The Bridge of Grimwater | Notes About the Setting

  The bridge stands over the landscape, as a looming shadow in the cloud of mist, rising the lagoons and pools below from which it takes its name. The milky water on the surface steams and bubbles, giving the impression of some geothermal process driving the flow from below, but the truth is more sinister. Long ago, outside of extant memory, something terrible was buried deep below - not a monster, or an evil spirit, but some cursed material both unwanted and unneeded by the people that had created it. Whatever calamity brought about the collapse of their society consequently undid the seals they had placed, and over time this substance has seeped up into the groundwater and mineral deposits closer to the surface, with which it reacts violently in the production of more undesirable contaminants. It is this resulting concoction which then shoots upwards and drives the behaviour on the surface, and is deeply tied to the lives of the bridge's inhabitants.
  Initially, it would seem that this so-called "grimwater" should be best left alone; it is entirely unsafe for human handling, and too corrosive and innately contaminating to attempt to transport or separate its contents for any industrial purpose. However, where there is a unique resource and a desire for wealth, a purpose can almost always be found eventually. In this case, the service offered at the Bridge of Grimwater is disposal. If one has sensitive materials that need to be destroyed, or a need to get rid of something that can never be discovered, then the clans of Grimwater will ensure that no one ever attempts to find it. There are, of course, other, more mundane methods to deal with such problems, but it is the excessive totality of the process that drives the demand. Whether by corrosion, reaction or contamination, anything dumped into the pools will be scoured of value and, in the exceptional case that something still remains, will be tainted beyond recovery (an act which would require this determined individual to find an extraction tool capable of enduring the grimwater in the first place).
  The need for workers, both to carry out the regular disposals and maintain the bridge which, even without direct immersion, is steadily rotting away in its toxic shroud, means there is a permanent population living within its structure. In order to survive in this environment, the citizens of Grimwater wear respirator masks every hour, day and night, from the moment they leave their incubator pods as newborns. Many have assumed, upon hearing this, that many parts of daily life must be highly inconvenient without ability to reach one's own face. However, just as a need can be found when there is resource, solutions can be created so long as there is necessity backed by the promise of payment. Take the need to eat as an example: a number of sustenance providers in the surrounding locale have converted their own brand of nutritious, colourless slurry into a paste, that can be fed via straw through one of the masks' supplementary ports (provided, of course, that the consumer has also purchased the appropriate proprietary adapter to interface with company-clan's patented connector straw).