The Sinks

Castorhage — built partly upon clay and silt deposits — is literally dancing upon its own grave: The more weight that comes to bear, the faster the sinking takes place. This is nowhere more apparent than in the Sinks — literally a drowning town. In 97, Branner, the then king of Castorhage, ordered the creation of a new town for artisans. This would be a place of grand canals and gilt buildings, of towers and cathedrals and art. Branner, always a strongwilled child, decided that it would be wise to use an area of the city known as the Grey Lake, famous for its shallow waters, as the basis for the town. From the start, the project was doomed. A mysterious number of accidents occurred, workers disappeared, and wages had to treble overnight to keep the work going. Piers vanished in moments, taking those working on them into the waters, never to be seen below. A curious fog — Jack’s Candle — seeped up at night and killed with its poisonous kiss. It remains the main reason for the multitude and high cost of canaries across the city, the birds dying as soon as they get a whiff of the marsh gas itself to give their owners precious moments to take precautions. Numerous attempts were made to abandon the project. By this time, however, Branner was sick, and his stepmother Loris insisted that work continue. Even after her child’s death, the long-lived (and despised) stepmother insisted that the work be concluded — as a fitting tribute to her dear departed stepson. Even at its finest, it was obvious that Branner’s Folly (as it had become known) was sinking — towers leant, walls ruptured, cathedrals sagged. Yet after a few decades, the sinking suddenly halted, and the town was left as it is today — a twisted wreckage of leaning walls and towers, exhausted battlements and dislocated arched bridges over canals that range between a few feet to bottomless. Visitors find the Sinks curiously unsettling, and are often prone to dizziness. Even the prahu-punters, most famous for the songs they sing as they take their fares from one street to the next, claim that only certain alchemical variations of snuff keep the dizziness at bay as they punt fares between the steep, dying canyons of the city walls — walls that threaten always to collapse. Now the Sinks is the home to the disowned nobility: bastards, criminals, madmen, those who sicken, those who have wronged, and inbred horrors. These nobles like to think of the Sinks as an elite domain, a decadent aristocracy willing to take life to further extremes than those in the Capitol. In truth they are exiles; their crimes beyond even those considered normal in the Capitol itself. Vampires infest some of these families, although they are always careful to conceal their gifts. For the rest, they are a disturbing mixture of hopes and fears, abominations and murderers. These nobles pay well, and have infested the Sinks with hangers-on, traders, priests and others mad enough — or greedy enough — to live in the shadows of their masters and mistresses. Stories persist that sea-devils (or Sahaugin) have been seen brazenly walking the streets here by night, and that the worship of their hellish gods goes on behind the gilt doors of this dislocated district.

Alternative Name(s)

BrannerS Folly

Type

District

Population

500000

Location under

The City

Included Locations