Lagash - the Gloom

Watch your step, it's a drop of a lifetime.

A scar left by the End of All Things according to official historians, the Gloom is a jagged canyon across the empire-city of Lagash, deep as the night is dark and even more filled with dangers. No one has a true count of how deep the Gloom really is, except perhaps the Emperor and the head of the Sanitation Worker's Guild. At its widest, the Gloom is over a dozen meters apart, the edges splintered and ragged from the magical injury that formed it.

Less official sources say the Gloom is much younger than the End - an experiment, perhaps a mistake by the Emperor, of more recent origin. Such theories are seldom spoken within earshot of imperial agents.

Even Lagash's all-consuming city-scape stops before it reaches the edge of the Gloom, creating a rare dead and empty area between the first jumble of buildings and the descent into the dark. It begins with a gentle curve, then drops into a steep tumble down. The walls of the canyon are so sheer to be almost perfectly vertical and smooth as glass, but cast no reflection. Instead, they seem to consume any light that touch them, given the place its name.

by Rawpixel.com (Freepik)

The Gloom is long enough to cross three districts of Lagash, ending on one side in the Arcanium District and deep into the heart of the slumlands on the other. At day, there are bridges and air-ship that ferry people and goods across the Gloom, but all such traffic cease during the night, save for the most desperate or foolhardy.
Deep within the dark, burrows and nests pock-mark the otherwise unblemished surface of the Gloom. Deeper still, there are cavernous holds where things crawl and squirm and feast on anything that fall within their grasp. Despite the dark, the Gloom is not empty, nor silent, with shriekes and screams regularly climbing out of its depth to annoy those unfortunate enough to live nearby. Ever so often, the things that live inside emerges, either as solitary hunters or as a ravenous horde, looking for food.

Only three types of people visit the Gloom - unlucky imperial agents, foolhardy adventurers, and sanitation workers. (And, of course, PCs)

This makes the gloom something of a headache for city authorities, with a sizable contigent of city guard and Imperial Wizards dedicated to keeping watch over the Gloom. Citizens disappearing, travel being disrupted, and worse the creatures within the Gloom not respecting the Emperor's Law is a source of constant problem.

by http://www.tribalartasia.com/

Every sort of plan has been considered, from flooding the whole lot of it to covering it with bars and traps. Now and then, some bureaucrat or up-and-coming administrator will get it in their head that they will be the ones to finally put a nail in the whole affair, and a slew of adventurers are hired to go poke about in the dark. So far, they've accomplished little except fatten the predators who make their home down in the Gloom, but every fresh-faced and ambitious imperial servant think this time will be different.

In the War

As the Emperor's ambitions grew, so did imperial interest in the Gloom. More and more efforts have been made not only to explore the Gloom but to bind its inhabitants and send them to devour the city's enemies. With war on every horizon and foes at every gate, the empire-city is searching for every advantage it can get - and another pack of adventurers descend into the Gloom at the promise of the coin.