I’m confused about the rail lines in the Imperium. The Brightstone sheet mentions Bowmore Bridge as perhaps the largest in the Imperium. But the map of the Shattered Isles shows rail lines connecting the different islands.
What form do these rail lines take? The train from Spirited Away comes to mind as a possibility…
I think that the phrasing “is said” indicates how little mobility, social or physical, exist in this setting. I don’t think most of the folks in Doskvol really understand the immensity of the railways or the engineering that goes into them. The largest demographic that even might have traveled would be the refugees from Skovland, who the vast majority of Akarosi look down on.
I picture the rail lines being terrifyingly huge structures of slowly rusting steel elevated over a blasted, blighted landscape and occasional stations (including a handful, too small for the map, where the crazy nomads meet to trade). I imagine the rails as hundreds of years old and built in a brutish, brutal style. Only near the cities are any resources worth squandering on aesthetic appeal.
Over the seas, they can’t sink pylons into the water without Leviathans smashing them out of their way. Instead, there’d be massive floating platforms, partially supported by half-understood ritual and magic. The rails above them would have switching stations connecting the long and precarious sections, blowing in the wind and carried by the current. The reinforcements from these sections would eventually inspire the suspension bridges inside of the empire’s wealthiest cities.
John Dornberger does more justice than I will, but Bowmore bridge is a an inhabited bridge with shops and houses on it. The rail between the islands is a forever long expanse of human will and metal perforating the night sky and he void sea.
For me, the rail never has to deal with Leviathan smashing them. Leviathans are of the depths, they’re a mystery and intelligent culture unto themselves. Some say the lords of all demonkind, others merely harbingers of something yet to come from beneath the ebon waves.
As for the rails themselves. Legend has that in the first days following the Cataclysm; the Immortal Emperor (Blessed Be His Name) walked the shattered Isles, gathering together the remains of humanity, binding demons, and founding the first cities of the empire. Where he walked, a strange metal followed in his wake, and from this the first of the rails were constructed from the relentless blackened bones of the earth.
In short, they’re constructed from a strange alloy that seems both stainless and rustproof. And might have been standing for centuries already, no one really knows. The rails are older than the trains, but have been like new the whole time.