Piskaro

We're moving from the Karthax Mountains down to Krevborna's coast, stopping for a while in Piskaro--Krevborna's second-largest city and busiest port. Piskaro is the gateway for nautical horrors in the setting, but it also has variety of other Gothic nonsense going on.

Piskaro

A Dangerous Seaport Fallen From Grace

Piskaro is a densely populated port city of hundreds of islands connected by bridges and canals spread across the lagoon where the River Krev bleeds into the Khorva Sea. Piskaro is a center of thriving maritime trade and a haven for pirates. Its wharves bustle with the lading and unloading of full-rigged ships, prison hulks are moored offshore, and dangerous quayside taverns are frequented by cutthroats and whalers who call exotic ports home. 

     Piskaro is governed by whichever pirate captain has recently intimidated the others into submission. The exercise of law and order in Piskaro falls on parish beadles and constables. Piskaro’s authorities turn a blind eye to the activities of the buccaneers operating out of its wharves, but the city’s pirates do make examples of those they consider traitors—as the number of gibbeted skeletons hanging wharfside attest.

Perhaps because of its proximity to the strange and unknowable sea, life in Piskaro is subject to persistent oddities. Those who sleep in Piskaro often find their slumber disturbed by hallucinatory nightmares, prophetic dreams, and foreboding omens. The deformed and reeking remains of unnatural aberrations occasionally wash up on shore. Sigils and runes are scrawled onto the sides of buildings with chalk to ward off violent crime. 

Hallmarks

The following elements and aesthetic notes define Piskaro:

    • Piskaro, Krevborna’s largest port, is controlled by pirate captains and their crews.

    • Teetering buildings crowd together like crooked teeth atop Piskaro’s largest bridges. 

    • The city smells of the briny deep and the sea’s unfathomable secrets.

    • Many of the seafaring folk of Piskaro place their faith in Zhylassa, the Lady of the Drowned, a cruel sea goddess regarded as a grim heresy by the Church of Holy Blood.

    • The taverns near Piskaro’s wharves are notoriously violent.

    • Some of Piskaro’s native population are greshniks possessing bulging eyes, a marked lack of hair, and fish-like visages that hint at an inhuman heritage.