The City

The most citylike city in town, and harder to exterminate than a field of weeds.

The City is the biggest hive of Munane folk in Bloodmarsh, but not from lack of attention from the natives. Sprawling and lawless, the City only scrapes by due to the huge number of economic immigrants always streaming in. Trade, crafts, magical research, military training - the City has it all if you don't mind sleeping in straw or gravel or rats.
Almost all of this activity takes place only in the topmost layer of buildings and fortresses. Beneath the Current City, and holding it up above sea level like the back of a dead giant, is the Previous City. This network of ruins and caves is made up of the collected half-demolishe fortifications, corpses, and wreckage of several hundred years of high-turnover real estate and construction.

Demographics

Lowhuts 26%, Criminoids 24%, Goblins 16%, Locathah 15%, Bighornians 12%, Ettercap 7%

Government

The House of Burgesses unites the selected representatives of the different "burghs" or political zones of the City. Each burgh maintains an identity and a defensive strategy, and has official and unofficial ties to the neighbors. The House is in fact a house, and the house is mostly used for arguing, but when an army of one sort or another approaches to try to take the city for its plunder or position, the burgesses begin to act in concert and put up a collective front.

Defences

The City usually has only a perfunctory gesture of a wall, due to the fact that it's always expanding and contracting in the cycle of reconstruction and destruction. Instead, houses are built with the mortared-stone ground floors and overhanging upper stories which Bloodmarsh has developed, with murderholes above every door and arrowslits aiming down every alleyway. There is no standing army to meet assailants in the field; everybody's too busy with the all-important business of trade to bother with standing around on a wall or poking someone with sticks. Instead, once the wall is breached, the city essentially buttons up on an ad-hoc basis and transforms into a labyrinthine death-trap, so that any invaders must bleed strength for every block of progress toward the fortified House of Burgesses. This by no means makes the City impregnable, but it certainly makes it a high-investment-cost option for the aspiring conqueror.

Industry & Trade

More than half of the City is entirely composed of supporting logistics for oceanic trade. Since the Red Bay is the only decent deepwater port in the relative safety of Bloodmarsh, all economic intercourse with the Homelands is focused on this city, and so traffic in the ponderous oceanic ships of La Froche and Criminea are constantly lumbering in and out, stirring the magic pot which is the Intercontinental Trade to waft zephyrs of economic prosperity into all of Bloodmarsh. The Broadways host several shipyards and maintenance bays for the big oceanic vessels which rely on it for harbor on this side of the Interstitial Ocean, manned by the uncharacteristically high population of locathah who live here for the purpose.

Infrastructure

The top layer of the city is built on an enormous pile of rubble known as the Previous City, like the living outside layer of a mountainous coral. The Previous City retains large hollows, partly filled with bones and mud from the streets but still accessible to the Underlings of Unterburgh. This place is a traditional emergency refuge for the surface inhabitants.
The roads through The City are formed of necessity and usually completely change between razings. They currently form a sort of spiderweb, with a big radial nexus of crossings in the middle and concentric ring roads circling outward.
The all-important coasts and harbors are encrusted with acres of colossal piers known as the Broadways, half of which sit on pilings and half just float right on top of the waters. The undersides of these structures don't go to waste, as two thriving Locathah burghs exist entirely in multi-level submerged dwellings which hang beneath the Broadways.

Assets

The City has an unchallenged control over the harbors of the Red Bay, and hosts the greatest rate intercontinental merchant traffic on Earth by most estimates. There's also always treasure to be looted from the Previous City, especially right after a razing event. There's also a constant flow of through-traffic on Westroad which brings in needed supplies and economic stimulation.

History

The city has been completely destroyed by Immortals or conquering mortals throughout its long history, the most recent ruination being the Archer's Day Demolition, 2277. It is currently in a state of reconstruction, sitting at about half of its prior population but growing fast.
The place has been razed to the ground about twenty times since its establishment as a fortress complex in 1822. Fort Desperation, as it was originally known, was one of the Blasted Forts which mankind held by tooth and nail until The Stompening. With nothing but grit and suicidal determination, mankind expanded Fort Desperation further and further until its outermost perimeter of trenches encompassed several acres. Dragon attack still plowed up the whole place periodically, but only when some of the local scalies could be persuaded by their social superiors to brave the multitudinous ballistae stationed on the Fort's squat towers.

RUINED SETTLEMENT
1836, 1844, 1845, 1856, 1870, 1874, 1892, 1901, 1919, 1930, 1942, 1950, 1966, 1982. It remained standing for the rest of the War of Cons and Souls, but then was ruined again in 2001, 2019, 2025, 2042, 2060, 2120, 2130, 2134, 2170, 2195, 2211, 2240, 2256.

Type

City

Population

15,000