In some ways, the ancient Low City and its people are merely the detritus left behind by their dead ancestors. It’s not an optimistic way of looking at things, nor a particularly polite one, but it is not an inaccurate one either. When the old world died, or was killed, it left behind a world forever scarred by their mistakes, and a small handful of people who would have to live with them. Those people live in a hole in the ground left over from a mine, slipping into the cracks where useful things had once been found and making do with the scraps that remain. Some of them would likely even agree with this assessment, that they are but the leftovers of a greater past: after all, many of the Low City’s residents think of the before times, the lost world in whose remains they now linger, as a destroyed Eden to whose heights they can scarcely dream to aspire. To others, the past is the origin for all their troubles, its residents the architects of their misery, hubristic monsters of the past who robbed their descendents of a future. Some, still, never think about the dead world at all, whether because it doesn’t interest them or because it’s too painful or because they were simply never raised to know that before there was a now, there was a before. 

 

Which of these options the people of the destroyed past would prefer, nobody can know. Perhaps they’d just be happy to be thought of at all, so long after their time came to an end.

 

The people of The Low City produce far less waste than their ancestors did; thus far, no civilisations have been made out of their detritus. Due to a combination of limited resources, limited space for waste dumping, and a wish to be better than their predecessors in this matter, wastefulness is tantamount to a crime in the Low City. As much as possible, everything must be recycled, reused, scavenged. Food scraps and bodily waste become fertiliser- as do bodies, once their owners are done using them. Broken things are repaired when possible, and harvested for parts when necessary. Everything must have a use, because at the end of the world there is no time or energy or space for useless things. There are exceptions, of course; these are more philosophical stances than they are practical ones, guiding forces which seek to minimise waste rather than eliminate it entirely. After all, many of the things that make life worth living have no strictly practical purpose, but tell that to the people who flood into the City’s common areas whenever a new image is released by The Observatory, or the musicians who fill the cold tunnels with life, or the Fallen who cover their high ceilings and walls with visual reminders of why they must suffer. “Necessary” is a word whose meaning becomes very fuzzy when people are involved. But for the most part, the denizens of the Low City do their best not to create new waste, and when they do they dispose of it responsibly by taking it to the place where waste belongs: with the rest of the waste, on the surface.

 

Once a month, a crew of specially-trained technicians drive a mechanised wagon out onto the surface, clad in pressurised suits and with only one purpose: to take the latest of the city’s irrecoverable, unusable waste to the Dump. A pit, about an hour’s drive from the city entrance, believed to have once been a quarry but now simply a hole where the leavings of other hole-dwellers now belong. The technicians pour the waste down into the pit, and then return home, and that is that. They know better than to linger, to wonder at the things that remain on the surface. The surface is abandoned for a reason, for many reasons, and to these folk its true purpose has been found at last by their kind: a waste dump, nothing more. Besides: while wonders may occasionally be found by the crews which scour the dead surface, they are far outnumbered by things which serve no practical purpose that the people of Now can ascertain, things which are therefore wasteful in their eyes. The people of Before were so arrogant, so wasteful in their hubris, that they destroyed the world- or so one version of the history goes. Why would the technicians want anything to do with that?

 

There are, of course, those whose opinion differs on such matters. The past was a time of things both wondrous and terrible, and while the consequences of that time lean more towards the terrible… Surely that is no reason to discard all that it wrought? After all, the Low City itself is a product of that time, and you don’t see people abandoning that place of relative safety on moralistic grounds. Well, you don’t often see that, anyway. And so Scrappers scour the surface, ignoring and ignored by the waste disposal technicians despite their technically similar roles, searching for anything of value that might still remain in the dead world. While these Scrappers are not strictly sanctioned by any group, as journeying to the surface for even the most crucial tasks is generally considered ill-advised and nobody wants to be responsible should something go disastrously wrong, the work of the Scrappers is not strictly outlawed either. After all: if it was, that would make it rather more difficult for the Lesh Ministry and Umbressi engineers to justify buying the things Scrappers find. Resources, lost technology, information, even sufficiently interesting trinkets: all fetch a high price if you know who to sell to. However, Scrapping is certainly not encouraged, as it poses substantial risk: not just to those who engage in the practice, but to the Low City itself. Due to the potential loss of resources should a Scrapper crew perish or fail to recoup the resources spent on an expedition, and the tremendous risk posed by incautious Scrappers bringing dangerous finds back to the Low City, there is a careful- if informal- balance maintained in who is allowed to be a Scrapper, and how often they may go on expeditions. And, lax and unofficial as it may be, there are standards and processes involved, that can either be followed or ignored. Thus, while there technically are no truly sanctioned Scrappers, there are definitely unsanctioned Scrappers.

 

Common among these Unsanctioned Scrappers are Skitterlings. This is due both to how the physical attributes of Skitterlings lend themselves well to such work, and to the fact that there has never been a Skitterling on a Sanctioned Scrapper crew. There are several reasons for this: the lack of Skitterling-modelled protective gear for surface work, the lack of connections to those in power among Skitterlings eager for the work, and general suspicion and distrust that Skitterlings can be trusted with such potentially dangerous work. All of these reasons can, of course, be traced back to species-based discrimination, but considering that this is not a job that anyone is really supposed to be doing there isn’t exactly anyone for the victims to complain to. These Skitterling Scrappers, who call themselves Digs as is typical of itinerant Skitterling workers, and in spite of the fact that unlike most Skitterling jobs being a Scrapper does not always involve digging, use a variety of methods to ply their doubly-illicit trade. On surface journeys they sneak out in the vehicles used by the Waste Disposal crews, concealing themselves among the refuse or clinging to the undersides of the vehicles themselves. They use jury-rigged gas masks and protective gear, rather than the relatively sophisticated- if old and tatty- pressurised suits worn by the professionals. And when they find something worth finding- which they do even less often than the Sanctioned crews- they do not take it back to eager and pre-arranged, trusted buyers in the Lesh Ministry or the Umbressi Guilds, but rather to whomever they can find willing to pay a fraction of what their finds are truly worth on short notice. Safety, planning, surety- these are privileges for the far more fortunate. While Scrapping is often dangerous work, as any work on the dead surface tends to be, for Skitterlings it is far more so, for all the reasons described. However, for some, the risk is outweighed tenfold by the potential reward.

 

There was a Dig recently, composed of three Skitterlings, none of whom returned. But not for any of the typical reasons. Their masks did not break, they did not fall down chasms, they did not become lost. And yet, they all died. Because, while the surface may be deadly, the subterranean is far from safe. And neither can hold a candle to the dangers held by a forgotten past.

 

The Dig whose tragedy we will now examine was led by a bold young male named “Biliki”, who had by this point gone on a number of Scrapper Digs and was as much of an expert as one can be at a job which kills most people on their first attempt. Together with his comrades TssKss and Ffhn, both females, Biliki’s final Dig started out as his Scrapper Digs usually did: with a meeting with his fence, a Grib named Sharp/Putrid/Overwhelming. As usual, the Grib had obtained information regarding some Scrap for their employees to obtain, a tip that had been passed from hand to hoof to claw to hand until it had reached Sharp/Putrid/Overwhelming. They were not a particularly wealthy or highly regarded Grib- few wealthy Grib would employ Skitterling Digs, after all, unless they were truly desperate- but they had a tenacity and a ruthlessness that had allowed them to thrive in the business of illicit business. This was the last point at which this was a typical Dig for Biliki and his friends, as Sharp/Putrid/Overwhelming informed him that this would not be a typical surface Scrap; because they would not be going to the surface at all. Sharp/Putrid/Overwhelming had received a tip that there was an immense cache of artefacts whose nature could only be guessed at- and whose value could scarcely be imagined- buried deep belowground several miles outside of the Low City limits, far beyond the Reservoir, far beyond anyone Biliki knew has ever travelled. This would be an unusual Dig, their Grib patron told them, but if they conducted themselves well enough it may just be the last Dig they ever need go on. TssKss asked why they, in particular, had been selected for this task. If the reward was so great, why would Sharp/Putrid/Overwhelming not go to the extra cost of hiring a more experienced and well-equipped crew? Their patron just smiled and reassured them that they were the perfect team for the job: there were indeed others who were interested in this prize, and were likely already in the process of trying to reach it, but only a Dig of Skitterlings could be relied upon to tunnel quickly- and, more importantly, quietly- enough for the task at hand. The trio were perfectly equipped for this job, by their very nature, and would be able to slip in and out of the burial site undetected before their competitors would even get halfway there. TssKss, more cunning and wary than her companions, was convinced: nothing like flattery and a sense of superiority to make one more bold. Biliki and Ffhn didn’t even need that much convincing. The three of them set out for the burial site with their usual Scrapping gear, sans breathing apparatus, and some extra rations for the journey. They were excited, determined, brave.

 

They were never seen again.

 

The journey to the burial site was uneventful, for the most part. The three Skitterlings dug with their bare chitinous hands through the firm dirt, as their ancestors evolved to do and as they had come to love. Together, in the cold and dark, surrounded by pungent wet earth, letting its grime coat their claws and feathers and letting its smell fill their broad nostrils, the Dig was in their element. Every few hours they took a break to rest and eat and enjoy each other’s company. Even if this Dig did go as well as Sharp/Putrid/Overwhelming promised, and they never had to work again, would they really want to give this life up? They thought not. What else would they do? If only they’d had a choice in the matter…

 

Things began to change for the Dig when they neared their destination. They had been given a compass direction to follow, a rough estimate for the distance to the burial site, and that was it; they could only follow that direction on Biliki’s prized compass- one of his most valuable possessions, it was scratched and glued together, but that it functioned was all that mattered. They knew they must have been getting close when the dirt through which they dug… changed. It was subtle, and perhaps they dug for some time before noticing, but when Ffhn pointed it out it was obvious: there was an odd texture to the soil, an odd taste to the stale air. Alkaline, perhaps? It irritated the backs of the Skitterlings’ noses, caught in the backs of their throats, but they couldn’t quite say what it was. The fact that it was unfamiliar was, perhaps, proof enough that they were nearing something unlike anything they’d encountered before, which was precisely their goal. It was also a warning, though the Skitterlings didn’t know that. As they dug further, they began to encounter strange obstructions in their path: sharp, hard, metal protrusions which Ffhn chipped a claw on when she discovered them. The Skitterlings grew excited as they discovered more of these, spiky and misshapen protrusions whose dimensions and form- mostly obscured by dirt- could only be guessed at. Surely this was an attempt at keeping intruders out, a sort of underground fence to keep larger digging vehicles from reaching the burial site but which the small and cunning Skitterlings could easily slip between. The trio did not even imagine that this, too, was an attempt at a warning. They simply dug on, until they reached harder material which stopped them in their tracks. Rock- no, more like the concrete which Umbressi often used for their larger structures. A solid wall of the stuff- TssKss pointed out that it was more likely a sphere, perhaps miles in diameter, intended to encase the burial site and prevent intruders from acquiring the wealth hidden within. Far too hard for the Dig’s chitin claws to penetrate- but, of course, these were professionals: they knew better than to rely on their claws. As Ffhn held up a phosphor lamp, Biliki prepared a small shaped explosive charge: powerful enough to break through the wall provided it was less than a metre thick, while small enough that it shouldn’t be detected by anyone not in the immediate vicinity. While the pair worked, by the light of Ffhn’s phosphor lamp TssKss saw something on the wall they intended to breach: writing. Looking closely she could see characters she recognised as the flowing, beautiful Lesh script, the efficient and squat Umbressi alphabet, a few pictograms she contextually assumed to be Grib, though she had never seen these before, as well as some languages she didn’t recognise at all. She pointed the text out to her companions, and for a time the three puzzled over what they could mean; because, tragically, none of them could read. Literacy is not common among Skitterlings, as it is not commonly necessary. There is no native Skitterling alphabet, and while some will take the time to learn a script belonging to one of the other Lowcity species the members of this Dig had never bothered to. And so, before they detonated the charge that sealed their fate, they were more excited than ever for what they were about to find; after all, it must have been quite the prize, for whomever had put it there to put what they assumed to be threats on its walls in quite so many tongues. 

 

But, of course, they weren’t threats. Much like the poisoned soil, and the foreboding spikes, and the remote and hidden location, the text on the sarcophagus they breached that day was nothing more than a warning: do not come here, for within there is only death.

 

The shaped charge did not give off much smoke, as it was designed by those who prioritise clean air above most everything else, and so it was not long before the Dig Crew was able to see their prize. Excitement turned to confusion. Then to fear. They saw, in the darkness of the immense sarcophagus, barrels and barrels and barrels of- well, they did not know what lay inside. But they could just barely see, by the strange red light that seemed to emanate from the barrels themselves, or perhaps from within, that they were not alone. They were so shocked by this simple fact that they did not even react until the nearest Golnur Drone had already severed Biliki’s head from his shoulders with a sharp snap of its mandibles. And, as TssKss and Ffhn fled back down the tunnel, the ground shaking beneath their feet as it filled with drones like their minds filled with terror, if as Ffhn fell and was immediately lost beneath a swarm of hissing clacking insectoid bodies, TssKss found herself strangely aware of how unusual the Drones’ movements were, how uncannily synchronised the attackers were, even for Golnur, well… There was nobody left for her to tell. And then she felt a sharp, horrible pain in her leg, and a terrible weight on her back, and everything went black.

 

In the Low City, in a small and out of the way office behind an otherwise nondescript business, the Grib named Sharp/Putrid/Overwhelming waited for their Skitterling workers to return. Eventually, when they did not, the Grib took that to be an answer in and of itself. Their absence, their failure to return, was revealing enough to make the attempt worthwhile. They pulled out a small book, scribbled a note on a page- paper, real paper, far more valuable than they should have been able to afford- and, tearing page from book, called over their Fallen assistant. A few words, an implication, a nod, and the messenger was away. The Grib leaned back in their chair, and thought. Considered. Planned. Things were unfolding, had always been unfolding, and always would be as well. Such is life, everywhere, above, within, and beyond, the dark and cruel tunnels of the Low City.