Kantreska's Hall in Gessick. From the webcomic. Artist: Meghan Taylor.
Gessick is a tikedi community in the southern Tarsin desert, located to the southwest of Oros and only an hour’s journey on foot from Crater’s Edge. It boasts the second largest population in Tarsin, next to Tarsin City in the far north, and it is also one of the oldest settlements in the desert. Travellers are drawn to Gessick for its proximity to the Crater and the resources therein.
Its structures are carved directly from the walls of a dry bed canyon, which is all that remains of an ancient river tributary. The main river itself still flows through a neighboring branch of the canyon, cutting a path from the western coast of Tarsin to the Crater. Outsiders from other Tarsin communities and tikedi nations, as well as merchants and traders, are housed on the cliffs above, which the majority of the permanent population takes up residence on the canyon floor.
The most famous structure in Gessick is the Kantreska’s Hall, a chamber nearly as tall as the canyon walls themselves and adorned with columns and a carved relief of the community’s emblem: a rock in standing water with the sun, as a great circle, positioned above it. The hall has stood for uncounted centuries, and it is there that Gessick’s Kantreska sits daily to hear the concerns of his or her people.