Eastgate
Soaring towers and stately manors shape Eastgate’s skyline, along with the great living monument of the Grand Holt, but most of its homes are modest villas and townhouses. Much of Eastgate is residential, and its people tend to be hardworking, secure but not wealthy, and fiercely proud of their neighborhoods. The streets are clean and safe, the parks quiet and green, the fashions respectable but never flashy. Eastgate is where Absalom’s poor and working-class people aspire to live because it represents an ideal of dignity and ease that seems more comfortably familiar, and more attainable, than the alien world of aristocrats and foreign grandees. To someone who grew up hard in the Docks or the Coins, making it to Eastgate means making good.
Most Eastgaters make their livings elsewhere in the city. Rickshaws and carriages whisk a constant flow of commuters away to work, and some employers even hire elephants to carry their employees. It can take hours to navigate the city’s streets each day—a highly unusual arrangement in a place where most people reside much closer to their workplaces—but Eastgaters consider the trade-off well worth it, since their district is so much safer and more affordable than living in comparable luxury anywhere else in the city.
A low-key rivalry exists between Eastgate and Westgate, with Westgaters touting their district as “Bestgate” and Eastgate as “Leastgate,” but Eastgaters rarely spend much time boasting back in return. Westgate is more affluent, but it is also more selfish and unequal. Eastgaters view their communal prosperity, and their shared enjoyment of rich green spaces that have no counterpart in Westgate, as self-evidently superior. If anything, they are inclined to feel slightly sorry for Westgaters—who, after all, would be quick to move to the Ivy or Petal Districts if they could afford to. In Eastgate, such transparent striving for status is considered pitiably foolish compared to simply enjoying the community already around them.
Eastgaters are well aware of their good fortune and are vigilant in protecting it. The crime rate is very low, and the poisonous intrigues that flourish elsewhere in the city find little root here. This insistence on maintaining the district’s safe, upstanding character is not without its less salutary side: Eastgaters are unashamed of pushing less-desirable elements out of their district. The Post Guard has little tolerance for beggars, and the Eagle Garrison frequently makes its surveillance obvious enough to exert pressure on unwanted persons to move out. Even ordinary citizens tell beggars and buskers to take their business out to the Puddles, “where it belongs.” Eastgate once hosted charity kitchens and orphanages for the poor, but neighborhood pressure to “keep other districts’ problems within their own walls” led to their eventual closing.
A domineering community organization called the Concerned Residents’ Union takes care of neighborhood problems too small for the Eastgate Council but (in their eyes, at least) no less important to maintaining the district’s good character. Within the last decade, tensions between the Union and some of Eastgate’s “undesirables” have grown much worse, thanks to the increasing strength and size of two pagan cults resident in the district, the Children of Spring and the Circle of Stones.
The growth of the Children of Spring, centered in Evergreen Park around the charismatic Gozran cleric Lady Evigail, has consumed many of Eastgate’s youth, encouraging them to disconnect from their families and live a life more in tune with the balance of nature. The Circle of Stones, led by the reclusive dryad queen Iolanthe, dwells within the multi-trunked, enormous tree known as the Grand Holt, one of the defining monuments of the district, if not the entire city. About 10 years ago, the tree underwent a staggering growth spurt, thickening its bark and trunks, forming additional internal chambers, and overtaking several nearby buildings. The Concerned Residents’ Union looks upon both these developments with wariness and disdain, longing for a simpler time when unorthodox cults politely kept themselves to the city’s other districts.
Most Eastgaters make their livings elsewhere in the city. Rickshaws and carriages whisk a constant flow of commuters away to work, and some employers even hire elephants to carry their employees. It can take hours to navigate the city’s streets each day—a highly unusual arrangement in a place where most people reside much closer to their workplaces—but Eastgaters consider the trade-off well worth it, since their district is so much safer and more affordable than living in comparable luxury anywhere else in the city.
A low-key rivalry exists between Eastgate and Westgate, with Westgaters touting their district as “Bestgate” and Eastgate as “Leastgate,” but Eastgaters rarely spend much time boasting back in return. Westgate is more affluent, but it is also more selfish and unequal. Eastgaters view their communal prosperity, and their shared enjoyment of rich green spaces that have no counterpart in Westgate, as self-evidently superior. If anything, they are inclined to feel slightly sorry for Westgaters—who, after all, would be quick to move to the Ivy or Petal Districts if they could afford to. In Eastgate, such transparent striving for status is considered pitiably foolish compared to simply enjoying the community already around them.
Eastgaters are well aware of their good fortune and are vigilant in protecting it. The crime rate is very low, and the poisonous intrigues that flourish elsewhere in the city find little root here. This insistence on maintaining the district’s safe, upstanding character is not without its less salutary side: Eastgaters are unashamed of pushing less-desirable elements out of their district. The Post Guard has little tolerance for beggars, and the Eagle Garrison frequently makes its surveillance obvious enough to exert pressure on unwanted persons to move out. Even ordinary citizens tell beggars and buskers to take their business out to the Puddles, “where it belongs.” Eastgate once hosted charity kitchens and orphanages for the poor, but neighborhood pressure to “keep other districts’ problems within their own walls” led to their eventual closing.
A domineering community organization called the Concerned Residents’ Union takes care of neighborhood problems too small for the Eastgate Council but (in their eyes, at least) no less important to maintaining the district’s good character. Within the last decade, tensions between the Union and some of Eastgate’s “undesirables” have grown much worse, thanks to the increasing strength and size of two pagan cults resident in the district, the Children of Spring and the Circle of Stones.
The growth of the Children of Spring, centered in Evergreen Park around the charismatic Gozran cleric Lady Evigail, has consumed many of Eastgate’s youth, encouraging them to disconnect from their families and live a life more in tune with the balance of nature. The Circle of Stones, led by the reclusive dryad queen Iolanthe, dwells within the multi-trunked, enormous tree known as the Grand Holt, one of the defining monuments of the district, if not the entire city. About 10 years ago, the tree underwent a staggering growth spurt, thickening its bark and trunks, forming additional internal chambers, and overtaking several nearby buildings. The Concerned Residents’ Union looks upon both these developments with wariness and disdain, longing for a simpler time when unorthodox cults politely kept themselves to the city’s other districts.
Type
District
Location under
Included Locations
- Antler Lodge
- Beragel’s Fur and Feathers
- Blackhill’s
- Blue Tower
- Broken Bastion
- Concerned Residents’ Union
- District Courthouse - Eastgate
- Eastgate Hall
- Endiron School
- Estate of Yargos Gill
- Evergreen Park
- Gilltown
- Grand Holt
- Green Ridge
- House of Guile
- Mama Shrog’s Solutions
- Mercerene Manor
- Postern Gate
- Raptor’s Rest
- Tallavont School
- Turning Leaf
- Watchtower
- Watercleft
- Wondervale
Ruling/Owning Rank
Owning Organization
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