The Wide

The primary market and largest civic space in Baldur's Gate is the Wide, where sellers set up their stalls and put out their wares each day at dawn. Street music and noisy performances are forbidden, and every night the sellers who are not Upper City residents must pack up and leave. Bustling by day, the Wide is desolate at night, except on holidays and when hosting grand celebrations.

By law, all commercial buying and selling not done in a licensed and taxed establishment must be conducted in the Wide, the city's most prominent civic space and public market. Every morning sees an influx of vendors setting up their stalls and taking deliveries from a small army of porters. Every sunset, vendors cart their unsold wares back out, or pay exorbitantly expensive warehouse storage fees. In the hours between, the Wide hosts a vibrant, crowded market where fortune-tellers and con artists sit beside dealers hawking spices, fish, furs, perfumes, and every other luxury good to be found across the continent and beyond. Despite its crowds, the Wide is well regulated, the Watch keeping a sharp eye out for pickpockets. Street musicians are forbidden on pain of heavy fines and expulsion from the market, so the Wide proves more subdued than the chaotic markets of the Outer City. Quiet performers, such as puppeteers and sleight-of-hand tricksters, are common.
Jedren Hiller, the Bailiff of the Wide, is a lawful evil male human bandit who assigns stall placements to merchants each morning. Longtime regulars and merchants who reside in the Upper City get most of the prime placements, while those who are less established—or stingy with Hiller's expected bribes—get undesirable places in the less trafficked corners. The bailiff's corruption is legendary in Baldur's Gate, but few merchants see any alternative to greasing his palms, particularly as the profits from a good day's trade vastly outweigh the losses.
Statue of Minsc and Boo. For years the Wide hosted one of the city's most cherished landmarks: the Beloved Ranger, a statue of a powerful warrior in plate mail wearing a cheerful grin and cradling a hamster in his hands. Recently, though, the statue was revealed to be the Rashemi hero, Minsc, and his "miniature giant space hamster" companion, Boo, trapped under the effects of petrifying magic. When the magic was dispelled, it freed the heroes to walk the world once more but robbed the Wide of a bit of its charm. The merchants complained loudly, and a replacement statue of Minsc and Boo was promptly commissioned and set atop the pedestal where the actual heroes stood for years.

Infrastructure

The Wide, a sprawling marketplace, is the eponymous landmark of this Upper City district. Its reputation as a thriving crossroads of trade spans the Sword Coast and stretches as far east as Thay.
During the day, the steamy aroma of roasted, spiced meats mixes with the wet, earthy smell characteristic of Baldur’s Gate. Bright, multicolored awnings cover stalls in which tools, textiles, foods, luxuries, oddments, silks, scarves, tobacco, Shining South spices, and all manner of creature comforts from every corner of Faerûn are bought and sold. Prices are lower in the Wide than else where in the Gate, which means negotiations are usually sharper. Not all merchants here are in the commodities trade. Tattoo artists, fortune tellers, sages, hedge wizards, astrologers, and poets also work in the Wide. At tables throughout the market area, Baldurians mingle to debate city affairs, philosophize, gossip, and conduct business and trade.
Meanwhile, strong, young delivery-makers bull through the shoulder-to-shoulder crowds heading to and from stalls. If not for the tall poles they wear strapped to their backs and shoulders, the goods carried by these young males and females would be easy targets. Atop the poles, out of a human-sized person’s reach, swivel and sway baskets and crates full of goods. Seldom do these top-heavy poles collide and become entangled. But when they do, a row inevitably ensues. As soon as pole-carters leave the open air of the Wide and enter less crowded city streets, they lower their merchandise to street level lest enterprising bandits lean out second-story windows to strip them of their wares.
The Beloved Ranger statue is the only permanent structure in the marketplace. All others are collapsible, movable, pitchable, or temporary. Competition for the best stall locations is fierce. Upper City merchants have the upper hand, of course, as do those with plenty of cash to grease the palms of the bailiff of the ‘Wide, his officers, Watch soldiers who provide security and the dozens of other outstretched hands bearing permits, charters, and signet rings of office. A prime location in the Wide can turn so much profit that almost any amount  of graft is justified in obtaining it.
The Wide’s market area constitutes nearly half of the district that bears the same name. High-class shops, well-heeled merchants’ residences, trading and insurance offices, the sages’ and traders’ guildhalls, the Undercellar’s public entrance, and Ramazith’s Tower fill out the rest of the district. (Murder in Baldur's Gate, 2013)

Type

Neighbourhood

Included Locations

• Harbreeze Bakery