Skyseat

The north quarter of Ostium, also known as the Skyseat, is the palace district of the city and the seat of government. It houses the governor-reagent, the ruling nobility and the various merchant princes of Ostium's cartels.

Skyseat has two major features: The Palace of Glass and The Visage.

The Visage is what the locals call the 300-foot cliff face which separates Skyseat from its sister-quarters. Skyseat is situated upon a plateau that overlooks the entire city from the north. Its intimidatingly sheer rock faces combined with the strong coastal winds that continually buffet the area make for a long drop and a quick death for any would-be climbers.

As such, the only real means of ingress or egress from Skyseat are the golem-pulled elevators. Control and maintenance of these elevators is supposedly handled by the Skyseat precinct, but has actually been outsourced to merchant prince Thasselorn Cumulan. Rides up and down the elevator are supposed to cost only a nominal fee, however Lord Cumulan charges outrageous rates to all but nobility and honored guests. Ostensibly, this is to keep more common troublemakers out of the palace district. However, the truth is that it has created an economy of semi-legal slave trade in Skyseat.

Slave owners will sponsor a person's fare up to Skyseat but not down, trapping him or her in a district where the law favors the rich, shops do not open doors to the lowborn, and to simply walk on the wrong streets and be the wrong kind of person is a crime. Lowborn brought to Skyseat in this manner often find themselves with no choice but to work as indentured servants else quickly starve to death. Those who choose not to live by this system are called Hurlers. Likely because, driven either by desperation or despair, the most common fate of these ragged individuals is to hurl themselves off the Visage.

Most hurlers live in hidden ghettos either as beggars or criminals.