Drac's End
Freeport sits nestled against the swamps of Skull Island. Drac’s End is where the pressing mass of the city starts to peter out against the greenery and farmland that covers the rest of the area around the city. Although the area around the city is clear-cut and patrolled by the Sea Lord’s Guard and Watch, the threats of the Island's interior keeps most people who can afford better housing away from this part of town. Of course, the number of people in Freeport who can’t afford better housing is considerable, and Drac’s End is home to the poorer elements of the city’s population. Sailors and longshoremen keep shabby rooms in rundown rooming houses. Families live in crowded, noisy tenements, and the smell of humanity is palpable to one walking the streets.
This doesn’t mean Drac’s End is a terribly dangerous place. Compared to Scurvytown, the streets here are a haven of safety and civility. The people here may be poor, but they are in large measure honest folk just trying to get by. The district also features an amazing variety of cultures and races from across the known world, all packed into the crowded dwellings. Foreigners fresh off the boat often gravitate to Drac’s End—those with the sense or morals to avoid Scurvytown that is. The cheap rents and the presence of the Freeport Institute (the lone bastion of higher learning in town) is also an attraction to many, and the students of the school only increase the district’s diversity.
The people of Drac’s End live packed together here in slipshod buildings, fully realizing they are the human shields between Freeport and the rest of Skull Island. Never was that more obvious than during the Great Green Fire, when Drac’s End was ravaged for days by fire, smoke, and burning ash. Many houses burned down, and many more were damaged and still bear the scars of the flames.
The disaster could have reduced the district to ashes, but it pulled through—if anything, the people of Drac’s End became stronger for their ordeal. There is a community here now, one that looks after its own and fights back against threats that might destroy it—whether that be the threat of famine, the travails of poverty, the political machinations of the rich, or the supernatural forces prowling the swamps. Life is hard in Drac’s End, but it’s not all bad, and most people here have hopes for a better future, whether they’re realistic or not.
This doesn’t mean Drac’s End is a terribly dangerous place. Compared to Scurvytown, the streets here are a haven of safety and civility. The people here may be poor, but they are in large measure honest folk just trying to get by. The district also features an amazing variety of cultures and races from across the known world, all packed into the crowded dwellings. Foreigners fresh off the boat often gravitate to Drac’s End—those with the sense or morals to avoid Scurvytown that is. The cheap rents and the presence of the Freeport Institute (the lone bastion of higher learning in town) is also an attraction to many, and the students of the school only increase the district’s diversity.
The people of Drac’s End live packed together here in slipshod buildings, fully realizing they are the human shields between Freeport and the rest of Skull Island. Never was that more obvious than during the Great Green Fire, when Drac’s End was ravaged for days by fire, smoke, and burning ash. Many houses burned down, and many more were damaged and still bear the scars of the flames.
The disaster could have reduced the district to ashes, but it pulled through—if anything, the people of Drac’s End became stronger for their ordeal. There is a community here now, one that looks after its own and fights back against threats that might destroy it—whether that be the threat of famine, the travails of poverty, the political machinations of the rich, or the supernatural forces prowling the swamps. Life is hard in Drac’s End, but it’s not all bad, and most people here have hopes for a better future, whether they’re realistic or not.
The World of Nor
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