Lugh

Lugh is a poor, industrial, and coastal city residing in a bay, alongside the remains of a superweapon, appearing as the main location in two arcs: Bleeding Edge & Counting Sheep

Appearance

Buildings in Lugh are blocky and brutish. Because the city is built along the side of a mountain, many buildings sit at strange angles. The poverty in the city also means that many are legitimately falling over<ref>I watched as Lugh came into sight.  For a city that seemed to have been named as a hybridization of ‘Lug’ and ‘Ugh’, the sprawl I saw before me seemed fitting enough.  It called the shims of Radham to mind, the poor, menial labor focused area of the city, but writ large and dashed across rocky seaside.

Half of the buildings were blocky and brutish, pure utility and the cheapest means of building put to use – stone blocks and the builder’s trees, which seemed to have been grown into and through buildings rather than used as the buildings were first put together.  Of the other half of the buildings, those that weren’t made out to be sloping off to one side by optical illusion and the jaunty slant of rooftops were actively working on falling over, with no optical illusion needed.

A thick, dark smoke rose from chimneys, a thin spitting of rain came from the clouds above, and the odd occupant of the city had a lantern out or a flickering light on and casting orange light, despite the fact that it was still early in the afternoon.[1]</ref>. It is a gloomy city, even with the help of streetlights and sunlight<ref>I circled around the warehouse.  The sun had reached the clouds above, lightening the places where the clouds were thinner, while the thickest parts of the clouds overhead remained particularly dark, a heavy contrast.  I could see where I was going without the help of the streetlights, but it remained gloomy.  Rain came down, persistent if not quite pouring, and it froze into an icy crust in places where the shadows were deeper.  Ice in the alleyways and the base of the buildings, water elsewhere.[2]</ref>. Unlike Radham and other cities, woody plants aren't used in the building process. Brick, stone, wood, and metal are common building materials, however neglect has made it so plants have begun reclaiming the city by growing in and on those buildings.<ref>My fingertips traced wet wooden slats as I walked along the side of the building.  It was as nondescript as any warehouse, one of the buildings that was tilting, threatening to fall over, and a few stray shingles had come free, likely pulled down by the poorer weather of summer, dropping onto the street beneath the eaves.

It was as though Lugh was so short on natural life, plants, real trees and whatever else, that it had forgotten what fall was, and was skipping straight to winter.  No leaves to turn colors, just a grim, dark, wet little knot of a town, plopped down on a rocky shore.[3]</ref>

It is rare for buildings in Lugh to be more than shacks that rest on top of the ground. Ridgewell is noted for having more buildings built with solid stone and with actual foundations.<ref>The building was one of the sturdier ones in Lugh.  The city was mostly populated with ramshackle constructions, many of which weren’t even set into the rocky ground but poised atop it, leaning as the weight settled.  Here and there, however, there were buildings made of proper stone.   This was one of them.  Two stories high, solidly built, with doors that looked like they were more metal bracing than they were solid wood.

I had the impression Lugh tried to revitalize an area and failed, only to forget the idea and wait a few years to a decade before trying again.  Ridgewell was a neighborhood that had seen more recent attention.  The building constructions weren’t great, but they hadn’t decayed or fallen to pieces in the same way that other houses throughout the city had.  Details and embellishments remained, from trim to decorative wood panels, untouched by rough handling from the weather.  Here and there, though, even in the nicest part of the city we’d seen yet, some pieces of wood trim had come undone at one end, and in the strong wind, they knocked a steady rapport against the stones or the other pieces of wood.  Windows rattled, and a change in the direction of wind made shutters slam open or closed, where they hadn’t been fastened into place.[4]</ref>

While the Lambs are there, it is almost constantly cloudy and lightly raining.

Points of Interest

The superweapon's remains

The skull and skeleton of that titanic superweapon, built by Professor Ibott's mentor, are prominent landmark in the city. The titanic beast was killed around ten years before the events of the story. In the time since, bacteria and vermin have been unable to consume the remains of the monster. Leading it's flesh to calcify and erode as time passes on. It is so large that instead of trying to dispose of it, the denizens of Lugh have simply begun to build around it. Docks and buildings made since the corpse appeared have built around the massive tentacles.<ref name=":0">But the capstone, the element of Lugh that made people want to drift close enough to see, should they be on a boat, was the impressive sight of the great superweapon.  Or the ex-superweapon.  It had died at sea and drifted inland, or it had died at the coast and languished there.  Either way, it was too big to really dispose of, so it had been left to rot.  The armored exterior and the skin had proven too resilient for even vermin and disease to eat at, and much of it had calcified over the last decade or two, the remainder falling away.  As new buildings and sections of dock had gone up, they had done so under, over, and around the tendrils and tentacles that flowed from the armored carapace.  Here and there, wood had been grown and brickwork laid to reinforce the structure.

“Professor Ibott’s mentor created that thing,” Jamie remarked.

“Really?” I asked.

The waves were heavy in the bay, and the ship rocked this way and that.  We were heading for the dock, and it didn’t feel like we were slowing down enough to avoid crashing bodily into it.  I tensed a little and gripped the railing.

“They made the project a recurring one, they keep a pack of those things in the water, but the batches are smaller.  At a certain point, with size, you’re not getting any more effective, you’re just showing off,” Jamie said.  He smiled.[5]</ref>

Ridgewell

One of the areas in Lugh that is well built. In this neighborhood, there are more buildings built out of solid stone. Decorations and embellishments are also still present. Unlike in other parts of the city where weather and poverty have removed them from buildings.<ref name=":0" />

Rebels used Lugh to create a couple of primordials, so the city was 'fixed' by the Crown