Social Class: Middle class
Character: Drab, dinky, dirty marble faced buildings skirt the edge of the border with the Clerk’s Ward.
District Type: Residential
Buildings: Upscale housing, average housing, average lodgings
First Impressions: The Marble District appears to be the Hive’s upscale neighborhood – and for upscale, that isn’t saying much. None of
the building faces really say much as to what’s in the building’s interiors – lush palaces might be hidden behind a façade of ruin and stone.
Spikeward from the Gatehouse, just beyond the sprawl of beggars and slums that rings the Gatehouse for a number of blocks, the Hive actually contains a relatively well-kept district. Known as the Marble District, for its cluster of a few blocks of gray and white marble buildings, it’s a spot of relative calm and civilization inside the ocean of urban wasteland it barely rises above.
Most official government buildings in the ward reside in the Marble District, as well as a branch of the Minder’s Guild that has taken to selling their services to a number of alehouses and less reputable members of the Hive’s so-called society. In addition, a number of shops and taverns that sell quality goods and ale, not the watered down swill popular elsewhere in the ward, and the walled in kips of several jink-laden bloods of the ward call the Marble District home. Principal among these businesses are Benni’s Tap, a favorite drinking spot for the knights of the ward, eager to spend their jink and not have to sit next to unwashed, or in the case of some bars in the gray district, undead bubbers.
At the edge of the district, away from the official buildings, yet separated from the rest of the ward, a number of boarding houses and fairly well maintained tenement homes are called kip by most of the skilled craftsman and honest shopkeepers and peddlers of the ward at large. Near the spikeward end of the district lies Black Boot Walk, frequently better lit than the Marble District, if only for the Hivers’ tendency to set abandoned kips on fire, typically within view of the high-ups in the Marble District. The Minders Guild may be set loose upon the area in force in coming months, fueled by the district’s jink and their own harsh sense of order.