Overview:
The Shambles were once a bustling industrial and residential zone, bridging the outer workshops with the inner civic areas. Decades of decay, structural failure, and energy shortages have left it a tangle of fallen scaffolds, toppled towers, and interwoven catwalks. Streets no longer run in straight lines, and many buildings have collapsed into one another, forming a chaotic, multi-level labyrinth.
Appearance:
Twisted steel girders and copper plates twist over partially sunken streets. Dust, ash, and metallic debris fill broken corridors, while fractured machinery and frozen conveyors protrude unpredictably. Sunlight reaches through gaps in collapsed roofs, highlighting precarious walkways and unstable piles of rubble. A low hum of residual motion occasionally echoes, giving the impression that the city is still alive in tiny, scattered pockets.
Structure:
A multi-layered tangle of collapsed buildings, interspersed with temporary catwalks and makeshift ladders.
Small open areas form hidden pockets for temporary camps, trade, or resting points.
Most original street layouts are unrecognizable, replaced by chaotic pathways through fallen infrastructure.
Landmarks:
The Broken Gantry: Once a main transport route, now a dangerous but frequently used connection for scavengers.
The Fallen Plaza: A partially sunken courtyard that serves as a central meeting and trading point for Salvagers.
Twisted Workshops: Collapsed industrial buildings containing still-useful machinery, tools, or materials. Often used by Salvagers when fabricating tools.
Tanglebay: A dense, vertical Salvager stronghold built from collapsed workshops and layered scaffolds, where thousands of automata live, trade, and fabricate amid reinforced ruins. Though chaotic in appearance, the district functions as a self-sustaining hub of improvised housing, communal courtyards, and constant mechanical activity, held together by experience, barter, and shared survival.
Faction Presence:
The Salvagers: Dominate the district, using it as a base for scavenging, trading, and improvisation.
The Emberwrights & Vigil: Rarely venture in, only if absolutely necessary for repairs or resource retrieval.
The Harvesters: Frequently stalk the surrounding areas, hoping to find Salvagers who stray too far from populated areas.
“They say a piece of the Broken Gantry creaks for no apparent reason, even when no automata are on it.”
“Some Salvagers whisper that hidden caches in the Fallen Plaza sometimes vanish, only to reappear elsewhere.”
“Twisted Workshops occasionally give off sparks, as if the machinery is trying to start on its own.”
“A Salvager claims to have seen a shadow moving through collapsed corridors that wasn’t any automaton they recognized.”
“Tools and parts sometimes shift between rooms in the Twisted Workshops without anyone touching them.”
“Sometimes the plaza falls into a sudden hush as Salvagers stop and strain to hear faint metallic tapping beneath the floor—then someone always bolts toward the sound.”
“A section of the Broken Gantry is slowly collapsing into a hidden sublevel—anyone nearby could trigger a chain reaction.”
“Salvagers occasionally disappear in the deeper sections of the Shambles; some suspect Harvesters.”
“An entire Twisted Workshop once shifted without cause, gears and scaffolds moving as though alive.”