Breaking Ground in Absalom

Monday, October 27, 2008

For more than 4,000 years Absalom has been the City at the Center of the World, a metropolis-sized showcase of the greatest treasures in all Golarion. But it wasn't always like this.

Or was it?

Cities aren't born, they're made, usually through centuries of back-breaking labor and innumerable hardships. But that isn't the case with Absalom. It was brought into the world in a single moment, ready to grow, ready to flourish, ready to claim its place as a city-state to rival empires. From the earliest records of that miraculous place, recorded in Pathfinder Chronicles Guide to Absalom, comes the following account:

"No account exists of Absalom's first moments, for Aroden was alone when he raised the Isle of Kortos from the depths and placed the Starstone where it is now, marking the focus of what was to become the City at the Center of the World. Even in the first centuries of Absalom, when Aroden was a common sight in its halls and on its streets, no one claimed to know how or why Aroden moved the Starstone, or created its resting place. Some believe the Starstone Cathedral is Aroden's greatest construction, while others say the Starstone itself built the monument that protects it. The Cathedral was finished before a single inhabitant arrived in Absalom, though it has continued to grow and expand itself in the centuries since that time. Aroden never answered questions put to him about the Cathedral, saying only that any who needed to know of it would find the answers themselves.

"Indeed, all records of the first few centuries of Absalom are spotty at best. The Founding Law of Absalom, the laws which even the Grand Council may not change or remove, were written in stone within Azlanti Keep, but no other original documents survive. Four millennia of mold, accident, and even intentional sabotage have ruined every book, scroll, and tablet kept before 400 AR. While copies of copies claiming to be true to the original texts can be found throughout the city, even within Forae Logos different editions of texts often disagree with one another. Much of the first millennium of Absalom is less history, and more mythology.

"What is clear is that Aroden established the location of the city when he placed the Starstone, and that doing so took a heavy toll on him. Some myths claim the Isle of Kortos belonged to a terrible sea-demon or god of minotaurs, and that Aroden delved into a massive labyrinth to face and defeat that original resident. Other legends place Absalom as an old outpost of the Azlanti, sunken and brought back from the depths by that civilization's last son, and assign that as the reason gillmen continue to live in and around the city. Most natives actually assume Aroden raised the island up from the depths when he recovered the Starstone, creating it from the raw rock and kelp of the sea floor, but no record of this version of events can be dated any earlier than 1,450 AR and no record of Aroden himself making the claim exists. While this last version of events is official dogma to several churches, many serious scholars discount it."

Pathfinder Chronicles Guide to Absalom by Owen K. C. Stephens releases this December.

F. Wesley Schneider
Pathfinder Managing Editor