Vale
Setting
A neon city whose lights shine so brightly that the untrained eye wouldn't notice the criminal dealings in the shadows. That cafe with the kind baristas and excellent lattes launders money for the radical remnants of the old White Fang. The stores surrounding it include fronts for the rats of the city. Similar stories abound - when the police cut one down, three more grow back in its place.
Despite how crowded, dirty, and crime-ridden it is, people distract themselves with the city's thriving entertainment industry - holoscreens plastered around like billboards, myriad television and book series, live music on most blocks. Even the most disinterested Vale citizen can name at least one city celebrity, and that name probably belongs to the Fall Maiden.
Sights, Smells, Sounds: Fried food, neon, abundant lanterns, music of any variety, brewhouses, capsule hotels and apartments, salt air, heated conversations in dark alleys, mafia bookstores
Buildings: Stacked one on top of the other, fit together like books on a shelf. Brightly lit in every color from every angle. Cluttered - any open space there once was has been occupied by holoscreens broadcasting music videos, reality TV, and occasionally breaking news.
Defenses: Vale actually has the most of Huntsmen and Huntresses of all four kingdoms. Aside from those many warriors guarding its thick perimeter wall, and Vale's natural barriers, Vale cultivates its entertainment industry so the city is saturated with positive or superficial emotions.
NPCs and Factions
Clover Ashlyn
Everyone knows the show Combat with Clover, the reality TV show starring Clover Ashlynn wrecking Grimm. She wields dual pistol-
odachi that combine to become scissors, and her semblance is "reflections" - creating short-lived clones that mirror her previous battle moves.
Clover's screen persona is cheerful, confident, and receptive to product placement - or, it was, until the recent battle that amputated her hand. Now she's timid and depressed, and it's uncertain whether that's an act or not. Her show seems to be focusing on her recovery, but people searching for the Fall Maiden believe this is distraction from a lead. When the episode where Clover lost her hand was first aired, right before the feed was cut, a squall of fire was recording singeing the offending Grimm. Those few moments were cut out of all subsequent broadcasts.
Iron Thorn
After Blake reformed the White Fang into a peaceful political group, devout followers of Adam Taurus's doctrine operated underground to become the Iron Thorn. Their activities include stealing from human-owned businesses, running smear campaigns against the city's human leadership, and threatening (and carrying out) acts of violence as "retribution" for the "kyriarchy that humans created and benefit from."