The Sump

The Sump is the lowest and most polluted level of Zaun, at the bottom of the canyon far beneath Piltover. Toxic runoff and industrial waste from the chem-forges above collect in stagnant sump pools, choking fumes hang over everything, and the infrastructure is left crumbling. It is home to the most desperate and destitute of Zaun's citizens, and even the air here has a texture to it, a thickness that only clears as one climbs toward the upper city. Much of the Sump's misery traces back to the split that divided Zaun from Piltover. Rich merchants, too eager to dig a canal, failed to make certain the ground was stable and put half of Zaun under water; that Flood turned one half of the Sump into a graveyard and the other into a landfill. The two cities have existed in a wary symbiosis since, while the chem-barons hold the undercity as their own turf. It is reached from above by the Rising Howl, a multi-tiered elevator carried on three great beams that descends past the Promenade and the Entresol. Life here is brutal but not without its own order. Those who make the wrong enemies or back a loser with their last cog end up in the Sump, scratching out a living beyond the reach of those above who will not stoop to look for them, which makes it almost a haven. Many survive by sump-scrapping, dangerous work that claims the careless and the unlucky, while gangs such as the Sump Riders run its lanes and thugs extort the few shopkeepers who remain. The faithful still whisper prayers to Janna, and despite the squalor a fierce sense of community and resourcefulness endures. The undercity's poisons breed their own monsters. Twitch, the Plague Rat, began as a rodent mutated by that toxic waste into a sentient creature, and prowls the Sump as its self-styled predator. The mechanical Blitzcrank rides the Rising Howl and once caught the plunging elevator above the Sump-level rooftops, lowering it and its passengers safely to the ground. In recent days a new threat has spread through the depths: a gang marked with a crude spider symbol, drawing believers and pilgrims to a mysterious figure they call the Voice, unrest grave enough that Piltover sent the enforcer Vi to find its source.