The Ash Belt
"Where Industry Meets Sorcery"
- Controlling Faction
- The Orvain Consortium
- Hazards
- 3
- Settlements
- 3
- Landmarks
- 1
Named for the perpetual haze of coal smoke and supernatural ash that hangs over the region, the Ash Belt is the industrial heart of the Frontier — and its most polluted organ. The ground here is dead. Trees are petrified, twisted shapes of black carbon that shatter like glass. Water runs with an oily, iridescent sheen that tastes of copper and sickness.
This is Consortium territory: mines, rail yards, and the belching Ley-Engines that pump the Current like oil. The Circle of Ash hides in its smoke.
Threats & Features
| Feature | Effect |
|---|---|
| Ley-Engines | Building-sized pumps. Any Psionic Talent cast within Near range automatically adds +1 Tension Die. |
| Glass-Walkers | Crystallized predators. Move silently and reflect light like mirrors. Defense 11. |
| Smog Banks | Dense smoke patches. Treat as Pitch Black (+4 TN) even at midday. |
Settlements
The three settlement files attached to this region — Orvain (the Consortium capital, fortress-city built into Black Iron Mountain), Kessick (the rail hub, only legal source of “clean” Consortium water), and Rustwater (The Crossroads, contested neutral ground at the intersection of rail lines and dust roads). The source rulebook also names Cindralock (a twice-burned mining crater-town with no open flames after dark) which doesn’t yet have a settlement file.
Landmarks
The Screaming Rails — the stretch of Silver Line between Orvain and Kessick where the track itself wails with the voices of the dead who built it. Source also names Iron’s Harvest (cursed metal that grows from the earth overnight and rusts on contact with air) which doesn’t yet have a landmark file.