After Alkenstar was wiped off the map, the famed Gunworks—a weapons factory and heavily armed military outpost located by Lake Ustradi—was left in turmoil. With Alkenstar gone and the Mana Wastes roiling with the kind of unstable magic not seen since the war between Nex and Geb, it was only a matter of time until the suddenly-remote Gunworks ran out of supplies, and nobody was sending more. Tensions soon rose between those who wanted to hunker down, ration, and wait until contact could be made with anyone from outside, and those who wanted to turn their guns on the Wastes in an attempt to quell the land and claim whatever resources could be extracted from its corpse.
The stragglers left behind by Alkenstar turned their weapons on each other before they had a chance to turn them on anyone else. And before the survivors had a chance to catch their breath, they were attacked again from outside. A group of kholo who had been waiting out the Gunworks' self-imposed siege stormed the facility and claimed it as their own, overpowering those who tried to stand and fight and driving away those who didn't.
Though they were glad to secure a defensible new home for themselves, finally free to pursue their own prosperity without the guns and marshalls of Alkenstar pointed at them, the kholo faced the same problem the Gunworks' previous residents had. Supplies were scarce, and the polluted Lake Ustradi could only do so much to support them, even with the facility's still-functioning water purifiers. But kholo have always been clever and resourceful, and their unity wasn't based on loyalty to a city that was no more. They began using the ample material and machinery left in the Gunworks for their own ends, producing firearms and clockwork gadgets they could trade with the local nomads for the resources they needed, and inventing devices of their own to process and purify any food sources tainted by mana storms and alchemical runoff.
Over the generations, the kholo of Pranee's Forge—renamed after a legendary ancestor said to have turned Alkenstar's technology against them through her own mechanical ingenuity—established themselves as a community of scrapwork inventors. They kept a relatively low profile, out of an instinctive understanding that they didn't want to court the same fate that befell Alkenstar, and their creations never spread far outside the Mana Wastes. Within the Mana Wastes, however, kholo clockwork and gunpowder have been indespensible, and Pranee's Forge is known to produce the region's greatest artillerists. When particularly large or dangerous mutants threaten the desert, the kholo are hired to take care of the problem, and they do so with explosive efficiency.
The Age of Renewal has been kind to Pranee's Forge. Their engineering skills had always been held back by the difficulty of acquiring good salvage. The mines near Moonlit Junction are a valuable resource, but there's always a demand for more and higher quality metals. The Junction's ability to import metals from other nations has made them a vital trade partner for Pranee's Forge, and though the kholo are wary of what exporting weapons and technology to Nex or Geb could mean for their home, the income those sales could generate is a perpetual temptation. Forgemaster Ibis Negash, a burly kholo woman with a distinctive pattern of vertical stripes across her snout, has been the firmest hand keeping the Forge from crossing that line. As the Forgemaster chosen by the Forge's elders, she believes it's her job to think about the community's long-term stability, and she considers anything that threatens the Mana Wastes as a whole a direct threat against Pranee's Forge itself. That's also why she's been interested in helping the Harbor of Hearts solve the mystery of the shardstorms. The Forge is well-protected, and most kholo see becoming Shardbound as an opportunity. Pranee's Forge never had trouble embracing community members who became Fleshwarps after getting caught in a mana storm, and the shardstorms are viewed in a similar light. However, the threat of shardsickness still looms, snd there's no guarantee the storms aren't going to get loose. Ibis hopes the Harbor of Hearts can solve things before it comes to that.
Ever since the schematic for the Flamescarred Longboard made its way to Pranee's Forge, skating has been a favorite community pastime. The most competitive skaters are called "Gearhounds," and they've developed a lighter, more nimble version of the Flamescarred Longboard that sacrifices speed and power for agility. The highly technical but expressive style of skating this has enabled is well-suited to the tight, industrial environment of the Forge. The current leader of the Gearhounds is 20-year-old Gladiolus Roba, reigning and youngest-ever champion of the Forge's annual skating competition, who rode her first board when she was just a pup and hasn't stopped since.