Sailing endlessly along the storm-lashed frontiers of the Outer Colonies, the Bronze Bastion is less a city than a continent of metal adrift upon the sea. Its towers rise like the ribs of a giant shipwreck, each glowing with the light of divine furnaces that never cool. Chains thicker than masts trail into the depths, anchoring the fortress against the ocean’s pull, while the hum of enchantment thrums beneath its decks like a heartbeat forged in brass. The Bastion is the beating forge of the frontier — birthplace of armies, weapons, and the restless ambition of mortals who believe war itself can be mastered.
The Bastion floats upon an immense bronze hull more akin to a mountain than a vessel, drifting between the ports of the Outer Colonies as both fortress and factory. Massive chain-anchors rise from the sea floor to moor it when trade or warfare demands, clanging like bells of thunder as they tighten. The air smells of smoke, oil, and salt; the sky above is perpetually streaked with red from the glow of molten metal.
Districts are built in tiers:
The Foundries at the lowest deck — a maze of crucibles and hammers, where the heat is thick enough to melt thought itself.
The Parade Rings above — vast training grounds where mercenary companies test their strength before the watching eyes of recruiters.
The Chainways circling the edges — streets of merchants, quartermasters, and smith-priests who trade in coin, steel, and binding contracts.
The Bastion Keep at the summit — command halls, garrisons, and the great furnaces where divine flame is bound and bartered.
The ocean around Locria glows faintly with reflected fire, and on clear nights, the fortress casts a pillar of orange light visible from hundreds of leagues away — a beacon and a warning both. When storms strike, the Bastion simply turns into the wind, its anchors dragging across the seabed with a sound like thunder rolling through iron veins.
Locria’s origin lies in the Age of Conquest, when the frontier colonies begged Olympus for a bulwark against the chaos beyond the mainland. The god Hephaestus answered, forging the Bastion as both fortress and forge — a city that could never fall because it would never stand still. Into its furnaces he poured a fragment of divine fire, then chained the vessel to the world with links of enchanted bronze that could bind storm, spirit, and sea alike.
The first settlers were mercenaries, blacksmiths, and oathbreakers seeking redemption through labor. Under the command of General Myrrhos the Tempered, they built the floating city into an arsenal for the gods’ mortal armies. When Olympus withdrew its direct hand from mortal wars, Locria remained — now self-governed, its forges running still, its contracts written in blood and bronze.
Every generation since has seen the Bastion drift further from divine oversight and closer to mortal enterprise. It became a republic of mercenaries and smith-princes, each guild controlling one aspect of its endless machinery. The Consulate of Chains, a council of forgemasters and generals, rules by decree of contract rather than faith. To break one’s word in Locria is to invite immediate retribution — for the city’s bronze laws are literal, inscribed upon chains that hang through the streets, glowing red whenever a sworn civic oath is betrayed.
During the War of Falling Stars, the Bastion supplied half the continent’s weapons and hired out its formidable Iron Legions. Its forges burned for a decade without pause, fueled by the divine furnaces below. When the war ended, the seas around it were choked with drifting ash and metallic silt, giving rise to the proverb: “The Bastion forges victory, then forgets who paid”.
Legends claim that deep within the Divine Crucible, the central furnace, still sleeps a spark of Hephaestus himself — the Anvil Flame, a consciousness of molten light that speaks in dreams to the smiths of Locria. When angered, it roars through the chimneys, turning night to day for miles around. When appeased, the forge’s fires burn blue — a sign that the city’s debts to the gods are, for the moment, paid.
Despite its martial grandeur, the Bastion’s heart is transactional, not sacred. It sells faith to the highest bidder: mercenary oaths, divine-blessed arms, and the promise of victory in writing. Even the gods are said to keep ledgers here, hidden among the arsenals, their celestial debts measured not in gold but in oaths of service and honor kept.
The Consulate of Chains governs Locria through contract-law. Each Consul represents one of the city’s great guilds: the Forgewrights, the Iron Legions, the Mercantile Bond, and the Syndicate of Tethers, who maintain the enchanted anchors that bind the fortress to the world. Votes are cast by brand, seared into living