As usual, here's the map showing the location of the neighborhood we'll be covering this week:

(As mentioned in the post looking back on the first three months of the challenge, I have all fifty-two neighborhoods named now, but there are no changes to the map since then except names for a few of the highways and ghostway lines. I've still really, really got to name those dang rivers. Okay, I'm going to set a goal of doing that before next Monday.)

"The Inches" is the collective name given to the small islands in the ocean just west of Lüm. The name comes from a dialect word for such islands; they were originally called that just as a description, and then it ended up sticking as a name. The Inches comprise a few dozen islands all told, of various shapes and sizes. Some of them have some greenery or even trees growing on them; others are little more than barren rocks. No bridges connect the Inches to the mainland, or (with a few exceptions) to each other; the only way to or from the Inches is by boat—or perhaps by swimming or flying.

By far the most populated of the Inches is Wolfstail Island, a large island on the western edge of the keys that holds the Wolfstail Penitentiary, Lüm's main prison (replacing the older prison in Watercastle). Wolfstail Island is an outlier, however, and most residents of the Inches don't count the inmates of the Tail (as the prison is informally called) among their number. Excluding Wolfstail, none of the Inches has more than a couple of dozen residents, and many of them are entirely uninhabited. Some of the residents of the Inches subsist by fishing; others commute to the mainland for work; a few are rumored to be pirates, though nothing has been proven. What they for the most part have in common is a desire for privacy and solitude; the Inches are not easily accessible from the rest of Lüm, and most of their inhabitants like it that way.

Even the inhabited islands of the Inches are relatively lawless (Wolfstail again obviously excepted, with the prison guards stationed there). The city guard rarely comes there; perhaps on occasion an intrepid guard takes a boat out to the Inches, but it's not a regular occurrence. For the most part, the low population of the Inches and the reclusivity of their inhabitants makes this seldom makes this a problem, but when a rare theft or murder does occur there, it often goes uninvestigated.

Probably the most notable site in the Inches, and certainly the one visible from the farthest away, is the Gargan Lighthouse, situated on and named after an island called Gargan Rock. The venerable lighthouse provides a guide and landmark for ships sailing to Lüm, or past it along the coast, its light and foghorn warning ships away from rocks and shoals and helping their navigators get their bearings. While formerly a keeper lived in the lighthouse to maintain and care for it, now that is mostly automated, and it is checked periodically by officials of the Port Authority but has no fulltime onsite keeper—although the living areas do remain from when it did, and from time to time people do stay at the lighthouse for a while as a form of a getaway or adventurous experience, with the Port Authority's permission—or squat there without the Port Authority's permission until they're found out. Rumors that parts of the lighthouse may be haunted do little to dissuade this.