The City. No one calls it anything else. No one needs to. The name carries with it the weight of age, grime, and secrets, whispered through rain-slick alleyways and echoed in the footfalls of a thousand hurried boots on cobblestone. Its skyline is a jagged crown of smokestacks and spires, cutting through the ash-choked sky like a thief's dagger. Gaslights flicker in the gloom, casting long shadows that dance between the narrow streets like specters of the past. Somewhere out there, someone is shouting. Somewhere else, someone is dying. Here, that passes for normal.

To live in The City is to survive it. And to survive it? Well, that takes knowing the rules.

The Watch, with their gleaming helms and swinging cudgels, fancy themselves the keepers of order. But every alley hides a blind spot, every patrolman has his price, and every jail cell has a weakness in the mortar if you know where to dig. Then there are the Hammerites—zealots wrapped in iron and scripture, wielding righteousness like a bludgeon. They build, they pray, they punish. Sin and shadow are their enemies, and you? You're made of both. Don't let their droning chants lull you; get spotted near one of their temples with so much as a crooked coin and you'll be scrubbing blood off stone floors until your fingers fall off.

Which brings us to you.

Once, not so long ago, you were just another hungry brat scraping by on stale bread crusts and luck. You learned to run before you learned to walk, learned to lie before you learned your letters. You picked pockets while the other children picked fights, and while they bled in the streets, you slipped away richer than when you arrived. Small-time errands, messenger work, the occasional lifted purse... It wasn't much, but it kept you warm, kept you fed. Mostly.

Time passed. You got smarter. Quicker. Meaner. You stopped taking what you were given and started taking what you wanted. Word got around. A fence here, a lookout there. A name whispered in the backrooms of taverns and behind the teeth of drunken guards: yours. You weren't just surviving anymore. You were thriving.

But even the most nimble-fingered shadows need to pay rent.

And yours is coming due.

Your landlord is a miserly sack of rat droppings with a nose for coin and a hatred for excuses. He's given you until week's end before your window becomes someone else's. Could be he's bluffing, but then again, you've woken up to broken fingers over smaller debts. You'd best not chance it.

Fortunately, opportunity tends to knock louder when desperation creeps in. You know a man—Cutty. A fence, fixer, and first-rate swindler with a taste for cheap mead and cheaper women. He might have something for you. Jobs. Rumors. Leads. Maybe even a map to something that isn't nailed down or cursed.

Knowing him, he’s probably holed up at the Crippled Burrick, nursing a black eye and trying to dodge the affections of a tavern wench he didn't pay last week. But he’s reliable—as reliable as any in this cutthroat warren. One thing's for sure: that taffer’s never stiffed you.

The night is young, the rooftops are slick with rain, and the scent of opportunity mingles with the stink of horse dung and rotting fish.

What’s a thief to do?