Greaves Whale House



The Greaves Whale House is the main whale slaughterhouse of the Greaves Lighting Oil Company, located in the Rudshore Financial District in Dunwall.

Details
The Greaves Whale House is set in a large area at the edge of Rudshore, between buildings lined up along Agroosh Way and Ebenezer Causeway. It was founded by Ebenezer Greaves in the early 19th century. With the industrial revolution wrought by Esmond Roseburrow and Anton Sokolov, Whale Oil became an attractive market. Businessmen were quick to set warehouses specialized in processing whales at the edges of Rudshore, and attract workers with promise of better, safer work conditions. Among them, the Greaves Whale House grew rapidly, absorbing its rivals and dominating the whale oil trade. Eventually, auxiliary facilities such as the Greaves Auxiliary Whale Slaughterhouse 5 were set up elsewhere in Dunwall, notably Slaughterhouse Row, to handle the work overflow from the Whale House.

At its peak, the facility employed 300 workers, among them children filling minor but dangerous tasks. The Whale House had its own refinery for processing whale oil, separated from the slaughterhouse by a yard. The Whale House also had its own docks for Whaling Trawlers to unload their haul, and even a rail station connecting it to the rest of the city's automated transportation network.

The Whale House was closed after Rudshore's flood during the Rat Plague. The yard was flooded, and whale oil was left in the giant vats outside the buildings. Before its closure, the Whale House was using research from the Academy of Natural Philosophy to perform live collection of whale oil. Rothwild Slaughterhouse applied instead the new process, which led this rival company to break productivity records.