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 4137 ar Under the banner of the expansionist prince Haliad I, Cheliax unsuccessfully lays siege to Absalom for the first time, following up with three additional attempts in the next 3 centuries.

4307 ar The Pathfinder Society is founded in Absalom.

4606 ar Aroden dies, triggering the beginning of the Age of Lost Omens.

4717 ar The Fiendflesh Siege. Acting Siege Lord Wynsal Starborn orders the manumission of all slaves in Absalom willing to fight in defense of the city. Slave trading and slavery in Absalom is thereafter abolished by popular decree of the Grand Council.

4719 ar The current year. The same month that adventurers thwart the Whispering Tyrant’s surprise attack on Absalom, Watcher-Lord Ulthun II of the fallen nation of Lastwall and his decimated retinue arrive to a heroes’ welcome.

NOTABLE FIGURES

The following figures are important to Absalom and the Isle of Kortos.

SCION LORD AVID OF HOUSE ARNSEN, TERIARCH OF DIOBEL Lord Avid hopes to use the disappearance of Lord Gyr of Gixx to find a way to get himself named Primarch in his stead.

WYNSAL STARBORN The High Council named Wynsal Starborn, respected retired captain of the city’s First Guard, Siege Lord of Absalom during the Fiendflesh Siege of 4717.

WATCHER-LORD ULTHUN II Lastwall’s final Watcher-Lord fled to Absalom only months ago. This Nidalese paladin lord remains hugely influential even in defeat.

THE DECEMVIRATE The masked ruling body of the famous explorers’ organization known as the Pathfinder Society, this council is composed of 10 of the most experienced Pathfinders. 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.