Devil's Cradle

“All right, so it’s a city that’s under a perpetual thunderstorm that randomly abducts ships from across the planet all day from dawn to dusk, is ruled by an empty building where no one hears noise, has a quarter of the place sealed off to contain roaming hordes of radioactive undead, and exists under a giant web of steel cables woven across the colossal bones of some prehistoric monster. Am I missing anything?
Seriously? Giant metal spiders? WHY DO PEOPLE LIVE HERE?” -Evon the Explorer, upon learning about the city in which he'd arrived.

Devil's Cradle
The infamous and accursed capital of Allacraus, Devil's Cradle is a telling example that things can always get worse. The city is located on a bay that's guarded by an enormous underwater castle stretching across the bay's floor right where it connects out to sea. The castle's spires jut just high enough to form a natural barrier to entering the harbor through any but the approved gates, and are capable of defending the entire city from any nautical attack. Still, Devil's Cradle is known for certain other properties, each infamous in its own right.
Several hundred years ago, Devil's Cradle was called something else, and was a thriving port city that was largely responsible for handling ships and cargo transitioning from the open sea to one of several inland rivers. A significant naval force to combat piracy as well as an enormous merchant fleet and many private vessels made it probably the busiest and most populated port on the continent.
When Mount Harbinger exploded and sent numerous meteors across the face of the continent, one of the largest impacted directly into the harbor. Thousands were killed instantly, and many more died as the corruption of the wrack rapidly spread through the hulls of the various ships, most broken to various degrees, and created a bizarre fusion of structures that have come to be known as the Underharbor.
For almost a hundred years, the entire area around Devil's Cradle was the largest source of Wrackbeasts and monsters on the entire west coast of the continent, a distinction which eventually gave the city its dire moniker. Then, a famous company of heroes fought their way through the crater, descended into the bizarre underwater structure, and managed to locate and defuse the wrackstone meteor that was the source of so much horror. Clearing the surrounding area enough to make it relatively safe took almost another ten years, and the city was finally beginning to settle into some semblance of normalcy when the war with Shovani began.
Devil's Cradle was a key supply point for Allacraus naval forces, and functioned as their de facto military headquarters. It was only natural then, that Shovani would eventually target the city. As their army approached by ship, dissident elements within the city seized on the looming instability and attempted to stage a coup. Thus it  was that Shovani arrived to find the city already at war, and its invasion added even greater confusion to the melee.
No one knows exactly where the 13th house obtained the artifact that caused what happened next. All that's known for certain was that there was a tremendous explosion in one of the city's side districts, which tore through the atmospheric domes above and permanently altered the weather by summoning the phenomena known as the Maelstrom, the eternal storm. Even greater chaos erupted as undead, animated by some kind of radioactive magic, swarmed out of the canyon into the city.
Recognizing the threat the damaged portion of reality represented, the Shovani general agreed to suspend the war with the now largely united human faction, and the three groups pushed the undead back long enough for the canyons to be sealed off and for a small group of elite soldiers to find and contain the source of the anomalous energy. Though the damage could not be entirely repaired, the wound the city had suffered to its reality had been bandaged. 
Awkward impromptu peace talks resulted in the end of the war.
The Four Districts
Now the city is divided into three (some would say four) sections:
1. The Under Harbor, the vast labyrinth of ships knit together by Wrackstone several hundred years ago, occupies the space below the waterline and part of what was once the harbor.
2. Next to it are the Earthen districts, the portions of the city that are either underground or on the floors of the enormous canyons that run up to the edge of the sea.
3.Finally, the Sky districts are those areas on top of the surface land and in elevated portions of the canyon that are still covered by the atmospheric domes, which now serve to shelter the city from the Maelstrom.
Some still discuss the so-called "fourth quarter," the canyon network sealed off from the rest of the city in order to contain the monstrous undead that roam through that area, some of them still radiating the strange and lethal void energy that characterized the artifact whose destruction triggered the final phase of fighting in the city.
Sealed off from the ocean by decades or centuries old ship hulls reinforced by the magic of the original wrackstone, the Underharbor is far from safe, which is why legitimate business and residences are only located on the very upper layers of the massive structure. Living near the city is expensive, however, and there are many criminal or dissident elements who need to be hard to find. Those that need to hide badly enough populate the mid and lower levels, but those are dangerous places. The monstrous inhabitants haven't fully been cleared, pockets of wrack energy remain, not all sections are seaworthy and there are sometimes creatures that make their way inside from the sea. That's not even considering the danger posed by other desperate people.
Devil's Cradle has a number of unusual features. Some of the more notable are detailed below.
The World's Bones: Devil's Cradle sits in a bay largely defined by jagged black and green limestone, but one other material features heavily in any view of the city. Protruding from the surrounding rock rise a series of enormous bones, each the size of a castle tower or larger. For most of the city's history, it existed in the shadows of these bones, forming a kind of grim break against the elements that was in some areas incorporated directly into the city's architecture. The rough bowl shape formed by what seems to be a gigantic rib cage surrounding the city is part of the inspiration for the city's name, as early explorers often remarked that it resembled a cradle.
The Fallen Quarter: Before its war with Shovani, the city was already known as a place of curses, waning sunlight and ill fortune. Its massive ports and convenient location as a nexus for trade were barely enough motivation to keep people passing through the city. Then hostilities broke out in earnest with Shovani, and near the climax of the war, a great explosion of dark energy tore through an entire district of the city. The cause of the phenomenon is still unknown, though theories and rumors abound. The strange black light of the blast instantly slew those it touched and reanimated many of their bodies in a twisted version of undeath even deadlier than the typical products of necromancy. A massive wall  and a number of deliberate cave-ins have since sealed off that district, but the effects linger on in other ways, not the least of which is a decided mood of pessimism. The district is still accessible through a heavily guarded underground passage called the eye of Orpheus, but because it's flooded at all but low tide it can be difficult to navigate and often strands explorers in the quarter for much longer than they'd care to stay.
The Maelstrom Since the explosion, the skies above Devil's Ante have gone from frequently cloudy to one long storm that covers the sky from shortly after dawn until dusk each evening. The Maelstrom, as it's come to be known, has some bizarre properties. When at its most violent, it seems to form a link with other storms out at sea, possibly with all nautical storms everywhere. Little is known except that the few vessels foolhardy enough to venture out into the harbor proper during especially fierce periods vanish whole. Even stranger, from time to time the storm will part to reveal a new vessel from some other location. There is no apparent rhyme or reason to these strange abductions, save that those of the crew that survive the passage describe having sailed into an ominous storm in whatever waters they were originally sailing. Distance seems wholly irrelevant to this property of the Maelstrom, with vessels appearing from the opposite side of the continent or even further afield.
The Lattice of Steel and The Clockwork Arachnia When the Maelstrom first appeared, it delivered lightning strikes into the city with such frequency that many assumed the city would be abandoned. Many were packing up to leave after the explosion anyway, but then the spiders arrived. In one of the few public acts of the parliament of silence, it was proclaimed that the city would now be under the protection of "new guardians," and that people should not fear the storm. The spiders simply emerged from the sea and set to work, weaving a network of steel cables above the city that they anchored on the enormous bones that defined the city's skyline. In just a few days, this web began to draw the lightning into itself, with the resulting energy pulsing along the web in a loud crackle that spared any of the city's denizens from the storm's wrath. Combined with the natural insulation from the wind which the city enjoys from its location in a crater, this new protection made living in Devil's Cradle possible despite the constant ill weather. The great domes that once shielded the city have largely been restored, but they are maintained irregularly and leak in some places.
Nonetheless, the various dangers of the city outweigh the benefits to the vast majority of prospective citizens, and most who reside in the city permanently are forced to live there by ties to shipping, an industry that still uses the harbor's nightly stretches of calm to unload goods and passengers bound for destinations across the continent. This has led to Devil's Cradle becoming something of a ghost town, with abandoned buildings outnumbering those that are inhabited. Its slums contain the truly desperate folk who can afford no other lodgings, and outside the well-patrolled central district crime is rampant. Though the nobility of Allacraus all have manors in the city, most are maintained by a small private guard while the wealthier class resides on property further into the countryside. Still, there is a great deal of opportunity to be found in the city, for those who have courage and the means to defend themselves.
Several dangerous organizations inhabit the city, from the thieves guild to the feuding noble houses to the infamous governing body known as the parliament of silence. Recent events have seen some new arrivals as well, a small cabal has grown in the wake of the disaster referring to themselves as the Clockword, and insisting that the spiders are merely the first of a new enlightened race that was coming to cleanse the world of all flesh.

Government

The city of Devil's Cradle, and in theory all of Allacraus, are ruled by the Parliament of Silence.

Type

Capital

Location under

Allacraus (Nation)

Included Locations

• The Broken Circle
• The Everstorm