Wisplight Spires
Ingenuity, perseverance, manufacture and survival. These are the tenets of the biomechanical city that flows like a conjunction of souls underneath the surface world. This technological wonderland started its humble beginnings as a lost expedition. Born with economic hardships, it’s members had little choice but to serve Westports interests in prospecting the swamps. They were supplied, geared and sent along with professionals that led the inevitable failure. From a wild charge of the local savages, those who fought back were brutally killed, with the rest captured in no man's land. Yet in the darkness, something else stirred. One night, a single entity stepped out of the trees with a sweeping calm following his ancient skull and tattered robes. The single question he held within, would the barbarian village be willing to part the smallest generosity for an old man. From the answer of burning torches, warcries and flying axes, the entity answered only by bowing his head as his friendly eyes filled with disappointment disappeared underneath his hood. And then. Fire. From the trees, wisps soared in to enact swift vengeance on the blood crazed berserkers. It was mere minutes before the struggle was over, and none but the entity and the captives still stood alive. This creature, that came to be known as the Ferryman led the survivors to the mountains, and gave them a home that soon came to be the sprawling, underground city that it currently is.
Demographics
The Spires consist mainly of Northborn humans that make up most of the middle classes, and also the higher rule. It also consists of noble envoys from Diestrian and Peregeronian ethnicity. Recent alliances and trade has also brought a wide community of traditional Drow, Orochen and even Goblins to inhabit the city.
Government
The spires are ruled by a technological heart known as the soul engine. This is actually not a terrible contraption that devours the living, but a generator that uses the Spiritmarshes mutated fruits biofuel to run the machine.
To keep it running, the entity known as the Ferryman runs operations to preserve the balance between the heart of the city and its surrounding nature.
This is where Wisplight Society comes in to aid him with the gardens, but also with tax collection and law keeping.
Defences
Protected by its mountains and deadly swamps, there is no need for many defencive checkpoints or mechanisms. This does not stop the underground halls and paths from serving lethal traps that could be triggered by the flick of a switch. By closing off sections from the quarters and pumping out deadly toxins into them, invading the city becomes tricky.
To prevent civilian casualties from such measures, the city also has secret tunnels and mechanical custodians that aid in any evacuation before they assist the military with swarming the enemy.
Industry & Trade
Ironically, for an underground populace, the citizens are no miners and import most of their earthen materials. Instead, they work to export these materials back in shapes of technological parts.
Infrastructure
Within the city, inhabitants have built chemical laboratories, biofuel factories and steam driven workshops to create anything from artificial limbs and organs, to medicine and experimental weapons.
Assets
Some of the city's most unique and successful shops are the market for alchemical reagents and biological gadgets that have everything from hallucinogenic, to sleeping, to healing effects on use.
Tales also suggest their medical industry has brought back the dead, or at least the fatally wounded from certain fate. With the use of biological enhancements, people can even be made stronger, faster and even more agile after treatment. Needles to say though, such changes come with controversies.
Guilds and Factions
Wisplight Soceity
Explorers Guild
Tinkers Guild
Rangers Guild
International Trade Coalition
Mysticians Guild
Snowscales
House of Spiders
Necrotic brotherhood
Icenguard
Wisplight Conclave
Tourism
The city is regularly visited by architects, biologists and mechanics that wish to marvel in what to them is considered a massive biopunk theme park. There is also a high interest in the medical facilities that attract scientists and various forms of doctors and surgeons.
Architecture
Brass and copper, glass and wires. Decorated with pipes, cogs, exhausts and pneumatic machines and clockworks. The underneath of the mountain's carapace seems to live and breathe through the five circle districts. These massive caves are combined by tunnels of steel and pipelines that work as veins for the biofuel blood to run the machine.
It's this blue liquid known as bioluminium that lights the steampunk streets.
Above, the vents in the cavern roof send out fresh, breathable air while other ventilations inhale the airbound waste that rise from machines and chimneys. The water and carbon dioxide is picked up and transported by similar tubes of brass and glass to feed the glowing gardens.
The Spires:
Four massive mechanical towers that tower above the Spiritmarshes foggy air. They stand as a warning, and a guiding light for anyone who dares the mires. The gothic designs also harbour military checkpoints and elevators down into the city.Biotechnicans district:
The heaven of medical expertise. The district is filled with white and red cubical buildings that are connected with pipes and wires that dance around the bioluminescent mushrooms growing from the cavern roofs and walls. The streets are filled with glowing trees, bushes, man made rivers, pipeline bridges and globe like factories. All made from steel plates and connected by concrete roads that shine from biofueled street lamps.The Glowing gardens:
A soaked down cavern floor with carefully placed rocks and patches of sand that makes the zen garden. This district can be found protected in the middle of the other four districts. It is filled with wisplight trees and all kinds of mushrooms and flowers that provide the city with food, fuel and oxygen, along with other various needs to make for a thriving populace. The garden is also home to a massive temple and the Wisplight Society.The Market district:
A district made from plate and copper, covered by cobble roads and gas lit street lamps that fill the narrow streets. The Marketplace is the most crowded district, that features most of the commoners' steampunk housing, stores and guildhalls. It's one of the Frozen Empires big epicenters for their global trade, and even hosts the station for the tram that runs in a circle through the four big quarters.The Culture district:
The far most eccentric district, and the second most populated that harbour most outsiders that came to migrate or represent their factions. The pavement here is arguably the cleanest, with gravel roads and placed dirt that fill the cave with grass and little trees. To give an outside feeling, rivers, ponds and wooden bridges have been built to seperate but still connect the mixture of goblin, human, darkelven and other different cultural societies. This is also where the finest taverns, restaurants and theaters can be found.The Factory district:
A smog filled quarter that harbours a permanent stench of coal and oil in the befouled air. This is where most of the tools, weapons, machines and mechanical parts are made. The district is the least populated one and almost only functions as a work facility due to it’s inhumane living standards. Its importance is still critical though, not only for the city but the Frozen Empires as a whole. Thanks to the manufacturing of the factions flag vessels, known as the Dreadwhailers, massive cranes can be seen working all day and night long on the platforms to ensure the safety and function from one of the empire's most effective warmachines.
Type
City
Population
80.000
Related Ethnicities
Inhabitant Demonym
Northborn
Location under
Owning Organization
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