For DMs trying to imbue their fantasy worlds with the gritty, relentless authenticity of a real industrial complicated, there isn’t any higher real-world inspiration than the Saugus Iron Works Nationwide Historic Web site in Massachusetts. Usually neglected, this small Nationwide Park preserves the reconstructed coronary heart of North America’s very first built-in iron works, a technological marvel that operated within the Seventeenth century. It presents a blueprint for creating the a dwarven city intruding on agrarian tradition: a spot outlined by innovation, battle, and the brutal necessity of steady manufacturing.
The Coronary heart of American Business
The Saugus Iron Works Nationwide Historic Web site, nestled in Saugus, Massachusetts, is greater than only a historical past lesson; it’s a meticulously recreated Seventeenth-century residing museum. This twelve-acre Nationwide Park consists of working waterwheels, forges, mills, and the historic Iron Works Home. Guests can immerse themselves within the iron-making course of by strolling the grounds, that are accessible seven days per week. The location’s core operational options—the bellows, the huge journey hammer, the blast furnace, and the rolling and slitting mill—are all reconstructed on their unique foundations.
Seeing the waterwheel in motion actually brings house what it should have been wish to have an iron works on the town. This overshot wheel, powered by the circulate of the Saugus River, drives the enormous leather-based bellows, which provides the continual blast of air wanted to maintain the furnace roaring. The waterwheel additionally lifts the immense 500-pound hammer that kilos the uncooked pig iron into workable wrought iron bars. Ranger-guided excursions typically function demonstrations, permitting guests to see and listen to this equipment come to life (I bought to see simply that once I visited).
Whereas the positioning is a testomony to technological achievement, it is usually a reminder of the preliminary environmental harm inflicted by business. The Saugus River, which supplied the important energy supply, was dammed and altered. Moreover, the huge want for charcoal required the fast felling of native timber, and the fixed dumping of slag (waste materials) into the river itself had a transparent ecological influence, setting the stage for future conflicts with the farmers who lived there.
Bringing Down the Hammer
Established round 1646 and referred to as Hammersmith, the Saugus Iron Works was an unlimited enterprise for the younger Massachusetts Bay Colony, pushed by the necessity for regionally produced iron items like kettles, instruments, and nails. To handle the complexity and labor calls for, the homeowners—referred to as the Undertakers—had to herald a various workforce.
The labor pressure was a contentious combine. Extremely expert English staff have been recruited, however they typically clashed with the inflexible Puritan society of Lynn, going through arrests for every thing from public drunkenness to sporting high quality garments. Crucially, a good portion of the workforce consisted of Jacobite Scotsmen captured in the course of the Battle of Dunbar in 1650. These prisoners of struggle have been transported throughout the Atlantic and compelled right into a harsh system of indentured servitude to toil within the new ironworks. Valued at about £10 every, these Scots carried out grueling duties like woodcutting to provide the colliers (who made the charcoal) and dealing as forge fingers, residing in separate quarters and slowly integrating into an typically hostile new world.
The economic operation itself fueled intense native battle. The damming of the Saugus River to create the required energy for the waterwheels led to lawsuits and bitter disputes with native farmers and townspeople. The altered water circulate brought on flooding on others’ property and broken crops, making a wave of litigation that was so persistent and oppressive that it performed a significant function within the ironworks’ monetary smash and supreme closure round 1670. Mismanagement, excessive labor prices, and this regular stream of lawsuits, reasonably than simply materials shortages, proved to be the commercial complicated’s remaining undoing.
From Saugus to the Underdark
For the DM, the Saugus Iron Works makes an ideal template for a residing, respiratory, and conflicted industrial dwarven settlement.
- Workforce & Manufacturing: To run a full-scale operation—together with the blast furnace (for pig iron), the forge (for wrought iron and service provider bars), the rolling and slitting mill (for nail rods), and all of the assist methods (colliers, miners, woodcutters)—a medieval-era works may require a core operational crew of fifty to seventy expert dwarves on-site, plus tons of extra within the surrounding useful resource business. The dwarves operating the bellows and the hammer can be sturdy, extremely disciplined crews, working in brutal, rotating shifts to maintain the waterwheels spinning.
- The Relentless Core: Crucial element for a fantasy setting is the Blast Furnace. Traditionally, these furnaces have been notoriously troublesome and costly to start out up. As soon as lit, they may not be allowed to chill down, because the temperature change would irreparably harm the furnace lining. Consequently, the Saugus furnace was stored burning 24 hours a day, for months at a time. For a dwarven citadel, the directive is evident: the forge by no means sleeps. Any risk to the water provide, the charcoal gasoline strains, or the expert crew turns into a world-ending disaster for the dwarves, whose whole society is constructed on this steady flame.
- The Farmer/Dwarf Battle: The historic pressure with the Puritan farmers interprets completely to the traditional fantasy trope of Dwarves versus Floor Dwellers (Elves/Farmers). The dwarves dam the native river for industrial energy, creating floods and air pollution that smash the Elven groves or human farmers’ crops. The townspeople resent the fixed noise, the smoke, and the aggressive enterprise practices of the dwarven ironmaster, resulting in fixed lawsuits (or, in a D&D sport, sabotage, and assassination makes an attempt) as an alternative of court docket proceedings. This pressure presents countless plot hooks: the occasion should escort a dwarven service provider bar cargo previous an offended lynch mob of flood-damaged farmers, or they need to examine the sabotage of a significant water sluice gate.
Cast in Historical past
Strolling the grounds of the Saugus Iron Works is an expertise. You’ll be able to hear the rhythmic thump of the hammer, witness the frenzy of water by way of the machines, and picture the sheer quantity of pig iron and completed merchandise—hinges, instruments, and bars—transferring out to the world. Incorporating this relentlessly grinding, 24/7 business, with its historic mixture of subjugated staff and crippling exterior battle, will make any fantasy forge—from a hidden underground dwarven metropolis to a chaotic, steam-powered human metropolis—really feel grounded and gritty.
I did simply that by incorporating all these concepts (together with the above footage) into the fantasy city of Hammersmith in my marketing campaign world. My group of gamers are at the moment studying by way of expertise simply how a lot hassle dwarven business can carry to fantasy farmland.
