Ket (Greyhawk) - Sea of Death: Gygax Delineates His Vision of Ket (1987)

Sea of Death: Gygax Delineates His Vision of Ket (1987)

After a dispute with TSR's majority owner Lorraine Williams, Gygax was forced out of the company at the end of 1985. Just prior to this, he had written the first two Gord the Rogue novels, set in Greyhawk. As part of his separation agreement with TSR, he retained rights to Gord to Rogue, and in 1987, he wrote the third book of the series, Sea of Death. The second chapter is set in Ket, and it highlighted what Gygax had originally envisioned of Ket in his World of Greyhawk material.

In Sea of Death, the city of Lopolla (called Hlupallu) is crowded, noisy, grimy, decadent and dangerous, with a quasi-Arabian flavor reminiscent of some of the city settings in Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian short stories, Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar stories or John Norman's Gor novels. The city itself is divided into four walled quarters: the Casbah fortress, the Souk marketplace, the Medina residential quarter and the Ourmistan foreign quarter and warehouse district.

Out in the countryside, Bedouin-like nomadic tribes led by a hetman eternally wander, staying in one place only for a season before moving their herds of horses and goats to a new location. The men hunt and fight from horseback, while the women tend crops. The people have names like Malik ibn Urchi, Ageelia, Omar, Mulha and Zulman.

In a tavern fight between the obviously eastern Oeridian Gord and several (western) Baklunish guards, most Baklunish patrons immediately side with the guards, while non-Baklunish patrons side with Gord. However, several Ketites—in keeping with Gygax's vision of Ket as a mix of eastern and western cultures—take both sides:

In seconds a cacophony of battle-cries and challenges erupted, and the place truly became a battleground of east versus west. Ketites fought on both sides, each according to his feelings at the moment...