The Styes
The Styes is the informal name for a overcrowded, poor, and crime-ridden city in the northern Sword Coast. While the city is officially called Seaton, its informal name is far more commonly used by residents and outsiders since its fall from grace.
Districts
The Styes are split into four districts. Due to how disconnected some districts are, most people in the Styes make use of private gondalas to ferry them from one part of the city to another.
The Lower Quarter, also referred to by residents as Flotsam, is the least populated and the most treacherous to navigate. Due to the city's neglecetd, and especially the pollution brought on by the Alchemists' Quarter, much of the Lower Quarter has begun to sink. The various sea walls that once marked the edge of the road and the water have now become towering barriers holding back the very ocean itself, as members of the Lower Quarter continue building buildings on top of buildings in order to counteract the sinking. This has led to numerous trenches in the Lower Quarter which sprawl far below ground, and what in other city's would be bridges over canals are here rickety planks of wood crossing these dangerous crevasses.
The Merchants Quarter contians the docks and industry for the Styes. Most of the community's fishers live here, and numerous warehouses line the edges of the quarter. Most of these places are either boarded up and abandoned or serve as flop houses. Of the city's four districts, this one is the most welcoming to visitors, but that is a low bar.
The Alchemists' Quarter is the northeast section of the Styes. Before the Chaos in Neverwinter, this quarter was home to the city's finest temples and universities. However, in 1461, desperate for a new influx of gold, the Seaton Committee heavily loosened their restrictions on alchemical research. Since then, the Alchemists' Quarter's once marvelous buildings have become the bases or building blocks for unscrupulous alchemists, and the research from those alchemists have clogged the water channels with refuse and filth. Beggars scrounge this quarter searching for anything of value the alchemists may have discarded.
The final district is the High Quarter, the seat of local government in the southeast section of the Styes. Most of the buildings here were once municipal offices, but now lie abandoned. There are less residents of the High Quarter than any other, and while guard patrols are more common, but they are near universally corrupt and subject to bribery.
History
Seaton, once a profitable and stable town, ballooned in population and wealth in the early 1400s, when the Seaton Committe opted to cater to the wealthy and elite of nearby Neverwinter by opening a variety of venues for games of chance, high-scale brothels and other institutes of dubious repute that couldn't be hosted in Neverwinter proper.
While this worked for a time in raising the city's fortunes, it did foster an environment where more and more seedier populations moved into Seaton. Nevertheless, Seaton gained a reputation across the Sword Coast for being the place rich people go to have a good time.
However, tying Seaton's fortune to Neverwinter came at a horrific cost when, in 1451, Mt. Hotenow errupted, leveling most of Neverwinter, killing its ruling family, and leaving most of its citizens destitute. The fortunes of Neverwinter were sealed shortly thereafter, when orcs from the Kingdom of Many-Arrows raided the ruined city. These collective disasters would start the period known by Neverens as the Chaos.
Neverwinter's ruined fortunes devestated Seaton, and the gold flow into the city stopped abruptly. Poor investments by the Seaton Committee, who did not expect their income source to implode, sealed Seaton's fate, and the criminal element of the city began gaining more and more influence and power.
In 1463, desperately running short of new sources of gold, the Seaton Committee gutted nearly every regulation they had on alchemical research in a bid to attract alchemists from across the Sword Coast. While this plan worked, this open invitation sealed Seaton's fate, and the newly arrived alchemists quickly began polluting and ruining the waters in the canals and the nearby ocean, killing and mutating many of the fish that Seaton's traditional workers relied upon for food.
By the late 1460s, Seaton had become all-but-known to all as the Styes, reflecting its current squalor.
In the years following the end of the Great Dragon War in 1493, the Styes were intentionally excluded from participation in the Neveren Alliance, as the alliance's founder, Lord Dagult Neverember felt that Seaton's inclusion would harm the alliance's reputation.
In 1494, the aboleth S'gothgah arrived in the Styes, planning to use the abundance of fear and despair among its citizens as power for the Feast of Corruption. The Seaton Temple of Bane, buried in the Low Quarter, became the headquarters for S'gothgah's Cult of Bane for the duration of the Banesmark Crisis. For the next two years, S'gothgah intensified the misery of the Styes through murder, theft, and by infiltrating the Seaton Committee. This situation continued until the end of 1496, when the Heroes of Saltmarsh arrived in the Styes, destorying the cult and freeing the Styes from S'gothgah's cult.
Alternative Name(s)
Seaton
Type
Slum
Inhabitant Demonym
Seatonian
Location under
Included Locations
Owning Organization
Comments