It’s a city rich with tradition that thrives on commerce, community, and innovation. One that blends technology with the natural world. Windmills make up part of the skyline, while floating tidal farms churn out energy from the ocean currents. Duwamish’s wheel-like layout is designed for an efficient use of resources and power across the city grid.
Merchants, seafarers, and travelers from across NAN, the Elki Rim, and the distant Roman Empire pass through its harbors. From the harbor to the roadways, Duwamish is a city of opportunities, colorful marketplaces covered in rainbow colored sunshades, and whispered secrets linger behind long shadows.
What Came Before
Duwamish has stood the test of time, predating almost any written record. It’s humble start is it the dim, early history of the Duwamish tribe. According to their stories and legends, they’ve been in the area for longer than any written or oral history records. Many stories suggest how long there has been a Duwamish settlement, such as tales of the last Ice Age as it battered the area. Some elders claim that the city was always there, just in different forms with different names but with the same spirit.
In its early days, Duwamish, was a collection of simple coastal villages for a fishing community along the Chesheeahud Bay. The location, because of the nearby river and access to the ocean coastline, soon proved the right mix for the settlement to grow. Over the centuries, despite setbacks from hurricanes and even an Ice Age, it expanded to the metropolis of Duwamish as it’s known today.
Heart and Bones of a City
But the city’s architecture contains hints and homages to those ancient roots. Buildings, such as community and administration buildings, are designed like a tribal longhouse. But while the design, and even texture appears ancient, the building materials aren’t. They’re made, or more accurately printed, from fungal material grown for that purpose.
Duwamish has a unique structure among the major cities of the NAN. Unlike other major metropolis areas, the city’s layout was based on a medicine wheel. Main roadways spill out from the city’s administrative center to form spokes of the wheel. In between lies the various districts for housing, manufacturing, research, and more.
At the core, or center of the wheel are the Administrative Longhouses, the city government buildings that mange the city itself. These are the tallest buildings in the city, forming the ‘hub’ or ‘axel’ of the city’s ‘wheel’. Each towering building is a blend of ceramics, 3D printed bio-grown architecture, and gold-glass technology. A testament to the city designers ability to merge old-world heritage and beliefs with modern advancements.
Outside the main wheel lie the city’s outer districts. Boroughs where the pulse of the city’s trade ebbs and flows like a river. These areas house the massive seafood preservation facilities, while others are dedicated wind-energy farms. Along the edge are the fungal-battery recharge clusters where fungal batteries can be fed recharge nutrients. Dotted in between the wind farms are the one story bio-labs.
Along the outer districts lies the Duwamish Port Authority with docks and shipping for the coastal tribes and towns. In particular, they support the northern and Polynesian tribes as they sail through on their seasonal fishing expeditions each year.
City’s Lifeblood: Trade and Trading
It’s said that trade and trading is the lifeblood of a city, and Duwamish is no exception. Trade and commerce for the city revolves around advanced ceramics, bio-tech involving advanced preservation techniques, and ocean farming. In particular, it’s the fungal battery technology, gold-glass preservation materials, and seafood are the city’s main exports.
Primary Exports
Seafood: Herring, salmon, saltwater clams. All of which are preserved in either gold glass jars or gold-plated ceramic canisters, designed to withstand heat and time.
Gold Glass & Gold-Plated Ceramics: These are highly sought-after in the equatorial regions, the Roman Empire, and for long-haul trade routes. Extremely durable, this double layered crystal technology with high temperature gold lattice allows for perfect food preservation.
Smoked & Preserved Foods: Red cedar-smoked hazelnuts, camas root, and fruit preserves like crabapple, wild cherry, and cranberry jam.
Fungal-Batteries: These bio-technological batteries generate as much power as the most efficient chemical battery, but are “recharged” through feeding. They’re critical for hovercraft and personal item technology.
Primary Imports
Grains & Fruits: Duwamish’s cold climate makes it dependent on imports from the warmer interior regions.
Gold from the Tlingit: Essential for both trade and their iconic storage containers.
Acorn Flour & Wild Rice: Staple food sources imported from the southern territories.
In and Around Town
Duwamish districts in the city ‘wheel’ are a tapestry of industry, tradition, and administration. Each district has its own feel and identity, shaped by industry, tradition, and history. At times, it’s even shaped by their own secrets. The more well-known districts are “The Hub”, “Golden Docks”, “Outer Ring”, “Amber Warrens”, “Dzidzilalich Swamp”.
The Hub
This is the city center and seat of governing power in Duwamish. Here, administrative longhouses hold offices, council chambers, and other rooms devoted to running the city. Elected leaders and representatives from NAN’s larger council have offices here. It isn’t uncommon to find high-ranking business executives, and even representatives from as far away as the Roman Empire in residence, working trade and similar deals.
Golden Docks
The Golden Docks are the waterfront district. Here the wide powered and ceramic cobblestone streets are lined with seafood markets, shipping yards, and storage facilities. This district is arguably considered the busiest district, as trade from all along the continent moves through these docks. Some cargo comes as far away as even the distant Roman Empire, and carries a premium price.
But this district holds more than markets or shipping yards. This is also the home to the Goldscale Syndicate, a powerful merchant syndicate that influences much of the city’s seafood trade. A modest building near the seafood markets is the deceptively small administrative offices for the syndicate.
Outer Ring
The outer ring of the city wheel is the bedroom and subdivision-like communities exist. Here is where visitors will find multi-family longhouses, small tribal communities, and even mid-century traveler lodges. Tribal communities could be long standing bloodlines or even ‘found family’ tribes that have formed from immigrants or outcasts looking for a place to call home.
Amber Warrens
This is the ‘downside’ district of the city. An underbelly and lower income district where smuggling, black-market tech, and underground fighting rings thrive. One of the oldest districts in Duwamish, it’s thick with rumor and wild stories about its origin. Some of which claim anything from bad luck to mutated sewer dwellers plague the district.
Closer to home, this district is known for strange disappearances. But community watch groups and authorities are quick to say that most are from bad run-ins with the Goldenscale Syndicate or even the Smoograts gang. Locals have a different view and will quickly recount stories of sewer mutants courtesy of Dr. Destroyer and his mad experiments.
Dzidzilalich (Little Crossing-Over Place) Swamp
One of the more mysterious places with the strongest tie to tradition and history in the area is the Dzidzilalich Swamp. This wetland occupies a wide area outside the Duwamish city wheel, but holds a special place for the city.
It’s here that the Duwamish, Suquamish, and Muckleshoot tribes gathered to trade, fish, make alliances, and even share traditional knowledge. As time went on, and the settlements drifted to where modern day Duwamish would rest, Dzidzilalich would drift into history. Over time, the location would be mostly reclaimed by the surrounding swamp of the same name.
But the location and swamp were never completely forgotten. Local folklore tells tall tales and stories of past alliances and conflict. Even today, people talk about strange happenings and occurrences in the swamp. Witnesses claim to have seen creature moving in the mist. Animal-people that walk on two legs, and dressed in strange clothing. Ghosts are said to appear in the mist, or approach travelers especially at low tide. Many of the stories are also accounts of mysterious disappearances, where travelers would vanish in the persistent fog when following the local apparitions.
Famous Factions
A city this large and vibrant, isn’t without its divisions and colorful characters. This would range from the powerful Goldscale Syndicate, to the Smoograts, the Drowned King, and last the strange figure known only as the Ghost Tide.
Goldscale Syndicate
This powerful faction, is a syndicate of the nine most influential trading groups of the local seafood industry. Working together, they influence the Duwamish seafood industry to help both the city, and some say, themselves. This collection of trading ‘families’ is led by Sugmuk Beshkno, a man known for both his sharp mind and strong physical prowess. While it’s unproven, rumor has it that Sugmuk runs the Syndicate like a crime family, complete with underhanded deals.
Smoograts
This famous bunch, are an anti-establishment, tech-scavenger gang that find their way through sewers and all manner alleys across the city. Infamous, and nerfarious, for building or modifying technology in new and dangerous ways, they are a constant thorn in the city administration’s side. It’s the Smoograts that are quick to rebel against Duwamish policy that they feel is stifling. One of their more common tactics is to ‘hack’ the city’s fungus power-cell grid to steal power and use it for their elaborate crimes.
In truth, despite the drama, the Smoograts are not one gang but a collection of five gangs scattered across the city. Each gang has their own colorful leader with their own agenda. But no matter what odd grievance they have taken with the city, the smoograts are also secretly aggressively protective of nature and the environment. This often puts them at strong odds with the Goldscale Syndicate or Dr. Destroyer with violent results.
Drowned King
"This city rose from the tide. And I shall return it to the depths." — The Drowned King
Between the gangs and the Syndicate, the most feared predator in the shadows is a mysterious figure called the Drowned King. A monstrous crime lord, his identity has been lost to time. Most rumors state that the Drowned King emerged from the mists of Dzidzilalich during low tide after an attack by Dr. Destroyer. Once he arrived in Duwmish, he has been bent on the single goal of bringing Duwamish to it’s knees. Once crippled, he plans to return the city to the below the water, where he thinks it belongs.
Most reports say the Drowned King may not be entirely human. But instead a fusion of human and a deep-sea predator like a shark. His skin is cold, and slightly gray. Limbs are unnaturally long, with webbed fingers and small, sharp claws on the end of his fingers. Despite a human face, he has row upon row of sharp shark teeth.
The Drowned King is brilliant but erratic, with powers that grant him control over water, to move and manipulate it with a thought. Many times, he’s tried to flood one district or another. His inner circle of corrupted individuals is known as the Drowned Court, and are said to be experts in their own right in various disciplines from chemistry to other technology.
“They say the Drowned King was once a sailor who drowned by the Syndicate. Still more say he wasn’t ever human in the first place, but came from beyond the stars. ‘They’ say a lot of things that are hard to believe.” — Cha’Tima of the Clay Hawk people
Ghost Tide
“You just don’t see her coming. She’s there one second, then gone the next. They say she rides the fog itself and it listens to her.” — Anonymous dockworker
While the Drowned King is a clear and present danger, his rival is as much an urban legend as she is real. The Ghost Tide is a shadowy figure, known to protect the less fortunate across the Duwamish districts. A phantom-like protector, there are countless eye-witness stories and rumors about her exploits. There are even more about her speculated powers.
No one knows her name. This Duwamish vigilante, garbed in a close fitting outfit of grays and blues, is known for appearing then vanishing when she’s needed most. Often, she appears when she needs to confront the Drowned King, schemes by the Goldscale Syndicate, or other threats to Duwamish itself.
Most reports suggest she’s human, barely five foot ten, with a lean, muscular build. Stories suggest she can mistwalk, fading into the fog like stepping through a veil. But, many believe she doesn’t actually teleport, but instead has a perfect memory of every hidden path through the city. Others wonder if she moves at supernatural speeds.
Beyond that, she’s known to a minor control over water and mist, even to the point of forming temporary barriers, block her opponent’s vision, or even slowing down projectiles. In a hand-to-hand fight, she’s a holy terror, moving like a specter in and out of the shadows. Her fighting style is quick fast, hitting to disable by ambush before vanishing under cover.
No one knows where she came from, only that the rumors started almost eight years ago. Some believe she’s the last descendant of a old Duwamish bloodline. One of the first bloodlines to originally settle Duwamish. Still more wonder if she’s not human at all, but a young woman that was dragged to her death in the bay by the Drowned King. A specter between life and death that is looking for revenge.
Whatever her origin, Ghost Tide’s code is clear. She doesn’t tolerate cruelty or injustice in Duwamish. More than one smuggler, mercenary, and more swear to have had their plans ruined by her. With Ghost Tide striking without mercy but never killing her opponents.
Rumor or not, the Goldscale Syndicate supposedly has a standing bounty out for her capture. The Drowned King routinely attacks Duwamish to drive her out of hiding so he can try and eventually eliminate her. To date, they haven’t, as the stories and Ghost Tide’s protective presence remain as a silent shield around Duwamish itself.
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