## Government The Parliament of Peers, a group mainly composed of nearly fifty patriar members, makes recommendations on issues of law and governance. Once the parliament comes to a majority decision on a matter, usually after much heated debate, it presents its position to the Council of Four. Three dukes and one grand duke make up this ruling council. The council also votes on matters, and in the case of a tie, the grand duke’s vote counts as two. Common belief holds that many parliament members, and possibly one or more of the dukes, can be bribed for their votes. ## Council of Four Comprised of four dukes, the Council of Four presides over the government of Baldur’s Gate. Though the Parliament of Peers and the patriars hold a great deal of power, the Council of Four is the ultimate authority. It convenes in High Hall, a fortress in the middle of the Upper City, and controls the Flaming Fist, the navy, the tax collectors, and all public utilities, among other things. ### Grand Duke Ulder Ravengard Ulder Ravengard is a fearless soldier who rose up through the ranks of the Flaming Fist to become its supreme marshal. Ravengard used his military position and influence to secure for himself a seat on the Council of Four. Following the deaths of two council members amid a cloud of corruption and scandal, he persuaded the Parliament of Peers to back his election to grand duke. Upon ascending to the highest position in the city government, Ravengard refused to relinquish command of the Flaming Fist, making him the most powerful figure in the city by far. This decision has not endeared him to anyone, but Ravengard could care less about his popularity. His only concerns are the stability and prosperity of Baldur’s Gate, and he doesn’t trust any of the other dukes or anyone in the Parliament of Peers to put the city’s interests before their own. Ravengard rose to grand duke on a platform largely backed by idealistic commoners and enemies of the other established dukes. While he won election handily, Ravengard has struggled in performing his duties, finding his hands tied at every turn by bureaucracy. One of his only obvious pleasures remains the surprise inspections he regularly visits upon the troops at Wyrm’s Rock. Ravengard has recently gone missing after leaving for a diplomatic summit in Elturel. ### Duke Belynne Stelmane Once a vigorous and formidable politician, Duke Belynne Stelmane recently suffered a seizure that left her with a partially paralyzed face and slowed speech. Given her current situation, Duke Stelmane is in no position to oppose attempts by her fellow dukes to seize the reins of power in Baldur’s Gate. ### Duke Dillard Portyr Duke Dillard Portyr was once a respected businessman, but after a string of sour deals, he pulled back from his investments. Now he uses his time to enjoy the comforts that his wealth and title provide him. He lives alone in his manor, having outlived his two wives and three sons, and trades correspondence with his niece, Liara Portyr, who commands a Flaming Fist outpost on Chult known as Fort Beluarian. Duke Portyr is conflict-averse and goes out of his way to avoid stress. He is known for listening with concern, showing an earnest desire to help, making promises to look into things, and then doing nothing. As a result, a great deal of the citizenry’s scorn lies heaped upon Duke Portyr’s shoulders. Duke Portyr expressed concern about Ravengard’s diplomatic mission to Elturel, fearing what the Flaming Fist might do while Ravengard is away. ### Duke Thalamra Vanthampur Acid-tongued, shrewd, and aggressive, Duke Thalamra Vanthampur is the matriarch of the Vanthampur family. Born with nothing, she spent years wallowing in obscurity, repairing and renovating the city’s ancient sewer system. One promotion after another followed until she was named Master of Drains and Underways. By then, she had been married three times and given birth to three sons. Her lifelong goal has been to lift herself and her family out of the sewers and into high society. Years of political dealing, blame shuffling, and bribery paid off when Thalamra was elected to the Council of Four. Although she has served on the council for the shortest amount of time, Duke Vanthampur is easily the most politically savvy council member. She speaks little during meetings of the council, preferring to further her political agenda through meetings in her private offices and at her family estate. When she does choose to debate, she speaks with a strength beyond what it seems like her age should allow, and is known for leveling insults that land unsettlingly close to (supposedly) hidden truths. \pagebreak ## Lower City A crescent of steeply sloping neighborhoods plays home to the common folk of Baldur’s Gate. The Lower City is a chaotic tangle of conjoined, slate-roofed buildings, its narrow cobblestone thoroughfares spanned by bridges and buttresses designed to keep overflowing tenements from tumbling into the streets. As cramped and noisy as the Lower City can be during the day, bustling with business from a thousand shops, the district turns eerily quiet at night. Though lit by street lamps and traversed by hired lantern bearers, the darkened streets are far from safe, and those citizens not running taverns or other late-night establishments tend to lock their doors and bar their colorful window shutters as the river’s dense fog rolls in. Nearly everyone in the Lower City is engaged in some sort of trade. Crime of all sorts is rampant, from petty smuggling to outright robbery and murder. Though the city government tries to curtail this by paying the Flaming Fist to patrol the streets, the mercenaries sometimes seem more like an occupying army than a true police force, better suited to indiscriminate head-cracking than delicate investigation. As such, while most residents are happy to shout for the Fist when beset by obvious criminals, they also band together into local crews to better watch each other’s backs and settle more subtle scores. In such an environment, laws are often treated as suggestions, and while most residents are just ordinary folks trying to get by, there’s truth to the old adage that everyone in Baldur’s Gate has a secret to keep. ### Gates The three gates of the Lower City are ripe with logistical, historical, and metaphorical significance. Though tokens are not required to pass through the gates connecting with the Outer City, using any gate comes with a 5 cp entry toll and erratic investigation of cargo and suspicious individuals. #### Baldur's Gate The oldest and least impressive of the city’s gates, Baldur’s Gate nevertheless remains the city’s heart. As the only gate allowing ordinary people through the Old Wall, Baldur’s Gate embodies the power imbalance between rich Upper City patriars and Lower City commoners. Once the sole gate leading to the harbor, it’s still the primary route by which the city’s wealth flows from port to patriar. #### Basilisk Gate Piercing the city’s eastern wall, this statue-lined gate connects the Lower City to the great Coast Way, stretching through the majority of the Outer City and then southeast toward Amn, Tethyr, and Calimshan. #### Cliffgate This foggy minor gate grants access to the Tumbledown neighborhood and its graveyards. Many stories claim that Cliffgate is haunted by the spirits of former citizens seeking reentry to the city and passage back to their homes, but locals know that any mysterious disappearances are more likely the result of a quick mugging and a long fall to the river below. ### Neighborhoods General wealth, predominant profession, and traditions divide the Lower City into several neighborhoods. These divisions foster stereotypes and rivalries between city residents, some comical, some age-old insults that can quickly turn violent. #### Bloomridge The wealthiest and most fashionable Lower City residents gravitate toward the commanding views of Bloomridge, where townhouses squeeze in among upscale boutiques and cafes, their rooftop gardens and tiled terraces creating explosions of cheerful colour. #### Brampton The easternmost Lower City neighborhood, Brampton is notoriously poor, its location making it the worst for residents seeking to serve Upper City denizens — but the best for smuggling in untaxed goods from Rivington. #### Eastway Home to the Basilisk Gate, Eastway is the city’s primary gateway to the Outer City and the world beyond, catering to travelers with its profusion of inns, porters, and caravan supplies, as well as to Outer City residents looking for reasonably priced Lower City luxuries. The flow of travelers and strangers through this neighborhood makes it one of the most dangerous parts of the city, as criminals prey on those unfamiliar with the city and without local ties to avenge them. #### Heapside A solidly middle-class neighborhood, Heapside has its share of shops but tends to be more residential, catering to the city’s workforce with ancient but reasonably priced homes and only a moderate likelihood of being stabbed in the street. #### Seatower Everything in this neighborhood revolves around the Seatower of Balduran. The best armorers and weaponsmiths in the city can be found here, along with residences for Fist mercenaries and their families. Dance halls, fighting dens, taverns, and other delights jockey for position near the fortress’s causeway, hoping to be the first place a carousing mercenary stumbles into, and each Flaming Fist payday sees the neighborhood swell into the most boisterous corner of the city as soldiers celebrate with riotous good cheer and flagrant street brawls. #### The Steeps As the most direct route from the harbor to the Upper City via Baldur’s Gate, the Steeps has a natural advantage in securing business from wealthy travelers, and many of the city’s most successful merchants maintain lucrative storefronts along its dramatically steep thoroughfares. This also makes it the Lower City neighborhood most likely to be visited by patriars, and thus the Steeps sees more than its fair share of patrols by the Flaming Fist. \pagebreak ### Crew Territories The fact that city’s numerous crews can be based on both geographical and professional communities means that their territories often overlap or stretch beyond the borders of any particular neighborhood. The Harborhands, for instance, can be found across the Lower City wherever a neighborhood touches the water, but would rarely try to flex its claim outside of the actual docks and piers. More common is the situation of groups like the Greengrocers’ Guild or the Brethren of Barbers, who operate out of all corners of the city and therefore claim no physical territory at all, banding together only in the interests of their trade. For many such crews, there’s often no need for a formal meeting place — they meet whenever and wherever necessary, in shop stockrooms or around kitchen tables, and have little interest in banners and sigils. Still, there’s no denying that certain crews dominate certain corners of the city. Sometimes this is the result of a community forming its own crew in a direct attempt to control and protect its neighborhood. Such is the case with the Bloomridge Dandies, wealthy merchant scions who loudly proclaim that the Flaming Fist isn’t doing enough to protect their neighborhood, and who relish the opportunity to display their bravery by patrolling neighborhood taverns wearing expensive swords and purple armbands. More often, physical territory is the result of a citywide crew having a natural local nexus, such as the Porters’ Union and the Butchers’ Block tending to dominate Eastway, as their members congregate near the Basilisk Gate for easy access to the stockyards and incoming caravans. Unless there’s active conflict between two crews, most members are content to work with members of other crews, and see little point in staking out physical turf. After all, a neighborhood needs many different professions to thrive — carpenters and cooks, grocers and apothecaries — and the fact that siblings and spouses often belong to different crews helps keep inter-crew conflict to a minimum. ### Notable Locations Presented below in alphabetical order are some of the most noteworthy Lower City locations. These locations are also marked on the city map. #### Baldur's Mouth Patronized by all levels of society, Baldur’s Mouth is the city’s primary news service and gossip rag. Utilizing a small army of lantern bearers, the Mouth spreads news both by selling broadsheets on street corners and by shouting summaries of top stories at passersby. From the slums of the Outer City to the finest manor house sitting rooms, the Mouth is where Baldurians go to be informed, incited, and pleasantly scandalized. While some of the news — such as word of new laws passed by the Council of Four or official election results — is handed down directly by the government, most comes from freelance journalists, and official pronouncements often sit side by side with scathing editorials or unflattering political cartoons of those same officials. Ettvard Needle runs the operation from a surprisingly modest converted warehouse in Heapside. The son of an established Lower City tailor, he had always rankled at the way Lower City residents were treated by haughty patriars, and started Baldur’s Mouth as a way to empower the city’s poor via what he saw as the greatest weapon of social change: information. In the beginning, he simply paid local lantern bearers to shout his stories of upper-crust injustices, but as enthusiasm for the practice built and more people began bringing him information, he began writing the stories down for his distributors — teaching many of them to read in the process — and then selling the notes directly. Today, Needle prints his broadsheets by the cartload, aided by mechanical scribes purchased from the Hall of Wonders and funded by advertisements from merchants across the city. Though beholden to advertisers and tacitly sanctioned by the city government, the Mouth has never lost its populist bent. Needle carefully ensures that the paper is useful enough to the government that it’s never in their interest to shut it down, yet devotes the rest of the paper to news the government might prefer hushed up, from aristocratic scandal and evidence of corruption to straight talk about various threats to the city, always with a healthy dose of anti- elite rhetoric. His editorials have a particular soft spot for his friend Rilsa Rael, the Guild kingpin of Little Calimshan. Baldur’s Mouth is a prime source of opportunity for adventurers in the city, as Needle is always looking to hire daring “investigative reporters” willing to investigate rumors of strange happenings or procure proof of corruption by the city’s elite. Even just reading the broadsheet can present adventure opportunities via advertisements recruiting mercenaries, half-substantiated reports of monster attacks ignored by the Flaming Fist, and more. And of course, should adventurers succeed or fail in some high-profile venture, they might just find caricatures of themselves and stories of their exploits in the Mouth’s latest edition. #### Blade and Stars This comfortable inn was named for its original sign, an enchanted wooden shield. Painted black, the circular shield displayed an image of a curved silver saber gripped by a pale, slender arm. An enchantment on the shield caused glimmering, starlike motes of light to sparkle along the saber’s blade. The former innkeeper of the Blade and Stars, a half-orc bandit named Aurayaun, used to insist that the illusory effect was the shield’s only magic, and that it did exactly what she intended it to do: draw in business. Still, it appears that there’s more to the shield’s story, for recently both Aurayaun and the shield disappeared. Since then, Aurayaun’s worried wife Lupin has been running the inn and loudly expressing her belief that the disappearance is the result of foul play. What kind of foul play, she has no idea. While Aurayaun was quiet about her past, she had no enemies that Lupin knew about. Lupin furiously rejects the Flaming Fist’s conclusion that her wife simply abandoned her. A local vagrant claims to have seen Aurayaun climb up and remove the sign-shield late on the night she went missing, then vanish into an alley with a cloaked figure. Since then, though, Lupin has received parcels containing pieces of the shattered shield, each bearing a tiny constellation upon it. Lupin is convinced it’s a map, but to where, and whether that destination is terrestrial or the heavens she doesn’t know. She’s willing to pay to find out, though. \pagebreak #### Blushing Mermaid Infamous up and down the Sword Coast, the Blushing Mermaid is known as the best tavern and inn in Baldur’s Gate for those looking to get their teeth kicked in, or to kick in someone else’s. Always one spilled drink away from a brawl, the bar is the sort of place most don’t visit unless they’re well-armed or with a lot of friends — preferably both. The place takes its name from the life-sized wooden mermaid hanging above the incongruous reception desk, a dozen blackened and withered hands nailed to its body — souvenirs left by those who refused to pay their bill. Beyond the combination lobby and common room, the Blushing Mermaid is a confusing maze of wings and oddly interconnected floors, hiding dozens of small and shabby rooms and at least four levels of cellars. Few people bother to sleep at the Mermaid, due in part to its operators’ loud pronouncement that they aren’t responsible for any losses, including those of life and limb. Instead, its plethora of back rooms and antechambers act as de facto offices for the menagerie of shady characters who spend their days drinking here. Ostensibly retired sailors, the bar’s regulars are in fact contacts for a variety of unsavory organizations, from smugglers and bandits to fences, drug dealers, and panderers. Some work for the Guild, others for operations all along the Sword Coast. Those looking to do business with the Gate’s underworld find that a handful of silver in the Mermaid can open doors, but the wrong word can find you dumped unconscious in the alley out back. While the Mermaid’s criminal aspects are an open secret, the place is well connected enough that the Flaming Fist traditionally leaves it alone. #### Cadulhallow's Funeral Arrangements For as long as anyone can remember, the moon elves of the Candulhallow family have managed the city’s small fleet of corpse carts. Though family members rarely push carts themselves anymore, their terse agents are a constant sight around the city, picking up the dead and using hand-drawn wagons to haul their shrouded loads to the Shrine of the Suffering or outlying cemeteries, funded by city stipends and tips from grieving loved ones. #### Counting House This thick-walled fortress of commerce has been a center of trade in Baldur’s Gate for centuries, acting as the primary location for banking and currency exchange. As much a bunker as a bank, the Counting House squats on the waterfront, its two windowless upper stories heavily guarded. Most ordinary patrons never make it past the ground-level offices, yet the majority of the Counting House stretches below, extending down into the mud like a cylindrical stone taproot. Here are the building’s legendary vaults, where the city’s patriars and merchants from across the world store items too valuable to be trusted to lesser security. Only the most vetted of humanoid guards are allowed in the Counting House’s depths. Instead, stone golems patrol the twisting lower corridors, while water elementals circle the outside in flooded channels, keeping thieves from tunneling into the magically warded vaults. A gold dwarf named Rakath Glitterbeard acts as the bank’s proprietor and key treasurer of the city’s banking crew, the Honorable Order of Moneylenders. More importantly, he’s also the Guild kingpin for the Steeps, controlling the lesser loan sharks and knee-cappers who cater to the city’s more desperate credit risks, along with its outright thieves. Stolen treasures from innumerable heists reside in the Counting House’s vaults alongside legitimate deposits, protected by the bank’s walls and Rakath’s web of political influence and predatory loans. Between the dwarf’s sinister reputation and the bank’s legendary security, few thieves would even contemplate trying to crack the Counting House — but anyone who succeeded would likely be set for life. #### Eastway Expeditions Eastway Expeditions used to buy dubious exploration and dungeon-delving gear on the cheap — often from hollow-eyed early retirees — before marking it up to sell to optimistic would-be heroes. Scalm Shilvin is the shop’s slick, tail-coat- wearing tiefling proprietor. She made a decent living from her business, but all that changed when Baldur’s Gate forged a lucrative trade alliance with the merchant princes of Port Nyanzaru in Chult. Shilvin quickly capitalized on the growing interest in Chult, outfitting droves of green adventurers and directing them aboard ships headed south. Most never returned — leaving her uncertain of whether any of her “jungle-proof” or “dinosaur-deterring” equipment worked as she’d marketed. Eventually the local government got involved after several overly ambitious patriar scions vanished on ventures hastily outfitted by Eastway Expeditions. Now Shilvin can sell her modest selection of goods and any jungle-related gear only after a ten-day waiting period, helping to ensure that fewer citizens rush off to Chult unprepared. To make up for the resulting loss of business, Shilvin has made connections with several trading (and piratical) ventures in regular need of crew. Eastway Expeditions has since gained a lowkey reputation for helping people get out of the city fast, so long as they don’t care overly much where they go. #### Elfsong Tavern Despite its rough-and-tumble clientele, this tavern is one of the most popular in Baldur’s Gate. At infrequent and seemingly random intervals, a disembodied elven voice cuts through the crowd, its song haunting enough to magically dim the room’s lanterns and make even the bar’s most hardened customers weep. #### Felogyr's Fireworks This four-story stone structure constantly streams smoke of unusual colors from various vents and chimneys. From the elaborate showroom spanning the bottom two floors, alchemist Avery Sonshal maintains his family’s longstanding monopoly on smokepowder production in Baldur’s Gate. \pagebreak While smokepowder is reserved for the Council of Four and Gond’s High House of Wonders, the shop sells a variety of lesser alchemical items to the public, from torches with colored flames to smoke grenades and fireworks, some of them enhanced with harmless illusions. While the windowless workshop filling the building’s upper two stories is strictly off-limits, its stairwell blocked by a massive iron vault door and a thug hired from the Bannerless Legion, the mutton-chopped Avery is usually happy to chat with customers and other alchemical enthusiasts on the lower floors. At the moment, however, Avery is visibly troubled. #### Garmult's House of Mastery Part school and part alehouse, this wide three-story building leans precariously over the street in Eastway. Run by an old, agender martial artist named Garmult the House of Mastery offers both martial training of all sorts for the city’s would-be warriors and a central hangout for the Bannerless Legion crew. Garmult assists crew leader Dezri “Guts” Lamouer in matching clients with mercenaries. They also hire members to teach classes in the building’s open-air atrium while other members lounge on the overlooking balconies. At any given time, there’s usually multiple veteran mercenaries here swapping stories and waiting for contracts. While anyone can pay Garmult to study in the House of Mastery, only those who’ve earned membership in the Bannerless Legion are welcome to socialize and find work here. Those who come around looking for such things are challenged to a friendly sparring match in the atrium, usually with Garmult. If they impress Garmult, they’re welcomed with a laugh and a firm handshake, at which point Garmult is happy to hook the new members up with bodyguarding contracts and other work, taking only a nominal finder’s fee. Though not everyone in the Legion is as welcoming of new members, Garmult allows only consensual, nonlethal sparring within their establishment. Few members challenge Garmult’s authority for risk of missing out on future contracts. #### Harborside Hospital Generations ago, an outbreak of extremely contagious dancing croup — a deadly plague that caused those afflicted to cough themselves to death even as their limbs thrashed uncontrollably — caused many Baldurians to rethink their approach to medicine. Requiring individual victims to seek out healing from their respective clergies accelerated the disease’s spread as the infected traveled to different houses of worship throughout the city, overwhelming the facilities at each. In the aftermath, the Lower City decided to consolidate. While patriars might still be able to afford house calls and personal priests and physicians, commoners funded the building of a single large facility where everyone could come for treatment. Eager to no longer have every worship service interrupted by contagious congregants, several of the city’s temples were only too happy to provide clerics to work in the facility. Of course, coin still determines one’s quality of care, the clerics rarely work for free, and those without sufficient funds generally end up in the ominously stained basement with the chirurgeons-in-training — but at least those in need know where they can go for help. Chronically understaffed, especially in those wards catering to poor Outer City residents, the hospital has constant security problems, from angry patients to spontaneously arising undead, unethical or experimental treatments by priests of non-good faiths, or excessive withdrawals from the stores of painkilling narcotics. It perhaps says something about Baldur’s Gate that city officials decided to build the hospital right next to Cliffgate, convenient to the graveyard and as far as possible from the wealthy neighborhoods. #### Hissing Stones This low stone bathhouse in the Seatower neighborhood is one of the oldest buildings in the area. Built in the Chessentan style, it features heated pools, echoing halls, and gorgeous tile mosaics. The Hissing Stones hold a special niche in Baldurian politics due to its status as a neutral, safe, and private meeting place. Its longtime proprietor, a female moon elf named Merilyn Allaryr, ensures that clients enter the baths bearing nothing but the thin robes she provides, leaving all weapons and other possessions with her. Merilyn’s reputation, and that of her highly capable attendants, is formidable enough that even rival crews or businesses engaged in the tensest of negotiations never violate the house’s rule against violence. This establishment’s commitment to discretion also makes the bathhouse the prime venue for paid companionship in the Lower City. Many of the most sought-after courtesans meet their patrons in the Hissing Stones’ steamy private rooms, trusting to Merilyn’s silence and the house’s reputation for business meetings to deflect the suspicion of jealous spouses or gossipy wags. Unlike Merilyn, the Reveler’s Union — the city-spanning crew of night-workers — isn’t averse to selling secrets teased from the bathhouse’s clients, and those looking to purchase such information need only whisper in the right ear here. Though this dichotomy keeps Merilyn herself from officially joining the Union, the crew uses the location as its de facto headquarters, regularly renting out and conducting meetings in its vast central pool. \pagebreak #### Insight Park Forty years ago, a dwarf druid named Torimesh arrived home in the city after decades of adventuring abroad and purchased this small portion of the hillside. Too steep to build on, the area had long been an illegal junkyard, with locals standing atop a rocky promontory and dumping their refuse over the edge of the embankment. Instead of clearing the debris away, Torimesh used magic to nurture the local plants, causing a forest of green to grow up over the garbage, rusting away debris and creating soft lawns and thickets shot through with small recesses and tunnels where the old refuse had piled high. This revamped space he dedicated as a public park, arguing that the poor need to feel nature’s touch just as much as rich patriars with their manicured gardens. Torimesh himself lives in a tiny hut backed against the jutting outcropping still known as Dumper’s Rock. The main appeal of Insight Park is the Drawing Tree. Planted by Torimesh and grown to full-size in a matter of days, the tree is of a species no one can identify, and Torimesh steadfastly refuses to say anything about its origins, yet everyone knows its power. When properly entreated by Torimesh, the tree’s red bark cracks and curls like parchment. Pulling it carefully away reveals a prophetic scene rendered in bloody sap. These arboreal visions of the future are often cryptic, yet inevitably come to pass. As much as the city’s elite would love to harness this power, anyone else attempting to peel the tree’s bark or force a prophecy reveals only bark and sends Torimesh into a near-murderous rage. For his part, the druid refuses to work for money, peeling off prophecies only according to the unspoken whims of the tree, or in exchange for bizarre and dangerous favors. #### Jopalin's After taking over from his father, a male half-elf named Jopalin transitioned this building from a seedy dockside tavern to a thriving, upscale teahouse. Many were shocked by the growth of such a sophisticated establishment among the port’s lowbrow customers, but no one can deny the addictive nature of the half-elf proprietor’s special blend. #### Low Lantern This old, three-masted ship rocks gently in the water alongside Stormshore Street Dock on the harbor’s eastern side. A notorious festhall and tavern, the ship is no longer seaworthy and is in desperate need of repair. On warm days and evenings, respectable clients can sit at tables on the upper deck beneath hanging lanterns, smoking and drinking between wagers, while a more raucous crowd congregates around bars and gambling tables on the decks below. #### Mandorcai's Mansion The only blight in otherwise upscale Bloomridge, this mansion appeared out of nowhere in the middle of the night, taking over a previously vacant lot. Fully staffed with close- lipped servants, the imposing manse hosted a few lavish parties for the Lower City elite, presided over by an eccentric and brooding human wizard named Mandorcai. And then, just as suddenly as he had arrived, Mandorcai shut the manor’s doors and vanished from public life. Curious locals who peered through the windows reported a completely empty manor, its furniture looking as though it hadn’t been touched in years. Yet soon thereafter, individuals around the city began to receive invitations to visit, written in silver on black paper folded into pentagons. Those who entered the mansion for the requested appointments never emerged. After a handful of such disappearances, a Flaming Fist squad smashed its way into the building. Only two of its members emerged, babbling about shifting rooms and blood-soaked abattoirs filled with writhing hooks and chains. With no laborers willing to tear the place down, the Council of Four boarded up the doors but left the mansion standing. For decades now, no one has been observed going in or out. Whether the little black invitations that still occasionally appear on citizens’ doorsteps are genuine or harmless pranks remains anyone’s guess. #### Seatower of Balduran The headquarters of the Flaming Fist stands on a rocky islet in the harbor, its sheer walls erupting from the stone in such a way as to grant invaders from the sea few footholds. From the fortress’s five stout towers, specially made Gondan trebuchets stand ready to hurl stones three times the distance of an ordinary siege weapon, giving the fortress command of not just the entire harbor but the opposite bank of the river as well. Any invading ships not intimidated by such death from above would also have to contend with the massive chain running from the Seatower to pilings under the easternmost wharf in Brampton. A capstan in the tower can raise the chain, stretching it across the harbor mouth and keeping anything larger than a rowboat from entering or leaving. As for land-based attacks, the 400-foot-long causeway connecting the Seatower’s islet to the shore needs no gates or drawbridges, as any attackers foolish enough to charge along its length would be easy marks for the wall’s archers. Roughly a hundred Flaming Fist soldiers occupy the fortress at any given time, along with the residents of the Officers’ Tower. In the central bailey, the organization’s vast armory holds every weapon a mercenary company could need, along with trophies from campaigns abroad, a priceless library of war-related texts, and more. Rumors also speak of the Fist’s treasury, kept in a lead-lined vault somewhere beneath the Officers’ Tower and surrounded by yards of solid stone, the secret doors leading to its vaults hidden by clever mechanisms and cleverer magic. In addition to defending the city, the Seatower also serves as the local prison of Baldur’s Gate. Three levels of dungeons extend beneath it, the lower two below sea level and integrating part of a naturally occurring cavern system. This both keeps the prison secure and pacifies prisoners, as any who act out know that they can always be moved from the dry cells to the dank lower levels. Particularly problematic inmates end up in the Swimming Hole — a flooded and lightless shaft where prisoners must constantly tread water or risk drowning, while also fending off the blind, biting shrimp that dwell there. Though long-term incarceration is rare in the city, there are always a few inmates rotting in these cells, ranging from petty criminals to political prisoners locked away on trumped-up charges. \pagebreak While the Fist treats the prison as something of an afterthought, any trying to break in or out of the dungeons still have their work cut out for them. Only the upper cells have windows, and anyone trying to break through the walls of the lower cells risks catastrophic flooding. Sentries are constantly on alert for ships drawing suspiciously near the island, and no one is allowed through the fortress’s gate without a reason and an escort. Cells themselves have heavy steel doors with high-quality locks, with the keys held by Jailer Albrecht Little, or his second, Jailer Cogrus Stonehammer, a female shield dwarf. Soldiers are often assigned to “cell duty” as a temporary punishment — while this generally means rougher treatment for prisoners, the regular turnover might present a sliver of opportunity for anyone attempting a rescue. #### Seskergates Once home to the Sesker merchant family, this tall, gaudy mansion was abandoned after the last member of the family died in it under mysterious circumstances several years ago. Shortly thereafter, a mage from Athkatla named Imbralym Skoond bought the place to use as his home and magical workshop, drawn there by stories of the structure’s original builder, a smuggler who turned the place into a warren of secret passages, hidden rooms, false walls, and concealed entrances, most of which have now been forgotten. Ambitious and thoroughly amoral, Skoond rose to prominence as the Council of Four’s wizard, doing regular favors for the council to further his own plots. #### Sewer Keep Like many port cities, Baldur’s Gate has traditionally dumped its sewage downstream and let the river carry its problems elsewhere. As the city grew, however, this began to dangerously pollute the river, leading a coalition of druids and patriars to construct the Sewer Keep. A series of three towers built into the walls at the western end of the Seatower neighborhood, the facility was intended to treat the sewage just before it enters the river, using vast enclosed holding tanks of magically augmented plants to purify the effluent. Though the facility was a marvel of magical ecological engineering, the public proved singularly unwilling to care about their waste, and funding quickly collapsed. Since then, the Keep has been a shadow of its intended glory, struggling to keep the worst of Baldur’s Gate from the waterway. Today, the facility still operates, but mostly as a headquarters and cover for the Sewerkeepers crew. Most of the “druids” and technicians running the plant are anything but — instead, they’re a specialized thieving crew that uses the keep’s position to pass unseen through the city’s network of sewer pipes and cisterns. From this warren of tunnels, they can smuggle goods and conduct daring burglaries, as well as occasionally acting as subterranean monster-hunters and paid guides through the city’s guts. #### Shrine of the Suffering This simple stone shrine to Ilmater, god of martyrs and patient endurance, stands in a small, quiet square, the edges of its plaza thick with the pallets and meager belongings of the Lower City’s homeless population. Here, poor Baldurians can come to receive free meals and enough coppers to pay their way through the city’s gates, thanks to the ministrations of Brother Hodges, a strongheart halfling priest. Supported by donations from all ranks of society and beloved by their community, the halfling cleric and his adult children Hansen and Sissa can inevitably be found here chatting with the city’s downtrodden, offering what healing and alms they can. The church’s only source of non-donation income is a twisting series of crypts that extends down from an entrance behind the altar, at several points piercing the city’s sewers. For a small fee, anyone can have a corpse brought down into the cramped tomb, where hordes of sewer rats flood in to eat the flesh, leaving (mostly) clean bones to be interred in the attached ossuary by Ilmater’s faithful. While a somewhat ignoble end, it’s often the only holy-ground burial the city’s poor can afford, and Brother Hodges does his best to bring quiet dignity to the practice. However, a fertile carrion crawler has recently slithered up from the sewers to feast on the corpses in the tomb, leaving a trail of squirming young wherever it passes. Brother Hodges is incensed by the desecration, but doesn’t dare face the beasts himself, and the Flaming Fist has been slow to come to his aid. Though the church can’t pay, he would gratefully offer free healing to anyone who dealt with the menace. #### Smilin' Boar With its downright ribald menu of salaciously renamed breakfast foods, the Smilin’ Boar was always intended to cause a stir in well-to-do Bloomridge. Yet the current buzz is more than owner Jentha Allinamuch, a female strongheart halfling, ever intended. For the past six months, bodies have been appearing in the alley just behind the halfling’s café. More than a dozen have appeared so far, never with any witnesses as to how they go there. The victims have no apparent commonalities — being of all ages, races, genders, and social classes, and having disappeared from points all across the city — yet there’s no question in anyone’s mind that the same killer is responsible, as each is found with curved slices across their wrists and a heart-piercing wound. The whole district is astir over the murders, but so far the Fist hasn’t been able to turn up any leads on what locals have fearfully dubbed the Sickle Man. With business plummeting, Jentha is as eager as any grieving family to find answers, and would happily pay independent investigators to help track down the killer. \pagebreak #### Sorcerous Sundries A dome of stained glass roofs this tall, round shop, casting chaotic shafts of color down across several open-air floors that rise upon wooden pillars, connected by staircases and ladders. While the living quarters upstairs teem with rare plants and bookcases, the bottom floor acts as one of the most popular magic shops in the city. Inside its delicate- looking but magically warded walls, customers can buy and sell all manner of curios and common magic items from the eccentric shopkeeper, Rivalen Blackhand, a mage with a withered right hand. Blackhand almost always has potions of healing available for sale. #### Water Queen's House The oldest temple in Baldur’s Gate, the Water Queen’s House clings to its enormous pier like a monster of the deep, its stone walls trailing over the side and descending down beneath the waves and river mud. At the pier’s tip, a huge fountain in the shape of a sinking ship sprays water high, reminding faithful of the price of failing to appease Umberlee. The intimidating Allandra Grey leads the temple’s score of waveservants, most of them women widowed or orphaned by the sea. Ordinary Baldurians rarely see the waveservants, and never step inside the temple. When the faithful wish to make offerings, they must ring a bell by the door. Two waveservants answer the door, one accepting the offering inside while the other says a short prayer in the doorway. Once the prayer is spoken and the donation collected, they step back and close the door. Though no outsiders know exactly how the temple’s finances work, the dour waveservants buy little in the markets save essentials. The rest of the tithes are carried in solemn procession down crumbling, moss-covered stairs that cling to the outside of the temple and descend into the murky water. The waveservants disappear below the water for a few minutes, only to return empty-handed. What happens to the treasures is anyone’s guess, with some suggesting they’re hidden in underwater vaults. Others believe the gifts are borne away by Umberlee herself. <div class='footnote'>Part 2 | Your Introduction</div>