The Mining Crew

Kind
Humans
Domain
Survey roads, drill sites and blast zones
Role
External threat
Faces
None yet

There is no villain here, deliberately.

Most of the people working on the mountain do not know Shae exists. They do not know the Grindylocs exist. A good number do not understand the hydrology of the mountain well enough to know that a charge set well away from any visible creek can still take the water out from under one.

None of this makes the destruction any less thorough. It makes it much harder to stop.

In the Story

The crew arrives indirectly, and in this order:

  1. Gray stone dust in the water.
  2. The minnows gone.
  3. Survey ribbon in the forest — a colour that occurs nowhere else in it.
  4. Wooden stakes with black numbers cut into them, dividing land that has never recognised those divisions.
  5. The blasts.

The humans themselves stay distant for a long time. Their machinery and their markings arrive well before their faces do.

Threat

Survey Marks the land according to human boundaries
Drill Opens rock and disturbs everything under it
Blast Fractures the mountain and redirects the water inside it
Not Knowing Permits enormous damage without anyone involved understanding what was destroyed

Iron, at scale, and none of it aware of what it is standing on. See Shiora Rill and The Hidden Bell.