#i also did a tiny régian era inver au where certain con artists are trying to fix the (horse?)racing games to win big

[ranticore]

so ive been meaning to explain more about ironwall than the lil hints u get from that one story i posted a while back but essentially it's a city that grew out of the necessity of making a place for people with monstrous or non-standard anatomy. it grew from a few alehouses with double-high doors into an industrial city in the 1700s, one which remained largely independent of the nation around it by virtue of being essentially "worthless" to the kingdom. it was ruled by a self-appointed Protector who was supposedly chosen by council vote at regular intervals but we'll get into that

So due to being the only place with accessible infrastructure for centaurs (of all animal types), it became a major population centre and, of course, with no alternatives and a rapidly depleting countryside due to population growth and farmers/peasants being unable to support themselves on their land anymore, Ironwall became something of a prison, too. Where else could anyone go? Ironwall in the 1800s was known to be a deeply corrupt cesspit built on the exploitation of citizens who had nowhere else to go. The council did not allow non-landowners to vote in elections resulting in a ruling class of landlords only voting in their own interests and a strongly stratified society. All because the majority-human settlements elsewhere were not obligated to build suitable housing or accommodations, and some would actively work to avoid such accommodations, like entire streets of houses where access is by steep flights of stairs, or houses on stilts in smaller villages etc. They had heard stories of how awful it was to live in Ironwall and wanted none of it in their backyard thank you very much.

The structure of Ironwall in the early 20th century took the form of a huge wheel-shaped city with accessory satellite towns at each spoke. Centaurs being able to comfortably travel long distances, they kind of invented the commuter town before anyone else out of necessity, as there was a well-developed housing crisis within the city with citizens crushed between sky high rents and few if any places to live. It took until the 70s before motor vehicles were legalised and they were not popular, mainly used by the wealthy who could afford to modify them.

The culture of Ironwall was extremely conservative for most of its existence due to the religious leanings of its founders and landlord class, with strict modesty laws for all centaurs (specifically banning the display of the juncture between human torso and animal body) and a "hard work shapes character" attitude.

When the steel industry finally collapsed, the centre of Ironwall saw an exodus of businesses and people until suddenly, low-quality housing was readily available and super cheap - and the regular humans began to move in. This was matched by similar economic pressures elsewhere, and the different populations finally starting to truly mix; factory workers from Ironwall had gone anywhere that was still hiring and centaur accommodation was being built outside Ironwall and its satellite towns by unscrupulous business owners seizing upon this new supply of cheap labour.

With Ironwall's historic heart starting to rot, there was a big push towards making the city welcoming to tourists and rehabilitating its shabby image. This was largely successful and the first wave of poor human arrivals was quickly drowned out by a second wave of gentrifiers. The historical city centre was preserved as high rise apartments (inhospitable to centaurs) went up around the outskirts, and many of the people whose families had lived in Ironwall for generations, who'd stuck around through the recession, found themselves in the tourism industry, in a very different place than the one they'd grown up in.

And that's why ironwall au Pascal was a taxi driver miserably trying to go viral on the internet in the hopes he'd finally be able to quit ferrying tourists around his ancestral home