Most lodge houses excavate a tunnel lit by Summerstone, but there’s one house built entirely within frozen mountain rock: the mole city of Podgorod. Brass gears and pistons of ligonine engineering whirr and click all around as a part of everyday life in the old corridors. Subterranean agriculture in the city is cutting-edge—the under- ground crops that sustain most Orians were first grown here. Its elk wear antler charms that give off the bright glow of mushroom oil from the cultivated in vast cavern fields.
Podgorod’s mining economy also carries the tinkering spirit. Complex elevators and carts run on tracks built by moles. They’re powered by wheels turned by the same underground river that is the population’s water source. Clockwork golems perform manual labor throughout the tunnels. They belch coal soot ventilated into a central stack that pushes a black line into the sky above the lodge.
Easy access to coal has made the ligonine city a mecca for an innovation trendy in recent years: the steam engine. Most consider these machines too cumbersome and unreliable, but Podgorod engines are well-oiled marvels of engineering.