The Five Struts
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The Five Struts *
The city’s name is Raptoraem — and always has been.
One early municipal map printed it as Raptoream, and nobody bothered to fix it. The misprinted map stays up on purpose — a joke the city keeps for itself, and for outsiders who think they understand the place.
Raptoraem sprawls in a starfish layout. Five struts tied together by bridges, each driven by its own appetite. Together they form the city’s body. Together, they feed the Maw.
Strait of Silks (Northside – Entertainment)
A labyrinth of pleasure houses, gambling dens, and fashion ateliers. Neon threads the alleys like spiderwebs. Art, vice, and glamour trade hands under the eyes of Moll Sera and Mistress Mirelle—rival doyennes who rule with poisoned daggers in velvet gloves.
Strait of Coal (Westside – Industrial)
The Crucible: factories, docks, and refineries seething without pause. Here Mr. Smiles and his Switchboard syndicate keep the coin flowing and the furnaces stoked. Ships, smog, and salvage drive this strut’s endless motion.
Miss your quota, lose your teeth.
Strait of Stone (Southside – Residential)
The Steep: stacked tenements, overflowing markets, and patched-together lives. Its people climb for light or sink into darkness. Marshal Regis “Stoneheart” holds sway as landlord and enforcer, dispensing rough justice with keys girding his fist.
Strait of Gold (Eastside – Luxury)
The Summit: wealth and governance perched above the grime. Marble towers, botanical gardens, and soirees unfold behind polarized glass. Midas of the Crimson Echelon rules through sky-high debts, and unending banquets, his pockets fat from Pit-fed mining spoils.
Strait of Veils (Center-Northeast – Spiritual)
The Sanctum: temples, crypts, and shrines perfumed with incense. Cults bloom like fungi; prophecies are bought and sold. The Spidershrine looms as the city's central cathedral and charnel house. All rites are woven under the pall of Hacket the Husk, surgeon-priest of the dead.
Perimeter cliff-wall forming the city’s coastal defense.
Composition: black basalt base with iron-crusted reinforcement, ~30m high and 6m thick.
Condition: surface pitted by acid rains; constantly under wave impact.
Defenses: battlements with cannons and turrets running in crescent formation toward Solarium.
Function: stabilizes city edge, prevents Deadlands incursion, and contains toxic backflow.
Key Site: Smuggler’s Cove — a concealed inlet within the wall’s curvature, historically used for contraband trade and prisoner exchanges; annexed by Raptoraem after the Siege.
The Drownwall
Vesper Gate (The Spine)
Collapsed Imperium archway converted into a trade crossing. Original bone-white marble span lies half-submerged; current structure consists of scavenged steel walkways lashed across remaining ribs.
Dimensions: spans channel between Solarium and Raptoraem.
Surface: corroded, iridescent from chemical wash.
Access: only passable at low tide; at high tide arches submerge, flow strong enough to drown.
Traffic: ore carts and caravans make daily crossings; guard posts positioned along flanks.
At low tide the jagged arches rise like vertebrae; at high tide the current roars through and turns deadly. Two weather-worn fresco-reliefs still flank the passage: on the Solarium side, a salt-eaten harpy with serpent-coiled hair and hollow eyes screams into the wind; on the Raptoræm side, a bronze-dark woman battles a three-headed dragon, her chipped shield turned into a shrine where Pitbound leave coins and charms.
The crossing is only passable at low tide, and during monsoons, the Spine disappears beneath the water entirely.