Gilltown

Hidden behind a row of council-subsidized housing for the Post Guard and Eastgate’s handful of poorer families is a small neighborhood, away from Absalom’s main roads, known as Gilltown. Its motley assemblage of weather-beaten tents, dilapidated wooden shacks, and packed-mud huts slopes down toward the water. At its center is a muddy square, littered with fish scales and discarded oyster shells, where the azarketis—as gillmen call themselves—trade with outsiders.
Although Gilltown is kept deliberately unpleasant to deter outsiders from lingering too long, it nevertheless draws a steady trickle of visitors. The wonders that the azarketis pull from the sea include not only pearls, corals, and rare raw materials prized in elemental water magic, but also treasures recovered from millennia of shipwrecks and sunken ruins around Absalom. Ancient maps, curious artifacts, and pieces of Old Azlant—corroded coins, barnacle-encrusted pottery shards, and salt-clouded mirrors and glasses—have all passed through Gilltown’s market square. Stranger and more dangerous artifacts occasionally appear as well, presumably obtained from other, more obscure civilizations in the ocean depths. The azarketis never speak of where they find such things or what use they may have, and as long as they don’t make trouble for others in Eastgate, the local authorities are happy to leave them alone.

Type

Neighbourhood

Location under

Eastgate