Precipice Quarter
In Absalom’s early years, the mysterious wizard Beldrin built his tower on the rocky, storm-swept cliffs along the southern shore of the Isle of Kortos. His stronghold was a dazzling masterpiece of architecture, comprising three glorious ivory spires that rose from an impossibly precarious perch on the cliff’s edge. Beneath the spires’ shadow, the surrounding neighborhood grew wealthy and beautiful. The district’s character began with a nucleus of students seeking to learn the secrets of Beldrin’s arcane might, but that spirit of curiosity soon broadened to artistic and architectural experiments that transformed Beldrin’s Bluff into an ever-changing monument to creativity and innovative expression.
The earthquake of 4698 AR devastated this movement. A neighborhood that had been known for high-end restaurants and glittering dance halls, where artists and aristocrats shared breathtaking views of sunsets over the water, suddenly plunged into screaming chaos. Fissures split off entire blocks, hurling terraced restaurants, celebrated playhouses, and tea gardens off the cliffsides into the ocean. Entire noble houses were wiped out in an instant, their manors cascading into rockfall and ruin. Two of Beldrin’s three spires crashed into the sea, tearing away great chunks of the cliffside as they fell.
In less than an hour, Beldrin’s Bluff was destroyed. The full extent of the damage was never assessed, and many deaths went uncounted, for hundreds of bodies were lost beneath stone or water and could not be recovered. Yet when the earth finally stilled its last shudder, the shaken survivors discovered that their miseries had only just begun.
It was as if the quake had freed some long-buried spirit of destruction that now rampaged across the ruins. Panic and dark rumors gripped the scattered survivors, who blamed outcasts and foreigners for their sufferings. Violent mobs and murderous cultists ran riot, tearing innocents apart. Many citizens fled. Those who remained found themselves trapped in a nightmare that deepened by the day. Demonic influences and malign magics began to course through the devastated district. Some believed that these originated from some arcane confinement in Beldrin’s broken towers; others claimed that they’d arisen in response to the death cults that sprang up after the earthquake—or perhaps these cults had even caused the disaster.
All that was once beautiful in this place had been warped into hideous hunger, and all Absalom’s efforts to reclaim the district now called the Precipice Quarter came to naught. For many years, the Grand Council simply barricaded the Precipice Quarter off entirely. No one was permitted to cross into or out of the district between dusk and dawn, and few tried. Only murderers, thieves, and vagabonds sought sanctuary among the district’s haunted, crumbling shells, and most of those came to grisly ends. The ones who returned, wild-eyed and gibbering of bulbous-headed halfling ghouls and marrow-eating vines, often wept for gratitude as they were led to the headsman’s block.
Yet finally, after twenty years of haunted failure, hope returned. Watcher-Lord Ulthun II, driven out of Lastwall by the Whispering Tyrant’s rise, relocated to the Precipice Quarter with many of the remaining Knights of Lastwall. From their base at Vigil’s Hope, they worked to purify the quarter of its evil with the help of the Pathfinder Society. The prominent Absalomian architect Blune Bandersworth, with the support of Grand Councilmember and City Planner Olansa Terimor, propositioned the Grand Council and bid for a contract to magically transform the Precipice Quarter—a district all but destroyed in an earthquake 22 years ago—into the heart of the 4720 AR Radiant Festival. The enthusiasm of Acting Primarch Wynsal Starborn, who since taking his station has wanted to resurrect the Precipice Quarter, sealed the deal for the site of this century’s grand fair.
The preparation of the Precipice Quarter for the Radiant Festival meant more than tearing down a few old buildings and resodding the lawn—under the guidance of Chief Architect Blune Bandersworth and Managing Landscaper Jeremia Plumendod, teams of wreckers and salvagers razed entire neighborhoods of derelict buildings, dozens of druidic engineers leveled hundreds of acres of scrub brush, and a platoon of paladins and priests destroyed and consecrated swaths of haunted land. Countless magic items were created (and a few artifacts destroyed) in the effort to make the formerly abandoned Precipice Quarter a suitable fairground for the largest Radiant Festival in the history of Absalom. City planners routed fresh water from springs beneath the Kortos Mounts to fill massive reservoirs, and primal spellcasters sculpted the earth to raise sturdy islands and magnificent rock sculptures from the artificial lakes’ bottoms.
From the moment work began, it took workers more than three years to flatten the rolling hills and transform the span of land between Whisper Street and Absalom’s eastern curtain wall. While visitors might consider this a remarkably short time for such an extravagant makeover, the truth is that the preparation of the festival grounds took far longer (and far more funding) than any of the chief planners expected, delaying the schedule so much that it jeopardized the entire festival. It wasn’t until Abadius of 4720 AR—six months before the fair’s scheduled opening—that stakeholders could even start hauling in the building materials needed to construct their exhibits. But the Radiant Festival has a tendency to bring out the best in people—or, if not their best, then certainly their tenacity. With an impossible deadline and doubtless more unexpected setbacks awaiting them, the laborers plunged forward and achieved something remarkable. As the remaining months turned to weeks, and the weeks to days, the former wasteland called the Precipice Quarter transformed into a glimmering plaza. Mounds of debris became hillocks covered in emerald lawns, fetid cesspits became crystalline swan ponds, and cobblestone-lined ditches became brown-brick walkways. With the exception of a few attractions—most notably the Dragonfly Pagoda, which was heavily promoted in the city’s newspapers leading up to the Radiant Festival—nearly every exhibit hall, administrative building, and spectacle was completed in time for the fair’s opening day.
Of course, in the rush to get the work done, the Festivals Committee had to make certain compromises and cut corners wherever possible. The original blueprints showed the fairgrounds extending all the way to Absalom’s eastern curtain wall, but workers didn’t make it past Jasper Avenue, and instead cordoned off the undead-infested eastern ruins of the Precipice Quarter to the best of their ability. Wherever possible, landscapers simply leveled and covered up rubble that wasn’t salvageable, raising the average height of the district’s ground level by more than 10 feet and resulting in an entire ruined subterranean level just beneath the surface of the fairground. To the Festivals Committee—and the city’s leaders—these risks were well worth the trade-off of opening the fair on time in order to showcase the glory of Absalom.
The earthquake of 4698 AR devastated this movement. A neighborhood that had been known for high-end restaurants and glittering dance halls, where artists and aristocrats shared breathtaking views of sunsets over the water, suddenly plunged into screaming chaos. Fissures split off entire blocks, hurling terraced restaurants, celebrated playhouses, and tea gardens off the cliffsides into the ocean. Entire noble houses were wiped out in an instant, their manors cascading into rockfall and ruin. Two of Beldrin’s three spires crashed into the sea, tearing away great chunks of the cliffside as they fell.
In less than an hour, Beldrin’s Bluff was destroyed. The full extent of the damage was never assessed, and many deaths went uncounted, for hundreds of bodies were lost beneath stone or water and could not be recovered. Yet when the earth finally stilled its last shudder, the shaken survivors discovered that their miseries had only just begun.
It was as if the quake had freed some long-buried spirit of destruction that now rampaged across the ruins. Panic and dark rumors gripped the scattered survivors, who blamed outcasts and foreigners for their sufferings. Violent mobs and murderous cultists ran riot, tearing innocents apart. Many citizens fled. Those who remained found themselves trapped in a nightmare that deepened by the day. Demonic influences and malign magics began to course through the devastated district. Some believed that these originated from some arcane confinement in Beldrin’s broken towers; others claimed that they’d arisen in response to the death cults that sprang up after the earthquake—or perhaps these cults had even caused the disaster.
All that was once beautiful in this place had been warped into hideous hunger, and all Absalom’s efforts to reclaim the district now called the Precipice Quarter came to naught. For many years, the Grand Council simply barricaded the Precipice Quarter off entirely. No one was permitted to cross into or out of the district between dusk and dawn, and few tried. Only murderers, thieves, and vagabonds sought sanctuary among the district’s haunted, crumbling shells, and most of those came to grisly ends. The ones who returned, wild-eyed and gibbering of bulbous-headed halfling ghouls and marrow-eating vines, often wept for gratitude as they were led to the headsman’s block.
Yet finally, after twenty years of haunted failure, hope returned. Watcher-Lord Ulthun II, driven out of Lastwall by the Whispering Tyrant’s rise, relocated to the Precipice Quarter with many of the remaining Knights of Lastwall. From their base at Vigil’s Hope, they worked to purify the quarter of its evil with the help of the Pathfinder Society. The prominent Absalomian architect Blune Bandersworth, with the support of Grand Councilmember and City Planner Olansa Terimor, propositioned the Grand Council and bid for a contract to magically transform the Precipice Quarter—a district all but destroyed in an earthquake 22 years ago—into the heart of the 4720 AR Radiant Festival. The enthusiasm of Acting Primarch Wynsal Starborn, who since taking his station has wanted to resurrect the Precipice Quarter, sealed the deal for the site of this century’s grand fair.
The preparation of the Precipice Quarter for the Radiant Festival meant more than tearing down a few old buildings and resodding the lawn—under the guidance of Chief Architect Blune Bandersworth and Managing Landscaper Jeremia Plumendod, teams of wreckers and salvagers razed entire neighborhoods of derelict buildings, dozens of druidic engineers leveled hundreds of acres of scrub brush, and a platoon of paladins and priests destroyed and consecrated swaths of haunted land. Countless magic items were created (and a few artifacts destroyed) in the effort to make the formerly abandoned Precipice Quarter a suitable fairground for the largest Radiant Festival in the history of Absalom. City planners routed fresh water from springs beneath the Kortos Mounts to fill massive reservoirs, and primal spellcasters sculpted the earth to raise sturdy islands and magnificent rock sculptures from the artificial lakes’ bottoms.
From the moment work began, it took workers more than three years to flatten the rolling hills and transform the span of land between Whisper Street and Absalom’s eastern curtain wall. While visitors might consider this a remarkably short time for such an extravagant makeover, the truth is that the preparation of the festival grounds took far longer (and far more funding) than any of the chief planners expected, delaying the schedule so much that it jeopardized the entire festival. It wasn’t until Abadius of 4720 AR—six months before the fair’s scheduled opening—that stakeholders could even start hauling in the building materials needed to construct their exhibits. But the Radiant Festival has a tendency to bring out the best in people—or, if not their best, then certainly their tenacity. With an impossible deadline and doubtless more unexpected setbacks awaiting them, the laborers plunged forward and achieved something remarkable. As the remaining months turned to weeks, and the weeks to days, the former wasteland called the Precipice Quarter transformed into a glimmering plaza. Mounds of debris became hillocks covered in emerald lawns, fetid cesspits became crystalline swan ponds, and cobblestone-lined ditches became brown-brick walkways. With the exception of a few attractions—most notably the Dragonfly Pagoda, which was heavily promoted in the city’s newspapers leading up to the Radiant Festival—nearly every exhibit hall, administrative building, and spectacle was completed in time for the fair’s opening day.
Of course, in the rush to get the work done, the Festivals Committee had to make certain compromises and cut corners wherever possible. The original blueprints showed the fairgrounds extending all the way to Absalom’s eastern curtain wall, but workers didn’t make it past Jasper Avenue, and instead cordoned off the undead-infested eastern ruins of the Precipice Quarter to the best of their ability. Wherever possible, landscapers simply leveled and covered up rubble that wasn’t salvageable, raising the average height of the district’s ground level by more than 10 feet and resulting in an entire ruined subterranean level just beneath the surface of the fairground. To the Festivals Committee—and the city’s leaders—these risks were well worth the trade-off of opening the fair on time in order to showcase the glory of Absalom.
Maps
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Radiant Festival
Type
District
Location under
Included Locations
Related Tradition (Primary)
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