Watch Log : Crime in Gotham

James Gordon’s Watch Log – 14th of Frostveil, Year of the Cracked Crown

Another night in this festering pit. Ink smears on damp vellum as I write by tallow dip. Gotham’s lanterns barely pierce the smog anymore. Patrols dragged in three goblin whelps from a Vale raid—scrawny things, gnawing stolen turnips. Locked 'em in the cages with rats. Barely a threat. Pests, not a siege. Real rot festers higher up.

Joker’s Grinmaws owned dawn. His paint-smeared goblins torched three Falcone dockside warehouses. Crimson flames lit the river black as pitch. Guards choked on laughing gas—foaming, clawing their throats, corpses grinning ear to ear. Thirty crates up in smoke: untaxed silks, alchemical salts, black lotus from shadow-caravans. Joker left his mark—a jester’s cap carved in oak, dripping tar. Falcone’s screaming bloody murder in council chambers, demanding my badge. His own cutthroats probably sparked it, feuding over dock shares. Joker’s chaos thrives where greed cracks.

Oswald Cobblepot struck at flood-tide. Icebeak goblins in ragged feather-cloaks swarmed two Falcone barges. Harpoon irons punched hulls, frost-phials flash-froze oars mid-stroke. Grain and silver sank to river-mud. Penguin’s raven arrived at my desk by noon: “Umbrella tax unpaid. Watch your trade freeze solid.” Docks grind to halt—lighter-men refuse runs, fearing waddling reavers. Bread lines snake three streets deep now; first riot brewed by vespers. Cobblepot’s Icebeaks nest in old fishmongers’ caves, trading goblin loot for smuggler coin. He’s strangling Gotham’s veins.

Falcone family bites back vicious. Carmine’s enforcers butchered a Penguin fence in Low Market square. Gutted him dawn-to-dusk, strung entrails across butcher stalls like Yule garlands. Message screams: no dock, no quarter. Now Falcone blades patrol every wharf, shaking down honest merchants for double protection tithe. Coin vanishes into family coffers while widows pawn heirlooms for crusts. Their “security” is just branded extortion—guilds know it, council turns blind.

Harvey Dent’s the festering heart. Golden boy of Gotham courts, once my hope against this mire. Some alchemist’s spite—acid flask at a feast—seared half his face to ruin. Now Two-Face haunts alleys, coin flipping life or death. Raided the city mint ten days past. Watch arrived to smashed presses, charred ledgers, half the gold ingots stamped with his scarred sigil—justice scales tipped crooked. Whispers say he rallies debtors, guildless blades, even disgraced knights. Promises fair coin or fair pyres. My own captains fear him; half owe crooked verdicts from his prosecutor days. Last night, two-Face’s crew gutted a tax-farmer’s manse—collector strung from rafters, ledger pages stuffed in his mouth.

Gotham chokes. Joker’s arson starves the slums. Penguin’s barges choke trade. Falcones bleed merchants dry. Dent unravels law itself. Streets run red with enforcer blades—cutters, garroters, poison rings bought quiet. Vice dens swell: gambling pits where men pawn daughters, brothels hiding branded thralls, kiseru parlors dosing nightmare smoke. Bodies clog morgues—noble poisonings logged “ague,” dockers knifed as “brawls.” Watch is stretched gaunt. Half my men take bribes, other half desert for Falcone gold. Council bays for arrests, but every collar implicates a patron.

Goblins nibble edges—snatch brats for Vale pens, torch lone carts. Vermin. But these men? Wolves in silk. Joker turns murder to carnival. Cobblepot drowns Gotham in coin-greed. Falcones own the law they break. Dent scars justice deeper than any blade. Bat-shadows stalk spires—I glimpse their rune-cloaks on midnight roofs. Pray they carve deeper than my quill. Ellen bars doors triple; Barbara learns dagger forms. Lanterns gutter low tonight. We hold the line, or Gotham falls to grinning teeth. End log.