Where the Verdant Bay gives way to endless mire squats Greywater Fastness, the most stubbornly industrial jewel of the Cities of Sigmar. It began as a mercantile venture drowning in the bogs of Ghyran, and rather than yield to the wetland it chose to burn it. Now a perpetual pall of coal-smoke hangs above the city like a second sky, and the marshes for leagues around are grey and dying, poisoned by the runoff of a thousand forge-chimneys.
This is a city that has declared war upon the Realm of Life itself. Its Ironweld artisans and cannon-foundries arm half the free cities of the region, and its rulers wear their contempt for the wilds as a badge of pride. But Ghyran does not forgive such insult. The Sylvaneth despise Greywater above all mortal holds, and the forest presses ceaselessly against its walls, sending root and briar to crack the foundations and strangle the outer works.
So the Fastness lives under a double siege, from the vengeful woodland without and the choking industry within. Its people cough black phlegm and call it the price of civilisation; its cannons roar day and night to keep the treeline at bay. Some whisper that in poisoning the land that feeds it, Greywater is merely digging its own vast and smoke-blackened grave, one felled tree and one dead marsh at a time.
The atlas continues
