Catálogo público
Griseville
Steampunk Noir
Victorian era with advanced steam power, brass gadgets, and clockwork automata. With technology came new opportunities for crime syndicates to flourish.
Descripción general
Smoke stacks rise from every borough of Griseville, pumping soot into the air until the sky turns the color of wet newspaper. The city proper houses two million souls, with another half million crammed into the shanty towns pushing against the outer walls. Twenty years ago, a collapsed mine shaft in Wales killed hundreds, but here in Griseville, the same Dolomite Mining Consortium runs the steam refineries that power half the city's grid. Nobody mentions the connection. The river Thame runs black through the city center, thick with industrial runoff that kills anything foolish enough to try drinking from it. Every morning, window washers scrape grime from glass panes only to find them coated again by evening. The influential speak in boardrooms while the desperate speak in alleys, and both conversations decide who lives or dies before sunrise.
Sociedad
Parliament exists, but everyone knows the real power sits with the industrial barons and crime lords who shake hands at the same dinner tables. The Metropolitan Police Force operates as a business: beat constables pay monthly tributes to precinct captains for the privilege of patrolling profitable neighborhoods. Those who cannot pay patrol the Rails district, where even the desperate think twice. The Church of England operates in open rivalry with the growing Cult of Mechanics, which treats industrial progress as evidence of divine favor. Neither institution objects to the existence of child labor in the factories; they merely argue over which theological framework best justifies it.
Tecnología
Steam pressure drives nearly everything, from the elevated railcars to the clockwork messenger birds that carry encoded correspondence across the city. Brass actuators allow quadriplegic veterans to walk and work, though the maintenance costs mean most end up in debt bondage to the very companies that made them mobile again. Pneumatic tubes connect every government building, bank, and wealthy home, creating a physical network for secure message delivery that the criminal syndicates tap with shocking regularity. Coal and water remain abundant, but quality lubricants have become precious, and a cold winter can drive desperate inventors to steal the oil right from the joints of city maintenance automata.