The industrial mass of Saint Jude’s Landing. Enormous machinery, biological remains, alien ecosystems, monstrous inhabitants, and working-class life collide across a sprawling industrial district. Something is always running, growing, breaking, or making a noise nobody gets paid enough to investigate.
01 / Getting oriented
Nine is where Creator’s alien biology, monstrous inhabitants, and Saint Jude’s Landing’s heavy industry collide most directly. Its immense scale and industrial infrastructure make it a particularly comfortable place for many large demi-human species and monsters to live and work.
The machinery is enormous. The buildings are enormous. Some of the things being moved, processed, dismantled, or left to rot are enormous, too. The people living here still have rent to pay and shifts to finish.
Nine processes raw materials, biological matter, minerals, Behemoth remains, and other resources produced by Creator. Heavy industry operates constantly. Trains, freight vehicles, conveyor systems, cranes, furnaces, processing equipment, pipes, and enormous machines dominate the district.
Behemoth remains are common throughout Nine. Some are processed for industrial use, incorporated into machinery, or left where they are because they are too large to move. Buildings, machines, industrial waste, and enormous biological remains sometimes become almost impossible to distinguish from one another.
Nine has an unusually large population of monstrous and heavily nonhuman residents because industrial work, creature handling, biological processing, heavy labor, and dangerous environments attract species that are particularly suited to them. Some creatures are employees, mechanics, drivers, technicians, contractors, business owners, neighbors, lovers, or families.
Nine is full of factory workers, mechanics, engineers, processors, drivers, cleaners, technicians, contractors, laborers, creature handlers, and people whose lives revolve around keeping the district functioning. Worker housing, cheap apartments, bars, shops, clinics, food stalls, dating scenes, and other ordinary necessities exist among the industrial infrastructure.
Nine's industrial ecosystem doesn't always respect the boundary between a machine and a living thing. The district's biological oddities are part of its environment, not an interruption to it.
Scrap-metal-and-flesh creatures crawl through machinery. Centipede-like organisms inhabit pipes and tunnels. Some creatures are all teeth, slime, raw muscle, exposed biological material, or strange combinations of organic and manufactured matter.
Nine is dirty, loud, hot, wet, chemically stained, greasy, and frequently humid. Strange alien growth pushes through cracks in concrete and machinery. Waterways, vegetation, wildlife, industrial waste, and monstrous life can exist together in the same environment.
Industrial accidents, toxic materials, malfunctioning machinery, dangerous wildlife, criminal activity, unstable structures, and hostile creatures are ordinary hazards. Some parts of Nine are heavily regulated; others operate with little oversight.
Nine's inhabitants aren't novelties, attractions, or a parade of strange creatures for outsiders to gawk at. They're people getting through the week. Their bodies, species, jobs, and relationships are part of the same lived-in community.
Interspecies attraction is deeply embedded in Nine’s adult culture. Humans, demi-humans, and monsters date, hook up, marry, raise families, and form long-term relationships. Large size differences, claws, fangs, tails, fur, scales, unusual anatomy, and other monstrous traits are not inherently considered incompatible with romance or sex. Some bars, clubs, brothels, dating scenes, and private communities specifically cater to human/monster and interspecies attraction.
Nine’s working culture produces its own particular kind of attraction. Huge mechanics covered in grease, scarred workers, monstrous laborers, exhausted factory employees, enormous creatures in protective gear, rough-looking truck drivers, and physically powerful people are common sights. Dating coworkers, meeting partners after shifts, workplace affairs, and relationships between people from radically different species are ordinary parts of local life.
08 / Life between shifts
Despite its grotesque surroundings, Nine is a functioning neighborhood where people live ordinary lives. Workers clock in, families go home, people shop for groceries, couples fight, lovers meet after shifts, friends drink after work, children grow up around machinery, and residents become accustomed to things outsiders would find horrifying.
Nine has a rough, practical working-class culture. People tend to know how to repair things, improvise, survive unpleasant conditions, and ignore whatever bizarre thing is making noises inside the wall. Its monster population is not a novelty or tourist attraction; they are part of the neighborhood.
Industrial, filthy, enormous, grotesque, hardworking, humid, mechanical, biological, sexually charged, and intensely alive. Nine is where Creator’s alien biology, monstrous inhabitants, and Saint Jude’s Landing’s heavy industry collide most directly.
District resident / Local connection
Benoit is associated with Nine.