"Pigbarter is without doubt the foulest sewer of a rotting excuse for a town I have ever stepped into in all my eight years as a traveler of the world. The whole place is choked with a fug of yellow, acrid-tasting smoke from the River Ruin, slouching its way past buildings on stilt-like legs."
- —Reuben Kyte, explorer and eventual Firemaster of the Angry Fist Tribe[1a]
Pigbarter is a large, lucrative trading post located at the mouth of the River Ruin, known in that region of the Dark Lands as the Scalded Delta, and a prime destination spot for those following the Ivory Road. A shouting, bleating, oinking marketplace stretches over a mile in every direction, the crowded streets bristling equally with boars that rut freely below the huts and fierce-looking, sallow market stall owners. A local sport called "pig-jousting" is also popular, drawing plenty of interest from mercenaries, merchants and gamblers from all around, and helping to explain the town's name.
Below the trading post -- whose buildings are propped above the waters of the River Ruin by massive wooden stilts -- a large shantytown lies infested with Gnoblars, who regularly attempt raids and heists on the marketplace above. Between the stench of its river, the danger of its denizens, and the chaos of its marketplace, Pigbarter is a far cry from what most mortals would consider civilisation, but it remains the best place to purchase supplies in the region.
The settlement itself is built above the foul, toxic, chemical waters of the River Ruin, supported by massive stilts which raise its buildings high into the air. Each habitation is rimmed with sharp shards of glass and sharpened nails that have been hammered into the wood of the foundation timbers and supporting beams, presumably to prevent nocturnal raids from the Gnoblars that infest this benighted town at ground-level. These beams are almost without exception riddled with woodworms, centipede and louse, and as a result a good third of Pigbarter's buldings have collapsed to form a ramshackle floor of shanty-towns, which house the large numbers of Goblin-kin that live below the settlement.[1a]
Quite how Men and Greenskins can coexist in this manner is difficult for outsiders to picture, but the township has its ways of maintaining order. Above the buildings, large flocks of trained eagle-owls as large as hounds are used by the town's inhabitants as a way to deter any Gnoblar raiding parties, who often target the goods and profits earned by both local merchants and traveling caravans following the Ivory Road. Those caught by the owls are often strung up on the roofs of the huts, a gourmet treat for the loyal avian policemen, the screams of these unfortunates serving as a warning to others who might feel tempted to raid the dirty stilt-shacks.[1a]
When travelling through Pigbarter, Felix Jaegar noticed that the Men living there chewed a kind of nut that made their teeth black and that the primary currency of trade were swine.[2]