The City of Granstoke

Granstoke was once described by the writer T.W. Deveraux as “a hell-city of dark satanic mills, the greatest feature of which is the road leading to better places”; an acid, though fitting remark to be sure, for Granstoke was the beating industrial heart of Great Britain. Every day its factories produced hundreds of tonnes of steel, weapons, tinned goods, wool and chemicals, transported on the railways and the Granstoke Union Canal to the whole of Britain and her Empire beyond. The city was home to over a hundred thousand souls, most of whom toiled in factories or shipping wharfs for a pittance. Gangs roamed the streets of the workers’ districts, carving the city into territories while the Granstoke Metropolitan Police clung to whatever control they could. Even before the Smog Deep Crisis, the city was draped in a pall of smoke, chemical fumes, and the stink of thousands living in squalor. As if blind to the suffering and squalor around them, the rich middle classes lived in a bubble of grand modern buildings dedicated to culture and art - though very little could truly be done to keep the stink away from their boulevards, parks, concert halls, and museums.

By 1901, Granstoke was a boiling pot, ready to explode. Among the workers, resentment started to grow into violent sedition and the threat of uprising. Feeling their control slipping, both the gangs and the Granstoke Metropolitan Police began to tighten their grip on the city with acts of incredible violence. In many ways, had the Smog not arrived to smother the flames beneath a veil of death, Granstoke may have become a war zone before the year was out. Now, the factories stand silent, the engines of industry cold and rusting. The narrow streets no longer echo to the sound of men and machines, only the occasional crack of gunfire and the bestial howls of unspeakable things, as the city lays dead in the cold grip of the Smog. The large amount of material wealth lying abandoned within, as well as the wealth of accumulated knowledge in its museum and university make Granstoke a key target for adventurers of all stripes.

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The City of Granstoke is the setting for most, if not all, of my future endeavours for Smog. It is not a real place, acting as a stand-in for various northern industrial towns and cities. It is nebulously located, it's only notable geospatial features it's canal and railway links. Like Gotham City, it has strong echoes of a real place, with the freedom to give it whatever features my narrative demands. In my mind, it is modelled on the Small Heath district of Birmingham, as depicted in the early seasons of Peaky Blinders, spun out into a sprawling metropolitan hell where rough gangs, esoteric cultists, and unholy creatures may all be found lurking. It was probably founded as a market town somewhere in the 14th century, though I don't perceive it having any remaining medieval features - even the cathedral is a neo-gothic edifice of brick and cast iron. It is what the laissez faire industrialist of the mid 19th century would think of as a 'modern' city, then kicked screaming into extremes of uncontrolled growth, pollution and poverty.