The discovery of Oilton as a dead city is the turning point that converts a seemingly valuable Stronghold into a landscape of extermination, competing claims, and cascading disaster. William Oh and his companions arrive expecting a functioning industrial settlement, but find working machinery, blazing walls, and no living defenders; the city’s corpses and ruined castle reveal that its population has been annihilated by an attack whose full consequences are still unfolding. What begins as reconnaissance becomes an investigation into mass death and, eventually, a desperate attempt to prevent the city’s remaining infrastructure from becoming a weapon in the hands of the Tangled.

Approach to the Abandoned Stronghold

The discovery follows a journey northward toward a Stronghold located beyond a Key Site, according to Travis’s expensive map. The approach is ominously empty. After roughly half an hour on the road, William Oh notices that there are no people, and the party’s footprints in the ash are the only evidence of recent passage. The silence is especially disturbing because the destination does not appear abandoned from a distance: a massive plume of steam rises over the settlement, an extremely low grinding sound suggests that the earth or its machinery is moving, and the lights remain on.

The Stronghold’s visible signs of life are industrial rather than human. Man-sized flames burn along the walls, apparently fed by oil pumped continuously from below. Yet when the party reaches the perimeter, Loth observes that nobody is on the walls. The contradiction between active infrastructure and absent inhabitants establishes the event’s central mystery: Oilton is not merely deserted, but operating without the people who should control it.

The Stronghold and Its Industrial Logic

Oilton’s defenses are shaped by its geography and its resources. The Stronghold resembles a mine built into a floating mountain; the mountain’s sheer edge serves as a natural wall, while ballistae line the perimeter against kaith invasion forces and flying threats. The exposed layers of the mountain reveal quartz or possibly salt, and the caravan’s earlier remarks lead William Oh to understand that the settlement’s value lies in salt as well as oil. Salt is scarce, commercially desirable, and useful as a spice, making the mine a strategic economic asset rather than an isolated fortress.

That infrastructure explains why the party cannot treat the Stronghold as an irrelevant ruin. The oil pump still works, the lights still burn, and the walls still carry fire. The city remains materially productive even after its social order has disappeared. This split between functioning systems and dead inhabitants also foreshadows the later danger: machinery, pressure lines, water tanks, and defensive installations continue to act after the people who maintained them are gone.

The Mass Death Inside Oilton

William Oh, Travis, and Brianna enter by reaching the inner edge of the wall and looking down into the city. After crossing the rooftops cautiously for about two hours, they arrive at the roof of the building nearest the castle. The rooftops offer no immediate attack, rescue, or explanation; they provide only a slow route through a city that has stopped answering human presence.

The first decisive sight is the streets. Instead of an empty void or surviving inhabitants, the party finds many corpses, with bodies lining the roads and showing different degrees of physical damage. The scale of the dead changes the meaning of every earlier clue. The missing guards are not a temporary patrol failure, and the working lights are not evidence of safety. They are the mechanical remnants of a settlement whose population has already been killed.

The castle has suffered even more severe damage than the rest of the city. It bears scorch marks, melted stone, and weapon damage, suggesting that the destruction was concentrated at the seat of rule as well as spread through the streets. William Oh’s assessment becomes increasingly clear: a monster without conventional weapons killed the city, while Climbers killed the Lord. The working reconstruction is that another Lord transported an unknown species of monster into Oilton, attacked the Lord’s castle, and allowed the monsters to eliminate the rest of the population. The discovery therefore reveals both a massacre and a political assault, with the Stronghold’s ruler and civilian population destroyed by different but coordinated forces.

From Crime Scene to Containment Operation

The dead city remains strategically important because the oil infrastructure could produce millions of gold each month by selling crude oil to other Floors. Travis warns that his older siblings may arrive within weeks to reclaim it, making Oilton a contested economic prize even before its immediate dangers are resolved. William Oh therefore treats total destruction as a possible but undesirable fallback rather than an automatic solution.

The more urgent threat is the Tangled population inside the city. According to information supplied by the Jibleya, thirteen thousand Tangled are stalking Oilton, up from just under nine thousand three days earlier. Loth calculates a daily growth rate of 14.28 percent. The number is not merely a count of monsters; it is a timetable. A city already emptied of people is becoming a breeding ground whose population can overwhelm any delayed response.

The party’s plan turns the Stronghold’s infrastructure against that threat. Travis is assigned to lure the fire-motes toward the target, while William Oh, Loth, and the others descend into the water tanks, where the Tangled sleep at night, and rig the tanks to explode. The operation depends on timing, terrain, and machinery rather than a direct assault. The Tangled themselves demonstrate why: when one collapses in pain, a new head and torso bud from its body, pulling itself free until two Tangled wander away. Killing individual creatures does not necessarily reduce the danger; under the right conditions, the enemy reproduces through the act of suffering.

Explosion and Consequences

The plan’s pressure builds through the water tower and the oil system. A blinking light signals that the trap has caught someone, while steam begins to pour more heavily from the engines, gradually increasing pressure in the oil lines. About half an hour later, while William Oh and Loth are discussing Build strategy, Oilton explodes.

The destruction begins at the castle, where the over-pressurized main line ruptures beneath the structure and releases burning oil. The castle shatters, sending flaming boulders in every direction as a fireball rises into the sky, large enough to dwarf the mountain on which the party is positioned. William Oh can feel the heat from their vantage point. The discovery of Oilton thus ends not with a simple identification of the dead, but with the city’s industrial system becoming the mechanism of its final destruction.

Oilton’s dead-city event links military logistics, political violence, and nonlinear catastrophe. A strategically valuable mine is protected by natural elevation and weapons, yet those defenses do not prevent its population from being erased. The functioning pump and oil lines preserve the city’s economic value while also enabling its collapse. The Tangled’s 14.28 percent daily growth turns delay into escalation, and their ability to divide into new bodies makes ordinary attrition unreliable. By the time the party understands what Oilton has become, investigation, containment, and demolition have fused into one operation: the city cannot simply be reclaimed, because its surviving systems and multiplying inhabitants have made the ruin itself an active threat.