Blackchain Bastille

Routine rabblerousers and petty troublemakers in Wretinridge are usually confined to a jail cell in one of the Citysguard Watchhouses scattered throughout the Precincts. There they await trial, responsible for paying for their own imprisonment – food and even shackles. Varying levels of comfort might be offered, each with different prices, based on the arrested person’s means.

More serious crimes often face the grittier fate of incarceration in Wretinridge’s infamous prison, Blackchain Bastille. It is suspended from gargantuan chains, themselves mounted to anchor points on either end of the harbor and skyport. The Bastille dangles precariously, hundreds of feet below Wretinridge, out of sight and mind, yet thousands of feet above the lifeless expanse of the Wasteland.

Few who enter Blackchain ever leave. The prison’s swaying halls and iron-clad cells are home to the realm’s most dangerous and desperate, where cruelty is law, and survival is a constant struggle. For many, the Bastille is more than a sentence; it is a death sentence in slow motion.

“I’ve spoken to guards who claim they’ve seen inmates driven mad in mere weeks, their minds shattered by the unrelenting void below and the unyielding cruelty of their fellow prisoners. Even seasoned mercenaries and hardened criminals, known for their indifference to death, have been known to beg for execution rather than face life within the Bastille.

To be sentenced to Blackchain is not just a punishment; it is a slow, agonizing descent into madness and oblivion. If you listen carefully on a quiet night in Wretinridge, you might hear the faint creaking of the chains, the distant howling of the winds, or perhaps even the cries of those who have long since been forgotten.”