CinCinn
CinCinn was a lesson written in bones. During the Ironworks era, the settlement's ruins stood as a warning to every outlier community on the empire's periphery: freedom has a price, and CinCinn paid it for everyone.
The city had begun as a struggling Merican settlement barely managing to survive. Freed Iron Slaves swelled the population, and with a high percentage of Sainthood of Ashes members, CinCinn became a haven for escapees and a prominent point on the underground railroad. For a brief time, it was one of the few communities in the Ironworks primarily made up of freed Irons, a place where those who had escaped bondage could build something of their own.
The Chancellor decided an example needed to be made to all border settlements and outliers. Platoons of Ironworks soldiers were transported to Toll City and marched from there. They razed the settlement, killed half its inhabitants, and brought the rest back as slaves, whether they were Irons or not. Bodies were left to rot where they fell.
No one dared reinhabit the city afterward. Only the undead roamed its streets. The bones of the dead remained scattered across the landscape, unburied and unrecovered, a deliberate monument to the cost of defiance. Every outlier settlement remembered the lesson of CinCinn, and the underground railroad learned to be more careful about which stops it kept quiet.
The city had begun as a struggling Merican settlement barely managing to survive. Freed Iron Slaves swelled the population, and with a high percentage of Sainthood of Ashes members, CinCinn became a haven for escapees and a prominent point on the underground railroad. For a brief time, it was one of the few communities in the Ironworks primarily made up of freed Irons, a place where those who had escaped bondage could build something of their own.
The Chancellor decided an example needed to be made to all border settlements and outliers. Platoons of Ironworks soldiers were transported to Toll City and marched from there. They razed the settlement, killed half its inhabitants, and brought the rest back as slaves, whether they were Irons or not. Bodies were left to rot where they fell.
No one dared reinhabit the city afterward. Only the undead roamed its streets. The bones of the dead remained scattered across the landscape, unburied and unrecovered, a deliberate monument to the cost of defiance. Every outlier settlement remembered the lesson of CinCinn, and the underground railroad learned to be more careful about which stops it kept quiet.
History
CinCinn began as a struggling Merican settlement that found new life when freed Iron Slaves swelled its population. A high percentage of Sainthood of Ashes members gave the community a moral core committed to abolition, and CinCinn became a prominent stop on the underground railroad. Its growing reputation as a haven for escapees attracted the Chancellor's attention. Ironworks soldiers were transported to Toll City and marched to CinCinn, where they razed the settlement, killed half the inhabitants, and enslaved the rest regardless of strain. The bodies were left unburied as a deliberate warning. No one attempted to resettle the ruins, and CinCinn became a cautionary tale whispered among every outlier community on the Ironworks' fringe.
Geography
CinCinn sat on the eastern periphery of the Ironworks, an outlier settlement accessible by march from Toll City. After its destruction, the settlement was nothing but ruins haunted by the undead. The bones of the dead remained scattered across the landscape. No living person maintained a presence within the former city limits.
