Bluffs

One of the most controversial areas in the city, Bluffs is a standalone district, a section of Skirts, or an unincorporated settlement on the edge of town depending on who you ask. Situated to the south of Wall and East of Skirts, this small and shabby district pushes habitability to its most extreme limits as the poorest classes of Granmont make use of every patch of flat land available for homes, shops, and streets along the rise into the southern mountains.  

History and Culture

Like any city Granmont has always had areas of abject poverty, and as the city expands and pushes the unhoused forgottens and other dredges of society out of their existing homes they have had nowhere to go but up. The eponymous bluffs to the southeast have never been deemed suitable for urban development due to the lack of space and instability of what land there is. This has reserved this land-slide laden zone for those who are desperate enough to have nowhere else to go. Over the past several decades of expansion Bluffs has gone from a remote site for prisons, sanatoriums, and seminaries to a tent-and-shack city housing several thousands of Granmont's most vulnerable.   Despite the efforts of what few public works projects reach this far, poverty is still ubiquitous in Bluffs. These winding streets leading into the mountains are packed and dense, with most building being little more than tin-roofed hovels or ratty tents. With the Watch rarely entering these forgotten blocks the criminal element has grown out of control--though the resolute people of Bluffs have a strong sense of community and protect their own, this district can be incredibly dangerous for outsiders perceived as a threat, especially the visibly affluent.   Impermanence is a way of live in Bluffs. With what few buildings that exist here falling short of even the most lenient building codes and the presence of rock-slides and shifts in the loose gravely soil the district is especially vulnerable to earthquakes, with even mild shifts collapsing the entire district. With no external help from the Watch or charity groups, the people of Bluffs are forced to rescue themselves, and each other, before rebuilding from scratch.   A little-known fact is that sole road of Bluffs stretches north into Wall, through Camino, Oaktops, and all the way to the golden-bricked Rue de Laurel; though its name changes as it winds through the city, it is the very same road that stretches straight from the Marquiss' front door all the way through the poorest neighborhood in the city, a stark symbol of Granmont's social inequality.