The Undercity
The Undercity is not the city's shadow. It is the part that never finished registering.
Read in its original CDS context. Explanations, perspectives and unresolved details are preserved as written.
Old service tunnels turned into housing. Abandoned utility spaces turned into markets. Unofficial workshops. Irregular identities. Criminals, workers, families, couriers, mechanics, and people who simply do not fit cleanly into surface administration.
It remains dangerous and imperfect. Crime, robbery, intimidation, debt, gangs, violence, exploitation and disputes still exist. It is not a romantic utopia simply because it protects certain people from the surface.
Two forms of authority sit in the layer without being the same thing. Kael Vorn governs what can be governed: corridors, crews, debts, freight, markets. Liariel protects the deeper layer that ordinary governance cannot own: the Unnamed, the Veil, protected identities and routes.
The Civic Network knows what is registered. Liariel knows what is actually happening.
Quotations
- The Undercity is not the city's shadow. It is the part that never finished registering.
- The Civic Network knows what is registered. Liariel knows what is actually happening.