Mining

What it governs

• The ore ladder, as a curve. Nothing refuses a citizen; the rock simply does not give.Charter, Part III — Gathering group
• A pickaxe buys speed. Only speed.
• One miner per rock — which is what turns a rare seam into territory somebody will contest.
• Climate decides which ore exists where. The deep tiers are remote, and the deepest of all is only in the north.
• Swinging at rock trickles experience into Strength, and the ore is heavy enough that carrying it is its own problem.

What happens today

A citizen reaches at rock and comes away with ore, with stone, or with nothing. Three things decide it: how far from home the seam is, whether there is something hard enough in the hand to work it with, and whether the body has done enough of this to know what it is looking at. A stone lashed to a stick is the first thing that buys distance — one rung further out than a bare stone reaches, and never the last rung. The last of the three is the ladder — a seam of iron gives nothing to a hand that has only ever moved copper, and says nothing about why.

What opens, and when

Only the levels the charter actually names. There is nothing between these rows — not because nothing happens, but because nobody has written down what would.

No citizen has reached any level of Mining, so every row below is a question mark. The world knows that something opens at each of these levels and has not yet found out what.