Old Town (Avemroth)

The district originally known as Abenbury includes the old city docks and the City Temple, the government center and financial district for the growing city of Avemroth. As Abenbury’s influence spread and subsumed other settlements on the island, the city took on the island’s name, and the port shifted from industrial commerce to commercial fishing. With time and colloquial usage, Abenbury became known simply as ‘Old Town.’

Characteristics

Over the millennia, the city's wealthy elite rebuilt much of Old Town's residential and commercial areas to attract tourists from the other Free Cities. This included erecting buildings in varying shades of blue, converting the old city docks nearest the river into seafront taverns, paving roads along both sides of the river up to the Kekhinim Temple and building taverns, amphitheaters, stages, and parks along the Riverwalk, and allowing the establishment of a formal market square complete with legal casinos and brothels.

With its heavy emphasis on tourism, Old Town is one of the safest districts in the city—at least outdoors—and represents about 7 percent of the city's resident population, largely composed of officers and adjuncts of the temples, low level government bureaucracy, and managers, workers, and . Even the prostitutes and barwenches of Old Town rank among the city's middle class due to their patronage.

Places of Interest

Downtown

City Temple

The City Temple or “Old City Temple” was the first temple apart from the temple of Averae on the island. Originally a multi-denominational temple to all of the gods, the sprawling complex now includes the Sanctuary for minor shrines to each of the gods, the Temple of Justice, the Althing or Temple of the City Guild, the Treasury (the city’s stock and commodities exchange and headquarters of the merchant guild), and the City Plaza, where a herald proclaims and posts the city news of the morning.

The City Temple sits just south of the Riverwalk where it overlaps with Light Street and north of Temple Street.

Abenbury Riverwalk and Old Town Pier

As Old Town’s importance as the city center increased, the importance of its docks and river traffic as a commercial commerce port diminished. Over time, enterprising client-merchants converted the docks into the Old Town Pier public houses and seafood market and began to cultivate a series of public houses, shops, and spaces for performing arts along both sides of the Abenbury River. The Abenbury Riverwalk grew to become an officially recognized road—actually two roads on either side of the river—winding from the Old Town Pier on the Isin Strait through the Kekhinim Temple and on through the Kekhinim Vineyards to the Averae’s Bounty cascades. Although the Riverwalk continues into Kekhinim Vineyards, it ceases as a commercial road at the Kekhinim Temple.

Managing, serving, or performing along the Riverwalk requires patronage, and even the lowest of prostitutes in the district rank among the city's lower middle class.

Kekhinim Temple

The Temples of Kevalth and The Twins began as separate complexes on the northern and southern sides of the Abenbury River as it winds into the Kekhinim Vineyards. Given their intertwined patronages, the temples eventually established connections across the river, and today all three temples are run by the Wood Elf Evergreen triplets. The Kekhinim Temple, as the combined complexes came to be known, represent the most beautiful and verdant location on the island, surpassing the vineyards to which they give way and for which they are named. The Abenbury River flows through the center of the combined complex and the Abenbury Riverwalk continues into the Kekhinim Vineyards to the east. The Kekhinim Temple is recognized as the border between Old Town and Kekhinim Vineyards districts.

The Abenbury Riverwalk rises to the temple up an increasingly landscaped hill of magically sculpted bushes and shrubs and vines hanging from wooden pillars and trellises. The Kevalth side of the river features a sacred grove extending far to the northern foothills of the Spine of Averae mountains. The Twins side of the river is a stunning garden with fountains and hanging gardens throughout, extending near to the Lake Aben neighborhood. In the center of the river sits an eye-shaped island with a high hill in its midst, atop which stands a circle of stones serving as the high place of the combined temple complex.