Carna announces itself with the Hassa River first — its current swift enough to serve as the moat the city treats it as — and then with the Carnelian Bridge, the iron-and-gold-inlaid span that is the primary entrance and the city's most visible statement about itself. The bridge is engineering, advertisement, and ideology expressed simultaneously in the same material.

Inside, the streets slope. Uphill toward the Gold District and House Carna's mansion; downhill through the Silver Quarter, then the Copper District, then the gravel pits at the outskirts. The stratification is architectural as much as social — the city's physical geography and its moral hierarchy are the same incline. The mines are below everything, accessible through guarded entrances, lit by arcane lanterns that approximate sunlight and purified by magical filtration. The forges never go cold. The air smells of hot metal regardless of the season, regardless of what else is happening.

Other races — elves, dwarves, halflings — exist in Carna's lowest districts and peripheral positions, working the labor the hierarchy places beneath consideration. They are not openly mistreated. They are structurally marginal, which requires no overt cruelty to maintain.

Carna occupies a position against the Ural Mountains with the Hassa River encircling the city on its exposed sides — water source and natural fortification simultaneously. The mountains provide the mineral-rich veins that are the city's entire economic reason for existing; the tunnels extend deep into the lower slopes. House Carna's mansion sits at the highest ground, with panoramic views of the river, the city, and the mines below. The city slopes downward from that point through successive districts, each associated with a lower tier of the craft hierarchy. The geography and the governance tell the same story.

Predominantly human, by design rather than accident. House Carna's ideology treats human dominance as a founding principle. Other races exist in Carna but occupy peripheral positions — working the labor the hierarchy places beneath consideration: the gravel pit overflow, the mine scraps, the roles that skilled humans decline. They live on the outskirts. The city's structure maintains their marginality without requiring its governance to enforce it explicitly, which is more efficient.

Gold mining is primary and has been since Eamon Carna struck the foundational vein. The Ural Mountains' gold deposits remain productive; the magical systems in the mines — arcane lanterns, spell-purified air, enchanted structural reinforcement — represent significant investment and have made extraction safer and more efficient than comparable non-magical mines elsewhere. The craft hierarchy produces finished goods at each tier: goldsmiths produce jewelry and decorative work commanding premium prices across Irna; silversmiths produce functional and ceremonial items; coppersmiths produce industrial and domestic goods; gravel pit workers produce raw material and labor.

The Gold District eats well. The downward gradient of the city applies to food quality as reliably as it applies to everything else. The Festival of Molten Glory is the year's most lavish public food event — display as much as celebration. The Day of the Dimmed Forge is the year's most austere, by design.

Human superiority is Carna's civic ideology — reinforced by the city's own founding myth, by the social structure that makes the belief self-fulfilling, and by a warlike reading of Pollaran's doctrine that treats dominance as evidence of strategic virtue. Within the human population, the craft hierarchy is strict: goldsmiths and jewelers at the top, silversmiths below, coppersmiths below that, gravel pit workers at the bottom. Each tier has its own neighborhoods, markets, and worship spaces. Movement between tiers is uncommon and resented when it occurs — the hierarchy is not merely economic but understood as a reflection of inherent worth, which makes its social enforcement automatic. Caminus's blessing is invoked before significant work; exceptional output is understood as divine favor, which reinforces the belief that quality of craft and quality of person are identical.

Celebrates the first gold pour of the season — a public spectacle of shimmering molten metal that is simultaneously religious ceremony and civic demonstration. The city watches from the tiers; the Gold District's view is better.

The somber observance honoring those who died in the mines. The forges go cold for one day — a significant gesture in a city where they run year-round. The community reflects on the cost of its prosperity. The official count of mine deaths honored in this observance is significantly lower than the private records kept by mine workers' families. This discrepancy has been consistent for at least three generations.

Craft is the art form. Goldsmiths produce work that functions as both jewelry and religious offering; the finest pieces are evaluated against Caminus's imagined standards. The Carna aesthetic runs toward display of craft skill rather than abstraction — purely decorative work that demonstrates no technique is considered indulgent. Songs exist in Carna but are secondary to the visual culture of the gold work that defines the city's identity.

Caminus is Carna's patron in practice: craft is not merely work but status, morality, and destiny.

Pollaran is honored as the war-god of House Carna: discipline, strategy, and domination as a craft. In Carna's interpretation, victory and control are the proof of worth, and the city's defensive posture and internal hierarchy are framed as strategic necessities rather than mere prejudice.

Bronthe is the stone deity of the Deepvein Mine itself — the tunnels, the foundations, the structural truth of a mountain being hollowed out over generations. The mine is Carna's entire reason for existing, and Bronthe's worship is embedded in the miners' culture as deeply as Caminus's is in the goldsmith quarter; offerings are pressed into the rock face before each new shaft is begun, and the Day of the Dimmed Forge is understood in the mine levels as Bronthe's day as much as a general day of mourning.

Talbar is strong in a city where contracts, guild privileges, and debt are weapons. Themela is honored by magistrates and the upper-tier courts that keep the hierarchy enforceable without constant violence. Zopha is respected by administrators and refiners who treat technical knowledge as power. Nyxollox maintains visible funerary practice, especially for mine deaths and civic executions.

Selunehra is observed in the forge levels and among the night guard at the Hassa River moat — the forges that never go cold require workers through every hour of darkness, and the watchmen who pace the river barrier have maintained Selunehra's presence in Carna even as the upper-district culture ignores it. The lower tiers and the mine workers are the primary observers; the upper districts consider themselves above it. Jusannia persists across every district of Carna in the quiet way of women's faith — midwives and healers serve the gravel pit families and the goldsmith households alike, and Jusannia's observance is too domestic and too universal to have been organized away by any hierarchy. Chamastle is the faith of the lower districts and the gravel pit workers, who protect their households with the understanding that the city's hierarchy offers them no safety net — the Day of the Dimmed Forge is the one day Carna allows itself to grieve openly, and Chamastle's protection is what the families of the dead have invoked every year at that ceremony for generations.

Carna's wealth sustains private rot. Mamaxa's discreet discipline circles find patrons among the upper tiers, where secrecy and control are currencies. Shinigami-leaning necromancers are periodically uncovered when bodies vanish from the records. Gormandus is not forbidden, but his feasting cults flourish in the same strata—indulgence as theology, excess as proof.

Carna begins with Eamon Carna — the lone miner who struck a gold vein pure enough to glow in the Ural Mountain dark and recognized what it meant. What started as a mining camp became a settlement as word of the find spread. The social hierarchy based on craft developed in the Age of Expansion as a natural organizing principle that House Carna, as Eamon's descendants, formalized into governance.

The period when House Carna formalized the city's governance model: fortification using river and mountain as natural defense, the goldsmith quarter as the economic center, the craft hierarchy as civic structure. The ideology of human superiority was made explicit in this period rather than merely practiced.

Invasions from neighbors, internal conflicts, and a catastrophic mine collapse tested the city's resilience. The defensive culture that characterizes Carna today — the Hassa River moat, the mountain back, the controlled bridge access — was shaped by these events. The mine collapse is the reason the Mines section of the original Eamon Carna survey documents shows a level that appears on no subsequent map.

Carna is productive, well-defended, and ideologically stable. The current unresolved matters are: the discrepancy between official and private mine death counts; the arcane mine maintenance systems and the lord's incomplete knowledge of how to maintain them; the Hassa River upstream gold traces that should not exist; and the level of the mines that appears on Eamon Carna's original survey and on nothing since.

House Carna governs as the founding dynasty — authority derived from lineage to Eamon Carna and reinforced by control of the mine operations that every resident's livelihood depends on. The ideology of the dynasty and the city's structure are identical; the specific lord is less distinctive than the system he maintains.

Human, Male — a goldsmith of genuine skill — what can be said of him individually matters less than what he maintains

Visible in the upper districts, engaged with the goldsmith community, distant from the gravel pits and the city's margins. His craft skill is genuine, which matters in a city that evaluates character through craft. He does not know how to maintain the arcane systems that keep the mines productive and safe; the artificer's workshop notes in the mansion archive, unread, are the only documentation of what would be required.

Human, Male — the Guild's institutional authority and the city's most commercially significant figure after House Carna

Sets production standards, maintains the quality that gives Carna's gold work its regional reputation, and manages the direct relationship with House Carna's leadership that makes the Guild effectively a partner institution. His authority within the Gold District is significant and is understood by all parties.

Human, Male — the operational manager of the city's most critical asset

Manages the Deepvein Mining operation on behalf of House Carna. Has knowledge of the passage in the deepest section of the mines that appears on Eamon Carna's original survey documents and on nothing since. He has not descended into it. He has not reported its existence to House Carna, which he tells himself is because he doesn't know what it is.