The Styes

Once, the Styes was a marvelous port district. Its magnificent buildings crowned an artificial island that was the centerpiece of a broad bay, held aloft on great oak pilings. Those huge beams supported great facades of marble grandeur, connected by boardwalks that thronged with richly clothed merchants, exotic travelers, and the passing palanquins of nobility. Known as the Island of Pleasures, the site was a destination for rich and decadent folk up and down the coast.
Time can be cruel, however. Warfare, corruption, famine, and natural disaster ruined many who loved the Island of Pleasures, and as their resources dwindled, so did this once-magnificent district. But even as fortune turned and the region rebuilt from devastation, the Island of Pleasures became an unneeded luxury. New people called the district home: poor, desperate folk crowded beneath fallen gables in hovels tattooed by mildew and damp rot. On their heels came folk whose trade was scorned elsewhere. Alchemists fouled the air and water with poisonous concoctions from failed experiments. Sweat-shop manufactories set up in the Styes and all but enslaved their desperate workers. Tanners and millers and dyers and butchers invaded the district, scraping every penny out of their businesses with no concern over the impact their toxic operations had on their neighbors or the environment. The district bears little evidence of its former glory as it daily sinks deeper into the muck.

Residents and Politics

The current population of the Styes is a little under twelve thousand residents, but they're packed into an area that might house half that number in a more prosperous settlement. Four-fifths of the district's residents are human, with the remainder split between gnomes, dwarves, halflings, half-orcs, half-elves, and a smattering of other humanoids.
The Styes is ruled by a group of four corrupt officials called "the council." The four councillors are Mr. Dory, Rashlen, Sliris, and Thornwell. The district is policed by a poorly trained militia consisting of some two hundred guards led by ten officers and one commander. The militia patrols in groups of at least ten, for their own protection more than anything. Larger groups of twenty or more usually include an officer.

Life in the Styes

In better days, the fact that the Styes was sheltered from offshore winds was one of its more desirable qualities. Now, the Alchemists' Quarter spews a permanent miasma of acrid, rancid yellow vapour that hangs above the district and coats its walls and roofs with a greasy film. The dense population of the decaying district makes the waters around the port swirl with sewage, blood and offal from butchers, lye and fur from tanners, and indescribable chemical mixtures from alchemists. In the eastern portion of the Styes, the pollution is so bad that the river's flow has been diverted, leaving a large portion of the district's boardwalks suspended over a wallow of rancid mud.

Merchandise

Most items for sale in the Styes can be had for standard prices, but they are of noticeably substandard quality. Anyone who walks around in fancy clothing, brightly coloured accessories, flashy jewellery, or with expensive weapons or armour on display is bound to attract unwanted attention from thieves, opportunistic merchants, and any local willing to commit a crime of opportunity (which is to say most of them). Bartering is common in the district, and characters will find it difficult if not impossible to sell anything with a value over 75gp for cash. Local merchants don't have that much coinage on hand, or won't admit it if they do.

Taverns and Inns

Taverns are everywhere in the Styes, ranging from large public houses to holes-in-the-wall with two tables and nothing but acrid, home-brewed rotgut on tap. The clientele is uniformly glum and morose, and brawls and fights are common. The best taverns in the Styes would be considered dives in most cities—and its inns are no better. Visitors are advised to bring their own bedding to avoid bugs and to move the bed in front of the door to keep out burglars and unscrupulous innkeepers.

Religion

Though religion is important to many of the Styes' citizens, no public temples operate in the district. This is partial because the councillors impose steep taxes on the faithful, to prevent religious leaders from becoming too popular and eroding the council's authority. But beyond this, even the most dedicated members of the clergy are eventually overwhelmed by the region's emotionally fatiguing problems.
Disease, famine, cruelty, and brutality weigh so heavily on the Styes that well-meaning clerics are driven to despair. Small temples dedicated to gods of healing and charity operate quietly in nondescript buildings, and tiny shrines can be found in alleys and cul-de-sacs all over the district. Beyond these, only one organized faith exists in secret in the Styes, and it plays a central role in the adventure—the cult of Tharizdun.

Health

Disease and infection are real concerns in the Styes. Most residents suffer from some form of debilitating condition brought on by the poisonous waste flowing and billowing out of the Alchemists' Quarter, or from the polluted water of the river and harbour. The adventurers are no exception. Anyone who visits the Styes is exposed to a disease known as redface. This affliction causes itching and painful inflammation all over the face, and especially around the eyes.
The effects of redface are identical to those of sight rot, but it's caused by pollutants in the air rather than contaminated drinking water, making it difficult to avoid. Sewer plague is common in the Styes as well, but avoiding contact with the district's ubiquitous rodents and vermin is usually sufficient protection against it.

Notable Locations

Low Quarter

Also known as Flotsam, the northwest section of the Styes consists mainly of slum tenements, dubious taverns, rickety warehouses, hovel-crowded alleys, and decommissioned ships converted into buildings. This entire area is slowly sinking into the sea. As old buildings become unlivable, new ones are built atop them, and the tangle of structures is four or five stories deep in some places. Many of the lower structures are completely walled off from the outside, making them ideal places for hidden temples and black markets. Swaying rope bridges provide the best avenues between the blocks of this quarter since the old boardwalks are sinking like everything else.

Alchemists' Quarter

The Alchemists' Quarter is the northeast section of the Styes. Long ago, it was the seat of the district's scholastic and religious leadership, but its once-fine temples and universities have long been dismantled for construction materials, or converted into dim, smoky factories and noxious laboratories owned by shady alchemists.
With no regulation to speak of in the Styes, alchemists are free to conduct whatever dangerous experiments they like, and to cut corners on safety and quality control. Iron chimneys belch smoke and foul vapors into the air, while liquid and solid waste are dumped into the water around the quarter.
A large part of this area has become so clogged and befouled with refuse that the water now moves only along shallow, sluggish channels that snake through the reeking expanse of mud. Still, it's common to see desperate scavengers wallowing in the filth, scrounging for anything of value that a distracted alchemist might have carelessly tossed out with the trash.

High Quarter

The seat of local government in better days, this quarter is the southeast section of the Styes. Most of the buildings here were once municipal offices, but only a few are still in operation. All the rest are either deserted or have been rented to strange and furtive eccentrics.
This section of the district is the least populated, and its often-empty streets and boardwalks are in stark contrast to the crowds that frequent the other three quarters. Militia patrols are common here, but guards in the High Quarter are universally corrupt, accepting bribes from nobles, bureaucrats, and powerful merchants, and extorting protection money from everyone else.

Merchants' Quarter

The southwest section of the Styes hosts most of the district's industry and mercantile efforts. Most of the community's fishers live here, and numerous warehouses line the edges of the quarter. Most of these places are either abandoned and boarded up, or serving as flophouses. Of the four quarters, the Merchants' Quarter is the most welcoming to visitors—though that's not saying much. It's also said to be the healthiest part of the district—but that's not saying much, either.

Harbor Master

These two stone buildings on a small island in the Merchants' Quarter are the base of operations for Harbor Master Tak Merakin (NE female half-orc bandit captain) and her constables (twelve NE human thugs). Tak is profoundly lazy, and as long as merchants and fishers pay their dues without complaining, she doesn't interfere with business on the water. She reacts only to obvious threats such as fires, riots, and storms—and even then, she displays an infuriating lethargy.

Frother's Lamp

This decommissioned stone lighthouse was once a proud beacon welcoming ships, but it functions now as nothing more than a sad Flotsam landmark. When the last caretaker died in a loud argument at a nearby tavern, no one took up her mantle, and the light has fallen into disrepair. After a few more decades of slowly sinking into the soggy seabed, it might end up consumed by shanties and other buildings built atop its corpse.

Marketplace

This large, open space serves as the primary market for the Styes. The area is always crowded, but the goods for sale here are of low quality and dubious origin.

District Garrison

This three-story stone building houses the district's militia (some two hundred LE guards, ten bandit captains, and one veteran) in crowded conditions more like a prison than a barracks. A handful of the guards are honest, but they are the exceptions. Most of the militia members are youths who needed a job, and whose ambition was satisfied by becoming paid thugs. The guards' patrol routes are determined entirely by who pays the largest fees for protection. The gallows in front of the garrison seldom lies unused for more than a few days.

Council Hall

This once-elegant structure is the traditional seat of the council in the Styes, which is a part of the larger city government in name only. Today, the four councillors who run the district spend most of their time in their own homes and businesses. A small staff of clerks works here, and the councillors hold town meetings in the hall once or twice a month, but most of this structure's other rooms have sat unused for decades.

Refrum's Workshop

This modest wood and brick building along the edge of the Alchemists' Quarter is the home of Master Refrum.

Dory's Warehouse

This is the home and business of one of the Styes' councillors, the sinister Mr. Dory.

Rashlen Manor

One of many run-down manors in the High Quarter, this building is home to Rashlen, one of the Styes' councillors. The manse is said to be guarded by golems and similarly horrible creatures.

Thornwell Tower

The tallest structure in the Styes, Thornwell Tower is a pinnacle of black and red marble surrounded by a stone wall. Councillor Thornwell dwells here. Locals whisper that the tower is haunted by devils and contains a portal to the Nine Hells.

Mortuary

The lack of a strong religious presence in the Styes means that the task of dealing with the dead falls to the mortuary. This large building is surrounded by a disused graveyard, but the district's dead has long been universally cremated. Those who operate the mortuary are rumoured to be thieves, undead, or wererats. The truth is a combination of all three. The master of this morbid structure is Sliris, a devious and secretive member of the council.

Hopene'er Asylum

This enormous building is the last remnant of a more optimistic time, when the desperate and doomed of the Styes were cared for and watched over.

The Mark of Tharizdun

There exists an underwater abyss known as the Endless Nadir—a haunted place shunned by the aquatic races of the region, for this realm is the site of a submerged city of aboleths. For the most part, the alien denizens of this city are content to plot and lurk in the depths of the ocean trench. But a few of them are cursed with curiosity. One such creature is Sgothgah, a scholar, crafter, and explorer—and an outcast among its kind.
Sgothgah's life changed forever when it encountered and consumed a cult of lunatics who worshiped Tharizdun, an ancient deity of darkness. As it read the minds of its victims as it devoured them, some of what it gleaned of Tharizdun—between their screams and their unheeded pleas for mercy—found purchase in Sgothgah's mind. For centuries, the aboleth mulled over the concept of Tharizdun in idle moments, and eventually those thoughts flowered into something alien and repulsive to most aboleths: religious faith.
To hide its burgeoning devotion to a non-abolethic entity from the prying telepathic abilities of its kind, Sgothgah relocated its lair to the edge of the Endless Nadir. There, in the solitude of the inky deep, the aboleth made a second astounding discovery: a juvenile kraken with an unlikely, circular scar on its head, a wound earned in battle against a giant shark years ago. Even such a strange scar would normally be little more than a curiosity, but Sgothgah saw a pattern in this one that evoked thoughts of Tharizdun's dark madness. The aboleth took this event as a sign that Tharizdun had gifted it with the task of nurturing the kraken until it was fully grown.
Sgothgah knew the kraken could never be raised to maturity in the Endless Nadir—even in Sgothgah's remote corner of it—without risking discovery by the other aboleths. So Sgothgah fled the abyss, taking with it the juvenile kraken and a number of loyal aquatic minions. It headed for coastal waters that the aboleths avoided because of the humanoids that dwelled there, trusting that other aboleths wouldn't follow it or even care that it had left.
Purely by chance, the oceanic immigrants came to a stretch of water where the once-notable port district of a minor city had fallen into decay and corruption. Known as the Styes, the district was only a wretched shadow of what it had once been. But the aboleth found a perfect location to hide the kraken—a sunken temple to the west of the district, known to the locals as Landgrave's Folly. Sgothgah quickly established mind control over a local cadre of fishers and sailors, sending them to infiltrate every corner of the ruined district. And to the aboleth's surprise and unnatural delight, it discovered an active cult of Tharizdun in the Styes.
Led secretly by one of the Styes' own ruling councillors—an inhuman creature that calls itself "Mr. Dory"—this cult of Tharizdun has thrived in the decay of the Styes for decades. Through enslavement and telepathy, Sgothgah forged an alliance with the cultists, always taking care to conceal its true identity. The cultists knew Sgothgah only as "the Whisperer," and they quickly came to regard their hidden ally as a powerful messenger of Tharizdun. To this day, only Mr. Dory suspects the truth.

Type

Large town

Location under

Mere of Dead Men