Wiki · Places

The Underbelly

The white city has an underside, and the tower has a foot. Neither of them could be called white.

Mountains of scrap, smoke, a distant sun — Down below. Things still work here, partly.

The underside

Under the smooth floor of Whitecrest and all the way down the tower runs rusty steampunk: pipes, boilers, valves, hatches, levers. This is the service folk's domain. Mechanics like Bo ride it up and down, make do with machines thrown out from above, and fix everything machines are not allowed to fix.

The bottom

At the foot of the tower is the ground: junkyards, neon, scrap, fires in barrels and robots built from whatever was to hand. It is home to everyone who could not get a better price plan. The machines down here are made of junk: some fall apart as you watch, some are pure genius.

There are no factories and no computers to train new AI down here. Some people try anyway, on whatever they can find. Up top this is very much frowned upon; keeping an eye on it is part of Noa's job.

Mr. Dog lives in the junkyard at the foot of the tower, with an AI of his own that is connected to nothing. Which is exactly why, as far as Whitecrest is concerned, he is outside the law.

The lower station

At the bottom the white passenger lift lands in the middle of the rust: a soft padded car with blue cushions, surrounded by boilers, moths around the lamps and a cargo cage. Some old lift greaser with a thermos is usually dozing nearby.

The white lift in a rusty station — The lower lift station (Beware of Mr. Dog).

A green glow over the junk — The Glow, the lowest floor and a resort. It glows. That is normal.

This wiki describes the world of the VENTFALL series. Return to Sender is a quick demo and does some things its own way; where it differs, the article says "in Return to Sender".