It paints a bleak picture · 2:49pm Apr 26th, 2017
Abbeyford-upon-Avon
This city was crowded and modern, but didn’t quite have the distinction of being a city-state like Liverypool or Trottingham. Abbeyford-upon-Avon was built upon the bend of a river and located near a natural clay deposit, a valuable resource. The largest building in town was the Brickworks Orphanarium, which was both a brickworks and an orphanarium all in one colossal super-structure.
Every single building in the city seemed to be made of brick and the streets had brick pavers. Each one of the houses was the same as the next, all of them narrow rowhouses, all connected, with each block of rowhouses forming a perfect grid. Near as Dim could tell, the town was ten streets wide and ten streets long, which each city block appearing to be a perfect square. The brickworks existed outside of the city proper, sitting on the riverbend, because a brickworks needed copious amounts of water.
The streets were narrow, cramped, and one might even say claustrophobic. Everything—buildings, streets, ponies—was covered in a patina that consisted of coal and brick dust. Sewage ran through open gutters found in the streets. For Dim, this city was time capsule; it had industrialised, and then had progressed no further beyond that point.
He had been the only pony getting off of the train, and no wonder. Abbeyford-upon-Avon was the sort of place you got on a train to get away from. Ponies did not come here, they fled this place. A perpetual cloud of miserable smog hung over the city—something a band of pegasus ponies could remove, if one had enough of them—and very little sunlight reached the streets.
Dim found it charming.
“Oi, fancy a shag, Guvna?”
Blinking behind his goggles, Dim turned to look at the source of the voice. A filly, maybe around her decade mark, was giving him a hopeful look. She had far too much makeup caked upon her face, not to mention her pelt was stained with coal and brick dust. Each one of her ribs stood out in sharp relief and the very sight of the scabs on her lips of her made Dim’s penis shrivel up in fright. No doubt, she was a fine collection of plagues, maladies, and diseases, and she probably had them in equal proportion to the years of her life.
“Sod off, trollop,” Dim replied.
“Oi! Suit yerself, ya poof!” the filly screeched in an unpleasant voice made gritty by pollution. “Ye bleedin’ fairy, ye think yer too good for this, well you can have a right and proper feck off, ye great, smelly twat!”
Black flakes rained down like snowflakes touched by evil and Dim knew that he needed to find a boarding house of some sort. Curious ponies looked at him, stared at him, and his sensitive ears could hear them talking about him. A mysterious figure beneath his hat and cloak, Dim shuffled through the streets, a stranger come to town.
That was how stories started; a stranger came to town.
Oi, he must be a prince.
What makes you think he's a prince?
He's the only one who doesn't have shit and dust all over him, he does.
B R I T I S H
the dark side of society
Huh. I grew up somewhere called Bradford on Avon. A city it was not. Had a lot of brick, though.
This is going to end one of two ways:
1. City gets destroyed in a battle. This would be a merciful fate for the place.
2. City gets saved... somehow. Long road to recovery.
Either way, Dim's legend grows.
4510653
Neither happens. The city is just a backdrop.
Mmmm... sounds like a lovely, quaint village.
I wonder why Dim doesn't use an illusion or aversion spell to avoid standing out like a frost bitten thumb?
Who's up for a jolly old spot of industrial England, wot?
(no one. Black lung isn't fun)