Lagash - the Pit

Welcome to the Pit. I'd say enjoy your stay, but that seems pretty unlikely.

"The Pit" is a catch-all term for all of the depressing slums that infest Lagash's cityscape like rot on a corpse. It spread between the hills and peaks of the city proper, between ancient monument cast down by the End of All Things, down and in the shadow of the city 'proper'. Although it isn't considered part of the city as such and imperial magistrates are loath to try and govern what is an urban wilderness, the Pit is home to perhaps the majority of Lagash's population. Here, they live in helpless squalor and crushing poverty, clawing a living in any way they can. They're kept there by those who live in the city above them, in fear that they might rise up if they don't, and to extract as much as they can from those already in dire, desperate straits.

A View From The Pit

As the name suggest, much of the Pit is physically below the rest of Lagash, sometimes by as much as ten meters down. The uneven and chaotic Lagash is even more so down in the pit - in the word of one of its more infamous residents, the Pit is what a city might like look like if a god had swallowed one whole then vomited it up again. It is a a mix of narrow streets, open sewer pits, and multi-store street ways with only the span of a foot to stand on. People live in tenament housing, several families to a room, while the more powerful or wealthy secure whatever larger structure might've fallen into the pit during the End of All Things.

by http://www.tribalartasia.com/

Ever so often, a grand monument from some other world has lodged itself too deep within the Pit for the city to bother reclaiming them. They stand out in all the filth like an gilded, infected tooth - remnants of an god's palace, the shard of a planar realm, or perhaps the broken, unrecognizable corpse of some divine being. Everything of value has since long been stripped of all such places and the remnants covered in graffiti, messages, laundry, and sewer discharge.
Even so, the people of the Pit are proud of their monuments. They form the basis of a rich and varied social life, and are the focal point where people meet to celebrate or settle scores. Markets spring up around them, as the crash usually flattens the land out enough to make it easy to set up shop.

Despite its sprawling size, space is at a premium in the Pit and the most valued commodity. Those who have it can lord it over others, and those who can take it will.

by Pixabay

by Rawpixel.com (Freepik)

While the Pit is a place of hopeless despair, abundant crime, poverty and strife, it is also a place where the spirit of Lagash is at its most true. The denizens of the Pit embody all that Lagash truly is - they're avaricious, opportunistic, ambitious, and tenacious, willing to try their hand at any plot or scheme that'll better their lot in life. They aren't afraid to get their hands dirty, nor stained in blood, with a fair amount of the city's sanitation workers - irreplacable in their worth - and grave-robbers both coming from the Pit.
So too do many of the Legion's soldiers. If there's no hope of a better life in the city, many of the young and strong try their luck outside of it, hoping to take it with a sword in hand.