Scrap Yard
A place people aren't supposed to go
Aritifcal land on the west side of the city, created by trash dumped from other islands. Besides a high concentration of metal refuge, toxic waste is often washed ashore - sometimes in barrels, other times just flouting free on the currents. Illness runs ramped in those who spend too much time in the yards, and few live to old age.
Yet, there are several pockets of communities still trying to live in the heaping piles, many of them orphan children or runaways turned out of the city known as Heap Kids. Because of the exposure to so many chemicals and high rates of diseases, many of them are never allowed inside the city walls at all for fear of spreading illnesses, and without medical care, die in their first year or so of living there.
Scrap Rats are others who try and survive in the Yard, scavengers who pick though new and old trash, looking for anything that can be sold, repurposed, melted down. All metal from the yard is illegal to remove, coming at great risk for the scrap rat, their buyer, and those unfortunately enough to come in contact with the potentially contaminated materials unknowningly.
Natural Resources
While nothing is natural about it anymore, the scrap yards are a wealth of expensive metals, from construction to precious. Gold, Silver, Copper, Bass and Bronze are regularly mixed in the unfinished and discarded projects, smaller in quantity, harder to find, but worth far more than the steel and aluminum that makes up most of the yard.
The Scrap Rat Kid-King (later known as the infamous Kidd MacEustace) had an eerry, inhuman ability to find these precious metals, and as he grew up, he'd gain a following from other rats who'd try and failed to rob him over the years.
Real rats and sea birds also live in the Yard, but birds who nest there tend to have small broods and few survive long enough to grow feathers. No fish have been seen in the waters around the yard's faux-coast line in at least three generations.
History
Once, before the wars and before the walls, the gentle slopes to the west of the city where carefully tailored woods and gardens, leading down to lazy beaches with groyne reaching out into mellow waters. A strong shipping current lays not to far off shore, leading to the building of at the rockiest point, warning ships away from the shore.
Unfortunately, this side of the island gathered sediment from the current easily, and as the world started marching toward progress, the trash and waste of wealthier islands began to accumulate along the shoreline. The build up got out of control quickly, and the island unfortunately had to direct rescourses elsewhere - having come to war with the Marines as it tried to strong arm them into the World Government that was slowly taking control over the remaining unaffiliated nations.
When the Marines finally did get run off the island, to save face they reported the island nation as having nothing of value to contribute to the world, other than being a literal dump. And so, they began purposely dumping trash off the west shore, knowing full well it would collect on the beaches. Other islands began to follow suite, and the beaches disappeared under a massive land mass of garbage. Most notable, up current was a island specializing in metal based manufacturing, and soon their scraps and castoffs formed the west side's new coast line, along with the area's moniker 'Trash Side'
Alternative Name(s)
the Heaps
Type
Wasteland
Location under
Included Organizations
Owner/Ruler
Ruling/Owning Rank
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