The Slaughter Docks

The Slaughter Docks line the waterfront of Rat Town, one of the foulest districts in Bilgewater. All day, monstrous creatures of the deep are hauled from the chum-churned bay by towering cranes and dragged into slaughter sheds for butchering. The rendered oils, bones, and hides of the catch are traded across Runeterra, making the docks the economic engine of the city, and the blood-and-bile stench of the work permeates everything, from the carving bays where the guts can run knee deep to the dockside verses of the Song of the Slaughter. The stretch known as Bloodharbor earned its name because even the tide cannot wash away the red slick running down its wooden slips. A red tide means prosperity: monster bounties earned, heavy purses of gold handed to captains and crews, and coin spent in quayside taverns and gambling dens that pay their cut to Sarah Fortune. The docks are gang territory as well. The Jagged Hooks patrol the wharves with a reputation for savagery, and corpses hung from devilfish hooks serve as warnings. During Miss Fortune's war against Gangplank, the Rat Town Dogs and the Wharf Kings were turned against each other over control of the patch and all but wiped each other out. The docks' most infamous son is Pyke, who began as a dock worker hacking carcasses into salable chunks before talking his way onto a ship's crew and becoming the best harpooner a golden kraken could buy. Dragged into the depths by a massive jaull-fish while his crewmates watched, he returned transformed, and as the Bloodharbor Ripper he now carves his way through captains, first mates, and anyone associated with the bloody business of the docks. Other violence has marked the wharves. Twisted Fate's attempt to rob a warehouse belonging to Gangplank there ended in a running gunfight with Graves and a fire on the docks, and in the chaos after Gangplank's fall, vats of rendered leviathan blubber burned above the harbor. The Buhru priesthood counts a subtler cost: the greatest sea beasts keep to deep water, away from the docks' stench, leaving only half-starved younglings to answer the serpent callers when the Black Mist comes.