An industrial fantasy, and one of Londael's cities. Its main exports: technology, innovation, and weapons. Its main imports: raw materials, food, and an endless influx of workers and would-be inventors and artisans coming from the towns and even neighbouring countries to reach for the tantalising opportunities patronage offers.
The machine-adorned palaces of the nobles sit only a triple-layered bridge over a choked canal away from the squat, smog-shrouded workers' houses, crowned with would-be inventors' rickety spires and strung with the lines and ladders of the Ratways; each ever reaching upward, building on the old to reach toward the new. There's a magnetic quality to the city: even as it spins a continent-wide web out to each of its myriad trading partners, most people born here stay here; and most people who are drawn here never leave, caught up in the volatile machinery of industry.
A few people are born here but most of its citizens have come from elsewhere. Londael's supposed neutrality and the tantalising lure of its shining innovations makes it an attractive destination for many hopeful expatriates. But the city and its dangers demand all of your attention.
- Hungry, volatile, crowded
- Increasing layers of buildings above narrow dark streets
- Liberties where the law's different/powerful guilds being squeezed out or changed beyond recognition by the relentless forces of change and the pursuit of 'progress'