<div align="center">(https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/pathfinder/images/0/07/Absalom_map.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20081216144120)</div><br/><hr/><br/><div class="floatleft">(https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/pathfinder/images/5/57/Absalom_symbol.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/250?cb=20090306043743)</div>For more than four thousand years, Absalom has been the City at the Center of the World, a metropolis unrivaled within the Inner Sea Region. In comparison, the illusion-shrouded capital of Kyonin, Iadara, is almost provincial, boasting less than a fifth of Absalom's population. The vast Patchwork City stretches five miles from west to east, and seven miles from south to north, each of its districts bigger than most cities in the Inner Sea region. Those approaching by sea must navigate the Floatsam Graveyard, the wreckage of the countless navies that failed to capture Absalom, and those approaching on foot find the Cairnlands beyond its walls littered with broken down, antiquated siege weapons from innumerable failed sieges of the City of Buried Treasures. Beyond its walls, the icecapped Kortos Mounts, some of the highest mountains in the world, jut impossibly high into the sky until they disappear into the cloudline.<br/><br/>Legend still holds that none other than the Last Azlanti, Aroden, was responsible for the founding of Absalom, having raised the Starstone from the depths of the Inner Sea before calling upon the best and brightest luminaries of the day, decreeing that the Starstone was not to be moved and tasking them with its protection. It is this event that marked the first year of what came to be known throughout the region as the most popular calendar: Absalom Reckoning, and the same event that propelled Aroden from his mythic status into divinity.<br/><br/>The port city's sprawling docks teem with activity, thick with longshoremen and merchants, foreigners and those eager to part them from their coin. To the sensibilities of an elven maiden used to far more contemplative surroundings, the din might seem almost deafening as young touts advertise for their employers, a good number of them for the taverns and brothels that litter the district that houses Absalom's docks, promising warm food and soft company so coveted by sailors when they take their shore leave, though nearly as many are there to offer their services as guides who swear up and down that as natives they know the city like the back of their own hands.<br/><br/>Of course, what might strike a native of Kyonin (or really anyone from beyond Absalom) more than anything else is the staggering diversity of those who walk Absalom's well-traveled streets. While the majority of the inhabitants are human, more than a third of Absalom's residents aren't, and unlike any other human metropolis, a traveler is greeted by the farthest thing from homogeny imaginable, with individuals from every corner of the world, every ethnicity, every fashion. A newcomer might even see individuals of races that someone from Kyonin may never have seen before.<br/><br/>Nestled within Absalom's Ascendant Court, the religious heart of the City at the Center of the World, waits the Pleasure Salon of Calistria. Elves and half-elves alike are more common among the temple prostitutes than they are beyond the its walls. Its high priestess is said to be a stunning beauty, Dyrianna of House Avenstar, the only noble house among the eight most influential in the metropolis to be descended not from human stock, but rather, elven immigrants from Kyonin.<br/><br/>The Pathfinder Society Grand Lodge can be found in the Foreign Quarter, a melting pot of foreign merchants with long-term investments in Absalom, adventurers, exiles, and those who lack the coin to return to their native lands. The Grand Lodge is a massive fortress, easily one of the most impressive even within the boundaries of a city as sprawling as Absalom.<br/><br/>And, of course, that's not even touching on the famous (or, depending on whom you ask, infamous) Starstone Cathedral at the very center of Absalom's Ascendant Court, where trials test those brave and bold enough to dare to seek divinity.