The Commons
- Where
- The Sunken Mile, on a closed expressway
- The argument
- The roll: whether to keep a list of who went without.
They grow figs on a road the city forgot, and you eat before you trade.
It's not a faction.
The margins
Groups that never took a faction's card, from the bazaar under Lowline to the ship-breakers past the wall.
The Warrens
Old Deepworks crawlspace under Lowline, and the closest thing Catena has to a single unlicensed bazaar.
Mapped The Warrens are laid out in the build. What happens in them is the game's design.
Inside are contraband chrome, forged registry paperwork, fenced salvage, a chop shop and the Deep Market. The Warrens never fight: the shard has no combat.
The honest door has a queue that nobody uses, and somebody keeps repainting it. The other ways in are stairwells and the Sluice Fall. Being vouched for opens a stall's dialogue.
A stall dispute is settled by the Warrens' arbiter, and the loser is expected to be seen buying from the winner within the week. The arbiter insists there is no boss. Lowline has the district above.
There's no boss down here. There's just me, and people being sensible near me.
ONE OF US IS ALL OF US.
DON'T TEST IT.
The Pit
The underground venue for duels, lit by the Undercurrent.
Designed The Pit is designed and not built.
The Pit is where Ghost and Blacklisted Legends take their duels, with Nyx Static calling them. Its sanctioned counterpart is the Circuit, a Meridian-lit arcade in the Coil. The maps and rules are the same in both. Only the room and the crowd change.
Both venues strip a Legend to the same baseline. Each gives a different reason for it. How a duel works is covered with PvP.
The Pit strips you to nothing. That's not fairness. That's manners.
Seven groups
Designed None of these groups has a quest or a vendor in the build. They exist in the game's writing so far, set in the newest part of the design.
The Commons, the mural wardens and five groups in the West Reach and the south each give the three answers a counter-argument. Each is arguing about one question, and the game does not settle it.
The mural wardens
- Where
- Underpasses across the city
- The argument
- Restore or record: the old want the scar visible, the young want it whole.
They repaint the underpass murals within a couple of days of a scrub crew's visit.
Leave the edge showing. If we make it perfect, in ten years it'll have always been perfect.
The Emberhold
- Where
- Cinderflats
- The argument
- The substation or the wall.
A warband in a district lit by open fires. They armed after the Long Row burned and nobody came.
Nobody came for the Long Row. So I stopped waiting to be come for. You'll find that's a very warm way to live.
The Pier-Wraiths
- Where
- Tidewrack
- The argument
- The three jammed gates: whether to shut them.
The neighbourhood that stayed when the water came. They know which slabs hold, and the water is their moat.
You came in a straight line. That's how we know you don't live here.
The Offcut crews
- Where
- Rustfield
- The argument
- The card: whether to take a union local.
Workers whose employer walked away. They keep a dead foundry's machines running and treat them as theirs.
A thing belongs to whoever has been keeping it running.
The Longshore crew
- Where
- The Stilts and Hullrow
- The argument
- The Loomline: whether to finish cutting it, and who gets the cut.
Ship-breakers who organise their lives around the ferry timetable.
Reef, and off. I've been asked a hundred times and answered none of them, so save the fare.
The Drift
- Where
- The Weed Line at the Stilts and the flooded slips in Hullrow
- The argument
- The muster: whether it is a count or a wake.
People who came to the Weed Line and stayed. They never follow you out.
We had a name for ourselves once. Couldn't be bothered keeping it up.
Still being written
The West Reach and the south are the newest part of the design, so names there may change. The places have pages of their own: West of the wall and the south and the water.
The mural wardens belong to the older city, and they are the one group with no rewards at all.
