It is hard to truly kill a city.

War had driven many from the old seaport, and by the time the floods came, most of what remained of humanity had relocated into the Great Machines, vast and protected structures that roamed slow and optimised routes across the inhospitable landscape.

For years the old city remained a trading post, a fragile but crucial meeting point between the Machines and the cargo ships. When conditions worsened and trade stopped, the Machinists offered the people of the city one final, fractious evacuation. The Machines maintained a wary distance after that, with only occasional sightings of them grazing blindly through the city’s outskirts, sifting through the rubble for raw materials before moving on.

Contact with the Great Machines was eventually lost, and it has now been a generation since anyone in the city has seen one, even on the icy horizons. Across the city’s splintered districts, small communities still survive under the guidance of local leaders, maintaining a precarious but unbroken existence against their constant adversities.

The city lives.

Replace the term “Great Machine” with “City”; replace “Machinist” with “District”.