The Deep Dregs
Bay floor, central bay · in the shadow of Ironclad Industries · avoiding Ironclad Fortress
The lowest point of the drained bay — a mid-tier salvage zone where electronics come to die and 180,000 people live in a collapsed megastructure that was never meant to be a city. The Dregs doesn't exist on corporate maps, but it houses the densest community resilience in the Sprawl. Judge Dreg walks every level three times a day. The Pit market never closes.
Arrival
Burnt plastic, ozone, and something organic you don't want identified — the
Deep Dregs announce themselves through the lungs. A collapsed pre-Cascade
logistics hub houses 180,000 people across twelve vertical levels in a
footprint that was never meant to be a city. The Pit market at the center
never closes, three tiers of informal commerce lit by salvaged LEDs and
fire barrels. Seid Rathmore — universally called "the arms dealer" because
he sells cybernetic arms, not weapons, a confusion he's tried and failed
to correct for years — hawks refurbished prosthetics from a stall on
Level 3. Judge Dreg walks every major level three times a day in his
leopard coat; violent crime dropped measurably when he arrived eight years
ago. Nexus ran a quality-of-life audit in '78 and the Dregs scored higher
than fourteen corporate sectors on community resilience. The audit was
classified within hours. Underneath everything, the constant hum of power
transformers fights a losing battle against entropy. When the hum stops,
smart residents start running.
Talk to people
- Pit Market Vendor
"Everything down here runs on borrowed time. Borrowed power, borrowed air, borrowed chrome. The corps lend us the scraps and we build a life from them. That's the deal — we survive on what they discard."
- Dregs Historian
"Nexus ran a quality-of-life audit in '78. We scored higher than fourteen corporate sectors on community resilience. The audit was classified within hours. Apparently we're not supposed to know we're doing better than them."
- Judge Dreg
"Keep moving through. The Trench is ahead and it doesn't forgive hesitation. Stock your rations — the bay floor has nothing to scavenge but rust."
Steel thread: st-borrowed-life