Monday, September 11, 2017

Lux Tenebris: Ordotown

ORDOTOWN
Ordotown and the surrounding area.
East of the Palatine Peninsula, the Bittersalt Sea extends eight hundred miles along the shores of the Braerosen Wastes.  It is a desolate coastline of gray-white desert, the legacy of a divine war fought and ended millennia ago.  The life that exists there is rare and tough. It is not the sort of place one would expect to find a settlement, but one exists near Deadwater Bay.
Ordotown can be found about a half-mile inland from the bay. There is no road, just a simple wooden sign near the beach that indicates the settlement’s general location.  Experienced travelers know that the best way to find Ordotown is to wait until dusk and follow the plumes of smoke rising in the north.  Even then, traveling at night toward Ordotown through the coastal Wastes can be fatal.  Various elementals and undead entities lurk on the edge of the town, waiting to fall upon the unwary.
            The town itself is a series of gray-white berms that rise and fall into the landscape, forming streets and habitations. It’s not until one is actually in Ordotown that one spots improvised chimneys emerging from some of these stony mounds or the carefully fitted doors and small windows that let meager daylight into the interior rooms.
            No one is certain how many people call Ordotown home. The populace exists in a constant state of flux. People come and go, appear and vanish, as they like. Estimates range from forty to a hundred people at most, although a survey of long-term residents would probably reveal a much lower number. 
            Ordotown does not appear on any official map. It is not a sanctioned settlement or colony of any government or church.  That’s the way the residents like it. Ordotown is a place where people come to disappear, for a while, or for a lifetime.
            Its origins are unclear. Some say the settlement was started by shipwrecked pirates. Others that it was established after the original, fossilized settlement, was discovered by academics. Some say treasure-hunters were the first to establish a base, but when they realized there was no treasure to be found they abandoned the site.  Whatever its origins, everyone agrees that the town was named after the first man buried in its graveyard, a fellow named Kranen Ordo.
            By all accounts he was a legendary scallywag, thief and fugitive.  His burial in the town graveyard seemed to give the settlement not only a name but a purpose.
            In the forty years of its existence, Ordotown has served as respite and sanctuary for felons and fugitives, the famous and the infamous, as well as common murderers and madmen.  The aasimar blackguard, Aril Phelar, found brief refuge in Ordotown before meeting his end in distant Ayath. Azor Ireloom, who murdered the pirate-queen Iron Jenny, fled to Ordotown, to avoid the murderous wrath of her crew.  Instead, he would be killed by Ara Nori, the Regicide of Kuln, in a common bar fight. The half-elf sorceress, Silmera Venteth, spent her final years atop the Lookout, mourning the death of her lover, the triton hero, Sulak Kirr.
            You would think more people would know about Ordotown, but they don’t. Every once in a while a bard shows up, poking his nose around, following rumors of an infamous outpost. The ones who find Ordotown and manage to leave are wise enough not to sing about it.

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