December 18, 1899 — Milltown Junction, Amerathia
The sky over Milltown was a painter's palette of steel-gray clouds streaked with coal smoke. Every hour, the town exhaled through smokestacks and furnace chimneys, the skyline traced by metal cranes and the silhouettes of towering water tanks. Once a sleepy rural outpost known only for its brickyard and fishing creek, Milltown Junction had been reshaped in the image of a modern Amerathia—functional, focused, and utterly transformed by industry.
From the ridge above, the landscape looked like a living schematic. Parallel rail lines converged at a central depot where goods and people crisscrossed like clockwork. Bright orange auto chassis rolled down conveyors into flatcars; barrels of refined oil waited in neat pyramids to be shipped east; refrigerated cars carried milk and meat packed in Amerathia's heartland toward far-off coastal cities.
