The Veins

Those who lived underground brought people to the Big Charry region as slaves with three main occupations: construction, mining and the raising and slaughtering livestock for what we can only kind of assume was consumption.  That last bit got revealed to be more of an assumption than proven fact since those who live underground left or died, or whatever it is that happened to them.

Most people are pretty certain that the veins don't exist.  It's something that people made up in the last days when the tide was turning; propaganda, and no one takes it seriously.  But if it is fiction, it's got some deep roots among the people who worked closest to the habitations of those underground.

Miners have stories of digging deep, away from coal, away from iron and all the other things that those underground wanted.  Moving tons of rock to move rock.

Construction workers tell of dressing stone in straight tunnels in the wake of miners.  Excavations which were not mines, but also obviously not fit for habitation.  They were like elaborate sewers, only deep under the earth.

Those who worked at the stockyards remember how important it was to catch all the blood they could in the drains.  How the drains themselves were set into the floors and lined with glass so the stone would not soak up the blood.

The folks who have returned to the region, poking at the past, at the secrets of those underground, almost to an adventurer, they know someone who saw the network in the earth, stone vessels and viaducts circulating the blood of hundreds of millions, still, echoing with the quiet, steady beat of an unseen heart.  No one is the person who saw it, but they all know someone who has.