Ormwood

Once, Ormwood was a sister town to Blackmouth with its own rich history stretching back to its colonial founding. It was a place of rich estates and elegant townhouses, public gardens and wide tree-lined avenues, somewhere beyond the grime of Blackmouth for well-heeled types to live. As the city rushed outward in the early years of the twentieth century it was absorbed by the urban sprawl and has gone downhill ever since. Townhouses became tenements, architecture was blackened by smoke and graffiti and the trees and parks choked in neglect. The coming of the Interstate ended any dreams of Ormwood ever returning to past glories, crushing century-old architecture under hot asphalt and splitting the corpse into two.

Farthest west, the wide streets of Westwood curve around the contours of the hills, lined with the best-kept remnants of Ormwood’s lost finery. Stout Georgian townhouses look down toward the ocean and crumbling statues of past luminaries cast long shadows over the gardens that lie about them. Below Westwood, trapped against the concrete spine of I-95, lie the avenues of Willowgate, once a place of gentlemanly shopping and leisure now slowly rotting as the world has moved on. Its avenues are lined with smoke-choked trees, shops struggling on as their neighbours fail and aging billboards proclaiming visions of redevelopment that no-one believes will happen. Only the churches seem to have resisted the decline and even then only barely as faith can only do so much against time.

The decline only deepens east of I-95. The interstate is the only true boundary Ormwood has left, as the slums of Yardley and tenements of Manton gnaw at the fringes. Things are worst in the streets of Kingston where gangland struggles decorate the avenues with tags, bullet holes and blood. In contrast, Presidents Row almost thrives as an impromptu retail strip fed by the Interstate and suburbanites slumming it for low prices. In between lie Five Circles, favoured by day by commuters as an alternate route into the city and by night by those seeking cheap beer or numbing music.

Locations

• Willowgate Arcade – the centrepiece of Willowgate, now scheduled for demolition.
• Sebastian Park – small, faded park on the edge of Willowgate.
• Jack's – bar on the north edge of Willowgate, formerly frequented by members of the Aryan Legion, burned in a tragic accident.

Chronicles

Beneath Cold Boughs was set in Ormwood in 2018 before its scope expanded to the whole city.