Perhaps no part of Absalom encapsulates its nature, contradictions, and complexities quite so thoroughly as the Ascendant Court. Located at the hub of the city’s thoroughfares, the Ascendant Court is the geographical and metaphorical heart of Absalom, and from the day of its founding, all the city’s life has pulsed through it.

Past and future rub shoulders here. The city’s oldest cathedrals and most venerated ruins stand in the Ascendant Court, but its streets are also crowded with new arrivals eager to write their own legends through the Test of the Starstone. The architecture of the Ascendant Court is a palimpsest of its history, with ancient temples to long-dead gods scattered among modern additions in a crowded, colorful mosaic that shows the influence of innumerable faiths that rose, evolved, and fell across the centuries. The district’s landscape is dominated by the Starstone Cathedral, which is ringed by an enormous pit. Around Starstone Chasm stand the grand but inevitably lesser houses of other deities, arrayed like jewels haloing a central diamond in a matriarch’s ring.