A New Kind of City

You listen as the hooded engineer — Greaves — explains everything. The steam pipes beneath the poorest districts leak scalding soot into homes, making children sick while the wealthy districts stay clean. Nobody listened when he filed his reports. So he decided to make the whole city feel what those families felt every day.

Something shifts inside you. He was wrong to do this — but he wasn't wrong about the problem. You make him a promise: restart the Furnace right now, and you will personally carry his evidence to the City Council. He hesitates, then nods.

Together, you relight the Central Furnace. Steam roars gloriously back through every pipe, and Cogsworth City blazes to life around you. When Master Aldric and the Constabulary arrive, you stand between them and Greaves, report in hand.

Weeks later, you sit before the City Council — nervous, sooty, and absolutely certain. The new clean-pipe law passes. Pip, apprentice of Cogsworth City, changed things not with a wrench, but with words.