Eastside
Spilling out from beneath the Beanstalk and down the eastern slope of Volcán Cayambe, the cheap tenements of Eastside are infamous only because of their location. Similar and even worse areas of poor living standards and high crime exist in the undercity, but Eastside is harder to ignore, being so close to the Beanstalk.
Eastside began as a bunch of warehouses, along with dormitories and kitchens to house and feed the hordes of workers who built the Beanstalk and the rest of the district. However, as the rest of Chakana blossomed into an attractive upscale location, Eastside was forgotten. Now, it’s a collection of repurposed tenements and struggling, unlicensed businesses that perch precariously on the steep slopes of the Andes. Most of its streets are narrow switchbacks with ground-level access to the buildings on one side and walkways to the fifth or sixth stories of the buildings on the other.
To avoid spending hours tortuously wending their way up and down the streets to get around, enterprising residents have built networks of scaffolding, bridges, and stairways that link the buildings between their tenth and fifteenth floors. This web of aerial travel routes creates a low-tech mockery of the plaza-level slidewalks and L-squares (elevated public squares) found in other areas, and only enhances Eastside’s decrepit and ramshackle appearance. However, it does provide a quicker (albeit very dangerous) way of getting around Eastside. Foot couriers who can navigate this web are in high demand in Eastside.
Most Eastside residents eke out a living with low-income or illegal jobs. Security is minimal, seccams are out-of-date if they work at all, and the NAPD usually patrols in armored hoppers or remotely via drones. However, the neighborhood is still nominally under police protection, and it receives some resources from the Chakana District Council. No matter how bad it seems, living here is far more pleasant than in some of the other districts’ undercity slums.
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