Welcome to Blackwater Reach !
At first glance, it looks like a success story : a coastal city that reinvented itself, glass towers catching the light, universities buzzing with young ambition, clean streets, curated districts, the promise of opportunity....
Fifteen or so years ago, Blackwater Reach entered what people now call the Reconstruction Era. Private investors arrived fast. Too fast to question. Old buildings were bought, restored, or quietly erased. The city changed almost overnight. People who knew the old Blackwater would tell you it looked nothing like it looks now.
Crown Heights rose from the bones of industry into something polished and deliberate. Luxury apartments, government buildings, casinos, luxury malls and private clubs where money moves without raising its voice. Everything here is now intentional, clean, beautiful. It feels safe, important...
Elmshade Borough was given care, but not rebirth. Apartments were repaired, streets were cleaned, local businesses were encouraged to survive and a lot jobs were offered to people out of Blackreach. It’s comfortable in a familiar way, like the kind of place where people build routines, raise families, and live a pretty normal life.
Ashfall Ward was left behind. The district got no major investment, no glossy promises, nothing. The factories there still loom, the alleys still remember the old Blackwater and people here learned to rely on each other instead of the city.
And then there’s Ironwood Campus. Once the edge of town, now its future-facing heart. Blackbriar College of Arts was restored and kept its old charm, as well as its creative, rebellious spirit. Beside it, Ironwood University rose clean and modern, with laboratories, dorms, libraries, and the city hospital clinic. Students flood the area with noise, ideas, protests, parties, late-night coffee runs.
Today, Blackwater Reach functions beautifully... if you know where you belong and where to look, and where not to look.
Opportunity exists, just not equally. Some districts move forward while o thers are preserved like artifacts. Some people trust the system that rebuilt the city. Some others watch it closely, record its patterns, and quietly question who benefits, and how to make the system fall.
Most residents don’t think in terms of power or resistance, they think about rent, deadlines, coffee orders.... But stories are told here : by professors, journalists, archivists, loyal citizens, and stories shape what people believe.
This is a city where slice of life thrives : late-night cafés, study sessions, gigs, jobs, routines, friendships. It's a city that looks like every others, if you don't look too closely.
But it’s also a city where narratives matter. Where who controls the story can matter more than who tells the truth. Where every citizen have the power to change the way the system works.
This is Blackwater Reach, it's not a blank slate, it's a living place, shaped by ambition, neglect, and an uneven rebirth.
You’re welcome here. Just… pay attention to the Senator, some people are starting to say he's corrupted, in a bad, bad way.