Sixscore Sprawls

The vast majority of the city-ship of Zhomad-Hur is engulfed by an urban spawl of towering medieval buildings made of rough-hewn blocks of grimy stone which are now caked with mold and soot as a direct result of the enormous factories, laboratories and foundries which eternally spew their detestable, seething refuse into the marsh below. There are six such wards on the city-ship, with their own distinct culture and architecture, which are woefully overpopulated and fraught with violence and poverty. Technology is generally at the medieval stage, although a power grid produces anachronisms - some people boil their water in electric kettles and light their houses with incandescent bulbs.   Shantytowns pop up wherever they can, and slums expand like malignant tumours. Here gangsters hold sway and are the prime facilitators of cruelty and malevolence. Crime that does not concern the Empress is dealt with via the ruthless bands of vigilantes, who impale petty thieves on stakes and leave their corpses up there for a week or so before dumping them into the marsh for the bog lizards to devour. Unfortunately, one man's definition of justice may not directly match up with anothers' and this tends to cause urban warfare to skyrocket, increasing the homicide rates. Many Favelas.   Religion in Zhomad-Hur is synonymous to "spooky belowdecks cult" seeing as how the Empress's iconoclastic policies have defaced and defiled every temple sees the sun, pushing any sort of faith aside from worshipping her into dark and damp places. All faiths have adopted an atmosphere of spiritual rebellion against the Empress. Zhomad-Hur at large is so filthy that one must clamber atop a seventeen foot tall heap of shit and cadavers as they commute to one's 16-hourshift at the steel foundry. Despite all this it is still a vibrant, exciting place if you ignore the misery and oppression - there are many underground subcultures which defy the empress through cunning metaphor.