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The Sewers

"The sewers are often part of dark designs such as infiltrating the upper city, meeting grounds, or trapping enemies in the floodable rooms."

The working underworld of Cadwallon — the wastewater network that is also a highway, a hideout, a battlefield, and a archive. Built by the Cynwäll, adopted by the Dogs of War, and extended (along the surface) by the Architects, the sewers are the shallowest, busiest, most-traveled layer of the underground. Everyone uses them. Almost no one controls them.

Origin & Structure

When the Dogs of War settled the Cynwäll Ruins, they found a network of pipes beneath the Upper City designed to carry wastewater down to the bay. They adopted it. As the Lower City grew on unstable ground, the Architects couldn't bury new pipes safely — so they ran them along the surface. This is why the lower city is crisscrossed with great exposed pipes, and why the poorest districts (not connected at all) dump waste in the streets.

Beneath, great underground tanks stock the overflow; the gates that open and close them are controlled by the Guild of Sewer Workers. Access points (manholes) are "many and very different" — guarded, locked, trapped, or disused.

Notable Sites

The Demijohn

Beneath Gamehead and Drakaër: a succession of decantation tanks that are the den of the ragmen. They store and catalogue tens of thousands of salvaged items — the city's discards as a chaotic archive. Led by Vytriol; the blowers hunt vermin with toxic gas. The Militia consults the Demijohns for evidence. (see The Rags)

The Oasis

A network of warm, humid tunnels under Ghieronburg and Ogrokh.

The hidden Elementals

The oasis shelters Elementals of Water — the Anfrebians — hiding since their failed invasion of 956. They are spies at the heart of the Free City, undiscovered for 47 years. Exposing them would spark a diplomatic crisis with the elemental Realm of Water. (see The Magical Invasion)

The Vegetal Entrails

Narrow tunnels of unknown origin, colonized by strange grove vegetation, ending in Ophidian-marked walls. An emanation of Desire — those who reach the surface emerge in magical groves. The strip-leaves (controlled by Dressmakers and Tailors) grow purepale leaves for mood-changing fabric; the Entrails of Desire in Gamehead are where the Ferrymen harvest the narcotic elegratia.

What the Sewers Are Used For

  • Travel — an "oft-used traveling way"; faster and more discreet than the choked streets
  • Infiltration — the classic route into the walled Upper City
  • Meeting grounds — for smugglers, conspirators, and worse (the Marine Ruins smuggler meets connect here)
  • Traps — the floodable tanks make lethal ambush sites; close the gates and drown the room
  • Salvage & intelligence — the Rags mine the waste for objects and information

The Tide of the Dead

When the sewers turn lethal

Heavy rain floods the underground and drives the dead to the surface — corpses from the Ophidian ossuaries, the common graves, and the necropoli wash up through the sewers into the streets. This is the tide of the dead, the root of the Cadwë death-dread. The Sewer Workers do the grim recovery; necromancers exploit the flow to reinforce their troops. Days of heavy rain are the warning; Cadwës lock in, boil water, and wait. (see Daily Life, Ophidian Vestiges)

Who Works & Lurks Here

  • Guild of Sewer Workers — control the flood-gates; the official authority; know where the litiocs surface and which outfalls run strange
  • The Rags — the Demijohn ragmen and blowers
  • Smugglers — the Marine Ruins meets and countless others
  • Water Elementals — the oasis spies
  • Tiger-sharks and worse — failed Dirz experiments released into the sewers, some reaching the bay

The warm outfall

A junior Sewer Worker has found water flowing warm from an outfall under the Garden of Desire district — in winter. It connects, eventually, toward the deep layers where Desire sleeps. Warm water where there should be none is exactly the kind of tremor the secret history warns about: Desire waking, heat and life bleeding upward through the Labyrinth's roots. Someone in the upper guild leadership is hoping the junior worker stops reporting it.

Relations

Close the gates

An enemy is moving through the sewers toward the upper city. The Sewer Workers control the flood-gates — a league that can reach the control mechanisms could trap the intruders in a floodable tank. But the gates also control where the next tide of the dead surfaces, and slamming them shut sends the flood somewhere else. Somewhere with people.

See Also