Pech Attar's shame and glory - for a Uresia campaign
As mentioned before, the Driftwood is a collection of impounded ships under the notional control of the Pilot's Guild. Notional, because while the Guild requires these ships be kept at anchor and punishes the lighting of fires with death, individual craft are under the control of a variety of groups. Some are maintained by their old crews, trying to scrape together the cash to pay their debts to the Guild. Squatters live on others, hiding from one enemy or another. Many have been acquired (in one fashion or another) by criminals. These are used as secret warehouses, hideouts, marketplaces, or illicit businesses. Of this last category, the two most famous examples are the Cloak of Storms and the Nameless Thousand.
Site of the most famous brothel in Pech Attar (and that's saying something...), the Cloak of Storms is run by the largest local crime syndicate, the Boathook Tong. The Cloak is an old troop hulk from the dark and glorious days of the old Kovali Empire. Now those big passenger holds have been converted into spacious, well-appointed rooms. The interior decoration has made the most of the sinister grandeur of Kovali Imperial aesthetic, which simply adds to the guilty thrill for the loyal (and typically fairly well-off) customers. Another characteristic flourish is the stormcloud grey clothing worn by the entertainers and staff. The courtesans' costumes are cut in the style of the Imperial Navy, with suitable provocative alterations, of course. Meanwhile the bouncers, bartenders, and other staff are attired in versions of the Kovali Marine full dress uniform. But all these uniforms are colored to match the old sails that originally gave the Cloak her name.
Visitors to the Cloak are ferried out from shore, where they pay their fees before being allowed on the longboat that takes them from the Low Town out to the Cloak. No weapons are allowed onboard, but given the ship's relative isolation and the reputation of the Boathook Tong, few people feel compelled to start anything much worse than a barroom brawl - and even they are expected to cover the damages and act suitably apologetic. For a crime syndicate made up of cut-throat merchant princes and stevedores, the Boathook Boys are sticklers for politeness.
This is a recent addition to the Driftwood, but after the Cloak of Storms, the Nameless Thousand is the most popular and lucrative of the criminal "Business Ships" making up the thriving core of the Driftwood. Five years ago, an Orgalt slave-rowed trireme put in to Pech Attar to trade a cargo of rather mediocre emeralds. When the day for the sale arrived, the captain and the small number of non-slave crewmen had vanished. There was an inquest, of course. However, observers at the Guild inquest noticed that the Pilots didn't seem to be looking for the captain too diligently. Theories abounded, many focussing on the captain's well-known cruelty to his enslaved rowers. The common feeling was that even though the Pilots are slaves pretty much in name only, they still felt like taking the opportunity to strike a blow, however small, for their fellow slaves.
For whatever reason, the fact was that there was now a large ship whose master was neither definitively alive or dead. The Pilots floated it out to the edge of the Driftwood and left her in the hands of her rowers. With their chains newly struck off, and in possession of a boat they wouldn't be allowed to leave in and a few thousand guilders worth of low-quality magic emeralds.
Who knows why they decided to turn their prison-turned-home into a casino?
In any event, their innovation has paid off. Although most non-Dwarf gamblers have to duck their heads to avoid getting concussed belowdecks, the Nameless is still a popular site for gamblers of all stripes. High-class nobles looking for thrills, or destitute men trying one last time to turn their luck around. By now, the original bankroll of emeralds has long since gone, paid out to one winner or another. And the slave crew (no longer Nameless, and never a Thousand - more like 200) are continuing to rake their profits off the top. Oddly, they don't seem to live much more extravagantly than they did as slaves. Canny people in Driftwood and the Low Town are starting to wonder exactly what long-term goals these dour card-dealers and croupiers are holding so close to their chests. In the meantime, the only real change they have made is to take several other impounded vessels put up as collateral and convert them into roomier living space, allowing almost the entire inside of the Nameless to be converted into several large casino rooms and a decent buffet line.
There are some peculiarities, of course, about permanently living in a floating tinderbox in one of the most crowded harbors in all of Uresia. One is the universal fear of fire. The Pilots patrolling the harbor periodically check for fires, and by common agreement (enforced by the occasional drowning) none of the tenants of the Driftwood will build much more than a small cookfire. Merchants from the shore who specialize in heat-intensive foods and services (bread, distilling, glassmaking) find it profitable to send their wares out to the Driftwood on small skiffs, and if you want to get on a Driftie's good side, you might want to bring a basket of muffins or a cask of ale with you. The buffet on the Nameless is a traditional Orgalt cold buffet, mostly composed of cold salted, smoked, or pickled meats (oddly, not as reminiscent of a Norwegian koltbord as it might sound). At the other side of the Driftwood, the managers of the Cloak go to some trouble to ship hot food out to the ship on a nightly basis.
But what do the other Drifties eat? Well, there's a fair amount of stuff they can manage to snag right there in the harbor. There is some oddity about the Harbor itself that keeps this floating shantytown from polluting the water too much (possibly a side effect of the Pilot's Guild having used it as a source of mystic power, or just as possibly not), so there is actually a limited type of subsistence farming going on, with mussels being cultivated on ropes and wooden frames, as well as a special, very large breed of barnacle. The mussels are actually quite good, but only the most down-on-their-luck Drifties eat the big barnacles (well, the Bordanii sect of warrior-cooks has a decent recipe for them, but even they would rather eat the Nunessi fish). There are also some crab- and lobster-analogues that can occasionally be trapped on the harbor floor. As well, there are incredibly large bottom-feeding fish similar to catfish, but they seem to be too smart to be caught by conventional means. Gull meat is quite prevalent in the Driftie diet, and those lucky enough to still have ship's boats can take their chances rowing the small craft out beyond the Teeth to fish in the open sea. Pilots will "unofficially" guide these people, pointing out clearer paths for them to take through the jagged rocks. The Guild also distributes leftovers from the Guildhall refectory to particularly destitute wretches, who recieve it with surprising bad grace.
All the ships have to buy their fresh vegetables and fruits from shore, even though a variety of seaweed is commonly eaten when a storm blows some in from the open sea. Another concern is drinkable water. All the ships make efforts to capture as much rainfall as possible, and selling potable water to the Drifties is another common business in the Low Town. Also, even though these ships aren't allowed to leave the bay, a certain trade in naval stores goes on, as the inhabitants patch and repair their craft to keep them afloat. The ships themselves are frequently lashed to each other, forming crude archipelagos. Most of these little groups agree to allow passage over each other's decks as necessary. Obviously, the larger criminal boats don't do such neighborly things. If at all, they might create their own little flotillas, as the Dwarves of the Nameless have.
The last major thing to consider is that due to age, disrepair, and other problems, several of these craft are no longer inhabited by people. That's not to say they are uninhabited, though. There are several varieties of vermin, beastie, and cackling monstrosity that lurk in the lower decks of these deserted wrecks. Like the other ships, some of these wrecks are held together by rotting ropes, crude bridges, or just a hundred years' growth of the big barnacles. People who must flee from even the crude social order of the Driftwood might risk hiding in these hulks, but the hazards are terrible. Every year or so, the Pilot's Guild organizes a cull in one or more of these dead ships, although if circumstances warrant it, they might go in looking for someone or something specific.
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