Legends of Gibbet

Out of all the cities on Bridges Gibbet is the most superstitious and prone to bouts of poetic whimsy. It's cultural story is thick with embellishment as each heroic sailor and thief tries to add themselves to the tapestry but a few legends stick out about the rest as important elements of Gibbets identity.

The Naming of Gibbet
Long ago when the progenitors where mere slaves upon the iyari boats songs were sung of wishing for an uprising. These songs were bloody and angry, they would make even the most hardened warrior pale this deep was their hatred for their captors. And when the uprising finally came? When the twenty two captains reclaimed their ships and bound them together? The songs were only the half of it, the horrors unspeakable to the mortal tongue.

When the other iyari fled only one remained and when they stood against the captains they were overpowered by a mass of writhing blades and chains. When the orgy of violence, when all vengeance had been sated, all that remained was a smear of blood and gore on the decks. But from this gore a new body grew, more broken and battered, but new. The iyari known to the men as The Tide was systematically destroyed and reborn uncountable times before in an act of frustration the captains hauled their weakened form to the highest mast and hung them from it.

For many many years the twitching form of The Tide was flown as the flag of Gibbet before the development of the city swallowed them whole. No one now knows where The Tide now hangs or even if there even was a Tide to begin with but the city is forever named for that final defiant act against the iyari.

S'llis and Kaern
In Gibbets infancy and early boom it attracted the attention of many a being eager to manipulate it for their gain. Two of these beings came from the very sea itself, one named S'llis and one named Kaern.

S'llis was a beast of flailing limbs and a maw that could swallow a ship whole. S'llis rose from the darkness with one arm at each corner of the city and asked for it's fealty. The Twenty Two said no. Some time later S'llis rose again now with one arm for each way the wind blows and demanded fealty and again the Twenty Two said no. Finally S'llis rose a final time with one arm for each of the captains and swore to sink the city if it did not bend to the beasts whims. To this the captains responded with curses the like the plane had never heard.

Kaern was a behemoth of a shelled creature who toyed with Gibbet, using it's immense body to push the city off course or to drag it out to ocean. Kaern did not wish for fealty, only a cut of the profits to fill it's lair with. And when it saw the city's plight at the hands of S'llis Kaern fought the many armed beast in a battle that lasted for days and that held the city in the middle of a maelstrom. When Kaern rose victorious from the scarlet depths it swore itself to protect the city for the rest of time, holding S'llis and any other gods of the deep away from the city. For now.

It is said that on specially calm nights you can still see the bioluminescent trails left below the city in Kaern's wake.

The Deck of Decks
When the city first expanded beyond a flotilla the captains began a land grab to claim their territories and in the chaos much conflict brewed. From this chaos stepped an old crone who offered a deal and a game for control of the wooden land of Gibbet. She would give each captain a card from her deck of fortune telling cards, twenty two in total, and each one of these cards would represent an equal portion of the city. Whomever held a card was entitled to an equal share of the city. If any captain held more than one card then they would have two shares of the city and so on. To this the captains agreed believing themselves more able to steal these cards than any of the others.

This confidence quickly turned to paranoia that quickly turned to outright madness. Many of the original captains locked themselves and their cards away to keep anyone else from taking them. The city was now equally divided but without leadership, to which the first mates of these crews turned to with aplomb. These citizens struck a deal for a peace between the wards and each slew their paranoid masters for their cards.

This tradition holds to this day where the ultimate symbol of power in Gibbet is to hold one of the Twenty Two original cards from the legendary Deck of Decks.

A Soul's Worth of Blood
Following the slaying of the first captains a tradition rose in the form of a task presented to those who wish to rise through the ranks of the hierarchy of their Ward. To pass truly into the service of a Lord of Gibbet one must openly and publicly slay a figure of immense importance to them, traditionally a father figure. This tradition symbolic of the weight of the blood spilled by the second generation of the Twenty Two for the betterment of the city and is meant to prove ones willingness to put the city and their Lords above all else.