever before. Indeed, certain religious debates raged
entirely by pamphlet.
The Orgoth outlawed such incunubula—sheets
and books made on a moveable type press—and
illuminated works once they gained full control over
western Immoren. They declared books and printed
material contraband. In fact, all printed works and
presses outside of Caspia were requisitioned and never
seen again. Printing continued in Caspia’s Sancteum
but rarely elsewhere, and what was printed was mostly
anti-Orgoth propaganda with the distributors of such
material eventually located and executed forthwith.
During the Orgoth Era, advancements in printing
slowed to a crawl if not a complete standstill.
In 261 AR, with so much technology once again
re-discovered or improved, two engineers working
for the Sancteum, rectors Fenric Gannek and Andrea
Bruer, unveiled a steam-powered press capable of
printing tens of thousands of pages on rag paper. In
333 AR, the Cygnaran king, Fergus the Fervid, realized
what the Sancteum had and demanded the presses
be made available to the Crown. This was a large step
toward making the mass publication and circulation of
literature possible.
By the 500s AR, the creation of increasingly
powerful economies based on improved trade and
commerce had enabled the emerging middle class to
participate in a free exchange of ideas. Today Gilder’s
initial creation, improved upon by Gannek and Bruer,
allows readers to be exposed to dramatically different
worldviews ranging from maps and accounts of travels
to information based on practical experience. In the