Grandville

Overview

As you emerge into this dark towering metropolis, you will know that you have finally stepped into Arachnos' parlor. Here you must make an immediate choice, will you become the predator or the prey?

Rising from the gritty streets, slate grey buildings ascend into the sky, blotting out the sun and driving Grandville into the blackness of perpetual night. Among the shadows, the city is a dense jungle of skyscrapers linked together by walkways and bridges. Below are the castaways, infiltrators, and mutated creatures too terrible to mention. Above are the less wild but more cunning hunters, like spiders waiting to pounce.

Originally a prosperous pirate town, Grandville grew into to a thriving business center in the mid 1950s. A small independent island, many corporations found benefit in operating outside the laws of the U.S. and the locals were eager to welcome new investors. Over time, lax regulations and the proliferation of offshore banking drew in even more businesses. Because it is so small, rather than grow outward, the island was forced to build upward, leaving those with the least power cast-off at the lowest levels of the city's strata. Already fortress like, when Lord Recluse took over the region he chose Grandville as the location for his capital and built himself a massive watchtower complex called the WEB. Now Recluse's citadel soars above this stratified city, the pinnacle atop a ladder of power.

Passing through the streets of Grandville it is possible to catch an occasional glimpse into the Gutters below. Through imperfect junctions, missing grates, and open sewage pits, a vertigo-inducing drop plunges into the darkness of the Gutter where the dredges of Grandville lurk. Unable to effectively control the creatures hidden here, Recluse has an Arachnos Flier patrol the area, its only goal to annihilate all living things in its path.

Above this dank underbelly, Arachnos officials and local business people live and work in Spider City. With miles of over-walks, railings, and bridges to keep everyone far from the grime below, this is the safest level of Grandville.

The white-collar bureaucrats and Arachnos agents of Spider City go about their lives under the oppressive shadow of the Tangle. This claustrophobic neighborhood extends from Spider City all the way to the very tops of the WEB buildings. With tangles of cables, catwalks, fire escapes, and makeshift hiding places, this brutal area provides a precarious existence to those who can survive its dangers.

The WEB itself is an enormous building complex at the heart of Grandville with an array of cables spiraling outward from the center, a literal web suspended over the entire island. A ring of skyscrapers surrounding the central Arachnos watchtower under this intricate webbing, the WEB truly is the inner sanctum of Recluse's domain.

Supporting the elaborate vertical construction of Grandville is the secretive Web Fabrication Plant located on a manmade island to the north. Supposedly dedicated entirely to the construction and maintenance of the WEB superstructure, the exact nature of this industrial plant remains suspect.

From the WEB, Over-Governor Elisa Silk handles all the civilian affairs of Grandville. The official Arachnos Keeper of Secrets, Silk is a powerful figure in the Rogue Isles—not even Recluse himself knows exactly what it is that she conceals. Watching over Grandville's security matters is Marshal Mayhem, a subtle man best known for his complex global extortion schemes.

With the completion of Grandville, Recluse has spun his web and now lays hidden, luring those he seeks to destroy, a patient hunter setting his trap for an unsuspecting prey.

Notes

• Grandville is planned to be released for City of Villains in Issue 7. A public release date has not been released at this time.

External Links

• Zone preview before the release of Issue 7.