The city
Sootfall
At the centre of the city stands the Works. It has run without stopping for longer than anyone can properly account for, and it burns coal, scrap, water and shifts. The ash it throws comes down over everything like the weather. That's the Fall, and that's the name.
Nobody currently living knows what the Works produces. There are wagons out on the east road every morning, loaded and covered, and nobody has ever met anyone who met the buyer. The question gets asked less than you'd think. It's a job.
Sootfall isn't divided by species. It's divided by what your species ended up doing, and nobody chose that either. Whoever got here first took the work worth having, and everyone since has taken what was left.


