Hordern

Lying south of Old Town along the Isin Strait, Hordern is the chief industrial district for the city. The docks on the western shore serve the large commercial container ports and marine transfer terminals that use up the best land in the district.

Characteristics

Hordern’s residential areas are plagued by poor sanitation and lack of access to clean water. The overcrowding due to the unfinished terrain of the residential districts has led to communal toilets, with more than 12,000 households having no access to safe waste facilities. Those attempting to use the communal toilets without a guard of some kind are prone to attacks, and Hordern has the highest violent crime rate in the city. Travel into and through the district requires armed guards with knowledge of the district, especially for those planning to stray from Light Street.

Hordernport

The docks along the western coastal region of Hordern rose to prominence and expanded as Abenbury transformed into a downtown and tourist-focused area. With the conversion of Abenbury's docks from commercial cargo docks to a fish market, Hordern became the most prosperous port on the island. The majority of that prosperity flowed to Old Town and the Kekhinim Vineyards, while the dockworkers lived in relative squalor.

Hordernport is largely commercial with a handful of the better residential areas housing guards while the worse areas house dock supervisors. The majority of the dock workers walk into work on a daily basis from Gaesneburg or The Cairns.

Stedweg Hippodrome

Originally the training grounds for the Temple of Septimus, the Septimites relocated north of The Watch after they subjugated Fenn City. Rather than let the fields fall into disuse, enterprising patrons turned the fields into a mount-racing complex and stables. A shrine to Septimus still marks the northern entrance to the grounds, and the temple frequently sponsors jousting tournaments. The Stedweg Hippodrome complex stretches across most of the border between Old Town and Hordernport.

Wealthy individuals throughout the Free Cities own the mounts, which they hire others to raise elsewhere. In Avemroth, the best trainers rise to the highest ranks of the middle class and even the lower upper classes. With the exception of the jousters, who usually arise from the Septimite ranks, most of the jockeys come from the slums of Avemroth. Jockeys who place in the top three in their races can make significant money to rise above their station; those who place fourth or lower earn next to nothing.

Gaesneburg

The City of the Dead as the middle and lower classes call it, Gaesnebury (pronounced ges-sen-bu-ry) is the oldest and most heavily used cemetery in the city as well as one of its oldest slums. A large public graveyard with both above-ground graves and miles of spidering underground catacombs, impoverished residents of Avemroth have lived in the City of the Dead for more than two millennia, helping carve new catacombs for burial and attempting to make a life among the graves. A large group of Svaald clanless live in the cool of the catacombs. Of the slums in Avemroth, the City of the Dead has the lowest crime, but it is by no means safe to outsiders without a formal purpose in the graveyard.

Some residents receive pay from the city for maintaining the graves. Shaman-channelers patrol the City of the Dead to assure that no graves are desecrated. The living also have neighborhood leaders, usually wise or charismatic elders from the three races. None of the neighborhood leaders have a presence on the City Guild, but the Guard for the Dead does.

The Mausoleum

Known as 'The Mausoleum' by local residents, the temple of Su-Lan appears from the outside as a large mausoleum surrounded by statues from every race. The Mausoleum shifts location, or the arrangement of the graves on the way to it shift. No one except the high priestess knows for certain. It is impossible for non-believers to find, but even irreligious locals treat it with reverence.

The Cairns

The cairns for which the district received its name along with some barrows near the foothills of the Southern Coil predate the founding of any of the settlements on Avemroth, as far as anyone knows. Marked as sacred or cursed sites, the Cairns were originally meant to be excavated and landscaped to reclaim usable land. After several early excavators experienced mysterious and untimely demises, the city abandoned reclamation projects. As Hordernport's workforce expanded, the need for housing expanded into the area of the Cairns. Poor residents of the district built shanties and hovels between the cairns and the barrows.

Flash flooding and crime are major problems in The Cairns. Residents have learned to create channels around their homes, which aid in washing sewage down out of the district, to the annoyance of the patrols along Light Street.