The Broken Mountains got their name from their jagged peaks, so unlike those of other mountain ranges.
The Skarlu United Organization named its coalfields the Broken Mining District because nearly a hundred mining sites, large and small, were scattered across mountains spanning more than three hundred miles.
If Annan had been there, he would have said that plants had flourished in the area in ancient times and turned into coal over ages of burial. Then shifts in the earth's crust had exposed the coal-rich rock deep underground. Dig farther down, and they would surely find vast new deposits.
The largest coal mine was less than a tenth the size of Coal Mountain, while the smallest could barely hold thirty people and might run dry at any moment.
Like the Phelan Trading Company, the Skarlu United Organization was a loose alliance of people who had banded together for survival. But unlike the Phelan Trading Company's nobles and merchants, these people were all gang members.
In other words, they knew how to fight.
They fought outsiders and one another. A mining site was usually controlled by one or more gangs. Some were newcomers, some were on the rise, and others were in decline. They spent their days fighting bloody battles over coal mines.
Naturally, the largest coal mine was controlled by the largest gang: the Oyster Gang.
The Oyster Gang had been the first to discover the Broken Mining District. Having found the prize before anyone else, they had grown rapidly.
The Raymond Family and the Phelan Trading Company could hardly stand by and let a new power rise. But the Wealth Church stepped in to keep the Grand Lord from expanding his authority any further, while the nobles of the Phelan Trading Company had interests of their own. They would rather