Role: Heavy industry & labor
Era: Oldest industrial expansion
Foundry Ward is the engine of Brassveil. Massive factories, boiler halls, and steelworks dominate the skyline, their smokestacks forming a permanent iron canopy. Steam lines snake through streets and buildings alike, venting pressure with ear-splitting force. Housing is dense, temporary, and built around shift schedules rather than comfort.
This is where the working class lives—and where unrest is born.
Hidden truth:
Pressure gauges and exhaust vents double as signaling devices, allowing unseen forces to track output, labor patterns, and agitation. Many “industrial accidents” are engineered pressure failures.
Role: Commerce, logistics, and coordination
Era: Standardization boom
Gearcross is the commercial heart of the city. Rail depots, freight exchanges, clock halls, and counting houses dominate its broad avenues. Every building displays synchronized clocks, and bells regulate trade, transit, and work shifts across Brassveil.
Nothing moves unless Gearcross allows it.
Hidden truth:
The master clock beneath the district coordinates Watch patrols and supply flow. Small timing adjustments create shortages, bottlenecks, or sudden surpluses—quietly shaping public behavior.
Role: Innovation, invention, elite industry
Era: Late industrial optimism
Tall workshops, laboratories, and gilded exhibition halls rise above the smog here. Inventors, engineers, and investors gather to unveil new marvels. Airship docks crown the rooftops, and private steam systems keep the air noticeably cleaner.
This district sells the future.
Hidden truth:
Many inventions are quietly absorbed into the city’s hidden systems. Inventors who ask too many questions are offered patronage—or disappear into sanctioned projects.
Role: Slums, black markets, abandoned infrastructure
Era: Unplanned overflow
Beneath and between districts lies the Cinderways: collapsed tunnels, forgotten housing, illegal workshops, and rerouted steam lines. Crime thrives here, but so does community. People survive by repairing, stealing, and repurposing what the city discards.
The Watch rarely enters willingly.
Hidden truth:
The Cinderways contain the oldest infrastructure—unaltered and partially immune to modern control systems. This makes it a refuge… and a threat.
Role: Governance, law, and authority
Era: Post-unrest reforms
Marble-faced buildings, steam-heated halls, and immaculate plazas define Crownrise. Courts, ministries, and Watch headquarters operate here under the banner of stability and civic duty. The Crown’s presence is symbolic but absolute.
Everything is lawful here—on paper.
Hidden truth:
Crownrise receives curated information from the city’s hidden network. Officials rarely give direct orders; the system presents them with “inevitable outcomes,” and they simply approve them.