The City at the Edge of the World

[O Senhor Leetz]

"The milk-blue waters of the southern seas quietly lapped against the sides of the aged carrack. For days the weathered boat seemed to have made no headway, caught in the doldrums of the tropics. The greater part of the crew slept off the rough hangovers of rough rum in makeshift hammocks while the ship bobbed listlessly under an impossibly hot sun. Amongst the lifelong sailors and gang-pressed unfortunates was a man, if he could indeed be called a man, that was quite unlike the others.

But this person was not different in a way that heroes are written to be; no, he was unlike the others because he was a coward and a dreamer. He was not on the boat by choice nor by force, but because it was the only option left to him in his soft and sordid life. He traveled not because of who he was or what he did, but what he had.

This thing he had was not gold nor iron nor arcana, but something beyond mundane. A small book, yellowed and smelling of pine tar, buried at the bottom of his now salt-stained satchel, was this thing. He knew what this thing held, of the intangible power written in crude script. But, not being a hero, he could not have cared less. He would have just assumed to smoke cigarettes and drink gin while the world burned around him (such was the power of the mangy book).

Nonetheless, that was not an option, as much as he wished otherwise. The book had to be delivered and fate decided that it had to be delivered by him.
And so this man who was not quite a man sat in the bowels of that sweltering ship, waiting and waiting for the fickle southern winds to take him west to the city at the edge of the world, the city known to all as Savior..."

[Rose-of-Vellum]

As Billie Holiday once sang, "Tell me more and more and then some."

[Nomadic]

Here is everything the reversion trashed

After weeks that dragged like years, the black-green coast of the Occident silently peaked above the sunset's horizon. Not long after that, the city of Savior was there, wherever there was. Docks sprawled out like skeletal hands of wood and warf. Birds and bugs, iridescent and incoherent, cawed and crowed and creaked - a hundred alien sounds compressed into a single voice. The man who was not a man was awoken by this sound, by these sounds. He sat up suddenly in his sweaty hammock, hit his head upon a beam, and quickly and efficiently vomited upon the carracks deck.
 
He looked around and was glad to see that the rest of the crew, none of whom was a friend of his, was already awake and working - nobody had bothered to wake him. As was usual, the man who was not a man had over-indulged and had over slept. He rolled his arm off his stale hammock, grabbed his tobacco pouch and rolled a crude cigarette. He wasn't sure if the dingy paper tube would help his throbbing head and sickened stomach, but he was willing to take the chance.

As would happen, the hand-rolled cigarette helped his head, but immediately made him retch again. He hoped he could make shore before the Quartermaster and Second Gunnery Sergeant realized that there was vomit in their bunks. The man who was not a man gathered what little belongings he had in that salt-stained satchel - a small flask of gin, a bag of tobacco, a knapsack of four books - The Ninth Prophecy of Saint Blanche, The Histories of the Lantern Kingdoms by D'Abo of the Olive, and The Blue-Eyed Knight and the Sea Maiden by Perepe, and, of course, that damned book with the yellowed pages and the stench of pine tar.

He crawled and stumbled his way up through the bowels of the carrack and, with more effort than he had possibly ever exerted in his entire life, sucked-up his hangover, puffed his chest, popped his shoulders, and walked off that damned carrack (not without grabbing a few things on his way out - a rusty knife, a nice leather coat, and a surprisingly comfortable hat, round and felt.

Once on the docks, away from the the sailers and slaves that paid no attention to him, he spit out the rolled cigarette he made a few minutes ago, found a stack of shipping crates into which he vomited (again), rolled and lit another cigarette, patted his salt-stained satchel to feel the book that smelled of pine tar, tightened the brim of his stolen felt hat and set off to find a woman he did not know in a city he had never seen along the coast of a new world that no one had charted.

The man who was not a man was a stranger in a strange city along a strange coast. He was hungover, broke, lost, and alone. He was as good as dead. But as fate would have it, this man would not be so fortunate as to simply die.

[Rose-of-Vellum]

Is this story now set in your "noir-esque, lightly steampunk-Bell Epoque setting based in an equatorial colonial city at the end of the world"? I get the climate, but not much else (e.g., the ship could have been described as a steamer, the clothes more Bell-Epoque, the writing more noir-esque). Then again, my major assumption could be faulty. 

[Weave]

I don't know what this setting is, but color me interested. Actually, is this even a setting or more a story of some setting? Your writing is engaging and reads easy - MOAR PLZ.