From the Private Papers of Vlad Dracula
Sealed Addendum — Economic Truce & Managed Absurdities Archive
The Rustbone Docks exist because nothing else could.
No city charter could justify them. No theology could bless them. No court would willingly acknowledge their necessity. And yet, every faction relies on them, which makes them the most honest place in the empire.
The leviathan was already dead when it fell. That detail matters. Nothing is conquered here. Nothing is proven. The ribs were petrified long before they were repurposed, their scale too vast to dismantle and too inconvenient to ignore. So the city did what cities always do—it adapted, lashed survival to corpse, and called it infrastructure.
The bones form streets because bones are durable.
The buildings hang because permanence is dishonest here.
Every transaction at the Rustbone Docks occurs under the Pact of Temporary Sanity—a deliberately fragile agreement stating that for the duration of trade, all participants will behave as if reason, restraint, and self-interest are shared values. This is a fiction. But it is a useful one.
The Iron Dusters enforce the Pact without enthusiasm and without mercy. They do not arbitrate morality. They enforce continuity. Violence here is not forbidden—it is delayed. Any party that breaks the Pact is removed swiftly and publicly, not as punishment, but as reminder that neutrality is conditional.
Humans come here because they must.
Vampires come because efficiency demands it.
Tieflings come because rules function best where no one fully believes in them.
Others come because the alternative markets require allegiance, and allegiance is expensive.
No sermons are allowed. No executions without cause. No feeding without consent or concealment. These rules are not ethical. They are logistical. The moment ideology enters the docks, trade collapses. Hunger follows. Chaos spreads outward.
I permit the Rustbone Docks because they expose a truth most prefer to deny:
When survival is immediate enough, even enemies can behave.
Not well.
Not kindly.
But functionally.
The shantytown grows and rots simultaneously. Structures are replaced weekly. Routes change daily. Entire sections vanish overnight when a rib fractures or a deal fails too loudly. No one builds for legacy here. They build for tomorrow.
This is why the docks endure.
They are not neutral because peace is valued.
They are neutral because insanity is postponed.
And postponed insanity feeds the Night better than open war ever could.
So long as the bones hold,
so long as the Pact remains unbelievable yet observed,
the Rustbone Docks will stand—
A monument not to cooperation,
but to the thin, trembling line where necessity overrules hatred.
Which is, in practice, the foundation of every empire.