Culture and Customs
As one of the world’s major crossroads and oldest continuously inhabited cities, Absalom is a nexus of culture—a fact its citizens rarely let visitors forget. Yet for all its inhabitants’ braggadocio, Absalom truly is a product of countless cultures and their historical idiosyncrasies. Its four-millennia-old adaptations of Vudran customs intersect with barely-familiar evolutions of three-millennia-old Osirian greeting rituals, mixed with two-millennia-old elven recipes and millennium-old superstitions from the Shining Crusade. Yet from all its borrowed elements, Absalom has cobbled together a culture all its own, at once uncannily familiar and utterly unique.
Residents crave new experiences, which most can satiate by sampling unfamiliar foods or learning any of the city’s myriad languages. Some even seek out unpleasant experiences, reveling in the novelty of the discomfort and the knowledge that they’ll have an exciting story to share about the affair afterward. This mindset provides fertile ground for fads of all types—clothing, food, cults, impractical dueling styles, political ideologies, and more—most of which flare up and die out within a few weeks of ravenous consumption, preserved only in the cultural memory as snide jokes and worthless collections. On the other hand, those cultural movements and styles with true staying power can survive for years, leading many Absalomians to insist they’re the best crucible for innovations. Fortunately, Absalom’s laws and citizens are fairly forgiving of strange customs and actions, sustaining the city’s role as a testing ground.
No matter how inventive the craftspeople, trade sustains the city. The merchants know it, and anyone from wholesalers to street peddlers consider themselves superior to crafters (who occupy the social ladder’s middle) and laborers (who rank near its base). Money and political power influence these assessments, yet it’s not uncommon to see a fearless fruit vendor dress down an aristocrat. This soft power turns merchants into minor powerbrokers, serving as social patrons to their regular customers to make connections throughout the city.
For all their cosmopolitanism, Absalomians exhibit a short-sightedness regarding other nations’ traditions and relative importance. After all, as longtime citizens often posit, Absalom is the City at the Center of the World, where all other cultures vie for a place. Particularly after its disastrous Virtue Corps in centuries past, Absalom prefers to let the rest of the world come to it.
Restaurants rarely open this early; instead, enterprising vendors set up charcoal braziers along the streets, grilling traditional staples like flatbread, barbecued smelt, spiced finger potatoes, and sausages. These foods rarely last an hour past dawn, after which the street vendors pack up to begin other jobs throughout the city. By that point most other citizens have awoken and seek lighter fare like tea, rice porridge, buns, sour pancakes with lentil stew, beer, or fresh fruit. Much of this is prepared in homes, though by this hour many restaurants have opened for business as well.
Once the city’s workforce is in full swing—usually within an hour after dawn, contrary to its unfair reputation for indolence—Absalom bustles with activity, with crowded streets, news criers, jostling markets, noisy smithies, and the calls of myriad draft animals. Formally, trade commences in the Coins at dawn, though produce merchants are the most punctual, with other traders trickling in throughout the early morning. Those plying the Avenue of the Hopeful are more aggressive, setting up shop before dawn to catch the first pilgrims.
Several hours before noon, street performers emerge in force. The Street Performers and Actors’ Guild spreads accredited entertainers throughout the city, limiting the degree to which any guild members interfere with each other’s acts while also dispatching enforcers to chase unlicensed musicians from the guild’s turf. This provides the performers the perfect vantages to coax coins from passersby, in particular the tourists who regularly assemble for guided walks through historic neighborhoods, tours of the museums, and site-seeing expeditions bound for anywhere from the Starstone Cathedral to the Cairnlands’ most distant siege castles. Tourists who miss these expeditions often filter into the open-air plays operating throughout the city in the late morning, which offer admission for mere coppers.
Noon is an especially raucous hour. By then, public debates both philosophical and thaumaturgical have reached their zenith on sunny days. These compete with the numerous faiths that sound instruments, parade sacred relics, or light celebratory blazes at midday, in turn vying for attention from the sundry parades that crisscross the city throughout the year.
Come mid-afternoon, the city visibly settles, with citizens seeking out both shelter and the region’s traditional late lunch. This meal is the largest for most, consisting of heavy, calorie-rich foods such as roasted goat, leavened bread with honey, hard cheese, barley stews, casseroles, pastas, and savory pies. Absalom especially prides itself on seasonal seafood feasts, with restaurants serving wide plates loaded with calamari, whole squid stuffed with lemons, scallops, fish cakes, and stibbins (fried meatballs made of minced cockles, leeks, and breadcrumbs).
Those engaged in physical labor customarily spend the better half of an hour resting in the post-lunch shade, and most other Absalomians enjoy similar respites out of opportunistic solidarity. Once again, entertainers spring into action, competing for lucrative posts in the packed restaurants or setting up in parks to serenade dozing audiences. Barbers and bathhouses see their heaviest traffic then as well, with the afternoon siesta being an ideal time for workers to convene and socialize while cleaning up. For the predawn workers, this period often signals the end of their workday, and fishers pile into taverns to enjoy the so-called Salt Hour deals.
Within an hour of sundown, most workers have washed up and headed home. However, Absalom never truly rests. Thousands continue laboring, whether longshore workers unloading late arrivals or craftspeople finishing goods well into the night. It’s not only Absalom’s size but its prevalence of minor magic like supernatural light that sustains these atypical hours, and many shops and citizens own centuries-old fixtures still glowing from continual flame. Similar fixtures also illuminate theater performances and many restaurants, as well as the Irorium, which often hosts pre-dusk sporting events. For most, though, mid-evening is for supper, a light meal traditionally eaten in a large group of family, friends, and guests. Small dishes and spiced foods dominate, like cheese, olives, pickles, dates, yogurt, eggs, chicken with chilis, honey, and hummus, though supper’s also a favorite meal to intersperse seasonal favorites like fresh fruit, green salads, and shore candy (a fish salad served in a clam shell). During the summer, restaurants commonly set up large canopied extensions into the streets during supper hours, creating breezy outdoor spaces, and hire performers to draw in crowds.
Once the sky is dark, the nightlife has already begun. Year-round, people pack the theaters, wandering up to the Ivy District for the best shows. Whereas quieter pubs cultivate regular patrons, wilder establishments compete with one another with group discounts, drink packages, and even risqué performances. During the winter, these beer halls are packed with patrons escaping the chill, and during the summer, nobles and city officials regularly cordon off whole plazas to host dance events and concerts, laying down thick mats where cobblestones would make too uneven a surface for revelers. In the lead-up to winter and Cayden Cailean’s Ascendance Day, though, pub crawls become increasingly common—and larger as the air cools. Carousing worshippers huddle together for warmth, and the later sunrises enable longer reveling.
Yet even as the inebriated and overworked stagger home, Absalom is alive with activity. Thieves’ guilds like the Bloody Barbers busily smuggle goods and watch for opportune victims to mug, all the while evading the city’s watch. Numerous faiths also emerge, ranging from Norgorber’s acolytes plotting whispered schemes, to Urgathoa’s priests carting off spoiled food for their rituals, to the Groetan procession of Midnight Pilgrims who convene near the Starstone Cathedral’s moat to gaze within and contemplate doom. These groups languidly retreat as the first sun’s rays appear, heralding a new day.
Yet relief arrives within weeks. The warming Kortos Mounts draw in the Gozhome winds, pulling moisture from the Inner Sea and showering the Starstone Isle almost daily for the better part of two months. Residents work through or around these storms, either donning oilcloth capes to shed the warm water, ducking under cover, or just suffering the damp clothes. The rain facilitates yet more festivals, with the heaviest downpour often coinciding with—and providing cover for—Norgorberites’ celebration of their patron’s Ascendance Day on 2 Desnus. The Ivy District hosts Eminence, its annual presentation of at least a hundred plays performed across sheltered venues small and large. The Vudran festival of colors, Yolarati, begins early in the morning in Absalom, with the afternoon rains washing the myriad street chalk, body paint, and scattered pigments into rivers of color that flow into the petal-strewn harbor. The strong winds even fuel the kite enthusiasts’ latest creations, with the legendary Gala of Sails kite battles exploiting these gusts on 27 Gozran. Seasonal crops like peas, apricots, eggplants, and broccoli appear in many dishes, and the Vudran merchants and their spices arrive in force before departing to exploit the Obari Crossing’s westerly summer gales on their return voyage.
By early Sarenith, the storms abate, driven back by the dry, northwesterly Porthmos Winds that propel the Southern Tack trade route. Absalom becomes a clear-skied paradise that experiences little precipitation, and the beautiful weather draws out more than just its residents. Tourists from throughout the Inner Sea and northerly climes voyage to revel in the city’s summers. Citizens take this opportunity to clean out their homes and, because Absalom reserves most market stalls on the second Sunday of Sarenith so that citizens can sell their own possessions without license, many of the Kortos paraphernalia visitors buy in the early travel season are in fact unwanted (though sometimes unexpectedly valuable) heirlooms. No matter the occasion, the incoming groundnut harvest makes its way to street vendors citywide, each selling roasted peanuts in cones made from rolled leaves.
It’s no coincidence that most of Absalom’s biggest festivals occur in summer. The ostentatious Passion of the First Siege on 1 Arodus sees huge parades with revelers either bedecked in the regalia of Absalom’s original guards or costumed as fearsome minotaurs, harpies, and centaurs with masks, wings, and hairy legs crafted from papier-mâché or brightly dyed sisal. The processions converge on the Irorium, where actors playing Aroden and Voradni Voon lead their mock armies against each other in a light-hearted recreation. Not to be outdone, the Pathfinder Society has for centuries chosen mid-Arodus as the time for its Grand Convocation, a massive convention attended by Pathfinders the world over where the traveling scholars can show off their latest finds, boast about their exploits, display magical wonders, and compete in exhibitions of strength and skill. Yet perhaps the greatest celebration is the Radiant Festival, a once-per-century jubilee that commemorates Absalom’s victory over Kharnas the Angel-Binder during the 17th century’s Radiant Siege. The city spares no expense, inviting nations worldwide to send representatives and exhibits of their latest innovations and cultural accomplishments to show off. Even between celebrations, the warm nights and late sunsets encourage residents to socialize long into the evenings, making the most of the weather.
Amid the bustle, Absalom’s political scene spins up with would-be nomarchs and members of the Low Council hosting their own parties and sponsoring district-wide picnics as a chance to gather goodwill. Nearly every spell lord, law lord, and member of the Grand Council serves some ceremonial role during the festivities, and the primarch presides over the largest events. Meanwhile, the High Council secretly convenes in its annual meeting—the Exaltation of the Starstone—to discuss ongoing city policies.
As the Porthmos Winds subside in late Rova, the eastward Southern Tack accelerates, bringing with it not only a wealth of Rahadoumi traders, but also cold, nutrient-rich waters rushing in from the Arcadian Ocean. Sardine runs follow within weeks—just in time for the Kraken Carnival on 15 Lamashan, during which kite battlers compete in the westerly breeze. Absalom’s fishers set out that night in lantern-strewn skiffs to perform their traditional shark hunt, harpooning the largest that come to investigate the light and serving them the following day. The chillier weather also attracts Iomedaean pilgrims to observe their patron’s Ascendance Day on 6 Lamashan. However, Absalom’s clam-digging tradition long preceded the Inheritor, and many residents instead (somewhat sacrilegiously) spend the holiday recreating Iomedae’s “Eleven Acts,” which is to say, unearthing and eating eleven sawscale clams to kick off the shellfish season. The same week typically sees the city’s hardy medroberry trees’ fruits ripen. Although some farms cultivate the berry-like fruit to create seasonal brandy, Absalom law prohibits the commercial harvesting of the city’s medroberries, leaving them for the populace to pick and eat over the short two-week season.
By the end of the year, the Gozfrost again whips down the Kortos Mounts. Residents spend much of their days indoors when possible, emerging long enough to reach a tavern on 12 Kuthona and toast Cayden Cailean’s Ascendance Day with church-subsidized spirits. However, on the first day of the new year, nearly everyone emerges for the bonfires, camaraderie, and spiced cider that mark Absalom’s Foundation Day: a celebration of Aroden’s raising the Starstone as the city begins a new year.
Free Union: Several times, Absalom has instituted and abolished slavery, most recently just a few years ago when Siege Lord Wynsal Starborn offered freedom to any slaves who would aid Absalom during the Fiendflesh Siege. The outpouring of support effectively ended the city’s slave trade, and most of the freed people have remained in Absalom to make a new life for themselves. They are united by the recent siege and the knowledge that they fought for their freedom once and can do it again—a stance many have directed toward politics. Known as the Free Union, these advocates boldly push back against commercial and governmental practices they consider unjust. Their members organize strikes, protest Lord Gyr’s secret prisons, and increasingly seek seats on the Low Council to shape Absalom’s politics. However, the Free Union poses a threat to numerous noble houses, ancestral businesses, and other institutions, and some of these have begun hiring more guards to protect their holdings and propagandists to present the Union in a negative light.
Halfhanders: Growing economic disparity sparked Garev Halfhand’s “Reborn Rebellion” millennia ago, and the unchecked power Lord Gyr enjoyed in recent decades fomented similar discontent. Dissidents calling themselves Halfhanders have gathered in increasingly heated meetings, debating how best to dismantle Absalom’s unconscionably rich noble houses as a continuation of their eponymous saint’s unfinished quest for economic equity. Lord Gyr’s guards shut down several of these gatherings to the Halfhanders’ fury. The primarch’s recent disappearance has emboldened the movement in their fight for sweeping government reform. Several noble families have begun shifting their wealth out of Absalom in anticipation of violent conflict, and others have begun hiring their own spies to infiltrate the movement and dismantle it from within.
Starstone Celebrants: There’s no greater feat than attaining godhood, and the Starstone Celebrants would brag they have front-row seats. These enthusiasts frequent the Ascendant Court’s taverns, ever vigilant for those ready to take the Test of the Starstone. Touching the Starstone and passing its test grants a mortal godhood, a feat that ascended Aroden to divinity and has only been replicated by 3 others since: Iomedae, Cayden Cailean, and Norgorber. The Starstone Celebrants claim to trace their roots all the way back to Cayden Cailean’s drunken companions, who witnessed the swordsman enter and successfully leave Starstone Cathedral. Most others are skeptical of this grand history, as gawking at failure is a far older mortal tradition.
In the days leading up to an attempt, the Celebrants wine and dine the candidate while also coordinating elaborate betting pools on how far the candidate might make it before perishing; the group takes a cut of the proceeds, using it to pay the candidate’s tab and make generous donations to the Shrine of the Failed. Should a candidate succeed, the Celebrants stand ready to be the first to toast the new demigod’s health.
Between tests, most Celebrants find other entertainment and then return to the Ascendant Court when the next challenger appears. Other enthusiasts are even more diehard, gathering irregularly to debate past trials or identify new potential candidates whom they might encourage with avid letter-writing campaigns. The Celebrants lack any formal leader, though a rotating cast of coordinators help manage the parties and treasury.
Sword and String League: Absalom’s steady sea breezes do more than cool the city; they sustain an avid kite-flying community. Whereas flying kites is a pleasant pastime for many citizens, the Sword and String League’s members endeavor to outdo each other in good-natured competitions, ranging from who can fly the heaviest kite to conducting pitched duels against one another with razor-edged kites designed to shred their airborne rivals. The fighting circuit is especially fierce, with small groups of kite warriors convening to test their latest designs several times a month. The championship bouts must wait until the Gala of Sails and Kraken Carnival in Gozran and Lamashan respectively, and especially intense rivalries can build such a popular following that the Irorium itself hosts a grudge match. For all the smiles and camaraderie, the kite builders spare no expense in outdoing each other, and their demand for ever lighter, stronger, and more esoteric materials employs more than a few adventurers.
Tri-Stripe Society: Local legends claim an early primarch so adored badgers that he granted them the city’s full protection. Whatever the law’s true origin, it is illegal to kill or harass badgers in Absalom, and their exportation is carefully managed to avoid exploitation. Millennia of selective breeding has created relatively agreeable lineages with regal names like the argental, queen’o’shadows, and grizzleduke, and badgers are quite popular as pets, guard animals, and pest control. Numerous businesses cater to badger enthusiasts, selling treats and installing badger habitats to attract the creatures, much as one might lure sparrows with a birdhouse.
Whereas most appreciate badgers, the Tri-Stripe Society adores them. These fanciers not only promote badger ownership and advocate for their continued protection, but they also maintain hundred-generations-long genealogies of the most famous breeds, hold an annual competition for badgers, and sustain a cottage industry of badger accessories like embroidered caparisons and ceremonial barding. When feral badgers take over cellars, the Tri-Stripe Society is often first to the scene to ensure the badgers are kindly relocated or adopted rather than harmed—no matter how much property damage results from the new residents’ claws.
Hotspurs: While mercenaries and adventurers play a key role in Absalom’s defense when they’re hired to help out, some of those who think of themselves as defenders of Absalom cause more problems than they solve. Of particular note here are those who self-identify as “hotspurs.” In many ways, these swashbuckling troublemakers are akin to an inversion of the Firebrands (particularly in their self-centered outlooks, lack of compassion, and awful fashion choices). They claim to stand for the people against the oppression of the government, but in fact are much closer to true anarchists than anything approaching a freedom fighter. Certainly, the lack of any centralized leadership makes each individual hotspur gang a different potential problem for the city’s defenders, but with the right type of coaxing, subtle manipulation, and monetary encouragement, hotspur gangs can be used for the greater good—at least, in the short term.
Absalom’s citizens thrive on novelty, and few of the city’s industries are as innovative and generally popular as games. From Ivy District showrooms offering finely crafted game boards and beautiful artisanal drouge tablets to common laborers tossing dice on Dock District corners, games are everywhere in the City at the Center of the World. Casinos and gaming parlors like the Second Labyrinth draw players from across the sea, while manufacturer’s like Fenworth Gameporium innovate new diversions and export them to distant ports. Many of Absalom’s broadsheets and journals feature puzzles, like the popular “Wings of Zohls” series in the Sennight Star.
The following are some of the locally famous forms of entertainment.
Children’s Games: Absalom’s melting pot culture circulates dozens of different games around the schoolyards, including less rigorous versions of the sports below. Many children’s games find inspiration from the four Ascended gods, such as the jumping game Eleven Acts, the blindfolded tag game Which Way Cayden, and the sing-song combination skiprope/tag contest called No-No Norgorber.
Drouge: When Selmius Foster reinvigorated the Vudran spice trade, he also introduced Absalom to draj, a cutthroat game played with slender plaques bearing symbols representing various beasts. Local house rules have since evolved the game—now known as drouge, a Taldan bastardization of the original name—which has an especially strong following in Diobel. Cheap game sets made of painted wood make this fairly accessible, though gambling dens more often use the traditional ivory and obsidian game pieces carved with such creatures as the elephant, the crocodile, the wyvern, and the infamously unpredictable chimera. Drouge has become so intertwined with the Absalom gambling scene that playing a low-stakes game “just for fun” is considered a joke. Whereas polite society often looks down on anyone carrying drouge tiles, owning a fine set is a sign of esteem in gambling communities.
Music and Theater: Absalom hosts thousands of public performances each year across dozens of venues, many in the Ivy District, which is famous for its entertainment scene. Routines vary wildly: Chelaxian opera, Jalmeri traditional dances, Nexian illusion displays, and even avant-garde gnome aerobatics are regular occurrences. Theaters compete to fill seats, driving the demand for new content. The result is a cycle in which performances become increasingly experimental, risqué, or rushed before the theaters default to more traditional fare after exhausting their audiences’ appetite for gimmicks and oddities.
Immense venues such as the Grand Dance Hall of Kortos help bring the arts to the masses, often setting aside considerable space for free, standing admission. Other residents prefer the open-air music provided by the Street Performers and Actors’ Guild. As the city’s premier bardic school, the White Grotto plays a massive role in shaping each upcoming decade’s artists and trends. However, it is the Ivy Playhouse that shapes the next fads, for it is there that artists witness each other’s newest works, inspiring new styles that quickly sweep across the city.
Rickets: Whereas drouge involves skill and finesse, rickets is a high-energy, “press your luck” dice game that’s popular with desperate and gutsy gamblers alike. Gameplay alternates between die rolls and bidding, with braver players staying in the game longer in order to bet on increasingly unlikely rolls. However, the game is legendary for the lucrative odds, and a truly lucky gambler can walk away with a lifetime’s earnings in one night.
Rumples: Played with a deck of 48 numbered cards, rumples tests its players’ memories, bluffing, and mastery of ciphers. During the first phase, the dealer deals the cards equally to each player, plus one pile for the house. Players can fold, notch, or mark their own cards in any way that doesn’t utterly mutilate the card, and all of the players can mark the house’s cards. Afterward, the cards are flattened, shuffled together, and dealt in small face-down hands to each player. Play continues with players trying to assemble valuable card combinations, relying entirely on their recollection of their own marks to identify which cards they and their opponents have been dealt—and bluffing the rest of the time. After several rounds of dealing additional cards and bidding, the highest-scoring hand wins. Traditionally, a group plays five sets before destroying the deck and starting over.
Rumples is not a game for the inexperienced or intoxicated. Eight different card-marking conventions have evolved, and players regularly experiment with other “vocabularies” that their opponents might not recognize. Although an adept gambler can grow rich off of newer players, the real winner is the Fenworth Gameporium, whose printing press has produced hundreds of rumples decks daily without fail for the past 50 years.
Sports: Absalom borrows a wide range of physical sports from immigrant populations, many of them played by semi-professional teams in the Irorium. Katapesh’s ruk, a game in which 10-person teams attempt to knock a sand-filled ball through rings, has an especially strong showing, and several national teams compete in annual grudge matches—often with mercantile leaders betting on the outcome to determine elements of upcoming trade deals. Gladiatorial games are also quite popular, and the Irorium hosts numerous bouts per day.
However, Absalom takes greater pride in deskata, an urban obstacle race involving three-person relay teams. Adapted from a Taldan Army of Exploration training drill during the Age of Excess, deskata has evolved into a homegrown sport that requires intense athleticism, street smarts, and willingness to dodge through crowds to gain an edge. Monthly competitions trace unique routes through the city, often adding in additional objectives like tagging the tops of key buildings. Somewhat typically, these routes avoid the Puddles, where the working-class residents claim to house the most talented amateur deskata runners.
With its ample coastline, Absalom embraces aquatic sports. More privileged athletes enjoy boating and even hippocampus racing, whereas even the most destitute can afford to swim. However, the harbor’s cleanliness is suspect, and those of means travel outside the city in search of clearer waters.
Towers: Whereas many fortunetellers consider the harrow deck a sacred divination tool, much of Absalom nonetheless delights in the sacrilegious gambling game of towers. After laying out the six neutral-aligned harrow cards on a surface, players compete to play their own cards atop these “foundation cards,” in a variety of suit combinations and card arrangements. Those who can’t legally lay down more cards of their own each round have to pay coins to the other players. Due to its combination of strategy and luck, towers is especially popular throughout the city.
A special committee of the Grand Council known as the Crier’s Table is the nexus for all official communications from the city’s government to its inhabitants, and oversees Absalom’s thriving publishing industry. Composed of a half-dozen members of the Low Council and reporting directly to First Lady of Laws Neferpatra of House Ahnkamen, the body drafts public declarations of new laws and other governmental decrees. It administers a corps of official town criers to relay this information at designated “crier’s corners” positioned throughout Absalom. By the diligent dedication of the Crier’s Table and their agents, decrees of the Grand Council can reach ears across the city within hours of their proclamation under the Conclave Dome.
The citizens of Absalom’s neighborhoods often develop a special rapport with their local criers, the most beloved of whom enjoy celebrity status in their assigned areas. Most criers supplement their usually staid official pronouncements with current events and even gossip about the city’s nobles and public figures, bringing a personal touch that can often draw citizens out of their way to hear the latest from their favorite mouthpiece. Popular criers often serve their assigned areas for decades, so long as they maintain the good will of the local populace. The Crier’s Table swiftly replaces unpopular criers, which leads to a bias toward positive news that breeds cynicism among the wiser folk of Absalom, but which plenty of citizens slop up eagerly—or more likely pay half an ear whilst walking past on the way to work.
Other cities and cultures across Golarion certainly have access to printing presses, but few locales even come close to Absalom’s embracing of the medium of print. The citizenry’s ravenous appetite for one sheets, chapbooks, newspapers, and fliers constantly pushes the city’s publishers, be they guilds or individuals, to continue feeding the public’s hunger for information. Innovations in print happen infrequently as a result, for publishers barely have enough time as-is to keep up with their beloved customers’ demands for much, much more!
While the printing of legitimate information is often regarded as a mark of professional pride, not all who have access to a printing press are trustworthy. Those eager to line their coffers or hoping to push personal agendas sometimes fan the flames of scandal in order to increase profits. These publishers print completely false accounts or fanciful creations— fiction disguised as fact—that can end up shaping history rather than simply reporting on it. While the goals of Absalom’s publishers and media moguls change with each generation (or often multiple times in a single generation), media bias remains an inexorable element of the city’s printed culture. An informed reader should make sure to not only keep an open mind, but to do their research on the source of the words they read and to foster skills at reading between the literal lines if the truth is what is desired.
Absalom’s thriving print culture of newspapers, broadsheets, and pamphlets developed with the advent of the printing press centuries ago, but the key ingredient of the primordial soup from which it emerged was the sense that the sanctioned criers of the Grand Council did not always tell the whole truth, and that the public would be better informed if left to discover the truth for themselves, rather than wait for their leaders to frame the conversation for them. Most of the city’s publishers and nearly all of its large-scale printmaking operations are centered around Scrivener’s Square, not far from the Grand Council Hall in the Wise Quarter. Originally named for the scriptoriums that once transcribed the words of official criers into hand-written decrees for distribution to the courts and prominent citizens, the bustling neighborhood is today home to the broadsheet publishers and pamphleteers who replaced the scribes after the arrival of printing presses and movable type. A civic fountain that locals call the Inkwell stands at the center of the square, swarmed by barking newsboys and frequented by off-duty clerks, young journalists, and servants collecting newly printed broadsheets for their wealthy patrons. When a particularly popular story, like a murder spree or the preparations for an upcoming festival sweeps the city, the crowds here swell in the early morning, as citizens hope to be the first to read of the latest happenings.
Absalom’s citizens have countless options among the printed material offered every morning in Scrivener’s Square and on busy corners all across the city. Partisan publishers distribute propaganda for every ideology under the sun, while independent pamphleteers produce material ranging from the mundane to the pornographic. In theory, all printed matter produced in the city must be reviewed and stamped with approval by the Crier’s Table and deposited in the Forae Logos before it can be distributed, but in practice this applies mostly to the larger concerns that benefit from government cooperation. This publication schedule accommodates a careful review by the much feared and respected Gressil Kluun, the Table’s so-called “Red Redactrix,” under whose careful scrutiny all printed matter must pass. Most publishers skip both of these steps in the interest of timeliness, risking censorial ire after the fact. As a formal committee of the Grand Council, the Crier’s Table has the authority to shut down presses and even imprison publishers guilty (or even suspected) of sedition, but such action has led to riots within the living memory of the city’s elves, dwarves, and gnomes, thus the Table is reticent to use its full powers of suppression unless they feel it absolutely necessary to protect the city’s vital interests.
While the printing of legitimate information is often regarded as a mark of professional pride, not all who have access to a printing press are trustworthy. Those eager to line their coffers or hoping to push personal agendas sometimes fan the flames of scandal in order to increase profits. These publishers print completely false accounts or fanciful creations— fiction disguised as fact—that can end up shaping history rather than simply reporting on it. Other cities and cultures across Golarion certainly have access to printing presses, but few locales even come close to Absalom’s embracing of the medium of print. The citizenry’s ravenous appetite for one sheets, chapbooks, newspapers, and fliers constantly pushes the city’s publishers, be they guilds or individuals, to continue feeding the public’s hunger for information. Innovations in print happen infrequently as a result, for publishers barely have enough time as-is to keep up with their beloved customers’ demands for much, much more!
Absalom’s most popular and longest-running broadsheet is the Sennight Star, a double-sided fold-over four-page weekly focused on local affairs, government news, reports of the Irorium’s pageants and battles, and tame gossip regarding prominent citizens. The Star’s famous embellished masthead incorporates the formal seal of the Crier’s Table, its coverage being so safe and straightforwardly partisan in favor of Absalom’s interests that the approval of censors is a foregone conclusion.
Far more subject to government scrutiny is Eyes on Absalom, a relatively young illustrated broadsheet that focuses almost exclusively on the criminal, the lurid, and the sadistic—and which is growing in popularity with each new issue. Edited with an almost diabolical focus on titillating tales by the cantankerous Layton Bryne and published by the ruthless Reginald Vancaskerkin, Eyes has spawned a spate of imitator crime rags that are just as popular, triggering a lot of fretting about the degradation of Scrivener’s Square, with uptight critics damning the entire print business for the sensational extravagances of relative newcomers. The prudish scolds of Absalom’s cultured society demand that the Crier’s Table take action against the paper, but the lavishly illustrated editions usually sell out long before they can be seized or recalled.
A monthly journal called Anon & Afar brings news from beyond the Isle of Kortos, usually reprinted from foreign broadsheets brought to the city on ships from distant ports and assembled by the publisher’s dedicated, multilingual staff. While general weeklies like the Sennight Star, Mother’s Message, and Ear to the Inner Sea often contain more timely shorter news items communicated through divination or other mystic messaging, Anon & Afar presents articles of far greater depth and far wider scope, with editors endeavoring (but seldom succeeding) to include in every issue at least one item from each of the nations of Avistan and northern Garund.
Those seeking news closer to home but still outside the city walls consult the Kortos Quorum, a biweekly paper focused on the latest news of Starstone Isle itself, Absalom excepted. Heavily supported by the Kortos Consortium, the Quorum contains a great deal of political material in opposition to Absalom’s trade guilds, as well as vicious criticism of Lord Avid of House Arnsen, the Consortium’s most hated foe. While the paper purports to cover the whole of the Starstone Isle, in function most articles concern the affairs of Diobel, Meravon, and the Swardlands, rarely reporting on events of the Dunmire, Kortos Mounts, or the Scrape. Amusingly, the Quorum claims to have a correspondent stationed in the distant ruined town of High Harbor, publishing amusing and imaginatively written reports of impossible goings on there to the delight of Absalom’s most whimsical readers. The folk of Kortos themselves appreciate the journal’s coverage of farming, fishing, and forestry, as well as its detailed almanacs that often incorporate elements of folk magic.
When not churning out the latest reports, many of the presses in Scrivener’s Square and elsewhere are put to use printing handbills, poems, and other single-sheet items of ephemeral interest to news consumers. These range from weekly indexes of the ever-changing stalls of the Grand Bazaar, to betting tipsheets for beast races and bloodsport, to advertisements of employment opportunities for laborers, performers, and even adventurers. This last category is especially popular with fraudulent publishers, who churn out mass-produced treasure maps and shopworn riddles to exploit credulous thrill seekers. The least harmful of these contain nonsense codes and directions to nothing, while the truly dangerous lure the gullible into undercity traps and muggings. Explorers in search of more trustworthy paths to unclaimed treasures are encouraged to consult back volumes of the Pathfinder Chronicles, which almost always fetch impressive prices in the city’s secondary markets.
While there’s no denying that Absalom’s broadsheets, books, and pamphlets influence the attitude of its citizens and even the culture of the Inner Sea region itself, the majority of Absalom’s inhabitants spend very little, if any, time reading. To stay abreast of current affairs—if they bother to do so at all—these folk most often turn to a local phenomenon known as event-plays. So long as a public performance is out of doors and refrains from “artistic embellishment,” its participants are technically exempt from the stringent membership requirements of the Street Performers and Actors’ Guild. Young actors aspiring to greater things and washed-up entertainers out of favor with the guild often stage impromptu reenactments of current affairs on the street, paying themselves on meager tips from their often-illiterate audiences. Due to the guild decree, event-play performances are seldom truly entertaining, which somewhat limits their appeal. A loophole in guild bylaws—included in the interest of Absalom’s children—exempts acts involving puppets from the artistic embellishment clause, resulting in a rash of increasingly popular and emotionally riveting puppet performances that are beginning to draw aggressive and resentful guild monitors. The prospect that more citizens now get their news from puppets than from the printed word is starting to fill some publishers of Scrivener’s Square with the first twinges of outright panic.
Not all of the information exchanged in Absalom is fit to print. The Shadow War between the city’s many factions all but ensures that someone is always watching and listening, and that valuable information—especially valuable secret information—seldom goes to waste. Several information brokers of international renown (and international reach) can be found in Absalom. Lady Dyrianna of House Avenstar, the head hetaera of Calistria and consul of the Courtesans’ Guild, controls perhaps the most knowledgeable and valuable information network in the city. Guild courtesans and her temple’s sacred companions ensure that her network’s most prized and pricey secrets are of a salacious nature, and while the influential and alluring noblewoman has an army of admirers, so too does she leave a broken collection of enemies behind her, their secrets exposed to foes wealthy enough to procure them. Dyrianna’s agents never work against the Grand Council, but she has extensive contracts with many of the city’s houses, and is behind many of the public humiliations endured by their enemies.
The following are draft animals, mounts, and vehicles commonly encountered in Absalom.
Camels: Generations of Keleshite and Garundi influence have popularized camels, which see use as mounts, beasts of burden, and even as farm animals. The preponderance of camels means that camel tack, barding, and accessories are as common as their equivalent for horses.
Caravans: Convoys and wagons enter through Absalom’s many gates, carrying a variety of lumber, produce, ore, and other goods from the island’s interior and nearby settlements. This cargo is subject to the same inspection as shipborne goods, causing logjams during harvest season and major market days. For those willing to travel overland, though, there are countless caravans ready to escort travelers to nearly any settlement on Starstone Isle.
Dogs: The humble canines’ omnivorous natures and relatively compact frames give them an advantage in dodging through crowds and navigating narrower streets. Dog-drawn travois are the tool of choice for many halfling porters, and the familiar scraping of these frames echoed through Absalom for centuries as the operators delivered their goods. However, the once-common travois is rarer following the Beautification Act of 4711 AR, which included a provision to restrict travois use (ostensibly to limit damage to the city’s streets). Some halflings defiantly continue their traditional craft and continue to fight the legislation in courts, though most have transitioned to dog carts.
Elephants: Even with Absalom’s productive farms and great wealth, maintaining an animal the size of an elephant in the city is tremendously expensive. Nonetheless, about 20 elephants reside in the city at any given time, typically used for prestige tasks such as ferrying important dignitaries, providing menagerie displays, and leading parades—particularly in Eastgate. The First Guard maintains six battle-trained elephants as part of an ancient cavalry unit that survives largely for ceremonial purposes, though the beasts served with distinction during the “Machine Mage” Karamoss’s siege. The somewhat smaller elephants from southern Casmaron have long been Absalom’s favorite variety, both due to the elephants’ purported descent from those Khiben-Sald brought with him millennia ago, and because handlers consider elephants from eastern Garund too aggressive for urban use. Despite their cost, elephants are a sure way to turn heads, though elephantine transport within the Ascendant Court and Coins is allowed only with special city permits.
Hippocampi: These aquatic equines serve primarily as steeds for Absalom’s Wave Riders cavalry, and while the local azarketi are willing to rent out hippocampi to small groups, most of the steeds see use in a strictly military capacity.
Horses: Horses are just as popular in Absalom as they are anywhere else across the Inner Sea region. Several breeders in the Swardlands fill the need for domestic stock, while new varieties from all over the world arrive regularly via Absalom’s harbor.
Marine Monitor: Among Absalom’s more ancient and unique mounts are the marine monitors, largely herbivorous lizards that inhabit the island’s rockier coastlines. Generations of selective breeding have diminished their dorsal spines and increased their size, such that they’re large enough to carry several human-sized passengers. However, the monitors’ lashing gait makes most queasy, their swinging tails mean they’re barred from most markets, and the lizards stubbornly refuse to work unless properly warmed by mid-morning. To their credit, though, the amphibious lizards are adept swimmers, and riders who don’t mind getting a little wet sometimes hire them to move goods about the Puddles.
Ships: Nearly all traffic to the Isle of Kortos occurs by ship, and most international vessels enter Absalom directly through the Flotsam Graveyard with close guidance from the Pilots’ Guild (for a modest fee). Vessels carrying less than 500 pounds of cargo or fewer than seven people are exempt from this service, and it’s the rare larger ship that snubs the guild’s expertise and doesn’t end up wrecked on Absalom’s artificial reef. Fortunately, most ships handle this fee as part of their fare when ferrying passengers to and from distant ports, with cities such as Almas, Cassomir, Katheer, Niswan, Oppara, Ostenso, and Sothis as the most popular destinations. Traffic from Katapesh is fairly light, thanks to a longstanding tariff Absalom placed on its perceived competitor’s goods, though the Low Council has recently eased that tax noticeably on most products. Travelers wishing to skim the island’s coast can board the ferries that set out daily from the Docks, with a few boats even setting off from Shoreline and other nearby settlements.
Riding (Terror) Birds: Introduced to the Isle of Kortos early on, riding birds (known as terror birds in other regions) make for fearsome mounts and even chariot draft animals. However, the birds’ carnivory makes them difficult to maintain and keep under control. The city watch maintains a set of guidelines for commands a terror bird must be able to recognize and follow in order to be allowed through the gates without wearing a muzzle, loose fetters, or both, whereas state approved birds are provided a prominently-displayed blue tassel to affirm their relative safety. Outside the city, terror birds are quite popular for travelers and merchants, who value the birds’ fearsome demeanors and self-sufficiency in a fight.
Ugvashi: These large, razor-plated pangolins have their origins in distant Casmaron. While they are too small for the typical citizens of Absalom to use as a beast of burden, many of the smaller peoples of the city use them as pack animals, with halflings in particular known for their love of ugvashis. Their dangerous plating can cause a lot of damage to the inattentive. As a result, most ugvashis are flanked by their owners on either side, both for the safety of others and also as a way to fend off any bystanders looking to pet the ugvashi.
Azlanti (0–420 AR): Aroden shaped Absalom to match the Azlanti model of perfection he knew. The abundance of green, gold, and divinely generated marble facades housed Absalom’s migrants for their first several decades. Afterward, the citizens replicated their patron’s style by incorporating broad domes, vast amounts of glass, and toweringly thin spires into their buildings—features that survive in Azlanti Keep, the Starstone Cathedral, and a handful of other sites. Likewise, the original city included significant quantities of throneglass, a green glass as hard as steel and not replicated since Ancient Azlant. Ultimately, this style of construction was too pricey to maintain after Aroden’s departure. When domes collapsed centuries later, citizens incorporated the fallen glass into circular mosaics in the renovated buildings.
Taldan (140–2920, 3760–4137 AR): Aroden’s faith spread swiftly in Taldor, and Taldan migrants to Absalom brought their straight-walled architecture with them. Much of the city’s early expansion involved these painted brick designs, bilateral symmetry, ornate entryways, and superficial exterior columns. The evolving style reached its zenith during the 2000s, though it fell out of favor swiftly following the Blue Lords’ departure in 2920 and the accompanying backlash against Taldan culture.
Osirian (200–576, 1532–2255, 2920–3250 AR): Although Osirian migrants designed numerous low pyramids around newly-formed plazas, their architectural sensibilities manifested more in subtle ways, such as the division of sacred and mortal spaces within homes. The earliest pyramid platforms were gradually decommissioned and transformed into small acropolises, particularly in what are now the Wise Quarter and Westgate.
Kortos Preclassical (400–750 AR): With Aroden’s departure, Absalom struggled to maintain the elegant Azlanti style, so its inhabitants explored their newfound independence through innovation. The Kortos Preclassical phase was outwardly blocky; however, building interiors boasted inlaid, polished timber from the Immenwood, and exteriors were brightly painted, in contrast to the stark Azlanti stonework.
Vudran (537–1325, 4340–4500, 4612 AR–present): Maharajah Khiben-Sald’s visit inspired an obsession with Vudran culture. New construction incorporated thin interior colonettes and geometric mosaics, with great arches and crested entrance towers decorated to convey a sense of the owner’s wealth and influence. Onion domes were especially prevalent around 560 ar, though competition to create the largest domes triggered catastrophic collapses that discouraged the feature for decades.
Nexian (580–1312, 2920–3760 AR): The sprawling, palatial designs of Nex only grew in popularity after the archmage Nex’s disappearance—before which Nex’s attempted invasion of Absalom had made his styles uncouth. Nexian construction emphasized impossible elements made manifest with arcane aid, ranging from woven stone walls to hovering annexes. Its elegance swiftly overshadowed contemporary Osirian structures.
Kortos Classical (700–1530 AR): Begun as a counterpoint to Vudran and Nexian designs, the Kortos Classical style reveled in the use of massive, interlocking stone blocks for monumental architecture. Pricier buildings often featured four-sided pyramidal glass peaks, and homes often incorporated rounded towers budding from one corner.
Tian (1308–1630, 2920–3060, 4315–4645 AR): When the Tian junk the Resplendent Phoenix arrived in Absalom, the citizens ravenously replicated the architecture found in the ships’ many woodcut illustrations. Swooping, multi-tiered roofs began shading the streets as neighbors competed to boast the broadest eaves; derelict buildings were cleared away to make room for elaborate gardens; and interior designers adopted the Tian emphasis on creating private spaces.
Kortos Post-Classical (1465-1730 AR): Garev Halfhand’s rebellion drove Absalom’s aristocrats to invest in public works and spaces, driving the Kortos Post-classical’s broad plazas, ramps, and columned pavilions. Homes increasingly featured upper-floor verandas and decks, and vast, multi-story apartments proliferated in this period.
Kortos Conservative (1620–2110 AR): As fears of Ulon and Norgorber grew following Kharnas’s invasion, Absalom dramatically scaled back its use of columns, swooping eaves, and defensive features in buildings, all of which sheltered spies and thieves. Instead, wood construction with smooth exteriors were common, and whitewashing surfaces became standard to better pick out intruders at night.
Kortos Vulgar (1993–2790 AR): The Age of Excess suffered from inferior construction materials. Most infamous was salt brick, a mud brick mixed with the abundant seawater rather than fresh water. The result was a brick that degraded rapidly. The decaying buildings resulted in near-continuous construction, narrow profile structures, interlacing split-level apartments, and an ever-growing accumulation of material later dubbed “Mount Absalom.”
Keleshite (1920–2920 AR): Qadira’s broad windows, breezy courtyards, and bright domes spread across Absalom with the Cult of the Hawk’s growing influence. Its spacious, sheltered porches and awnings still appear throughout the city’s markets.
Castrovelian (2638–2910 AR): When elves returned to Golarion, Absalom paid handsomely for the alien architects to create interplanetary constructions. Those delicate structures that remain preserve a snapshot of Castrovel’s styles at the time, complete with curving walls, upper-story bridges between homes, and aiudara portal-style doorways.
Kortos Revival (2920–3730, 3824–4055 AR): After expelling countless foreign agents, Absalom rebuked Keleshite and Taldan designs with a revival and adaptation of old styles that emphasized exterior columns, heavily carved eaves, stucco traced with swirling patterns, and a preponderance of flat roofs where citizens increasingly slept.
Azlanti Revival (3235–3835 AR): The resurgence of hunting lodges brought with them a romantic notion of old Azlanti ideals, reflected in these new lodges. Heavy use of glass, domes, and radial symmetry strove to recreate Aroden’s original vision for the city. This was particularly popular with the nobles, many of whom maintain estates of this style.
Chelaxian Independent (4090–4660 AR): Following its independence, Cheliax developed its own styles that gradually migrated to Absalom. This period’s steeply stepped exteriors supported towering edifices with sharp, square facades. Despite the severe appearances, these buildings boasted large, high-ceilinged interiors to overwhelm visitors. Many of these buildings have been renovated in the last century to avoid negative connections to Cheliax.
Kortos Neoclassical (4138 AR–present): Modern architecture favors a pristine beauty with painted white stone walls, red tile roofs, and vast arrays of small arched windows.
Most of Absalom’s oldest buildings center around the Ascendant Court, where Aroden’s early cult established a number of enduring monuments in the city’s earliest days. The oldest of these—including the Starstone Cathedral at the heart of the district—were created via Aroden’s earliest act as a god, formulated from the island’s rock by sheer divine will. These structures remain sturdy nearly 5000 years later, though some have begun to fail in the century since Aroden’s death. Azlanti Keep was built to Aroden’s design (if not by his sheer force of will). City lore holds that Aroden rested beneath the boughs of the Grand Holt after raising the Isle of Kortos. While this seems improbable, there is little doubt that the enormous tree has thrived for nearly as long as Absalom itself.
While the towering spectacle of the Spire of Nex out in the Cairnlands is, without contest, the tallest structure on Kortos (and quite possibly the whole of Golarion), Absalom proper features numerous spires whose heights are rivaled only rarely in other ports of call. Absalom’s tallest structures are:
Aroden
While the church of Aroden no longer functions as a religious order, the church of Aroden as a political institution still lives on a century after its god’s apparent death. With nearly 5,000 years of dominance in Absalom’s civic and religious affairs, the presence of the Last Azlanti and his clergy is felt everywhere in Absalom, from the Founding Laws Aroden inscribed upon giant stone tablets to create the city’s government to structures like Azlanti Keep that are said to have been constructed according to his specific design. The Last Azlanti personally dwelled in the city in its earliest centuries, and Absalom has served as his religion’s holiest pilgrimage site for millennia. Even a century after his death, statues of his ascension, often grasping the Starstone, are ubiquitous in the city as are his winged eye holy symbol, twelve guises, and other common motifs.The Absalom Mindset
Absalom thrives on ideas—new ideas, foreign ideas, and lucrative ideas alike. With strange cultural intersections woven deep into its history and a cathedral capable of transforming anyone (and their ideas) into the divine, Absalomians often believe that dedication and devotion to any ideal, no matter how abhorrent, has intrinsic value. As a result, even beliefs and cultures strictly banned elsewhere can find an open-minded audience and, with proper passion, the most pious philanthropists and heinous demagogues can gather a curious audience within minutes. As patient as Absalomians seem with strange notions, however, they’re vocal in their disapproval after having given a bad idea due consideration. Thus, the notion that citizens condone prejudice and tolerate violence largely stems from observers who never stuck around long enough to watch a sympathetic crowd turn on a bigoted loudmouth.Residents crave new experiences, which most can satiate by sampling unfamiliar foods or learning any of the city’s myriad languages. Some even seek out unpleasant experiences, reveling in the novelty of the discomfort and the knowledge that they’ll have an exciting story to share about the affair afterward. This mindset provides fertile ground for fads of all types—clothing, food, cults, impractical dueling styles, political ideologies, and more—most of which flare up and die out within a few weeks of ravenous consumption, preserved only in the cultural memory as snide jokes and worthless collections. On the other hand, those cultural movements and styles with true staying power can survive for years, leading many Absalomians to insist they’re the best crucible for innovations. Fortunately, Absalom’s laws and citizens are fairly forgiving of strange customs and actions, sustaining the city’s role as a testing ground.
No matter how inventive the craftspeople, trade sustains the city. The merchants know it, and anyone from wholesalers to street peddlers consider themselves superior to crafters (who occupy the social ladder’s middle) and laborers (who rank near its base). Money and political power influence these assessments, yet it’s not uncommon to see a fearless fruit vendor dress down an aristocrat. This soft power turns merchants into minor powerbrokers, serving as social patrons to their regular customers to make connections throughout the city.
For all their cosmopolitanism, Absalomians exhibit a short-sightedness regarding other nations’ traditions and relative importance. After all, as longtime citizens often posit, Absalom is the City at the Center of the World, where all other cultures vie for a place. Particularly after its disastrous Virtue Corps in centuries past, Absalom prefers to let the rest of the world come to it.
A Day in the Life
For some, daily life begins early in Absalom, with fishers, bakers, farmers, and dock workers rising well before the sky brightens. Dawn is a quiet time—at least until the sun’s half up, when a joyous horn from Sarenrae’s Temple of the Shining Star inevitably sounds, accompanied by moans from the city’s late-night revelers. Until then, laborers keep their conversations soft on their way to work. Fishing boats set out before first light, ships begin formally unloading at dawn, and field hands have already broken earth and begun caring for animals before any neighbors stir.Restaurants rarely open this early; instead, enterprising vendors set up charcoal braziers along the streets, grilling traditional staples like flatbread, barbecued smelt, spiced finger potatoes, and sausages. These foods rarely last an hour past dawn, after which the street vendors pack up to begin other jobs throughout the city. By that point most other citizens have awoken and seek lighter fare like tea, rice porridge, buns, sour pancakes with lentil stew, beer, or fresh fruit. Much of this is prepared in homes, though by this hour many restaurants have opened for business as well.
Once the city’s workforce is in full swing—usually within an hour after dawn, contrary to its unfair reputation for indolence—Absalom bustles with activity, with crowded streets, news criers, jostling markets, noisy smithies, and the calls of myriad draft animals. Formally, trade commences in the Coins at dawn, though produce merchants are the most punctual, with other traders trickling in throughout the early morning. Those plying the Avenue of the Hopeful are more aggressive, setting up shop before dawn to catch the first pilgrims.
Several hours before noon, street performers emerge in force. The Street Performers and Actors’ Guild spreads accredited entertainers throughout the city, limiting the degree to which any guild members interfere with each other’s acts while also dispatching enforcers to chase unlicensed musicians from the guild’s turf. This provides the performers the perfect vantages to coax coins from passersby, in particular the tourists who regularly assemble for guided walks through historic neighborhoods, tours of the museums, and site-seeing expeditions bound for anywhere from the Starstone Cathedral to the Cairnlands’ most distant siege castles. Tourists who miss these expeditions often filter into the open-air plays operating throughout the city in the late morning, which offer admission for mere coppers.
Noon is an especially raucous hour. By then, public debates both philosophical and thaumaturgical have reached their zenith on sunny days. These compete with the numerous faiths that sound instruments, parade sacred relics, or light celebratory blazes at midday, in turn vying for attention from the sundry parades that crisscross the city throughout the year.
Come mid-afternoon, the city visibly settles, with citizens seeking out both shelter and the region’s traditional late lunch. This meal is the largest for most, consisting of heavy, calorie-rich foods such as roasted goat, leavened bread with honey, hard cheese, barley stews, casseroles, pastas, and savory pies. Absalom especially prides itself on seasonal seafood feasts, with restaurants serving wide plates loaded with calamari, whole squid stuffed with lemons, scallops, fish cakes, and stibbins (fried meatballs made of minced cockles, leeks, and breadcrumbs).
Those engaged in physical labor customarily spend the better half of an hour resting in the post-lunch shade, and most other Absalomians enjoy similar respites out of opportunistic solidarity. Once again, entertainers spring into action, competing for lucrative posts in the packed restaurants or setting up in parks to serenade dozing audiences. Barbers and bathhouses see their heaviest traffic then as well, with the afternoon siesta being an ideal time for workers to convene and socialize while cleaning up. For the predawn workers, this period often signals the end of their workday, and fishers pile into taverns to enjoy the so-called Salt Hour deals.
Within an hour of sundown, most workers have washed up and headed home. However, Absalom never truly rests. Thousands continue laboring, whether longshore workers unloading late arrivals or craftspeople finishing goods well into the night. It’s not only Absalom’s size but its prevalence of minor magic like supernatural light that sustains these atypical hours, and many shops and citizens own centuries-old fixtures still glowing from continual flame. Similar fixtures also illuminate theater performances and many restaurants, as well as the Irorium, which often hosts pre-dusk sporting events. For most, though, mid-evening is for supper, a light meal traditionally eaten in a large group of family, friends, and guests. Small dishes and spiced foods dominate, like cheese, olives, pickles, dates, yogurt, eggs, chicken with chilis, honey, and hummus, though supper’s also a favorite meal to intersperse seasonal favorites like fresh fruit, green salads, and shore candy (a fish salad served in a clam shell). During the summer, restaurants commonly set up large canopied extensions into the streets during supper hours, creating breezy outdoor spaces, and hire performers to draw in crowds.
Once the sky is dark, the nightlife has already begun. Year-round, people pack the theaters, wandering up to the Ivy District for the best shows. Whereas quieter pubs cultivate regular patrons, wilder establishments compete with one another with group discounts, drink packages, and even risqué performances. During the winter, these beer halls are packed with patrons escaping the chill, and during the summer, nobles and city officials regularly cordon off whole plazas to host dance events and concerts, laying down thick mats where cobblestones would make too uneven a surface for revelers. In the lead-up to winter and Cayden Cailean’s Ascendance Day, though, pub crawls become increasingly common—and larger as the air cools. Carousing worshippers huddle together for warmth, and the later sunrises enable longer reveling.
Yet even as the inebriated and overworked stagger home, Absalom is alive with activity. Thieves’ guilds like the Bloody Barbers busily smuggle goods and watch for opportune victims to mug, all the while evading the city’s watch. Numerous faiths also emerge, ranging from Norgorber’s acolytes plotting whispered schemes, to Urgathoa’s priests carting off spoiled food for their rituals, to the Groetan procession of Midnight Pilgrims who convene near the Starstone Cathedral’s moat to gaze within and contemplate doom. These groups languidly retreat as the first sun’s rays appear, heralding a new day.
Festivals
Absalom’s diverse population and long history generate a bewildering cadence of public fairs, parades, religious festivals, and similar cultural events that temporarily transform huge sections of the city, sometimes occurring on the very same day. Naturally, adventurers often find themselves in the middle of such affairs, whether mingling with a dangerous cult, draping themselves in ceremonial attire as part of a disguise, or letting loose and partying with the city’s other celebrants.Smells of the City
The sheer size of Absalom is impossible to ignore when it comes to sight and sound, but the myriad scents awaiting discovery in the city can be equally overwhelming. Indeed, there are those who’ve lived long in Absalom who can identify their location in the city by scent alone. The general melange of odors varies widely between districts, be it the delicate crisp floral scents that abound in the Petals, the brine and filth stink of the Puddles, the scent of fish and sea-soaked wood of the Docks, or the medley of aromas rising from hundreds of competing recipes of street food in any of the city’s sprawling markets. There are even so-called “scent peddlers” who claim to have bottled specific aromas for sale to those who wish to “carry a bit of Absalom in a pocket,” but these are mostly con-artists and swindlers.A Year in the Life
Thanks to its moderate coastal climate, Absalom enjoys fairly mild winters, with ambient temperatures rarely reaching freezing levels. However, high pressure zones over the massive Kortos Mounts spawn the Gozfrost katabatic winds that ravage Absalom unpredictably between Kuthona and Calistril, sending lightly garbed inhabitants scurrying for shelter. Even these winds don’t stop farmers from sowing winter crops like carrots, lettuce, scallions, and fava beans, and the garlic harvest festival on 28 Calistril informally marks the beginning of spring with pungent street food and folk divinations performed with still-green stalks. Convoys of revelers make their way to Diobel to the west mere weeks later for its Kortos Spring Fair. There, not only do youths compete in pearl-diving displays, but the fresh sea breezes provide Kortos a reprieve from the two waves of spring pollen: the first from alpine conifers, carried by deflected winds and showered over Absalom to create sickly golden stains, and days later the coastal hatchgrass pollen, which inflicts citywide sneezing fits.Yet relief arrives within weeks. The warming Kortos Mounts draw in the Gozhome winds, pulling moisture from the Inner Sea and showering the Starstone Isle almost daily for the better part of two months. Residents work through or around these storms, either donning oilcloth capes to shed the warm water, ducking under cover, or just suffering the damp clothes. The rain facilitates yet more festivals, with the heaviest downpour often coinciding with—and providing cover for—Norgorberites’ celebration of their patron’s Ascendance Day on 2 Desnus. The Ivy District hosts Eminence, its annual presentation of at least a hundred plays performed across sheltered venues small and large. The Vudran festival of colors, Yolarati, begins early in the morning in Absalom, with the afternoon rains washing the myriad street chalk, body paint, and scattered pigments into rivers of color that flow into the petal-strewn harbor. The strong winds even fuel the kite enthusiasts’ latest creations, with the legendary Gala of Sails kite battles exploiting these gusts on 27 Gozran. Seasonal crops like peas, apricots, eggplants, and broccoli appear in many dishes, and the Vudran merchants and their spices arrive in force before departing to exploit the Obari Crossing’s westerly summer gales on their return voyage.
By early Sarenith, the storms abate, driven back by the dry, northwesterly Porthmos Winds that propel the Southern Tack trade route. Absalom becomes a clear-skied paradise that experiences little precipitation, and the beautiful weather draws out more than just its residents. Tourists from throughout the Inner Sea and northerly climes voyage to revel in the city’s summers. Citizens take this opportunity to clean out their homes and, because Absalom reserves most market stalls on the second Sunday of Sarenith so that citizens can sell their own possessions without license, many of the Kortos paraphernalia visitors buy in the early travel season are in fact unwanted (though sometimes unexpectedly valuable) heirlooms. No matter the occasion, the incoming groundnut harvest makes its way to street vendors citywide, each selling roasted peanuts in cones made from rolled leaves.
It’s no coincidence that most of Absalom’s biggest festivals occur in summer. The ostentatious Passion of the First Siege on 1 Arodus sees huge parades with revelers either bedecked in the regalia of Absalom’s original guards or costumed as fearsome minotaurs, harpies, and centaurs with masks, wings, and hairy legs crafted from papier-mâché or brightly dyed sisal. The processions converge on the Irorium, where actors playing Aroden and Voradni Voon lead their mock armies against each other in a light-hearted recreation. Not to be outdone, the Pathfinder Society has for centuries chosen mid-Arodus as the time for its Grand Convocation, a massive convention attended by Pathfinders the world over where the traveling scholars can show off their latest finds, boast about their exploits, display magical wonders, and compete in exhibitions of strength and skill. Yet perhaps the greatest celebration is the Radiant Festival, a once-per-century jubilee that commemorates Absalom’s victory over Kharnas the Angel-Binder during the 17th century’s Radiant Siege. The city spares no expense, inviting nations worldwide to send representatives and exhibits of their latest innovations and cultural accomplishments to show off. Even between celebrations, the warm nights and late sunsets encourage residents to socialize long into the evenings, making the most of the weather.
Amid the bustle, Absalom’s political scene spins up with would-be nomarchs and members of the Low Council hosting their own parties and sponsoring district-wide picnics as a chance to gather goodwill. Nearly every spell lord, law lord, and member of the Grand Council serves some ceremonial role during the festivities, and the primarch presides over the largest events. Meanwhile, the High Council secretly convenes in its annual meeting—the Exaltation of the Starstone—to discuss ongoing city policies.
As the Porthmos Winds subside in late Rova, the eastward Southern Tack accelerates, bringing with it not only a wealth of Rahadoumi traders, but also cold, nutrient-rich waters rushing in from the Arcadian Ocean. Sardine runs follow within weeks—just in time for the Kraken Carnival on 15 Lamashan, during which kite battlers compete in the westerly breeze. Absalom’s fishers set out that night in lantern-strewn skiffs to perform their traditional shark hunt, harpooning the largest that come to investigate the light and serving them the following day. The chillier weather also attracts Iomedaean pilgrims to observe their patron’s Ascendance Day on 6 Lamashan. However, Absalom’s clam-digging tradition long preceded the Inheritor, and many residents instead (somewhat sacrilegiously) spend the holiday recreating Iomedae’s “Eleven Acts,” which is to say, unearthing and eating eleven sawscale clams to kick off the shellfish season. The same week typically sees the city’s hardy medroberry trees’ fruits ripen. Although some farms cultivate the berry-like fruit to create seasonal brandy, Absalom law prohibits the commercial harvesting of the city’s medroberries, leaving them for the populace to pick and eat over the short two-week season.
By the end of the year, the Gozfrost again whips down the Kortos Mounts. Residents spend much of their days indoors when possible, emerging long enough to reach a tavern on 12 Kuthona and toast Cayden Cailean’s Ascendance Day with church-subsidized spirits. However, on the first day of the new year, nearly everyone emerges for the bonfires, camaraderie, and spiced cider that mark Absalom’s Foundation Day: a celebration of Aroden’s raising the Starstone as the city begins a new year.
Festivals
Absalom’s diverse population and long history generate a bewildering cadence of public fairs, parades, religious festivals, and similar cultural events that temporarily transform huge sections of the city, sometimes occurring on the very same day. Naturally, adventurers often find themselves in the middle of such affairs, whether mingling with a dangerous cult, draping themselves in ceremonial attire as part of a disguise, or letting loose and partying with the city’s other celebrants.Subcultures and Countercultures
In Absalom, there’s no one right way to survive, and millennia of improvisation and adaptation have spawned hundreds of subcultures, many of which still thrive to this day. Whereas some of these movements bring nothing but energy and joy to the city, others actively work to destabilize one or more of Absalom’s institutions in subtle ways. The city tries to discourage the more negative movements where it can, yet these countercultures are tenaciously resilient even when not widespread.Free Union: Several times, Absalom has instituted and abolished slavery, most recently just a few years ago when Siege Lord Wynsal Starborn offered freedom to any slaves who would aid Absalom during the Fiendflesh Siege. The outpouring of support effectively ended the city’s slave trade, and most of the freed people have remained in Absalom to make a new life for themselves. They are united by the recent siege and the knowledge that they fought for their freedom once and can do it again—a stance many have directed toward politics. Known as the Free Union, these advocates boldly push back against commercial and governmental practices they consider unjust. Their members organize strikes, protest Lord Gyr’s secret prisons, and increasingly seek seats on the Low Council to shape Absalom’s politics. However, the Free Union poses a threat to numerous noble houses, ancestral businesses, and other institutions, and some of these have begun hiring more guards to protect their holdings and propagandists to present the Union in a negative light.
Halfhanders: Growing economic disparity sparked Garev Halfhand’s “Reborn Rebellion” millennia ago, and the unchecked power Lord Gyr enjoyed in recent decades fomented similar discontent. Dissidents calling themselves Halfhanders have gathered in increasingly heated meetings, debating how best to dismantle Absalom’s unconscionably rich noble houses as a continuation of their eponymous saint’s unfinished quest for economic equity. Lord Gyr’s guards shut down several of these gatherings to the Halfhanders’ fury. The primarch’s recent disappearance has emboldened the movement in their fight for sweeping government reform. Several noble families have begun shifting their wealth out of Absalom in anticipation of violent conflict, and others have begun hiring their own spies to infiltrate the movement and dismantle it from within.
Starstone Celebrants: There’s no greater feat than attaining godhood, and the Starstone Celebrants would brag they have front-row seats. These enthusiasts frequent the Ascendant Court’s taverns, ever vigilant for those ready to take the Test of the Starstone. Touching the Starstone and passing its test grants a mortal godhood, a feat that ascended Aroden to divinity and has only been replicated by 3 others since: Iomedae, Cayden Cailean, and Norgorber. The Starstone Celebrants claim to trace their roots all the way back to Cayden Cailean’s drunken companions, who witnessed the swordsman enter and successfully leave Starstone Cathedral. Most others are skeptical of this grand history, as gawking at failure is a far older mortal tradition.
In the days leading up to an attempt, the Celebrants wine and dine the candidate while also coordinating elaborate betting pools on how far the candidate might make it before perishing; the group takes a cut of the proceeds, using it to pay the candidate’s tab and make generous donations to the Shrine of the Failed. Should a candidate succeed, the Celebrants stand ready to be the first to toast the new demigod’s health.
Between tests, most Celebrants find other entertainment and then return to the Ascendant Court when the next challenger appears. Other enthusiasts are even more diehard, gathering irregularly to debate past trials or identify new potential candidates whom they might encourage with avid letter-writing campaigns. The Celebrants lack any formal leader, though a rotating cast of coordinators help manage the parties and treasury.
Sword and String League: Absalom’s steady sea breezes do more than cool the city; they sustain an avid kite-flying community. Whereas flying kites is a pleasant pastime for many citizens, the Sword and String League’s members endeavor to outdo each other in good-natured competitions, ranging from who can fly the heaviest kite to conducting pitched duels against one another with razor-edged kites designed to shred their airborne rivals. The fighting circuit is especially fierce, with small groups of kite warriors convening to test their latest designs several times a month. The championship bouts must wait until the Gala of Sails and Kraken Carnival in Gozran and Lamashan respectively, and especially intense rivalries can build such a popular following that the Irorium itself hosts a grudge match. For all the smiles and camaraderie, the kite builders spare no expense in outdoing each other, and their demand for ever lighter, stronger, and more esoteric materials employs more than a few adventurers.
Tri-Stripe Society: Local legends claim an early primarch so adored badgers that he granted them the city’s full protection. Whatever the law’s true origin, it is illegal to kill or harass badgers in Absalom, and their exportation is carefully managed to avoid exploitation. Millennia of selective breeding has created relatively agreeable lineages with regal names like the argental, queen’o’shadows, and grizzleduke, and badgers are quite popular as pets, guard animals, and pest control. Numerous businesses cater to badger enthusiasts, selling treats and installing badger habitats to attract the creatures, much as one might lure sparrows with a birdhouse.
Whereas most appreciate badgers, the Tri-Stripe Society adores them. These fanciers not only promote badger ownership and advocate for their continued protection, but they also maintain hundred-generations-long genealogies of the most famous breeds, hold an annual competition for badgers, and sustain a cottage industry of badger accessories like embroidered caparisons and ceremonial barding. When feral badgers take over cellars, the Tri-Stripe Society is often first to the scene to ensure the badgers are kindly relocated or adopted rather than harmed—no matter how much property damage results from the new residents’ claws.
Hotspurs: While mercenaries and adventurers play a key role in Absalom’s defense when they’re hired to help out, some of those who think of themselves as defenders of Absalom cause more problems than they solve. Of particular note here are those who self-identify as “hotspurs.” In many ways, these swashbuckling troublemakers are akin to an inversion of the Firebrands (particularly in their self-centered outlooks, lack of compassion, and awful fashion choices). They claim to stand for the people against the oppression of the government, but in fact are much closer to true anarchists than anything approaching a freedom fighter. Certainly, the lack of any centralized leadership makes each individual hotspur gang a different potential problem for the city’s defenders, but with the right type of coaxing, subtle manipulation, and monetary encouragement, hotspur gangs can be used for the greater good—at least, in the short term.
Pastimes
With thousands of years of immigration and innovation, Absalom has adopted and adapted a host of pastimes. Likewise, its central location attracts new performances and famous artists from across the Inner Sea region.Absalom’s citizens thrive on novelty, and few of the city’s industries are as innovative and generally popular as games. From Ivy District showrooms offering finely crafted game boards and beautiful artisanal drouge tablets to common laborers tossing dice on Dock District corners, games are everywhere in the City at the Center of the World. Casinos and gaming parlors like the Second Labyrinth draw players from across the sea, while manufacturer’s like Fenworth Gameporium innovate new diversions and export them to distant ports. Many of Absalom’s broadsheets and journals feature puzzles, like the popular “Wings of Zohls” series in the Sennight Star.
The following are some of the locally famous forms of entertainment.
Children’s Games: Absalom’s melting pot culture circulates dozens of different games around the schoolyards, including less rigorous versions of the sports below. Many children’s games find inspiration from the four Ascended gods, such as the jumping game Eleven Acts, the blindfolded tag game Which Way Cayden, and the sing-song combination skiprope/tag contest called No-No Norgorber.
Drouge: When Selmius Foster reinvigorated the Vudran spice trade, he also introduced Absalom to draj, a cutthroat game played with slender plaques bearing symbols representing various beasts. Local house rules have since evolved the game—now known as drouge, a Taldan bastardization of the original name—which has an especially strong following in Diobel. Cheap game sets made of painted wood make this fairly accessible, though gambling dens more often use the traditional ivory and obsidian game pieces carved with such creatures as the elephant, the crocodile, the wyvern, and the infamously unpredictable chimera. Drouge has become so intertwined with the Absalom gambling scene that playing a low-stakes game “just for fun” is considered a joke. Whereas polite society often looks down on anyone carrying drouge tiles, owning a fine set is a sign of esteem in gambling communities.
Music and Theater: Absalom hosts thousands of public performances each year across dozens of venues, many in the Ivy District, which is famous for its entertainment scene. Routines vary wildly: Chelaxian opera, Jalmeri traditional dances, Nexian illusion displays, and even avant-garde gnome aerobatics are regular occurrences. Theaters compete to fill seats, driving the demand for new content. The result is a cycle in which performances become increasingly experimental, risqué, or rushed before the theaters default to more traditional fare after exhausting their audiences’ appetite for gimmicks and oddities.
Immense venues such as the Grand Dance Hall of Kortos help bring the arts to the masses, often setting aside considerable space for free, standing admission. Other residents prefer the open-air music provided by the Street Performers and Actors’ Guild. As the city’s premier bardic school, the White Grotto plays a massive role in shaping each upcoming decade’s artists and trends. However, it is the Ivy Playhouse that shapes the next fads, for it is there that artists witness each other’s newest works, inspiring new styles that quickly sweep across the city.
Rickets: Whereas drouge involves skill and finesse, rickets is a high-energy, “press your luck” dice game that’s popular with desperate and gutsy gamblers alike. Gameplay alternates between die rolls and bidding, with braver players staying in the game longer in order to bet on increasingly unlikely rolls. However, the game is legendary for the lucrative odds, and a truly lucky gambler can walk away with a lifetime’s earnings in one night.
Rumples: Played with a deck of 48 numbered cards, rumples tests its players’ memories, bluffing, and mastery of ciphers. During the first phase, the dealer deals the cards equally to each player, plus one pile for the house. Players can fold, notch, or mark their own cards in any way that doesn’t utterly mutilate the card, and all of the players can mark the house’s cards. Afterward, the cards are flattened, shuffled together, and dealt in small face-down hands to each player. Play continues with players trying to assemble valuable card combinations, relying entirely on their recollection of their own marks to identify which cards they and their opponents have been dealt—and bluffing the rest of the time. After several rounds of dealing additional cards and bidding, the highest-scoring hand wins. Traditionally, a group plays five sets before destroying the deck and starting over.
Rumples is not a game for the inexperienced or intoxicated. Eight different card-marking conventions have evolved, and players regularly experiment with other “vocabularies” that their opponents might not recognize. Although an adept gambler can grow rich off of newer players, the real winner is the Fenworth Gameporium, whose printing press has produced hundreds of rumples decks daily without fail for the past 50 years.
Sports: Absalom borrows a wide range of physical sports from immigrant populations, many of them played by semi-professional teams in the Irorium. Katapesh’s ruk, a game in which 10-person teams attempt to knock a sand-filled ball through rings, has an especially strong showing, and several national teams compete in annual grudge matches—often with mercantile leaders betting on the outcome to determine elements of upcoming trade deals. Gladiatorial games are also quite popular, and the Irorium hosts numerous bouts per day.
However, Absalom takes greater pride in deskata, an urban obstacle race involving three-person relay teams. Adapted from a Taldan Army of Exploration training drill during the Age of Excess, deskata has evolved into a homegrown sport that requires intense athleticism, street smarts, and willingness to dodge through crowds to gain an edge. Monthly competitions trace unique routes through the city, often adding in additional objectives like tagging the tops of key buildings. Somewhat typically, these routes avoid the Puddles, where the working-class residents claim to house the most talented amateur deskata runners.
With its ample coastline, Absalom embraces aquatic sports. More privileged athletes enjoy boating and even hippocampus racing, whereas even the most destitute can afford to swim. However, the harbor’s cleanliness is suspect, and those of means travel outside the city in search of clearer waters.
Towers: Whereas many fortunetellers consider the harrow deck a sacred divination tool, much of Absalom nonetheless delights in the sacrilegious gambling game of towers. After laying out the six neutral-aligned harrow cards on a surface, players compete to play their own cards atop these “foundation cards,” in a variety of suit combinations and card arrangements. Those who can’t legally lay down more cards of their own each round have to pay coins to the other players. Due to its combination of strategy and luck, towers is especially popular throughout the city.
Information Exchange
Just as commerce flows from the city’s harbor to its markets and traffic flows through its streets, information, propaganda, and news winds its way from person to person, spreading knowledge or lies in a complex ebb and flow. Those who come to understand this system gain enormous insight into the constantly shifting affairs of Absalom, granting them greater power over their rivals and a better chance at survival against the city’s many intrigues. The citizen who knows what is happening today is better prepared for what’s to come tomorrow, and the manipulators who can influence what the citizens think they know are the best prepared of all.A special committee of the Grand Council known as the Crier’s Table is the nexus for all official communications from the city’s government to its inhabitants, and oversees Absalom’s thriving publishing industry. Composed of a half-dozen members of the Low Council and reporting directly to First Lady of Laws Neferpatra of House Ahnkamen, the body drafts public declarations of new laws and other governmental decrees. It administers a corps of official town criers to relay this information at designated “crier’s corners” positioned throughout Absalom. By the diligent dedication of the Crier’s Table and their agents, decrees of the Grand Council can reach ears across the city within hours of their proclamation under the Conclave Dome.
The citizens of Absalom’s neighborhoods often develop a special rapport with their local criers, the most beloved of whom enjoy celebrity status in their assigned areas. Most criers supplement their usually staid official pronouncements with current events and even gossip about the city’s nobles and public figures, bringing a personal touch that can often draw citizens out of their way to hear the latest from their favorite mouthpiece. Popular criers often serve their assigned areas for decades, so long as they maintain the good will of the local populace. The Crier’s Table swiftly replaces unpopular criers, which leads to a bias toward positive news that breeds cynicism among the wiser folk of Absalom, but which plenty of citizens slop up eagerly—or more likely pay half an ear whilst walking past on the way to work.
Other cities and cultures across Golarion certainly have access to printing presses, but few locales even come close to Absalom’s embracing of the medium of print. The citizenry’s ravenous appetite for one sheets, chapbooks, newspapers, and fliers constantly pushes the city’s publishers, be they guilds or individuals, to continue feeding the public’s hunger for information. Innovations in print happen infrequently as a result, for publishers barely have enough time as-is to keep up with their beloved customers’ demands for much, much more!
While the printing of legitimate information is often regarded as a mark of professional pride, not all who have access to a printing press are trustworthy. Those eager to line their coffers or hoping to push personal agendas sometimes fan the flames of scandal in order to increase profits. These publishers print completely false accounts or fanciful creations— fiction disguised as fact—that can end up shaping history rather than simply reporting on it. While the goals of Absalom’s publishers and media moguls change with each generation (or often multiple times in a single generation), media bias remains an inexorable element of the city’s printed culture. An informed reader should make sure to not only keep an open mind, but to do their research on the source of the words they read and to foster skills at reading between the literal lines if the truth is what is desired.
Absalom’s thriving print culture of newspapers, broadsheets, and pamphlets developed with the advent of the printing press centuries ago, but the key ingredient of the primordial soup from which it emerged was the sense that the sanctioned criers of the Grand Council did not always tell the whole truth, and that the public would be better informed if left to discover the truth for themselves, rather than wait for their leaders to frame the conversation for them. Most of the city’s publishers and nearly all of its large-scale printmaking operations are centered around Scrivener’s Square, not far from the Grand Council Hall in the Wise Quarter. Originally named for the scriptoriums that once transcribed the words of official criers into hand-written decrees for distribution to the courts and prominent citizens, the bustling neighborhood is today home to the broadsheet publishers and pamphleteers who replaced the scribes after the arrival of printing presses and movable type. A civic fountain that locals call the Inkwell stands at the center of the square, swarmed by barking newsboys and frequented by off-duty clerks, young journalists, and servants collecting newly printed broadsheets for their wealthy patrons. When a particularly popular story, like a murder spree or the preparations for an upcoming festival sweeps the city, the crowds here swell in the early morning, as citizens hope to be the first to read of the latest happenings.
Absalom’s citizens have countless options among the printed material offered every morning in Scrivener’s Square and on busy corners all across the city. Partisan publishers distribute propaganda for every ideology under the sun, while independent pamphleteers produce material ranging from the mundane to the pornographic. In theory, all printed matter produced in the city must be reviewed and stamped with approval by the Crier’s Table and deposited in the Forae Logos before it can be distributed, but in practice this applies mostly to the larger concerns that benefit from government cooperation. This publication schedule accommodates a careful review by the much feared and respected Gressil Kluun, the Table’s so-called “Red Redactrix,” under whose careful scrutiny all printed matter must pass. Most publishers skip both of these steps in the interest of timeliness, risking censorial ire after the fact. As a formal committee of the Grand Council, the Crier’s Table has the authority to shut down presses and even imprison publishers guilty (or even suspected) of sedition, but such action has led to riots within the living memory of the city’s elves, dwarves, and gnomes, thus the Table is reticent to use its full powers of suppression unless they feel it absolutely necessary to protect the city’s vital interests.
While the printing of legitimate information is often regarded as a mark of professional pride, not all who have access to a printing press are trustworthy. Those eager to line their coffers or hoping to push personal agendas sometimes fan the flames of scandal in order to increase profits. These publishers print completely false accounts or fanciful creations— fiction disguised as fact—that can end up shaping history rather than simply reporting on it. Other cities and cultures across Golarion certainly have access to printing presses, but few locales even come close to Absalom’s embracing of the medium of print. The citizenry’s ravenous appetite for one sheets, chapbooks, newspapers, and fliers constantly pushes the city’s publishers, be they guilds or individuals, to continue feeding the public’s hunger for information. Innovations in print happen infrequently as a result, for publishers barely have enough time as-is to keep up with their beloved customers’ demands for much, much more!
Absalom’s most popular and longest-running broadsheet is the Sennight Star, a double-sided fold-over four-page weekly focused on local affairs, government news, reports of the Irorium’s pageants and battles, and tame gossip regarding prominent citizens. The Star’s famous embellished masthead incorporates the formal seal of the Crier’s Table, its coverage being so safe and straightforwardly partisan in favor of Absalom’s interests that the approval of censors is a foregone conclusion.
Far more subject to government scrutiny is Eyes on Absalom, a relatively young illustrated broadsheet that focuses almost exclusively on the criminal, the lurid, and the sadistic—and which is growing in popularity with each new issue. Edited with an almost diabolical focus on titillating tales by the cantankerous Layton Bryne and published by the ruthless Reginald Vancaskerkin, Eyes has spawned a spate of imitator crime rags that are just as popular, triggering a lot of fretting about the degradation of Scrivener’s Square, with uptight critics damning the entire print business for the sensational extravagances of relative newcomers. The prudish scolds of Absalom’s cultured society demand that the Crier’s Table take action against the paper, but the lavishly illustrated editions usually sell out long before they can be seized or recalled.
A monthly journal called Anon & Afar brings news from beyond the Isle of Kortos, usually reprinted from foreign broadsheets brought to the city on ships from distant ports and assembled by the publisher’s dedicated, multilingual staff. While general weeklies like the Sennight Star, Mother’s Message, and Ear to the Inner Sea often contain more timely shorter news items communicated through divination or other mystic messaging, Anon & Afar presents articles of far greater depth and far wider scope, with editors endeavoring (but seldom succeeding) to include in every issue at least one item from each of the nations of Avistan and northern Garund.
Those seeking news closer to home but still outside the city walls consult the Kortos Quorum, a biweekly paper focused on the latest news of Starstone Isle itself, Absalom excepted. Heavily supported by the Kortos Consortium, the Quorum contains a great deal of political material in opposition to Absalom’s trade guilds, as well as vicious criticism of Lord Avid of House Arnsen, the Consortium’s most hated foe. While the paper purports to cover the whole of the Starstone Isle, in function most articles concern the affairs of Diobel, Meravon, and the Swardlands, rarely reporting on events of the Dunmire, Kortos Mounts, or the Scrape. Amusingly, the Quorum claims to have a correspondent stationed in the distant ruined town of High Harbor, publishing amusing and imaginatively written reports of impossible goings on there to the delight of Absalom’s most whimsical readers. The folk of Kortos themselves appreciate the journal’s coverage of farming, fishing, and forestry, as well as its detailed almanacs that often incorporate elements of folk magic.
When not churning out the latest reports, many of the presses in Scrivener’s Square and elsewhere are put to use printing handbills, poems, and other single-sheet items of ephemeral interest to news consumers. These range from weekly indexes of the ever-changing stalls of the Grand Bazaar, to betting tipsheets for beast races and bloodsport, to advertisements of employment opportunities for laborers, performers, and even adventurers. This last category is especially popular with fraudulent publishers, who churn out mass-produced treasure maps and shopworn riddles to exploit credulous thrill seekers. The least harmful of these contain nonsense codes and directions to nothing, while the truly dangerous lure the gullible into undercity traps and muggings. Explorers in search of more trustworthy paths to unclaimed treasures are encouraged to consult back volumes of the Pathfinder Chronicles, which almost always fetch impressive prices in the city’s secondary markets.
While there’s no denying that Absalom’s broadsheets, books, and pamphlets influence the attitude of its citizens and even the culture of the Inner Sea region itself, the majority of Absalom’s inhabitants spend very little, if any, time reading. To stay abreast of current affairs—if they bother to do so at all—these folk most often turn to a local phenomenon known as event-plays. So long as a public performance is out of doors and refrains from “artistic embellishment,” its participants are technically exempt from the stringent membership requirements of the Street Performers and Actors’ Guild. Young actors aspiring to greater things and washed-up entertainers out of favor with the guild often stage impromptu reenactments of current affairs on the street, paying themselves on meager tips from their often-illiterate audiences. Due to the guild decree, event-play performances are seldom truly entertaining, which somewhat limits their appeal. A loophole in guild bylaws—included in the interest of Absalom’s children—exempts acts involving puppets from the artistic embellishment clause, resulting in a rash of increasingly popular and emotionally riveting puppet performances that are beginning to draw aggressive and resentful guild monitors. The prospect that more citizens now get their news from puppets than from the printed word is starting to fill some publishers of Scrivener’s Square with the first twinges of outright panic.
Not all of the information exchanged in Absalom is fit to print. The Shadow War between the city’s many factions all but ensures that someone is always watching and listening, and that valuable information—especially valuable secret information—seldom goes to waste. Several information brokers of international renown (and international reach) can be found in Absalom. Lady Dyrianna of House Avenstar, the head hetaera of Calistria and consul of the Courtesans’ Guild, controls perhaps the most knowledgeable and valuable information network in the city. Guild courtesans and her temple’s sacred companions ensure that her network’s most prized and pricey secrets are of a salacious nature, and while the influential and alluring noblewoman has an army of admirers, so too does she leave a broken collection of enemies behind her, their secrets exposed to foes wealthy enough to procure them. Dyrianna’s agents never work against the Grand Council, but she has extensive contracts with many of the city’s houses, and is behind many of the public humiliations endured by their enemies.
Transportation
Absalom’s many cultural influences and waves of immigration have created a vast array of mechanical and animal-powered conveyances that fill nearly every niche. Any larger animal requires feed and stabling—a hefty maintenance fee that means privately owning a steed or beast of burden in the city carries with it some prestige. Fortunately, there are ample long-bench wagons, swifter carts, and person-powered rickshaws that cater to the masses and visitors alike.The following are draft animals, mounts, and vehicles commonly encountered in Absalom.
Camels: Generations of Keleshite and Garundi influence have popularized camels, which see use as mounts, beasts of burden, and even as farm animals. The preponderance of camels means that camel tack, barding, and accessories are as common as their equivalent for horses.
Caravans: Convoys and wagons enter through Absalom’s many gates, carrying a variety of lumber, produce, ore, and other goods from the island’s interior and nearby settlements. This cargo is subject to the same inspection as shipborne goods, causing logjams during harvest season and major market days. For those willing to travel overland, though, there are countless caravans ready to escort travelers to nearly any settlement on Starstone Isle.
Dogs: The humble canines’ omnivorous natures and relatively compact frames give them an advantage in dodging through crowds and navigating narrower streets. Dog-drawn travois are the tool of choice for many halfling porters, and the familiar scraping of these frames echoed through Absalom for centuries as the operators delivered their goods. However, the once-common travois is rarer following the Beautification Act of 4711 AR, which included a provision to restrict travois use (ostensibly to limit damage to the city’s streets). Some halflings defiantly continue their traditional craft and continue to fight the legislation in courts, though most have transitioned to dog carts.
Elephants: Even with Absalom’s productive farms and great wealth, maintaining an animal the size of an elephant in the city is tremendously expensive. Nonetheless, about 20 elephants reside in the city at any given time, typically used for prestige tasks such as ferrying important dignitaries, providing menagerie displays, and leading parades—particularly in Eastgate. The First Guard maintains six battle-trained elephants as part of an ancient cavalry unit that survives largely for ceremonial purposes, though the beasts served with distinction during the “Machine Mage” Karamoss’s siege. The somewhat smaller elephants from southern Casmaron have long been Absalom’s favorite variety, both due to the elephants’ purported descent from those Khiben-Sald brought with him millennia ago, and because handlers consider elephants from eastern Garund too aggressive for urban use. Despite their cost, elephants are a sure way to turn heads, though elephantine transport within the Ascendant Court and Coins is allowed only with special city permits.
Hippocampi: These aquatic equines serve primarily as steeds for Absalom’s Wave Riders cavalry, and while the local azarketi are willing to rent out hippocampi to small groups, most of the steeds see use in a strictly military capacity.
Horses: Horses are just as popular in Absalom as they are anywhere else across the Inner Sea region. Several breeders in the Swardlands fill the need for domestic stock, while new varieties from all over the world arrive regularly via Absalom’s harbor.
Marine Monitor: Among Absalom’s more ancient and unique mounts are the marine monitors, largely herbivorous lizards that inhabit the island’s rockier coastlines. Generations of selective breeding have diminished their dorsal spines and increased their size, such that they’re large enough to carry several human-sized passengers. However, the monitors’ lashing gait makes most queasy, their swinging tails mean they’re barred from most markets, and the lizards stubbornly refuse to work unless properly warmed by mid-morning. To their credit, though, the amphibious lizards are adept swimmers, and riders who don’t mind getting a little wet sometimes hire them to move goods about the Puddles.
Ships: Nearly all traffic to the Isle of Kortos occurs by ship, and most international vessels enter Absalom directly through the Flotsam Graveyard with close guidance from the Pilots’ Guild (for a modest fee). Vessels carrying less than 500 pounds of cargo or fewer than seven people are exempt from this service, and it’s the rare larger ship that snubs the guild’s expertise and doesn’t end up wrecked on Absalom’s artificial reef. Fortunately, most ships handle this fee as part of their fare when ferrying passengers to and from distant ports, with cities such as Almas, Cassomir, Katheer, Niswan, Oppara, Ostenso, and Sothis as the most popular destinations. Traffic from Katapesh is fairly light, thanks to a longstanding tariff Absalom placed on its perceived competitor’s goods, though the Low Council has recently eased that tax noticeably on most products. Travelers wishing to skim the island’s coast can board the ferries that set out daily from the Docks, with a few boats even setting off from Shoreline and other nearby settlements.
Riding (Terror) Birds: Introduced to the Isle of Kortos early on, riding birds (known as terror birds in other regions) make for fearsome mounts and even chariot draft animals. However, the birds’ carnivory makes them difficult to maintain and keep under control. The city watch maintains a set of guidelines for commands a terror bird must be able to recognize and follow in order to be allowed through the gates without wearing a muzzle, loose fetters, or both, whereas state approved birds are provided a prominently-displayed blue tassel to affirm their relative safety. Outside the city, terror birds are quite popular for travelers and merchants, who value the birds’ fearsome demeanors and self-sufficiency in a fight.
Ugvashi: These large, razor-plated pangolins have their origins in distant Casmaron. While they are too small for the typical citizens of Absalom to use as a beast of burden, many of the smaller peoples of the city use them as pack animals, with halflings in particular known for their love of ugvashis. Their dangerous plating can cause a lot of damage to the inattentive. As a result, most ugvashis are flanked by their owners on either side, both for the safety of others and also as a way to fend off any bystanders looking to pet the ugvashi.
Architecture
Whereas many figuratively declare that their own accomplishments to be built upon their predecessor’s deeds, in Absalom, it’s literally true. Untold generations of habitation, construction, demolition, and renovation have gradually elevated Absalom’s average street level by dozens of feet. The city may appear a hodgepodge of styles, yet many of these structures are centuries or even millennia old, capturing the architectural predilections of their respective eras and the preferences of their neighborhoods. The following chronicles Absalom’s major architectural trends.Azlanti (0–420 AR): Aroden shaped Absalom to match the Azlanti model of perfection he knew. The abundance of green, gold, and divinely generated marble facades housed Absalom’s migrants for their first several decades. Afterward, the citizens replicated their patron’s style by incorporating broad domes, vast amounts of glass, and toweringly thin spires into their buildings—features that survive in Azlanti Keep, the Starstone Cathedral, and a handful of other sites. Likewise, the original city included significant quantities of throneglass, a green glass as hard as steel and not replicated since Ancient Azlant. Ultimately, this style of construction was too pricey to maintain after Aroden’s departure. When domes collapsed centuries later, citizens incorporated the fallen glass into circular mosaics in the renovated buildings.
Taldan (140–2920, 3760–4137 AR): Aroden’s faith spread swiftly in Taldor, and Taldan migrants to Absalom brought their straight-walled architecture with them. Much of the city’s early expansion involved these painted brick designs, bilateral symmetry, ornate entryways, and superficial exterior columns. The evolving style reached its zenith during the 2000s, though it fell out of favor swiftly following the Blue Lords’ departure in 2920 and the accompanying backlash against Taldan culture.
Osirian (200–576, 1532–2255, 2920–3250 AR): Although Osirian migrants designed numerous low pyramids around newly-formed plazas, their architectural sensibilities manifested more in subtle ways, such as the division of sacred and mortal spaces within homes. The earliest pyramid platforms were gradually decommissioned and transformed into small acropolises, particularly in what are now the Wise Quarter and Westgate.
Kortos Preclassical (400–750 AR): With Aroden’s departure, Absalom struggled to maintain the elegant Azlanti style, so its inhabitants explored their newfound independence through innovation. The Kortos Preclassical phase was outwardly blocky; however, building interiors boasted inlaid, polished timber from the Immenwood, and exteriors were brightly painted, in contrast to the stark Azlanti stonework.
Vudran (537–1325, 4340–4500, 4612 AR–present): Maharajah Khiben-Sald’s visit inspired an obsession with Vudran culture. New construction incorporated thin interior colonettes and geometric mosaics, with great arches and crested entrance towers decorated to convey a sense of the owner’s wealth and influence. Onion domes were especially prevalent around 560 ar, though competition to create the largest domes triggered catastrophic collapses that discouraged the feature for decades.
Nexian (580–1312, 2920–3760 AR): The sprawling, palatial designs of Nex only grew in popularity after the archmage Nex’s disappearance—before which Nex’s attempted invasion of Absalom had made his styles uncouth. Nexian construction emphasized impossible elements made manifest with arcane aid, ranging from woven stone walls to hovering annexes. Its elegance swiftly overshadowed contemporary Osirian structures.
Kortos Classical (700–1530 AR): Begun as a counterpoint to Vudran and Nexian designs, the Kortos Classical style reveled in the use of massive, interlocking stone blocks for monumental architecture. Pricier buildings often featured four-sided pyramidal glass peaks, and homes often incorporated rounded towers budding from one corner.
Tian (1308–1630, 2920–3060, 4315–4645 AR): When the Tian junk the Resplendent Phoenix arrived in Absalom, the citizens ravenously replicated the architecture found in the ships’ many woodcut illustrations. Swooping, multi-tiered roofs began shading the streets as neighbors competed to boast the broadest eaves; derelict buildings were cleared away to make room for elaborate gardens; and interior designers adopted the Tian emphasis on creating private spaces.
Kortos Post-Classical (1465-1730 AR): Garev Halfhand’s rebellion drove Absalom’s aristocrats to invest in public works and spaces, driving the Kortos Post-classical’s broad plazas, ramps, and columned pavilions. Homes increasingly featured upper-floor verandas and decks, and vast, multi-story apartments proliferated in this period.
Kortos Conservative (1620–2110 AR): As fears of Ulon and Norgorber grew following Kharnas’s invasion, Absalom dramatically scaled back its use of columns, swooping eaves, and defensive features in buildings, all of which sheltered spies and thieves. Instead, wood construction with smooth exteriors were common, and whitewashing surfaces became standard to better pick out intruders at night.
Kortos Vulgar (1993–2790 AR): The Age of Excess suffered from inferior construction materials. Most infamous was salt brick, a mud brick mixed with the abundant seawater rather than fresh water. The result was a brick that degraded rapidly. The decaying buildings resulted in near-continuous construction, narrow profile structures, interlacing split-level apartments, and an ever-growing accumulation of material later dubbed “Mount Absalom.”
Keleshite (1920–2920 AR): Qadira’s broad windows, breezy courtyards, and bright domes spread across Absalom with the Cult of the Hawk’s growing influence. Its spacious, sheltered porches and awnings still appear throughout the city’s markets.
Castrovelian (2638–2910 AR): When elves returned to Golarion, Absalom paid handsomely for the alien architects to create interplanetary constructions. Those delicate structures that remain preserve a snapshot of Castrovel’s styles at the time, complete with curving walls, upper-story bridges between homes, and aiudara portal-style doorways.
Kortos Revival (2920–3730, 3824–4055 AR): After expelling countless foreign agents, Absalom rebuked Keleshite and Taldan designs with a revival and adaptation of old styles that emphasized exterior columns, heavily carved eaves, stucco traced with swirling patterns, and a preponderance of flat roofs where citizens increasingly slept.
Azlanti Revival (3235–3835 AR): The resurgence of hunting lodges brought with them a romantic notion of old Azlanti ideals, reflected in these new lodges. Heavy use of glass, domes, and radial symmetry strove to recreate Aroden’s original vision for the city. This was particularly popular with the nobles, many of whom maintain estates of this style.
Chelaxian Independent (4090–4660 AR): Following its independence, Cheliax developed its own styles that gradually migrated to Absalom. This period’s steeply stepped exteriors supported towering edifices with sharp, square facades. Despite the severe appearances, these buildings boasted large, high-ceilinged interiors to overwhelm visitors. Many of these buildings have been renovated in the last century to avoid negative connections to Cheliax.
Kortos Neoclassical (4138 AR–present): Modern architecture favors a pristine beauty with painted white stone walls, red tile roofs, and vast arrays of small arched windows.
Most of Absalom’s oldest buildings center around the Ascendant Court, where Aroden’s early cult established a number of enduring monuments in the city’s earliest days. The oldest of these—including the Starstone Cathedral at the heart of the district—were created via Aroden’s earliest act as a god, formulated from the island’s rock by sheer divine will. These structures remain sturdy nearly 5000 years later, though some have begun to fail in the century since Aroden’s death. Azlanti Keep was built to Aroden’s design (if not by his sheer force of will). City lore holds that Aroden rested beneath the boughs of the Grand Holt after raising the Isle of Kortos. While this seems improbable, there is little doubt that the enormous tree has thrived for nearly as long as Absalom itself.
While the towering spectacle of the Spire of Nex out in the Cairnlands is, without contest, the tallest structure on Kortos (and quite possibly the whole of Golarion), Absalom proper features numerous spires whose heights are rivaled only rarely in other ports of call. Absalom’s tallest structures are:
- Absalom Lighthouse (655 ft., Dock District)
- The Watchtower (520 ft., Eastgate)
- Blue Tower (360 ft., Eastgate)
- Tower of Twin Truths (250 ft., Ascendant Court)
- The Irorium (200 ft., Foreign Quarter)
- Starstone Cathedral (200 ft., Ascendant Court)
- Tallavont School (170 ft., Eastgate)
- The Broken Bastion (130 ft., Eastgate)
- Crestwatch (100 ft., Dock District)
- The Arcanamirium (80 ft., Petal District)
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