Ahol

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"A miserable, dark city powered by eels and vice." - Description of late PR Ahol from a local gang member.

Ahol

Ahol's in the world like a big black pit and it's filled with people who are filled with shit.

Type	City
Government	Monarchy
Location	Osugbo
Inhabiting Race	Humans

Ahol is a large city located in northeast Osugbo.

About

Ahol in 695 PR

The city houses thousands of residents, but is poorly run and very corrupted by its officials, who rule under a greedy king. The Best Around visited Ahol once to stop an infiltration by an enchantress and her demon spawn, they had one casualty in the form of Iris' sister Dariel.

At some point during or after the second war with Tiamat, Ahol was subjected to the curse of Perpetual Darkness.

Residents and Factions

695 PR

• Nell's Pie Shop
  • Run by an evil enchantress named Nell who makes money by controlling the hunchbacks and lunatics of the town into making pies for her pie shop. The pies are typically human flesh from victims of Sweeney.
  • Her magic focus is a String of Pearls
  • Sweeney Vrock, a transformed Vrock who has been tortured and force to obey the whims of Nell. When in human form, the Vrock performs barbering duty for the town, trapping them in his parlor before turning them over to Nell.
  • Tobias Frag, Sweeney's apprentice who discovered the truth and sought sanctuary in the insane asylum instead of being captured by Nell and her hunchbacks
• Joanna Oakley
  • A poor woman who's fiance has gone missing in the pie shop. She asked Cliffedge to send adventurers to investigate.
  • Had a fiance Lieutenant Thornhill, who was killed and baked into a pie.
  • Got a new fiance named Mark Ingestrie, who has fallen suspiciously into this position only because of Thornhill's disappearance. Later became Tobias' caretaker

• Judge Lupin
  • Addicted to Nell's pies, he does everything in his judicial power to keep the pie shop open.
  • Also owns a pet beetle.

• Dr. Haze
  • Owner of the insane Asylum, keeps Tobias locked up and tortures him under the orders of Judge Jeffrey. At one point he releases the lunatics into the streets where they set the city on fire.
• Others
  • A poor widow who also lost her husband "Alms" and has taken to the streets calling out for him.
  • Thomas Priest, who is little.

1100 PR

As late PR Ahol is based on Doskvol, you can find more specific information off-wiki at this resource.

Some 400 years later, the city has become a remarkable hot spot for gang activity after it became a bubble society, with a large electroplasmic field keeping dangers out in Quelmar (which were aplenty thanks to The War of Many Names) from getting in.

The electroplasm that powered the city was created with a mix of distilled ghost and leviathan blood, Leviathan being a nickname for Dragons during that era of wartime.

However, the city was not entirely safe, thanks to the Psychobomb attacks on the realm, it became possible for forces of numerous archdevils (including Tiamat herself) to infiltrate Ahol from the inside. As such, further protections needed to be created. In order to stop the souls from becoming corrupted and evil from the corruption of devils, demons, and dragons, the city began to hire Spirit Wardens, whose job was to process and destroy any bodies in the city in a special ceremony that kept the souls (or ghosts) of the deceased from returning to Quelmar. This was not always succesful though, and large enough ripples in the Ghost Field, such as during The Mother's Day Riots, were still possible.

Occasionally, a ghost would return to Ahol and hide itself by inhabiting inside another person, or even a piece of clockwork.

Notable Gangs of the late PR Era

As mentioned above, gang activity was rampant in the cities by 1100 PR, with some of the larger and more notable gangs listed below:

• Red Sashes
• Crows
• The Neighbours
• Lampblacks
• Spirit Wardens (sometimes considered a gang of their own)
• Hollow Hunters
  • A ghostbusters-esque organization that was based out of Crow's Foot
• The Fog Hounds
  • -The Fog Hounds keep patrol on the north and east bound canals that lead to the Old North Port
  • Their leader was Margette Vale
  • The Fog Hounds are Insulur and Clannish, and have the money to fund their ventures thanks to a contract with the Dockers who pay to ensure no one gets things in and out of the city unless it goes through the docks.The Fog Hounds of course use this contract as a way to become the sole smugglers through the old canals, as they have the funding to fight off and pay off anyone else trying to smuggle through the northeast passageways.
• The Bluecoats
  • The city's police force. Enforcing the will of both the elites and their own pockets. Arguably the worst gang of the whole log, they are a group of violet thugs given official jurisdiction and equipment from the city. Corrupt and Merciless.
  • In a city full of criminals, their headquarters, Ironhook Prison, is filled with the worst of them. =

Notable Locations

The Neighburrow

Home of the Quelmar gang known as The Neighbours.

Other Locations

• The Blowhol, a store that specialized in selling blowguns and darts. Only one of it's kind in the city.

Behind the Screen

• Ahol's map in based directly on the streets on London, UK, where the original story of A String of Pearls and its later adaptions took place. Many of the characters and events in Ahol are an homage to the original story and its adapted musical Sweeney Todd.
• The show's line "There's a hole in the world" gives the city its name.
• Many of the 1100 PR factions and tidbits are based on Doskvol from the pen-and-paper game Blades in the Dark