The Black Port, a City in an Alleyway

"If you're reading this, chances are you already know about Black Port. Then again, this book might have been found on my corpse somewhere and published as is." Don't worry, only half of that sentence is true. "Either way, it doesn't matter to me. There are stories I want to share about black port, so many things I want to list down, but I think it's best I start small with how I first stumbled into my second base of operations.
I remember needing to head back to Hinterdale to pick up this strange commodity called batteries. One of Queen Sofidia's last inventions. Common nowadays, you've heard of them before. Tiny metal capsules filled with energy. Anyway, it was new back in the day and I just had to get some for myself. But then I saw two men slip into an alleyway. A knight and a man in a coat with an odd rifle. I thought to myself, "It couldn't be.... Deckard and Oskar?" My two idols, kings of the hunt, they've never failed a hunt before. Hearing that Deckard was after you is bad, hearing Oskar was with him meant that you needed to be close to your god. It won't stop them of course, but hopefully you'll be able to pass on with no regrets. WAIT I'M GETTING AHEAD OF MYSELF.
I followed them into the alley to see if I had finally met my heroes. But when I turned the corner, they were already gone. "That can't be right, they're good but they aren't witches." I started looking around, tapping on every tile of the road, every dumpster against the wall. I started jumping up and down to try to see if it was some sort of weighted entrance. I gave up.
I got tired of chasing hallucinations. "I need to pick up those batteries" I thought, but I was tired. I needed to sit down, so I sat on a box right beneath the window of Old Lady Abott's apartment when I heard something slide open from behind me. "What's the password" I heard a graveled voice whisper from behind me. A Green Lizarin maybe? I didn't have time to think that so I sputtered out the first thing I always say when confronted by a potential criminal. "Uh, I'm not a cop?"
And suddenly the wall behind me gave way and I fell backwards on my satchel. I heard glass shatter from the bag. "Ah, you must be new. Welcome to Black Port." The Lizarin man gave me a black enamel pin with a bullet on it. "Damn it, he was red" I would have thought, failing to predict his color by his voice, but I was more concerned about the jar of bees in my bag."

Purpose / Function

"After my harrowing first encounter at the entrance, I was subsequently forced downstairs into the guild's center where I saw a bustling, gigantic underground market filled with all sorts of illegal goods. Old era tech, stolen paintings, dangerous weapons, smuggled Moonkings and even BATTERIES! I saw the man that sold the batteries insert them into a strange device he called an "electronic flashlight". Appearantly it's like a normal flashlight except it doesn't use any Ether! No need for expensive Moonking Milk when you can get these tiny cheap tins for a third of the cost. I guess it's not all illegal stuff.
But the most notable thing, and possible the most haunting, was the giant pillars holding up Black Port that was covered from floor to roof in wanted posters, all varying in bounties and danger. I think this is some sort of quest board for bounty hunters. Biggest of all these pillars is what they call "The Trophy Case". Only the most dangerous and highest bounties go here. Posters here are rare, I only counted about 47. Small beans compared to the swathes of pillars everywhere else. Only high level hunts are put on the Trophy Case. Unlike other pillars however, when a hunt is claimed on the Trophy Case the poster isn't taken down. Instead, a cloaked man will climb up the pillar and cross out the poster with a large brush in one swift motion. Then he paints the name of whoever claimed it. An achievement, bragging rights among hunters. A name on the Trophy Case is the biggest honor among Hunters, but few ever go for it.
Mostly because smart hunters know that the target will be on high alert, and will display why they're so dangerous. Young fools rarely make it back. I was in complete fanboy mode when I saw that the most prominent name on the pillar was Deckard and Oskar, they've claimed 8 in total.
The second most prominent was a group of people who call themselves "The Dust". A roving band of assassins from the east, from what I've heard. I'm not sure who they are, all I know is that they've claimed 6 trophies. They've lobbed off the heads of Susane Ckarlinski and Shaw Ckarlinski, two very prominent nobles with a private army to rival Scalecrown's, a bounty that even Deckard and Oskar wouldn't touch. The Dust are a dangerous group indeed."

Alternative Names

Hinterdale's Hidden Half

Type

Market square