GameMastery Module U1: Gallery of Evil takes place against the backdrop of the largest city in Golarion: Absalom. This burgeoning metropolis is filled to the brim with people from all walks of life across three continents. Easily the most cosmopolitan city in the world, Absalom must expect the unexpected. In the jaded manner common to many large cities, nothing really surprises them.
While we intend to unveil more about our iconic major city over the course of the next several months, for now we are going to limit ourselves to one district at a time. The idea is to enable the readers to drop these districts into whatever major city they use in their own campaigns, while slowly building up Absalom's identity, history, and culture. In time, this metropolis will become one of the major centerpieces of our entire campaign setting, and in Gallery of Evil, we give you the first of Absalom's districts to be revealed: the Ivy District.
As one of the oldest districts in the city, the Ivy District sits a good distance from Absalom's outer walls. Its tranquil parks, flowering, ivy-lined streets, industrious mercantile and artisan zones, and upper-class homes have been blessed with relatively little disruption from the countless sieges that have shattered against the city walls and seaside cliffs surrounding the Isle of Kortos. The Ivy District is the hub of culture and art within Absalom and, some might venture, the greatest influence on the styles and trends of its neighboring kingdoms.
Winding cobbled stone streets and hard-packed dirt roads, separated by narrow drainage canals that eventually empty into the sea, wend their way through the district. Decorative bridges connect numerous streets with one another, each one decorated somewhat differently from the next, with bas relief sculptures, murals, or even tiled mosaics appearing seemingly at random. Its streets are among the busiest in the city, save only the market and dock districts.
The Ivy District is the most popular location in Absalom among those who appreciate the arts and the finest products and entertainment gold can buy. Because of the Ivy District's reputation for beauty, fine art, and masterwork trade goods (fine blades, stylish and top-quality armor, renowned gem cutters and jewelers, exquisite clothing, carpentry products, and so on), it is also very tempting for thieves. The district has a surprisingly low theft rate, however, thanks to the efforts of a well-paid District Watch and the Brotherhood of Abadar, which patrols the streets looking for signs of unlawful activities and disturbances.
One of the most significant areas of the Ivy District is The Ivy District Park and Topiary Menagerie. This public park is filled with beautiful oak groves, pines, beech trees, weeping willows, cedars, and a wide variety of more exotic flora. Flower gardens and fruit-bearing trees line the neat dirt paths that wind through the park, and a large pond dominates its center. At places where the water is narrow enough, gorgeous bridges arch across its placid surface. Ducks, geese, colorful fish, and frogs live in the pond. Other wildlife lives here too, such as squirrels, owls, foxes, and hares. The druidic members of the Perfumers' Conglomerate tend all the life here. Through continual effort they manage to keep the trees, grass, and flowers pruned and blooming all year round. The sparkling clean water and happy and healthy wildlife are a testament to their hard work.
One of the park's main attractions is located at the center of a tall hedge maze: the topiary menagerie. Shrubs and bushes have been expertly pruned and trained into shapes of animals, people, and even rare and magical beasts. Although this wonderful horticultural menagerie seems innocent enough, the park's attendant druids recently discovered a group of teenage kids dead in the surrounding maze and a topiary unicorn missing from the menagerie. The stab wounds on the bodies were enough to confirm their suspicions of the missing unicorn's involvement, but they haven't determined how it happened or what happened to the missing topiary killer.
