Absalom

Absalom boasts some of the finest—and oldest—buildings and monuments on the Inner Sea. Over nearly 5 millennia, Absalom has been built, rebuilt, and rebuilt again, resulting in a tapestry of architectural styles as diverse as the countless citizens and visitors who throng its streets and markets. Nearly a dozen districts huddle within the city’s walls, each as large or larger than the capitals of other nations,and each with numerous neighborhoods and intrigues tempting to both common residents and thrill-seeking adventurers alike. These districts include the following.

Ascendant Court

Shortly after raising the Isle of Kortos, Aroden used his newfound divine power to erect the Starstone Cathedral, a bewildering, ever-changing series of trapped passages and confounding chambers meant to thwart anyone who might follow in his footsteps. The cathedral perches upon a lonely tor at the center of a seemingly bottomless chasm at the heart of Absalom. Enormous, ostentatious temples to the great gods of Golarion ring the chasm and the ancient neighborhoods stretching out from it, flanked by lesser churches and shrines dedicated to deities mighty and forgotten. The district’s oldest temple of Aroden—the first of its kind in Absalom—is among the architectural triumphs of the Inner Sea. As perhaps the best symbol of the fall of Absalom’s founding father, the earthquake-damaged edifice now serves as the Embassy of Cheliax.

Azlanti Keep

Aroden himself designed and erected this multitowered fortified keep, and the structure’s traditional ancient Azlanti style has been widely imitated throughout Absalom and the Inner Sea region over the ages. The keep is the headquarters for the First Guard—Absalom’s army that polices external threats. The keep’s Grand Vault once served as a refuge for the city’s entire populace in dire emergencies, as it did during the First Siege, but although the vault is immense, the city’s population is now too great for all to shelter there. The vault also holds the huge tablets containing Aroden’s First Laws of Absalom, the foundation of its civic government.

The Coins

Much of Absalom’s mercantile activity takes place in this sprawling hive of crowded streets and teeming markets. From dawn to dusk, hawkers tout their wares to streetwise customers, haggling in a hundred languages amid bleating livestock, performing musicians, and the grind of wagon wheels on cobblestones. The city’s largest market, the Grand Bazaar, is said to contain nearly any object a buyer could ever want, provided they take the considerable time to search through the plaza’s hundreds of brightly flagged stalls and semipermanent shops to find it. By night, many of the district’s seedier neighborhoods become havens of violent crime, as pickpockets and thieves from the Puddles and the Docks wander north in search of heavy purses.
One of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the Coins was once one of its most lucrative: an elevated stone platform known as Misery Row, the center of Absalom’s now-outlawed slave trade. Today, the neighborhood is the center of a run-down slum avoided by the district’s famously corrupt watch (known cynically as the Token Guard). The squalid chambers within the raised causeway, formerly known as the Slave Pits of Absalom, are today inhabited by some of the city’s most desperate and depraved criminals.

The Docks

Absalom’s teeming waterfront is a district of taverns, flophouses, and warehouses echoing with sailors’ chanteys, barking dockworkers, and the trundling of wagons carrying cargo through crowded streets. Hundreds of ships from all over Golarion dock in Absalom’s harbor every day, and goods from scores of nations flow through the Docks to the city’s markets. A maze of half-sunken ships called the Flotsam Graveyard guards Absalom’s harbor from invasion by sea, as do detachments of the city’s navy and hippocampus-mounted Wave Riders, who patrol the Bay of Kortos and the waters around the Starstone Isle from their base in Escadar.

Eastgate

It sometimes takes 2 hours or more to get from Eastgate to districts on the far side of town, but most residents find the long commute a fair exchange for the relative safety of Eastgate’s cozy neighborhoods. A few manor homes of minor nobles peek above the thatched roofs of this district, which houses many more workers and artisans than hobnobbing members of high society. The Low Azlanti enclave of Gilltown—the city’s largest gathering of this ancient line of aquatic humans—is also found here, situated out of sight of major roads behind a row of inexpensive housing for the district watch, laborers, and clerks.
Eastgate’s verdant Green Ridge neighborhood is home to the Grand Holt, the oldest and largest tree on the Isle of Kortos. This multi-trunked fig tree spans several city blocks, with buildings demolished or modified to account for its increasingly fecund growth (especially in the last decade). Even as blights like the Tyrant’s Grasp and the Welt seem to rob Kortos of its vitality, the Grand Holt grows stronger year after year.
A fanatic cult called the Circle of Stones cares for the tree, as well as for Iolanthe, the immortal dryad queen who dwells within. The Holt provides a refuge for natureloving adventurers like druids and rangers, whom the cult hires to tackle all manner of adventures designed to further Iolanthe’s influence in the city and Greater Kortos.

Foreign Quarter

Absalom’s Foreign Quarter boasts whole neighborhoods that take on the character of distant lands. Taverns, hostels, and inns crowd the streets nearest the district’s largest thoroughfares, attracting those who come to Absalom by road or by sea to rest a while among cordial strangers chattering in a symphony of languages. Foremost among the district’s attractions is the Irorium, an immense coliseum that hosts gladiatorial combats, mock sea-battles, religious festivals, historical pageants, and more. The largest open-air arena on the Inner Sea, the Irorium boasts multiple public battles each day, and its gladiators count themselves among the city’s most influential celebrities. The imposing structure takes its name from Irori, and that deity’s clergy administers an influential temple and fighting college in the arena’s understructure that draws combatants from all over Golarion.
Not far from the arena is the Grand Lodge of Absalom, the worldwide headquarters for the Pathfinder Society adventurer’s guild. Beyond a massive gate bearing the Glyph of the Open Road lie seven ancient fortresses, each with its own function related to the Society’s worldwide affairs. Adventurers set out from the Grand Lodge on missions through Greater Kortos and far beyond, with all Pathfinder agents invited to return home to the Lodge every year for the order’s Grand Convocation, a boisterous occasion for information-sharing and engaging in friendly competition.

Ivy District

Absalom’s center of art and culture, the Ivy District boasts gorgeous manor houses, beautiful gardens, and equally alluring residents. Theaters, performance halls, and concert venues with worldwide reputations crowd the ivy-lined streets that give the district its name, as do dozens more with less savory standing. Performers and artists scrape by on the patronage of nobles, and bardic schools like the White Grotto train the next generation of performers. Perhaps due to its natural beauty, the Ivy District is particularly popular with elves and half-elves.

The Petal District

The wealthiest district in all of Absalom looks down upon the city from its perch on Aroden’s Hill. Brick-framed medians upon the district’s broad avenues stand lush with colorful flora, giving the district its name. The richest noble families and the most powerful merchant lords and guildmasters keep manors in the Petal District, ever striving to outdo one another with the ostentation of their estates. The city’s oldest academy of magical instruction, the College of Mysteries, is tucked among these wealthy mansions and caters largely to the youth of Absalom’s nobility. The irezoko, the enigmatic full-face magical tattoos of the college’s master students, are a badge of honor in the Petal District equal to the finest and most luxuriant of gowns designed by the city’s master tailors.

Precipice Quarter

Twenty years ago, a terrible earthquake sheared the cliffside district of Beldrin’s Bluff into the harbor below and collapsed many of the grand structures of what had been a carnival-like quarter of soaring pavilions, penny museums, cacophonous menageries, and stately manors situated around the three-towered demesne of the long-dead archmage Beldrin, a major figure of Absalom’s early years. In the wake of the catastrophe, the Grand Council effectively abandoned the district, leaving it to become infested with monsters and criminals. Acting Primarch Wynsal Starborn, himself a retired captain of Absalom’s First Guard, has rejected his predecessor’s laissez-faire attitude toward the district, and for the past 3 years his office has sponsored expeditions aimed at reclaiming the quarter. The efforts have met with some success, but among the reclaimed greenhouses and galleries are cursed mausoleums, flooded schoolyards inhabited by undead children, and other horrors. The Precipice Quarter is on its way to redemption, but considerable dangerous work remains to see the job through.

The Puddles

The slum district known as the Puddles has always been prone to flooding, but in the last decade things have grown increasingly desperate, with water now covering the majority of the district’s streets to the height of a human’s thighs or deeper. Those residents who refuse to flee (including no small number deliberately hiding out from Absalom’s city watch) have taken to building makeshift bridges and ramps between the district’s notoriously close-packed buildings, resulting in a vast and confounding network of skyways capable of delivering brave travelers with a strong sense of balance from one end of the district to another.

Westgate

This sleepy, largely safe residential district is home to mid-tier merchants, common shopkeeps, and up-and-coming citizens who can’t yet afford more expensive accommodation in the upscale neighborhoods of the Petal or Ivy Districts. Businesses mix with townhouses and flats where the district abuts the Foreign Quarter, but Westgate gets more residential as one approaches the city wall, with smaller homes giving way to modest manors and stately villas.

The Wise Quarter

Absalom’s reputation as a center of learning in Golarion dates back to its earliest days. Famed institutions like the Arcanamirium arcane school, Blakros Museum, and the great library of the Forae Logos contribute to Absalom’s academic pedigree, drawing knowledge-hungry students from all over the world. The Wise Quarter holds these institutions and scores more, and its broad avenues throng with students and instructors alike. The district is also home to Absalom’s civic government, including the ancient, monolithic meeting palace of the Grand Council and the honeycomb array of administrative buildings that serve its vast bureaucracy

Government

The web of control between the city’s primarch, Grand Council, Low Council, and other powerful actors is a complex one that can be manipulated by tugging on the right strand. Absalom’s factions and noble houses use their connections and sway to manipulate the workings of the city, from choosing who sits on the Low Council to the price of onions. This struggle for influence, known as the Shadow War, is something of an open secret, and those who know where to look can spot the political agenda behind seemingly pointless civil squabbles.

Industry & Trade

International trade lies at the heart of Absalom’s longevity and wealth, and remains fundamental to the realm’s independence and political strength in the greater Inner Sea region. Lumber harvested in the Immenwood travels by the Deluge River to Diobel or by road to Otari, and from thence to markets across the Inner Sea. Diobelian pearls, harvested from the oyster beds of Diobel’s shallow harbor, are considered among the finest available in the markets of the Inner Sea. Iron and other precious metals and stones mined on the island (especially by the dwarven mining enclave at Galizhur) feed Absalom’s many craftworks, whose products are exported worldwide. Skymetals harvested from the Diobel Hills or discovered on the ocean floor and traded to the city by Low Azlanti are among the most sought-after treasures in the world.

Assets

Alcohol/drugs, armor/weapons, books/lore, jewelry/gems, lumber, luxury goods and art, magic items, ores, seafood, ships, skymetal, textiles

Guilds and Factions

Firebrands , Knights of Lastwall , Pathfinder Society

Natural Resources

jewelry/gems, lumber, ores, seafood, ships, skymetal, textiles

Religions

Abadar
Cayden Cailean
Iomedae
Irori
Norgorber
Shelyn

Type

Capital

Population

303,900

Location under

Starstone Isle

Owning Organization

Grand Council

Characters in Location

• Goralias Dern