The Furnace of Brassveil
Foundry Ward sprawls around the oldest industrial core of the city. The air is hot, metallic, and perpetually loud. Buildings are layered atop one another, retrofitted endlessly as production demands increase. Streets are narrow to conserve heat. Steam vents erupt without warning. Work never truly stops.
This is where Brassveil eats labor and exhales smoke.
The largest steelworks in the ward, operating day and night. Entire neighborhoods are built into its outer walls. Workers claim the machines “breathe” differently when unrest is near.
Secret: Its pressure-release system transmits coded signals to Gearcross.
A textile-mechanical hybrid factory producing reinforced fabrics and machine belts.
Secret: Loom rhythms are subtly altered to exhaust specific worker groups.
The oldest operational boiler in the city, officially obsolete but never shut down.
Secret: It predates modern control systems and resists synchronization—making it valuable to saboteurs.
Manages wastewater and cooling runoff into the river.
Secret: Bodies and evidence are quietly disposed of here under the guise of industrial waste.
A valve-testing and distribution facility supplying pressure regulators citywide.
Secret: Valves here are swapped to engineer “accidental” failures elsewhere.
Where shift leaders meet under the pretense of labor coordination.
Secret: Foremen are ranked and rewarded based on how effectively they suppress dissent.
An open-air scrapyard and machine graveyard.
Secret: Black-market engineers rebuild discarded machines for illegal use or sabotage.
A steam-heated infirmary treating industrial injuries.
Secret: Injury records are altered to hide patterns of intentional harm.
A colossal central smokestack visible across Brassveil.
Secret: Its internal structure houses signal relays and observation chambers.
Regulates work cycles with deafening chimes.
Secret: Bells can be overridden to induce confusion during planned unrest.
Workers live in Boiler Rows—stacked tenements built directly against factory walls to conserve heat. Rooms are cramped, damp, and perpetually vibrating. Steam leaks provide warmth but cause burns and lung damage. Rent is deducted directly from wages.
Despite conditions, community thrives:
Shared meals
Informal childcare
Underground repair collectives
Nighttime storytelling to drown out machinery
The city calls it “efficient housing.”
Residents call it survival.
A covert labor network using factory gauges and whistles to communicate.
Goal: Protect workers and sabotage lethal operations without provoking mass retaliation.
A quasi-religious group believing the city must collapse to be reborn.
Goal: Accelerate systemic failure through targeted destruction.
An information-brokering syndicate operating through foremen and clerks.
Goal: Profit by selling unrest forecasts to the highest bidder.
Families of workers killed by “accidents,” quietly organized.
Goal: Gather evidence and expose the truth—if they survive long enough.
Foundry Ward is not a villain or a victim—it is a pressure chamber. Every choice players make here echoes outward. Aid workers too openly, and the system tightens. Ignore them, and the city rots from its core.
This is where players learn the most dangerous truth of Brassveil:
The machine does not run on steam.
It runs on people.