The original city of Crobuzon was founded as a small village near the coast of Iron Bay at the outflow of the Gross Tar River, near to the present location of Tarmuth. It quickly flourished as a trading settlement.
History of New Crobuzon
Welcome to New Crobuzon, the greatest city-state of the world. Over time, its hard-working citizens (and hard-scheming politicians) have made this powerful city-state a true force to be reckoned with. Its manufactories are a vast, sprawling, industrial mess, producing enough goods to extend New Crobuzon’s reach thousands of miles in every direction.
The city has created great art and advanced sciences, funded rail travel and gliding aerostats, utterly destroyed one of its rival cities, and brought others to heel – all while making its merchants and politicians very, very wealthy indeed. New Crobuzon now suffers the inevitable diseases of a proud industrial metropolis: alchemical wastes flow into the Gross Tar through the Brock Marsh, the crowds strain its streets and rails, and while its newer buildings tower ten and even twenty stories high, every mass of concrete, tar, and brick is rotting at the base.
Many of its districts are slums, rebels and unions threaten the wealth of the overlords, and its citizens are barely held in check by the brutal militia.
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0 BC
Founding of Crobuzon
Founding -
100 AC
The Burning of Crobuzon
Disaster / DestructionCrobuzon became a favorite target of pirate attacks. A mere 100 years after its founding, one such raid burned Crobuzon to the ground. The inhabitants pulled up stakes and moved inland to where the River Tar meets with the Canker, just a few miles upriver from its meeting with the sea.
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101 AC
Rebuilding and Renaming: New Crobuzon
FoundingThe most prominent historical figure from this early era was a cleric of Darioch named Jabber. Jabber would become known as the founding father of New Crobuzon, being credited with creating parliament, writing the city’s legal code, establishing the trade policies crucial to the city’s prosperity, and dozens of other feats. His influence became so vast that at some point he was deified, and the worship of “St. Jabber” would grow into the most prominent of the city’s religions.
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1100 AC
1500 AC
The Pirate Wars
Military actionNew Crobuzon continued to prosper as it became an ever-larger trading and manufacturing center. Unfortunately, whenever wealth congregates in the world, there will be those who wish to usurp it. Pirates and other maritime powers continuously harassed New Crobuzon (and each other,) but this antagonism reached its peak around the year 1,100, and thus began the Pirate Wars. Fought in two rounds, the first Pirate War lumbered along for about four hundred years. It was fought among New Crobuzon, Jheshull, Gnurr Kett, Suroch, and many other island and maritime powers. Allegiances shifted all the time.
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1510 AC
1545 AC
The Second Pirate Wars
Military actionWhen most people refer to the Pirate Wars, they mean the Second Pirate Wars, the sudden flaring up of the conflict again around 1510, when it turned into a real and bloody military conflict.
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1544 AC
1545 AC
The Bombing of Suroch
Military actionIn 1544, New Crobuzon deployed a secret weapon on their worst enemy, the northern coastal city of Suroch – the Torque bomb, which harnessed the same chaotic madness as the Cacotopic Stain. This created a new, smaller torque zone, with all of the horrible chaos that entails, including reality itself coming undone. The result was so heinous that New Crobuzon tried to keep its victory a secret, dropping a series of colourbombs on the remains of Suroch in 1545 in an attempt to destroy the madness. Official public records made no mention of torque bombs, and insisted that it was the colourbombs that ended the war, (although only a quarter of those bombs actually worked.) With this thorough victory, the number of countries and city-states seeking negotiated resolutions in favor of military solutions rose dramatically, and New Crobuzon has been home to a multitude of embassies ever since.
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1655 AC
Expedition to the Stain
Discovery, ScientificNew Crobuzon finally mounted a scientific expedition to examine the new Cacotopic Stain of Suroch, which included a heliotypist named Sacramundi.
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1689 AC
1690 AC
Sacramundi Riots
RevolutionSeeing the horror of the stain firsthand, upon his return he defied the government’s orders for secrecy by publicly distributing “Sacramundi’s report,” which informed the masses about the dreadful reality unleashed by New Crobuzon. This sparked the Sacramundi Riots in 1689, which came very close to bringing the entire government down.
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1690 AC
1700 AC
Khepri Exodus
Population Migration / TravelAlmost concurrently with the riots, the Khepri exodus began arriving on the shores of the city, escaping the terrible Ravening of their homeland. Many found work and refuge in the city, and their population began to rapidly swell. The city’s government held on by a thread for a decade, and had only just begun to make headway in restoring its former power when a terrible drought occurred which threatened the entire city’s food supply.
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1701 AC
1701 AC
The Week of Dust
RevolutionIn 1701, a social bandit calling himself Bridling became the mouthpiece for the discontent of the populace. Almost single-handedly, Bridling churned the city’s agitation to a broil, a time which would become known as the Week of Dust. Driven to desperation, Parliament approved a violent retaliation on the city’s malcontents. All protests were met with lethal force and extreme prejudice. Remarkably, this show of strength did not come back to bite the government, and actually succeeded in scaring the city’s populace into line. From that point on, only a tiny percentage of the city dared to openly oppose official policies, like “hero of the people” Jack Half-a-Prayer, and illegal underground newspapers like the Runagate Rampart.
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1776 AC
Current Time
Miscellaneous