Black Brine

The Dry Docks aren’t just where ships are made—they’re where debts are hammered out, grudges sharpened, and futures mortgaged plank by plank. This is the true heart of Crosswater, where sweat is currency and every splinter tells a tale. Captains come here trailing smoke and broken promises. Shipwrights come with fists like anvils and eyes like ledger books. It’s where the desperate drag their wrecks for a second chance, and the powerful commission sleek monsters to carve their names into the sea. The Guild keeps one eye on every rivet and rope, making sure dues are paid in coin or blood. Deals get made under the echo of hammers—loud enough to hide threats, quiet enough to carry secrets. To build here is to buy survival. To fail here is to vanish without splash or eulogy. The Dry Docks are where Black Brine's soul is laid bare—rough, loud, cruel, and still somehow standing.

At the southern edge of Black Brine’s Crosswater District, where the land sags like a drunk on a bad leg, the Dry Docks rise in a splintered snarl of timber and iron. Masts hang half-limp from skeletal rigs. Gulls scream. Tar smokes. Fires belch from open forges, and the air stinks of hot pitch and rusted dreams. Men shout over the clang of chain and the groan of hulls winched from the water like half-drowned beasts. Every ship brought here has a story, and most of them end in fire or salvage. A few lucky ones get rebuilt—restitched with sweat and sinew, rearmed for another doomed run across the mist-choked sea. The docks don’t ask questions. They take what’s left of your ship, your coin, and your hope—and they give you something harder in return.