The Copperlings

The Copperlings are the most single-minded faction in The Forgelands. Their devotion is to copper: mining it, working it, displaying it, and above all watching it age. To the Copperlings, copper is not a resource. It is a calling, and oxidation is not decay but maturity — the metal, in their phrase, learning its true color.

Beliefs and Practices

Copperling doctrine holds that bright-cut copper is young, green copper is wise, and waxed copper is, regrettably, asleep. They maintain weathering yards where copper blocks are aged in the open and visited like elders. Lightning strikes on copper installations are treated as significant events and recorded in their own annals, which the Archives have been permitted to read once, supervised.

Territory and Presence

The Copperlings cluster in the industrial east, near the sources of their devotion. They have petitioned formally for visitation rights to the Dripstone Copper Pit — the petition used the word pilgrimage without irony — and inquire about the completion of the Tortuga Foundry's copper wing on a schedule the foundry log describes as liturgical. Their mark on the Tablet of Factions is the rough ingot, a fact that has elevated the Tablet to near-scriptural status among them; their request to polish it was refused, gently, and mourned, briefly.

Relations

Relations with the Smithies are strained by philosophy: the Smithies work copper, the Copperlings revere it, and each finds the other's attitude baffling. With everyone else the Copperlings are courteous, mild, and largely uninterested, unless the conversation turns to roofing.

Field Notes

The copper roofing specified for every Grand Rail Line station has earned the project the Copperlings' formal blessing. The Archives confirm the blessing arrived in writing, on copper sheet.