Rosebriar: The Works

Finally I have reached the final district of Rosebriar, the industrial heart that keeps the community going. Locals call these rusty factories the Works but they don't do that anymore. The factories fall silent as industry shifts overseas.

Rosebriar: The Works

Welcome to the Rust Belt.

Description:

Discolored factory buildings decorate this side of Rosebriar. The rains wash rust and grease into the nearby canal where a few hardy fish survive upstream of Thornton Industries. On land most of the warehouses, aged foundries, and factory buildings collect dust, abandoned as work moves to other countries.

A few remaining businesses keep the town going. At least until they too go under. Sometimes they are helped along, pushed by falling steel prices or crippled by pension commitments. Then the unions picket the buildings, trying to squeeze a concession from the dried up organization. Nobody wins.

Most of the industry here focused on steel making and casting and that remains true today. Those businesses that survived create complex pieces of machinery that require high levels of accuracy and durability.By moving upmarket, they manage to justify their increased labor costs.

Local Hedge

Within the local Hedge, rusty barbed wire interweaves with the thorn bushes. Meanwhile a treacherous mess of muddy earth hides buried rusty steel beneath the trails. Hollows abound here, often adorned with abandoned pieces of strange machinery. sulfurous clouds sometimes obscure the sky and the air sits thick and musty in the mornings. A distant whirring and grinding never seems to get any closer no matter how long a traveler searches.

Those moving into the Hedge itself suffer twice as much harm as normal due to the sharp bits of metal among the thorns. The area grants a +2 bonus to efforts to hedgespin Tokens as the industry from the real world bleeds over.

Damnation City Stats:

Physical: Access 0, Safety 0
Mental: Information 1, Awareness 1
Social: Prestige -2, Stability 1

The Works cover much of the east end of Rosebriar, connected inward by major roads and outward via the highway and canal. Local security and regular police patrols keep out the worst excesses of the Heywood gangs. While the area has clearly seen better days, the neighborhood remains calm, perhaps deadened to its demise. The blue-collar jobs are almost gone and the workers who remain are well-educated engineers overseeing increasingly automated production. When multi-ton robots work around you, you keep an eye out for trouble.

Vice: Lethargy. The Works have moved past despair and into a pessimistic certainty. At its worst, repairs are neglected and dying businesses hemorrhage much-needed funds. Death is slow now that the weakest have died. The factories that still run have cut away the fat and now make thin slices at the muscle.
Virtue: Pride. Made in America means something here, something like hope, something like craftsmanship. The products the Works produces are top quality. People put their all into their products.

Site: Kalt Forge

Type: Industrial
History: This foundry sits quiet, cold but not entirely abandoned. Most people believe that competition overseas and bad investments sunk the Kalt company and to a certain extent that is true. But it is also true that its bosses were plagued by bad dreams and bewitched into odd (and unprofitable) purchases. Either way the factory shut down, the forges went cold, and the lights were turned off. The property was quietly sold off a couple of years later and now lies entirely in the hands of those who caused its demise: a group of changelings calling themselves the Bridgeburners.

Wise to the symbolism of the site's name, they have begun using the facility to build weapons and armor in their fight against the True Fae and their agents, which to their minds include ordinary Hobs and the Hedge itself. Forging cold iron, they have amassed daggers, swords, axes, even bullets and leather dusters lined with cold iron plates. Ground cold iron dust fill buckets for salting the earth on the other side. Soon they will be ready.

Story Seeds:

Burning Bridges: the local bridge burners have begun to assault supernatural sites such as Hollows, Hob homesteads, and Goblin Fruit patches. They salt the earth with ground iron, literally scorching the earth and leaving a dead poisonous Hedge behind them. Everyone knows the local Goblin Market is next. Who is willing to stop them? Will the Hobs abandon this town in retaliation? What happens when the Hedge is cut off to Changelings?

Carnival of Rust and Tears: A long time ago, a fae carnival visited Rosebriar every autumn. It served as a travelling market and a source of wondrous magics. The last time they visited however they all disappeared. The remains of the carnival can still be found rusting in the Hedge near the Works. At night the Ferris wheel and other rides come to life and ghoulish laughter can be heard from the glass strewn House of Mirrors. They say the carnival is haunted by the ghost of the last owner, a Darkling clown who acquired a taste for human flesh. They also say you can find tokens and other mystic items in and among the wreckage.

Closing Time: this story serves as a subplot for more magical threats. A factory begins hiring new workers. The PCs get the opportunity for honest work and a steady paycheck. They must balance this new life with their fae one. Along the way they get to know their coworkers. Perhaps one lives in Appleton and has a bothersome brownie or another has a sibling hunting changelings in Heywood. After several sessions of this, the factory shutters its operations. The union protests and tries to get the PCs to help out. Meanwhile the rumor mill says the work is being outsourced, the company is going under, or the government is shutting it down for breaking environmental regulations. Eventually whatever the cause the characters are again out of work and must deal with that life change. How do they adapt? Where do they get money?

NPCs:

Martin Wright manages one of the factories that still churns out steel products in Rosebriar. Overseeing schedules and hiring, this devious man has worked out a scheme with the local union to boost profits for both sides. He drives new workers relentlessly, scheduling them for odd hours and letting them go for the smallest infraction (such as failing to turn up for work due to missing the last-minute scheduling). But he waits until they've paid their union dues first. Then the union, whose long-term members keep cushy jobs at the factory, point out that the firing (or as typically referred to: 'voluntary resignation') was perfectly within the employee's contract. They kickback some of the dues to Martin and he never has to pay out health benefits or much of anything to these transient employees.

Lilly Steeltooth works at a locksmith in Heywood but spends her evenings at the Works, planning the next round of 'closings', slang for sealing Hedge gateways, with other Bridgeburners. This wizened locksmith developed a way to incorporate cold iron into door locks such that they resist efforts to open them into the Hedge.

A changeling attempting to create a gateway that she locked must roll Wyrd at a -3 penalty or they simply fail to open the door. any Glamour spent is lost. This works even if the locking mechanism is open. Only by removing the lock (often contained in the door handle) can a gateway easily be opened.

Up until now her handiwork has been limited to Heywood and few illegal installments throughout Rosebriar. The leadership of the Bridgeburners plans to fund her efforts to open her own shop in Appleton and spread the locks throughout town.

In person this thin hunched woman keeps her prematurely gray hair loose and clinks with the numerous tools she carries in her belt and pouches. Under the Mask, her teeth are metallic and her garb festooned not with tools but locks and clockwork.

The Iron Ogre: the mysterious leader of Bridgeburners is known to be a giantess who carries a significant amount of armament from the Kalte Forge at all times. Standing over 7 feet tall, this one-eyed woman is gathering changelings throughout the region. She plans to close of access to and from the Hedge throughout Rosebriar. Her goal is to create a stronghold inaccessible by the True Fae. If that works she intends to do the same for other towns in New York.