The cloying scents of spice and opium smoke hang thick in the air, assaulting your senses upon arrival in this powder keg of a city. An eternal smog seems to linger in grimy alleyways, the air thick with exhaust, smoke, and dirt. All around, the cacophonous symphony of haggling street vendors, braying horses and sputtering engines, and the occasional distant gunshot provides a discordant soundtrack to this city.
Hsin-Yao. Your new home.
This - well, this is a place where the supposed glories of civilization grind against the harsh realities of survival. The grandiose facades of the fine buildings of the main boulevards belie the destitution and desperation festering in the slum channels just a few mere side streets away. Strange men with untold allegiances slouch in those shadowed recesses, eyes following you until you pass from their territory.
For some, Hsin-Yao represents that elusive new start after being outcasts elsewhere - a chance to reinvent themselves anew, no matter how unsavory their past transgressions. For these souls, it is the promise of rebirth from the ashes of their former lives amidst the city's underbelly of grifters, entrepreneurs, poor workmen, and criminals.
For others, it is a generational home, regrettably playing host to disgusting foreign interlopers and their self-important "International Settlement". Lush enclaves of privilege amidst the surrounding squalor, their entryways emblazoned with signs bluntly stating "Thènians Not Allowed". And, of course, a dozen gendarmes around every entranceway to enforce this rule.
But you didn't come here to admire the opulent gardens of the elite. Your path leads elsewhere - to the slums. The Clockwork Circus, as they call it. A tangled, lamplit warren of ramshackle housing and black markets, where even the gaze of the law can be averted by greasing the right palms with the right amount.
This is the true beating heart of Hsin-Yao, laid bare in all its desperation and opportunism.
Perhaps you seek to merely survive by any means in this pit of societal detritus, clawing and scraping day-to-day. Perhaps you harbor loftier ambitions - to claw your way up from the dregs through influence, guile, or infamy.
No matter your motivations, no matter your circumstances - you are here.
What, exactly, shall you do?