Devil's Acre

Devil's acre is a canon loop so feel free to edit and add details from the book series! Characters can be added at will too.

## Basic Information

Devil's Acreis a punishment loop within London. In order to access it, peculiars must travel though a tunnel in the Thames river to enter the loop. Whilst not specified, the loop is at the time of Queen Victoria's reign meaning it is between the years of 1837 to 1901.

Black Market peculiar dealings are done here, including slavery, soul selling, and peculiar gladiator-style fighting. Ambrosia, like an illegal drug, drives some crazy because they are so addicted to it.

## Appearance Description

Devil's Acre, a punishment loop, is disgusting and impoverished. A body of water in Devil's Acre is heavily polluted, though it's citizens rely on it for drinking. Buildings rot, just as much as the people, not quite dead but ghastly in sight.

The air is heavily polluted, yellow and potently filled with ash and smoke. Each street seems to be filled with muck, save for Oozing Street, who is painted cheerfully despite the fact that it is certainly not.

Some normals live in Devil's Acre, trapped every day to do the same things over and over again with no realization.

## Detailed Appearance Description

Devil's Acre is seen to be a disgusting, impoverished place where many are left to rot without laws. As said in Ransom Rigg's "Hollow City": "It seemed the only thing keeping them from tipping straight into the water was the tightness with which they were packed; that and the mortar of black-and-green filth that smeared their lower thirds in thick, sludgy strata. On each of their rickety porches, coffinlike boxes stood on end, outhouses, which are contributing to the very filth that held them up. A rickety footbridge spanned the canal."

The body of water in Devil's Acre is known as "Fever Ditch", which not only is used as a sewer but also a spring. (Meaning that people put their waste in it then drink the water-waste mix.) Crazy wooden footbridges, some no wider than a board, crisscross the canal like a cat’s cradle, and its stinking banks are heaped with trash and crawling with spectral forms at work sifting through it. The only colors were shades of black, yellow, and green, the flag of filth and decay, but black most of all. The factory waste, night soil, and animal carcasses which flow perpetually into it are the source not only of its bewitching odor but also of disease outbreaks so regular you could set your watch to them and so spectacular that this entire area, or so claims a tour guide who went there, has been dubbed ‘the Capital of Cholera.’

Housing is very bad, with the buildings not much better. Foundations of them decomposing into mush, they are truly unsafe. Black stains every surface, smears every face, and stripes the air in columns that rose from chimneys all around. According to a tour guide who regularly takes passengers to the Devil's Acre, notable landmarks include St. Rutledge’s Foundlings’ Prison, a forward-thinking institution which jails orphans before they’ve had the opportunity to commit any crimes, thereby saving society enormous cost and trouble; St. Barnabas’ Asylum for Lunatics, Mountebanks, and the Criminally Mischievous, which operates on a voluntary, outpatient basis and is nearly always empty; and Smoking Street, which has been in flames for eighty-seven years due to an underground fire no one’s bothered to extinguish.

Doleful Street, one street, boasts two undertakers, a medium, a carpenter who worked exclusively with “repurposed coffinwood,” a troupe of professional funeral-wailers who did weekend duty as a barbershop quartet, and a tax accountant. Attenuated Avenue was just fifty feet long and had only one business: two men selling snacks from a basket on a sled. One man sells boiled cat's meat.

Oozing Street is oddly cheerful, with flower boxes hanging from windowsills and houses painted bright colors; even the slaughterhouse that anchored it was an inviting robin’s-egg blue.

As for Smoking Street, only it's bones were left—a chaos of timbers charred and leaning, embers glowing in the ash like tiny hearts beating their last. Wulfurous smoke rose from deep cracks that fissured the pavement. Fire-stripped trees loomed like scarecrows over the ruins. Drifts of ash flowed down the street, a foot deep in places.

The pavement on Periwinkle Street gives way to mud and the houses to shabby, sagging flats. It's a very seedy area, with some houses' windows blackened out.

## OCs in it

* Trish (LoonerMoon13)
* Cayo Robinson (Aira)