Little Calimshan

Generations ago, a fleet of Calishite refugees fleeing war in the south came sailing into Gray Harbor. Rather than opening their doors to the foreigners, the people of Baldur’s Gate quickly hustled them out of the city, forcing them out the Basilisk Gate in the middle of the night and taxing them for the privilege. Desperate and weary, the refugees finally found succor in a caravanserai run by a fellow Calishite in the Outer City. There they used what little wealth they’d been able to bring with them to construct a new home—a traditional Calishite settlement that would be precisely as friendly to Baldur’s Gate as the Baldurians had been to them.
Though much time has passed since that ignominious beginning, tensions remain high between Little Calimshan and the rest of the city, particularly with regard to those Baldurians living in the city proper. Unlike most of the Outer City, where neighborhoods blend into each other and no one can quite say where one ends and another begins, Little Calimshan is sharply defined by brick-and-plaster walls, 15 feet tall, 5 feet thick, and topped with minarets in the classic Calishite style. These walls don’t simply surround the neighborhood, either. Little Calimshan is built like a traditional Calishite city in miniature, with its interior divided into multiple drudachs (neighborhoods). Each drudach is walled off and inhabited by a particular family or tribe, with its own religious site, inn or tavern, marketplace, and places of industry such as smithies, armories, tanneries, or mills. While such an abundance of walls might make Little Calimshan seem fractious and standoffish, in fact the opposite is true: the thick wall walks act as elevated streets, with locals able to look out over the layout from above and easily pick a path to their intended destination.

Defences

While many residents of Little Calimshan venture into the larger city for business or pleasure, not even the Flaming Fist is able to force its way into the neighborhood-turned-fortress after hours except in the direst circumstances, and each drudach is instead patrolled by a militia of young unmarried warriors (guards with scimitars instead of spears) called amlakkars.

Industry & Trade

Second only to the Wide in the chaos and liveliness of its markets, Little Calimshan opens its gates to outsiders for just a few hours each day. Inside its warren of bazaars, local merchants have a near-monopoly on many southern imports, from silks and fine blades of Calishite steel to tomes of rare magical lore, thanks to exclusive trade agreements with various caravans. As soon as mid-afternoon arrives, however, shoppers are shuffled back out the arched gates, and the only non-Calishites still allowed within the neighborhood are those who’ve married into a Little Calimshan family or otherwise earned the sacred trust of a drudach’s residents.

Guilds and Factions

While Little Calimshan presents a unified face to the rest of the city, it has all the problems of any settlement. Income inequality is made all the more obvious by density, with paupers living literally side-by-side with wealthy genie-binders. Older isolationists clash with young folk eager for more interaction with the wider city. Yet by far the largest issue is the gang war currently ravaging Little Calimshan. Seeing the Guild as fundamentally an outsider organization, a Calishite gang called the Right Pashas seeks to oust Guild agents from Little Calimshan’s underworld. The Guild’s popular half-Calishite kingpin, Rilsa Rael, naturally objects to this insult, and each night residents bar their doors tight as a turf war of thugs and thieves rages across their rooftops.

Tourism

Among Little Calimshan’s most notorious locations is the Calim Jewel Emporium, widely regarded as the best jeweler in the city—and the best place to fence stolen gems, as it’s also the local Guild headquarters. In addition to hosting regular public forums in her shop, Rael tacitly oversees the Garden of Whispers, a maze of wood-and-paper screens where people from across the city can buy and sell secrets with Guild agents and each other, speaking through the barriers so as to maintain anonymity. Also popular are schools like the Lamp of Learning and the Verdashir Academy (also known as the Dervish Academy), which train spellcasters and warriors in the styles of their ancestral homeland, allowing only the most talented outsiders to access their archives or join in their lessons. And, of course, every patriar in the city has visited the famous Oasis Theater, home of the city’s most daring—and sometimes dangerous—productions.

Maps

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  Little Calimshan

Type

Town

Population

500

Inhabitant Demonym

Little Calishites