World premise
A playable world seed with consequences.
You arrive at Castle Garden in April 1894, the salt of the Atlantic still stiffening your only coat. Behind you lies a shuttered storefront in Ireland; before you sits a New York City that smells of horse manure, coal smoke, and the frantic ambition of a million strangers. Your former status as a restaurateur means nothing to the harried clerks or the 'padrones' looking for cheap muscle. You are currently just another body in a crowded tenement quarter where the price of a bed can rise or fall based on the whim of a ward boss or the arrival of a new steamer. Survival here is a matter of leverage: knowing who owns the stove, who controls the dock, and how to turn twelve dollars into a future before the city swallows you whole.
Economic hardship is tightening daily margins across the lower wards.
Local survival pressures are forcing new arrivals to choose between 'the Church' and 'the Machine'.
The smell of the docks and the heat of the basement kitchens define your immediate options.
Most openings depend on local trust, timing, and finding a gap in the established order.