Category:World

Lift Bridge

When the first metals came down the Nipeek River and the City Council was not as disinterested in the long-term growth of the city, a project was begun to create a lift bridge. The premise being that workers could travel across the river to the plantations to work, and farmers could bring their goods into residential areas that needed the produce in their markets. Although lumber rafts and barges could pass under bridges, sailing ships needed more clearance and so the lift bridge was designed.

Gravity could lower the bridge easily enough, but the metal construct needed more than sweat and pulleys to get back up. A group of mages solved the problem by creating arcane engines that could be powered to lift the bridge to its up position. A special city guard unit was tasked to the bridge and with wands of shocking grasp could power the lift and The Lift Bridge went into operation.

As time passed, and wands were “lost” and replacements harder and harder to obtain. Eventually, a special guard unit became a dedicated guard unit. The dedicated guard unit became a regular guard unit until even they would often fail to appear. Finally, and city ordinance dictated that if 4 guards with wands were not available the bridge would be left in its up position so as not to disturb the ships of the merchant princes. The fact that the working poor of the neighborhood would have to walk several extra miles each way to work, or that fresh produce would be more expensive for the already starving poor did not seem to factor into this decision.

The neighborhood around the Lift Bridge became known as Lift Bridge for the stubbornly raised position that it was now permanently held in. Plucky locals built scaffolding on both sides and the locals just climbed over and it became a favorite hang out of local youth. Many a drunkard climbed up on the lift bridge and jumped into the Nipeek, taking their own lives.

30 or so years ago, saw a grisly series of murders. The murders seemed to put the final coffin in Lift Bridge as some of the last and longest run business suddenly closed doors and the owners fled with no future addresses. Local gossips pointed out that the Lift Bridge had been dropped by local hooligans on the nights of the murders and that proved to the locals that the murders must have been the drug lords, or their servants come from the plantations, as all the murder victims were using poppy paste to get “greased”. No suspects or arrests were ever made.