The Barrows

The Barrows

@The Barrows are the city’s backbone and its scarred hands. Here, the air smells of sweat, broth, and crushed beetle shell. Houses are carved from repurposed carapace, their curved walls patched with scavenged cloth and scrap. Chitin bells mark the shifts, calling laborers to @The Slough, @The Sallowrack, or the tunnels’ edge. Many here bear the marks of the work—missing fingers, stiff gaits, faces lined before their time.
And yet, the Barrows endures. In @The Reach, neighbors barter bread for stitches, and delvers swap tales beneath banners made from shed wings. Children run along narrow alleys, playing beneath murals of the Titan’s fall. Here, hardship and pride are bedfellows, and though the guilds may forget them, the Barrows does not forget itself.

The Reach

@The Reach is where the Barrows exhales at day’s end. This wide, uneven plaza is paved with scavenged stone and chitin plates, ringed by stalls patched together from whatever could be carried home from @Odrun's Handle. Beneath faded banners of insect-hide, @The Cudgel recruiters spin tales of fortune and glory, offering dented gear to those desperate enough to take it. The air smells of broth and boiled roots, cut through with the sharper tang of spiced meat from street vendors. Deals are struck here for coppers, handshakes sealing trades of patched boots for dried fungus, or half-filled oil flasks for a worn cloak.
It is not wealth that fuels the Reach, but the refusal to let one another fall. Here, those with little still give, and those with nothing still stand.

The Slough

In @The Slough, commerce is a blade without a hilt. This open-air market sprawls along the edges of @Odrun's Handle haul routes, its tables slick with rain and insect ichor. Delvers bring in their kills—mandibles, husks, venom sacs—and haggle over them beneath leaning awnings. There are no inspectors here, no guild clerks weighing the value of a load; a man sells what he can, and buys what he dares. Shrewd tongues and quick hands thrive, but one wrong step can turn a trade into a threat.
Here, you might walk away with a charm carved from bone that wards off rot… or you might walk away followed. Either way, you will walk away with something.

The Dome

@The Dome rises like a blister of pale stone at the edge of @The Reach, its walls patched with scavenged timber and insect shell. Inside, the air is warm and heavy with the scent of simmering broth. Beds line the walls in two neat rows, each one occupied by those too hurt to work or too poor to buy healing. At its heart, the great hearth never cools, tended by retired delvers who carry more scars than teeth.
Here, wounds are cleaned without question, bellies are filled without charge, and no one counts coin. In the Barrows, where work can kill a man as surely as hunger, the Dome is proof that not all debts are paid in gold.

Gnarlgut Hall

The @Gnarlgut Hall is a long, low structure of dark timber and rusted chitin plates, its heavy double doors swinging wide to the stink of blood and the clatter of tools. Delvers queue outside with their kills—still twitching beetles, sacks of spider legs, cracked wasp thoraxes—waiting for their turn at the butchers’ bays. The floor is slick, the walls stained, and the air alive with the sound of scraping, cracking, and the wet slap of meat on stone.
This is work for the guildless and the retired, those who could not leave the trade but could no longer walk the tunnels. And though it stands apart from the guilds, @The Promissory's men are always nearby, ready to buy what they deem too rare to reach the open market.

Skelk’s Hollow

@Skelk’s Hollow, run by @Skelk Murn, is a dim, low-ceilinged tavern tucked between leaning buildings, its sign a weathered beetle shell hung on rusted chains. Inside, the light is soft, the drink is strong, and the air hums with the quiet murmur of those who have seen too much. The back room doubles as a healer’s den—its shelves lined with jars of ointments, rolls of bandages, and a scattering of holy symbols left by passing clerics.
On story nights, the benches fill until the walls seem to press in. Delvers and laborers trade tales between mouthfuls of stew, their laughter edged with the memory of those not present. In Skelk’s Hollow, bruises fade, both seen and unseen.

Cradle of Hooks

The @Cradle of Hooks is no place for the soft-hearted. Its long hall smells of boiled leather and chalk dust, its walls lined with racks of rope, pitons, and blunted training blades. Orphans here wake to drills at dawn, spend their days learning to set traps or tend beasts, and sleep beneath the watchful gaze of the name-wall—where each child is marked upon arrival and departure. Names crossed in red are those who went below and never returned.
Though it is a home, it is also a forge. The children of the Cradle are shaped to survive in the same darkness that took their parents, their first steps into adulthood aimed squarely toward the Handle.