Alleyway Junction 

The confounding side-streets of Alleyway Junction may be difficult to conceptualize, especially for an outsider, but the residents of this concrete jungle navigate with a keen understanding of the sub-districts that make up the greater whole.

When entering Alleyway Junction, you will generally find yourself walking the Main St Promenade.  This straightforward path contains a number of storefronts but also connects to several side-streets.  If you keep going straight, you won’t get lost, but you won’t find anything particularly secret or secure.

Most long-term residents live in the Alleys, the namesake of the overall location.  Alleys link everything together, and most apartment windows or balconies lead back out to the Alleys.  Look up and you’ll see a network of fire escapes and clotheslines, with Downtowners hanging from windows to exchange gossip.

Behind storefronts or beneath many other buildings are the mazelike halls of Boilerville.  A mess of pipeworks and power lines run through these back rooms and into the buildings of Alleyway Junction.  The layout here isn’t even slightly sensible, with each set of industrial equipment bleeding into the next, and HVAC systems criss-crossing throughout.  This area can be a hotbed for graffiti, and is a popular hideaway for those on the run. Among the pipes are hidden caches of guns or bizarre composite essences.

Industrious Downtowners are still mapping out the Wherehouses, a series of isolated resource-rich holding locations.  A wherehouse, when first found, is crammed to the brim with goods accomodating a given theme, be it home improvement or fancy napkins.  Locating and accessing one of these locales may require clipping coupons, frequenting the same storefront, wearing an ID badge, picking a series of locks in a specific order, or forever swearing off of smooth jazz.  Once a wherehouse has been emptied of shoes, hair products, ottomans, or whatever else, they are co-opted for work or sport.

Above the shops and alleys sits Chimneytops, a rooftop scene often rife with conflict.  Pathfinders use these open areas to run deliveries, and gangs sometimes gather here to settle scores with foot races and gunfights.  Steam or smoke rises from ventilation systems and exhaust pipes, and billboards break up the field of ceilings. The advertisements range from the well-known to the unnatural, with posters heralding nonexistent products and films.

Well-off Downtowners congregate in the lounges and derelict office spaces of Penthouse.  Though still somewhat run-down, this place is naturally exclusive, and cannot be reached by those lacking in prestige or those poorly dressed unless they are invited or escorted.  There isn’t much in the way of resources up here either, but sometimes fine liquors can be found.

Higher still are the inhospitable heights of Skyglass.  Flying monsters roost here amid unfinished skyscrapers and behind shattered windows.  The air is a tad thin, and looking out from here you can see clouds below. When you cast your gaze to the horizon, you can see skyscrapers further out than Alleyway Junction itself stretches, some with twisted or tilting design.

Back to the bottom, certain service entrances and manhole covers lead down into Sewercross, the undesirable muck-ridden passages beneath Alleyway Junction proper.  The multi-story stonework here isn’t reminiscent of a modern sewer, nor is it reasonably navigable.  Getting lost may be less concerning than tangling with the sewer’s denizens - mutated gators, monstrous rats, and teeming roaches.

Bordering Sewercross are a few carved out safe regions collectively known as Undercity.  Largely built into underground parking lots inexplicably crossed with subway stations, the de facto “owners” of Undercity are the Rat Pack.  The area is also home to some raggedy downtowners, and a small community of busking performers.

It’s rumored that somewhere within Alleyway Junction beats the Heart of the City.  They say the Heart draws the city together and turns monsters away.  Skilled pathfinders sometimes claim to feel “the pulse” when drawing closer to a big score.