Blackbones

"Put your backs into it." —shift foreman

Blackbones is one of the Cogs' two main industrial districts, located beneath Tavick's Landing and stretching west toward the center of Sharn. In most respects it resembles its neighbor Ashblack—foundries, forges, heat, smoke, soot—but it is slightly newer, and the corridors are a little wider and better lit. The air tastes like ash and hot metal. The light comes from everburning torches spaced far enough apart that stretches of shadow sit between the pools of warmth. The Fernian lava streams that make the Cogs viable for heavy industry run through both districts, and the heat is palpable at all times.

Mass production is the district's purpose: the plates, fittings, tools, and industrial components that keep Sharn's towers standing and its infrastructure running. The labor force is a mix of desperate shift-workers and warforged crews who toil without need for food or sleep. Warforged make up a significant portion of the Cogs' population across both Blackbones and Ashblack. Technically free since the signing of the Treaty of Thronehold, most of them were made to follow orders and work as part of an army, and many have little framework for what freedom means in practice. Unscrupulous businessmen have exploited this, luring warforged into indentured servitude in conditions that are, in practical terms, little better than slavery. They work ceaselessly, and their employers profit from it.

Baron Merrix d'Cannith has been working quietly against this pattern—encouraging warforged to take more initiative and improving conditions where his influence reaches. The Cannith Forgehold itself is located in neighboring Ashblack, where Cannith overseers help maintain order throughout the Cogs; Merrix's more personal investment in Blackbones is subtler. House Cannith's influence is constant regardless—contracts, inspectors, and standards that shape what gets built and how—but the institutional weight of the house sits one district over.

Authority and Order

Daask controls crime in the Cogs. The monstrous organization based in Khyber's Gate has attacked Orien supply caravans in the past, and merchants moving high-value goods through the district tunnels would be wise to arrange escorts. The Sharn Watch maintains a presence in the Cogs but focuses on locations vital to city welfare rather than the daily texture of industrial life. Problems in Blackbones are handled locally: foremen, private security, and the understanding that output is the only metric anyone above ground truly measures.

District Buildings