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    City Lore Drop: Greasewick Row

    Greasewick Row is where broken things go when they’re not done being useful. Machines. Generators. Cybernetics. Transit parts. Kitchen equipment. Illegal heaters. Questionable weapons. Occasionally people, but that costs extra and depends how much they’re leaking.

    It sits along the southern edge of Low Halo, right where the apartment blocks and music venues start giving way to older industrial guts. Mechanic bays open straight onto the street. Salvage stalls spill into cracked lots. Half the workshops are inside buildings that were never supposed to hold a workshop, and the other half are inside buildings that were never supposed to survive this long.

    Greasewick is loud all the time. Grinders. Welders. Impact tools. Test engines. Generators. Somebody shouting “turn it off” three seconds after it should’ve been turned off. Very educational.

    It’s goblin-majority, but not goblin-only. Humans, orcs, dwarves, kobolds, halflings, slimefolk, whoever can work and doesn’t mind getting grease somewhere permanent. Species matters less there than whether you know what you’re doing. 

    A licensed technician who can’t fix the problem is still useless. An unlicensed mechanic who can explain exactly why your engine is screaming and which part is about to leave the vehicle at speed gets respect. That’s the hierarchy.

    Greasewick isn’t part of The Tangle. Doesn’t answer to the Tangle Clan. Doesn’t belong to any elder, pocket, or routekeeper. But you can feel the influence.

    Apprenticeship over credentials. Reputation over advertising. Salvage over replacement. Fix the thing first, argue about paperwork after. “Illegal” and “doesn’t work” are not the same sentence, no matter how badly Crownline wants them to be.

    And yes, kobold crews do half the work nobody else can reach. Ducts, service shafts, enclosed machinery, utility spaces. Then some taller idiot stands next to the finished repair and explains it to the customer like the kobolds were decorative. Greasewick notices. Greasewick remembers.

    That’s the other thing about the Row. If you lie about how something broke, hide a dangerous modification, or don’t pay somebody, you may discover that every mechanic on the street is suddenly booked for the next six months. Wild coincidence.

    People think Greasewick is where things get repaired. That’s not quite it. Greasewick is where the city gets told it doesn’t get to decide what’s finished yet. And sometimes the answer is a generator. Sometimes it’s a building. Sometimes it’s you.