An Introduction to the Black Port

A man dies. He dies in war. He dies with a sword in his hand and three arrows in his stomach and bloody curses bubbling from his lips. He dies in the mud, surrounded by the shit and piss and viscera of his comrades, and he dies wishing he could have known what it would have been like to finish that sculpture he had been working on. To have displayed in the city, the capital city, to meet other artists, artists who maybe grew up in a small village like he did ridiculed and treated like shit.
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An old woman lies in her bed and feels something other than sleep wrapping its cold talons across her throat. She knows she will not see the morning. No dreams nor nightmares will accost her and no longer will she rot before her family. But she wishes she could live just a little bit longer. Her daughter is pregnant again, but the doctors said this child would live past infancy. How cruel fate is to take her before she could see the one thing that would keep her line alive.
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Water washes across the old druid's knees. He holds in his hand the instrument of his demise. It is bloodied to the hilt, and his entrails are a skirt about him. He coughs. He cries. He has killed himself because suicide was the only way to do what must be done--the only way to ensure that his fellows realized the ruin coming to their world at the hands of men who wanted only profit and materials. But he wishes he could have just left it all. That he could have just found the original Eden and lived there in happiness, without the need to fight.
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All three of these dying souls have one thing in common. Their lust for a last wish is the only thing that fills their mind. No matter how pedantic it may seem to you, to them this is their world, their dying thought.

And that is why they go to Porte Noire.

The Black Port is a city that does not exist on any map. No, instead Porte Noire only exists in the twilight of life and death, that divide that few know truly exist. Here, the desperate dying find themselves in a place beyond their wildest dreams with only the faintest memories of how they ended up there--if any memories at all.

In this city, existing along the River Styx, where Death's burlesque dancers and skull-faced oracles and steamboats filled with games where you can gamble away your soul are staples, the desperate can find that thing that they wished for in death.

But know this, those who yearn to have their wishes granted.
None return from Porte Noire, and few ever leave to a better place.

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A Party of Gamblers

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Hold it in your hands. Fan a few tricks. Shuffle them real smooth. Smell that new card aroma and that old card scent and tell me that poker decks aren't holy. In Porte Noire, nothing is more important to a dead or dying soul then their cards. Everyone carries them. Those that don't are given them when they get off the boat, and can buy new ones virtually anywhere in the city. See, to the dead, currency ain't worth much. You can buy things, but often you just end up trading favors, secrets, and promises, given everyone's after their own personal legend. If you can't compromise, pull the cards out. Play a game of blackjack or spades. Up the ante. Keep searching. Duels happen, but settling your problems over the poker table is better. The dead and dying are always betting more of themselves, more of their purgatory lives, all in desperate attempts to draw closer to that miracle they so crave. Then, when they've bet too much, they find themselves trapped by...

Porte Noire, A City for the Dying

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