From the Journal of Elion Karsis
The city pretends the Gutter Forges are chaos.
They are not. They are accounting.
Everything the Ascendancy discards ends up here eventually—crushed Duster frames, cracked haemotechnical housings, regulators burned out by blood that refused to behave. What the Court calls waste, the underworld calls inventory. Nothing is destroyed. It is dismantled, reinterpreted, priced.
The Forges live beneath the industrial wards, where the piping thickens and the tunnels stop being mapped. Caves fused with repurposed conduits. Old steam lines split open and turned into walkways. Pressure valves converted into doors. Every surface sweats heat or residue. Sparks fall constantly, like a second kind of rain. Blood dries black on stone and is scraped away only when it interferes with work.
The air tastes wrong. Ozone, rust, chemical sweetness—haemotech residue always smells faintly like rot trying to convince you it’s still alive. People breathe it anyway. They wrap cloth around their mouths and keep working. Survival recalibrates the senses quickly.
Silver dust is the real currency here.
Not ingots. Not blades. Dust. Filings swept into vials, weighed grain by grain, hoarded like holy contraband. Enough to poison a vampire if used correctly. Enough to ruin a forge if spilled carelessly. I’ve seen men killed for less than a teaspoon.
Bidding happens deep inside, where the noise is loud enough to swallow names. Not auctions—negotiations under threat. A Duster piston arm stripped for parts. A half-functional Vitae regulator. A cracked mask lens still warm from someone else’s death. Prices shift hourly depending on patrol density and rumor flow. Information is worth more than metal. Silence costs extra.
I was a courier here once.
That matters more than I like.
I learned how to walk without attracting attention. How to carry sealed cases without wondering what was inside. How to listen without appearing interested. The Gutter Forges teach you something the Court never will: systems fail incrementally. No single collapse. Just enough pressure relief to keep things from exploding all at once.
That’s why the Ascendancy hates this place.
Not because it’s criminal—but because it works.
Every dismantled Duster is proof that enforcement is temporary. Every reassembled haemotech device is evidence that knowledge leaks. Every successful bid is a reminder that power circulates whether sanctioned or not.
The people here don’t speak of rebellion. They speak of margins. Of risk windows. Of which Choir’s equipment breaks first under strain. They don’t dream of daylight. They plan for tomorrow.
That makes them dangerous.
If the sun ever returns, it won’t be because of prophecy or purity. It will be because places like this kept meaning alive by grinding it down, redistributing it, and refusing to let the system decide what counts as finished.
The Gutter Forges are ugly.
They are also honest.
And honesty, in this city, is always illegal.