Outlands Gatetowns: Input and suggestions

Blight: The Gate Town of the Abyss

Blight is what used to be called Plague-mort. I guess they figured if they changed the name maybe this time it wouldn’t slide. It’s still right close to the Abyss and has a high percentage of tanarri and other miserable sods, so I wouldn’t bet on the name change doing much good. The gate-town to the Abyss used to be a fairly large burg, around twenty thousand souls - or twenty thousand inhabitants, anyway; how many of them still had their souls is another matter. Plague-Mort, it was called, and it was ruled by an official called an Arch-Lector.

Now, the old Plague-Mort still exists - it just ain’t on the Outlands anymore. See, the Arch-Lector, Byrri Yarmoril, was under a lot of pressure from the tanar’ri to get his city to make the slide to the Abyss - and, shortly after the Faction War, he delivered. It meant the deaths of most of its inhabitants, but frankly neither Yarmoril nor the tanar’ri really cared. More food, souls, whathave you that way y'know. Plague-Mort is now resting comfortably on the Plane of Infinite Portals, the first layer of the Abyss. Well, it’s there, anyway - whether it’s resting comfortably is another matter.

In Plague-Mort’s place soon formed a new city, a burg now called Blite. Blite’s nowhere near as big as Plague-Mort was - at least, not yet, but it’s growing. To anyone who knew Plague-Mort, Blite’s a definite change - whether for the better or for the worse is a matter of opinion. Whereas Plague-Mort was foul, oppressive, and dangerous, at least it was civilized - by some definitions of the word, anyway. Blite ain’t. Fact is, Blite’s population is mostly evil humanoids: orcs, the bulk of ’em, or at least a good plurality, with a good supply of troglodytes, gnolls, harpies, minotaurs, and others. There are humans and demihumans there, but they’re far in the minority. And the monsters in Blite don’t get along much better than they do anywhere else. Blite’s less a coherent city than it is a bunch of disordered towns that are right next to each other and constantly at war.

Still, the races do make some attempt to get along, even if it’s largely unsuccessful. For all its nastiness, Plague-Mort was known as a mercantile center second only to Tradegate among the gate-towns, and, eager for gold. The evil bashers of Blite are trying to build up a similar reputation for their own burg - so far with very limited success. So they’re willing to try to work together to some degree (the key word being “try”) in the interests of financial gain.

Further unification, of a sort, comes from the leadership of Earless Feen, a powerful gnoll who’s managed to get himself looked at as something of an authority figure mostly by virtue of being able to smash anyone who disagrees. Feen’s got a gaggle of cronies who help him out, probably more out of opportunism and a desire to ally themselves with the winning side than because of any real loyalty. It may be worth mentioning that despite his name, Earless Feen does indeed still have both his ears, fact is, his ears are unusually large for a gnoll’s.

While Earless Feen more or less controls the town of Blite, its real leader is the cutter who controls Earless Feen - and that’s Alghu. While she doesn’t come close to matching Feen in power, this canny gnoll sorceress has the big ranger wrapped around her furry finger, and she knows it. She also manages to fill in for Feen’s shortcomings - where Feen is direct, straightforward, and brash, Alghu is scheming, subtle, and devious, and fortunately - for him, at least - Feen at least has the sense to listen to her advice. Feen seems mostly interested in running the town for his own power and pleasure, but Alghu – she got ambitions on her side, and keeps rather tight lipped about them.

Possibly the most powerful orc in Blite, Evlak is convinced that under Feen’s rulership the gnoll minority oppresses the orc majority (or at least plurality) in town. After all, there are temples to two gods favored by gnolls - Yeenoghu and Karaan - and no big temple of Gruumsh. With most of the town’s citizens being Gruumsh-worshippers, there ought to be a temple to Gruumsh at least as big as the one to Yeenoghu. There are other ways, too, that the gnoll minority seems to be favored. Feen’s rulership, he says, just ain’t fair. He’s right on every count, of course, but it’s not like his own rule would be any better. Evlak’s at least as nasty and unjust as Earless Feen is, and if he happened to take over the burg might be a marginally better place from the orcs’ standpoint, but not likely from anyone else’s.

Of course, given that he wants to have a temple in town for his power, it’s odd to note that so far no priest of Gruumsh has offered to build one. Not so much as a shrine has popped up in town. Of course, given the shifting nature of town – it’s possible that the priesthood is just waiting for someone to finally come out on top so they don’t have to waste their time building and rebuilding a place. Or there may be some other reason that’s just not come to light.

Other players in town include Bull, a minotaur who has carved out a three block wide area near the gate, which others in town have taken to calling ‘the Stockyards’. Bull seems to have set out the limits of his turf and isn’t interested in letting anyone else infringe on them. He offers for the right price and to the right folks, a secure place to stay for the night and a safe refuge for goods that any merchant may be bringing to town to sell. Bull may charge a high price, but at least your safety is pretty assured. Unfortunately, orcs, and gnolls need not apply. To quote Bull ‘Y’gots yer own pastures in town. Use em’. Of late, Bull’s been playing host to a sizable number of PTC middle managers, which may give the dark to this minotaur’s business sense.

There’s also the harpy woman, Acantha, whose flock has taken to hiring themselves out to drop things on assigned targets and take pay for intimidation. She hasn’t picked a side in town yet, but tends to get hired by whoever needs a little bit of public humiliation done for the right price.

In a town like Blight, there’s always the risk of sliding and joining it’s predecessor if the place gets too much like the last, and Blight’s already hovering right on the edge of doing so, which may explain the reasonin' for the orc population tolerating the unusual enclave that lives in relative peace and quiet on the edge of town. An entire orc clan, disciplined and organized has settled in, built up a small palisade and secured for themselves water and a small flock of goats for food. What gets more headscratches than anything else, is that these orcs fly two standards outside their gate – their family sigil… and the Harmonium symbol.

These berks aren’t crazy - they built that palisade for a reason – but they have money, connections, and don’t have nearly the attitude one would expect for Harmonium in the area. Apparently they’re more of the mind to lead the rest to the light by demonstration than by force. At least for now.

The clan name they call themselves by is Silver Eye, and apparently these barmy orcs claim they’re come directly from Ortho itself, as a sort of trading post for their home clan, and to gain rank and prestige amongst them. Normally they’ve have gotten chewed up and spat out by the folks in town, since at best they seem ambivalent about chaos, and at worse they’re some right lawful folks. But they keep the town from sliding, keep Feen, Alghu, and Evlak from losing power to the tanarri, and they’re a reliable source of money and loans in town so - so far they’ve not been swamped.

Their leader is a orc woman named Shukmut, a tall, dignified lady (for an orc), who dresses her hair in silver wire and coins and has a natural charisma that brings attention in a room directly to her. She’s spoken many a time with Evlak about his church’s needs, and the needs of the orc population in town, leading to speculation of an arrangement between the two. Privately though, she’s expressed disappointment in the lack of self discipline of the rest of her species in town, pointing out, rightfully so, that only those with the sense and control to work together in an organized way have made any profit or built any holdings in town. The lack of any formal election or means of determining leadership in town is her second biggest complaint but so long as she stares across the divide at Alghu she keeps her mouth shut and her head down.

Important Sites

Top of the Hill
Blight has one high point within it, a hill around which most of the city is built. At the top of this hill is where Feen, his consort, and their buddies have set up kip. The top of the hill is marked with a series of quickly built fences and walls, and just as quickly thrown up stone houses. The gnolls have dug their dens into the sides of the hill and woe be to any who approach without good reason. Non-gnolls who approach this section of town face questioning at best from the armed guards.

The Orc Section
This area of town is run down, and generally filthy. There’s little to no organization within the orc controlled areas of town – with some specific exceptions. The buildings are wooden, and in some cases have been burned down after inter family disputes, gang warfare, or just a good night out drinking. There’s trash and blood on the streets unless the entire block is owned by the same group or family in which case it might as well be it’s own domain. In any case, visitors through these areas better be orc, be well armed, or be fast on their feet.

The Stockyards
The Stockyards is a three block swath near the center of town run but Bull. Around the edge of this section of town, Bull has built up a series of stone walls, topped with a wooden palisade. Within he has arranged a series of warehouses, each guarded and carefully labeled, inns, with stables and a shared pasture in the middle. Each of the buildings is equipped with a tin roof, after an incident involving lit bottles of kerosene being dropped from above. Guards are posted at each of the four entrances and exits to the yards, and those who enter are required to show some form of identification or register themselves with Bull to get a place to stay.

Chapel Roost
A broken down building, near the edge of the top of the hill claws into the sky. It’s windows are broken out, and most of the walls are torn down leaving no roof and a burned out shell for remains. It is here that Acantha and her flock make kip, in the ruins of what used to be a temple to some Abyssal lord before the rest of the town of Plaguemort shifted to the Abyss leaving the burnt out building behind. Odd sounds and movements are sometimes seen in this place in the middle of the night but the harpies could care less as they make their homes well above the ground floor or the unknown contents of the basement. There are always at least three harpies here guarding their home, as they know they have not made many friends in town, so investigations into the contents of the ruined temples basement have failed in the face of their protests.

Silver Eye Homestead
The Silver Eye homestead is a secure and orderly little outgrowth of the edge of town. This place is built to last, with a wooden palisade encompassing a series of orderly stone buildings, most of them single story, and centered around a central courtyard. The buildings are roofed in red tile to dissuade fire attacks, and the central courtyard has its own pool, providing water to the residents and the voluptuous garden that can otherwise be seen only from above. The outer courtyard, between the main building and the single gate to the town is paved and then covered in a white sand dotted with large stones that the lady of the household uses as seating when she holds court or conversation with others in town. Visitors from town have expressed a feeling of disconcerting ‘order’ in this courtyard. When Shukmut is asked about this, she disavows any knowledge of it, saying only that her visitor must be unused to the natural order of her people.

Temple of Karaan
Not too far outside town is a green valley full of lovely verdure but loathly ordure - while the flowers and trees of the vale may be beautiful, the ground is covered with excrement and dung, mixed together with innumerable broken and shattered bones from all sorts of creatures. In the center of the valley is a great circle of misshapen stones, and that circle doubles as a temple of Karaan, a bestial god of destruction and savagery. The temple is run by a gnoll werewolf named Markasau, and Earless Feen himself is said to occasionally pay homage there, though he is not a regular worshipper of the Beast God.

Temple of Yeenoghu
A short distance ringward off the road from Blite to Bedlam is a cave with an overhang over the opening making it look something like the mouth of a gnoll. Inside this cave is the other major temple near Blite, this one dedicated to Yeenoghu, demon lord of gnolls. The high priest at the temple is an odd cutter, an awakened hyena who’s somehow acquired the name of Fuzzy. The chant is Fuzzy used to be the companion of a gnoll druid, but he was released and somehow got involved with Yeenoghu’s worship. Whatever the case, despite his dedication to a demon lord, and his nonhumanoid nature, Fuzzy’s one of the least unpleasant bashers a body’s likely to meet around Blite; he may be chaotic and capricious, but unlike most Bliters he’s not actively evil, and sometimes he can be quite friendly and helpful. ’Course, he ain’t good either, and he does worship a demon lord, so a cutter’s still advised to watch his back when Fuzzy’s around, but still compared to most of the nasties in Bedlam the hyena’s practically a saint.

Re:Shemmy's article - yes. In fact that article had me whining to get the things from him that he had to cut out. Considering he lives within 'strangling' distance from me I suspect we can get that easily.

Re: Courage and Fortitude - again, yes. Though the *exact* reasons aren't detailed in the writeups I have of them - there's a link to Ribcage too as a possible plot hook.

I'll be posting those two next after folks have some time to process this one.

Courage and Fortitude have been posted:

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Torch is posted!

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Hopeless:

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Curst:

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Excelsior:
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