Guild of Baldur s Gate

Cutpurses, loan sharks, killers, thugs, con artists, grave robbers, cat burglars-the Guild unites virtually every crime and criminal under one organization’s rule. For more than a century, the greedy, violent, and desper¬ate in Baldur’s Gate have come together to form a fluid hierarchy of loose associations overseen by the Guild’s mysterious leaders.
“The Guild keeps the gutters clean” is a phrase underworld denizens use to refer to the contract killings of wayward Guild members. The metaphor is true in a larger sense as well. The Guild monitors and controls crime in Baldur’s Gate and its environs. Thus, it serves the densely populated city by keeping illicit activities quiet. Much credit is given to the Watch and Flaming Fist for keeping the city’s cobbled streets free of open crime. But bold, daylight robberies and slaughter in the streets would invite too much attention from the author¬ities, so the Guild has “outlawed” such action unless Guildmaster Nine Fingers sanctions it.
Governing the Guild
The Guild is a syndicate of loose-knit groups under the authority of local kingpins. Nine-Fingers and her Lady’s Court head the criminal organization. A web of favors, duties, debts, intimidation, patronage, and gratitude hold the network together.
Each of the city’s districts roughly correlates to one kingpin’s territory. The different gangs and kingpins compete, usually bloodlessly, for influence and terri tory. Nine-Fingers discourages arson, flagrant murder, and other indiscriminate actions that would anger or kill bystanders or upset the general populace. The most prominent gangs include Shar’s Serpents in Blackgate; the Bloody Hands in Stonyeyes; Ganthall’s Gallants in Whitkeep, dubbed “Gallant” for never stealing from females; and the Rivington Rats in Rivington.
Even though the Guild has only a few players in its upper echelons, operations in each district have a strict hierarchy. In ascending order of status, the ranks of the Guild include clients, assets, footpads, enforcers, opera tors, and kingpins. A foul up at any level can lead to disgrace or death for the responsible party.
Clients: People indebted to the Guild are termed clients. These include shopkeepers who haven’t paid their protection fees, gamblers who are in too deep, and everyone for whom the Guild has performed a favor. Clients are not Guild members per se, but the organi¬zation often protects them: Clients are investments. Of course, the Guild does occasionally have to cut its losses, sometimes literally, but it’s best for everyone if a client sees the relationship as beneficial in some fashion. To understand the Guild, one must first comprehend the cabal’s relationships with its clients.
In the Upper and Lower cities, clients are typi¬cally folk whom the Guild is blackmailing or who owe money or favors to Guild members. In contrast, the entire Outer City depends heavily on the Guild as a governing force, since the area lacks formal law enforcement. An Outer City resident who has a com¬plaint against a neighbor-a charge of theft, fraud, or assault, for example-must confront that neighbor directly, because no police or courts are available to aid him or her. In that situation, if the accused is stron ger than the victim, the accused wins. And no one can prevent that neighbor from robbing, beating, or defrauding others at will.
But instead of simply putting up with things, a victim can approach the local Guild kingpin and ask for assistance. If the kingpin chooses to intervene, the victim might receive some sort of compensation from the Guild to offset losses. More likely, the accused will be beaten, have fingers broken, or wake up chained to a millstone-all of which are designed to encourage the accused to make his or her own reparations.
In exchange for this favor, the original victim—the client-now owes a favor to the kingpin, which the area crime boss can call in at any time. The client might be required to cater a party, hide contraband or house a wanted criminal, give up part ownership of his or her business, or arrange for a family member to be wed to a Guild enforcer. People who have little to offer, such as gamblers or sable moonflower addicts, might be asked to undertake some dangerous action, such as distracting a Flaming Fist patrol or taking the fall for someone else’s crime. Becoming indebted to the Guild is a risky move, but the cabal’s interventions have saved many lives, kept businesses operating, and pun¬ished innumerable villains who would otherwise have gotten away with their crimes.
This same structure of favors operates within the Guild, too. Members seldom work for pay. Instead, they perform favors for each other and pay them off by doing clients’ favors—when they aren’t actively com mitting crimes for their own enrichment.
Assets: Anyone the Guild compensates who isn’t a member becomes an asset. Most assets are informants, such as harborhands, beggars, festhall workers, and laborers, who are paid to keep their eyes and ears open and report anything that might interest their handlers. Assets also include people who are powerful in their own right and are paid to keep the Guild’s best interests in mind while doing their jobs. This group includes cor¬rupt city officials, Parliament of Peers members, and Flaming Fist and Watch soldiers.
Assets are indispensable to the Guild, but they get little respect from inside the organization. They aren’t members, have no authority within the Guild, and are told nothing they don’t need to know. The bailiff of the Wide, for example, knows which merchants’
stalls should not be inspected too closely, but not why. The Guild prefers for outsiders to remain in the dark, because bulging purses easily sway their loyalty.
Footpads: Cutpurses, con artists, alley thugs, book¬ies, and the like rank as footpads. Most want to move up the chain because they know they’re only slightly less expendable than clients. Footpads don’t pay regu lar dues, but most provide tokens of esteem to their local kingpins to curry favor, secure protection, and demonstrate their usefulness.
Footpads represent the part of the Guild that most resembles a traditional thieves’ guild. Their work isn’t particularly profitable, and their association with the Guild makes the organization less popular among the commoners who are often the footpads’ victims. But footpads serve an important purpose. Their constant thrum of low-level activity keeps the Flaming Fist and the Watch focused on petty street crime instead of on racketeering and smuggling, which are how the Guild makes its real profits. Fist and Watch crackdowns cause high turnover among footpads, which serves to weed out the careless and the stupid.
Enforcers: Guild enforcers are the group’s muscle and backbone. They aren’t trusted with high profile jobs or delicate assignments, but they’re reliable workhorses for daily chores. Enforcers handle the Guild’s essential rackets in smuggling, protection, and gambling. They work as bouncers at gambling halls, go door-to-door through the Outer City collect¬ing Guild fees, and make a fuss when a client doesn’t pay those fees.
Operators: The Guild calls on its operators when it needs mastery or finesse. For example, an operator steps in when a hard-to-frighten shopkeeper or public official defies the Guild and needs reminding of his or her place, when a burglary requires a master thief, or when the Guild needs to negotiate with a shrewd merchant. Because of their intelligence and skills, operators usually fill vacancies caused by retiring (or expired) kingpins. More often than not, ambitious operators use assassinations or bloodless coups to hurry those above them into retirement.
Kingpins: Kingpins function as the organization’s crime bosses. Each controls crime in one of the Gate’s districts. Kingpins compete with each other for prey and territory in subtle ways, avoiding bloodshed when possible. They work hard to always be in the know in their districts, and they succeed most of the time.
Kingpins who claim territory in the Upper and Lower cities don’t rule in the same ways that Outer City kingpins do, because the Flaming Fist and the Watch reduce those populations’ reliance on the Guild. Without an army of clients to manipulate and milk for favors, kingpins inside the walls must create specialized systems, such as the Fetcher’s army of spies and runners (see page 59).
Guildmaster: The guildmaster heads the cabal. He or she ties the kingpins together and addresses city wide problems. Many Baldurians, including low-level Guild members, are not convinced that a guildmaster really exists. The kingpins know the truth, however.
The guildmaster’s position and power derive from the same system of favors that fuel the rest of the organization. The figure known as Nine-Fingers is currently guildmaster because through favors per¬formed and owed, debts, and blackmail, she has personally broken and tamed most of the Parliament of Peers members, scores of Watch and Fist officers, and more merchants than all the kingpins combined. When a kingpin needs a law amended, a valued operator released from the Seatower of Balduran, or a ship offloaded without anyone noticing what’s inside the crates, Nine-Fingers can make it happen. When she does, that kingpin owes her a favor, and the system continues.
Day-to-Day Operations
The Guild’s daily operations revolve around running its rackets in protection, gambling, and smuggling.
Protection: Groups of two or three armed enforc¬ers make once a tenday calls on all Outer City shops to collect a share of the establishments’ profits. Shopkeepers who fork over this fee also purchase Guild-guaranteed protection. The amount each mer chant pays is modest, but when multiplied by the number of shops, merchants, and bookmakers being skimmed, the total amount of cash flowing into the Guild’s coffers quickly becomes impressive.
When someone claims to have had a bad tenday of profit, enforcers check in with their informants to con firm how many customers entered the place of business since their last visit. Enforcers rarely make allowances for anyone. A proprietor who falls behind on payments can seek a loan, legally or from a neighborhood loan shark; accept the Guild as a full business partner; or visit his or her district’s kingpin to ask for more time. Holding out on the Guild might not cost in the short term, but it almost always turns out badly in the long run.
When enforcers finish their day’s collections at five to ten businesses, they return to whatever shop, office, or home is their current front; pool their coin with other enforcers’ takes; pocket their cuts; and then spend the evening gambling, drinking, and making small talk. Most Guild “offices” are in client-owned businesses. Restaurants, taverns, barbershops, bath houses, pawnshops, moneychangers’ establishments, and funeral parlors are favorite locations.
Groups of three to six operators move the enforcers’ hauls from neighborhood headquarters to safe houses each night. One day’s haul from one collection point might bring in as much as 100 gp. The Outer City
alone has nine districts, and each has a dozen or so collection points. Protection is a lucrative racket.
Gambling: Contests and games of chance are ram¬pant in the Outer City, but making a decent profit off gambling in those districts requires grinding through thousands of low coin bets. The real money in gam¬bling is made in the Upper City, where patriars bet ridiculous sums on formalized games and anything else that catches their fancy, such as which captain’s ship will return from sea first or whose glass of wine a fly will settle on. Races and boxing or wrestling matches are hugely popular, as are dice games, spin¬ning wheels, stick drops, card games, and guessing or bluffing games between professional teams. The Guild rigs these contests whenever it can, both to maximize its profit and to reward clients with payoffs that don’t need to be concealed.
Smuggling: One of the busiest smuggling routes in Baldur’s Gate runs between Rivington and Brampton. Anything moving by land to or from Rivington gets taxed at Wyrm’s Crossing and again at the Basilisk Gate. To avoid paying that double fee, smugglers haul goods by night along the river between Rivington’s and Brampton’s quays, hiding them in weighted nets dragged behind boats. Near the pier, underwater ropes are hooked to the nets. Other Guild members wait in a waterlogged tunnel that connects to a nearby build¬ing’s cellar to pull those caches under the pier, through the tunnel, and into the building.
From Brampton, the smuggled cargoes mingle with honest ones and make their way through Baldur’s Gate to the Wide. The Guild’s river smugglers charge less than the toll collectors and the porters combined, making the smuggling route highly desirable for those bringing goods into Baldur’s Gate from the south.
“Nine-Fingers” Keene
The current master of the Guild disdains flashy garb and appearance-improving magic, so the world sees her as she truly is-an unassuming, brunette woman of middling height and build. Neither plain nor beautiful, Nine-Fingers is completely indistinctive. Her forgettable looks, far from being a drawback, were a great asset during her years as a thief. Nine-Fingers has a knack for avoiding attention. She drifts into and out of rooms, unregarded until she speaks. The guildmaster never forgets a face or a name, and she is a shrewd judge of people. Within minutes of meeting someone, she can correctly assess the person’s motives, ambitions, and fears and how far that individual can be trusted.
Few people know her given name. To the Gate, she is simply the notorious “Nine-Fingers.” The story of her nickname and her rise would be a popular tavern tale if it were widely known. When Astele Keene was five years old, a one-eyed elf kidnapped her, sliced off the little
finger of her left hand, and sent the digit to her parents along with an exorbitant ransom demand. Little Astele’s parents borrowed the money from family and friends and bought back their daugh¬ter, but Nine Fingers never forgave the elf-and never forgot his coppery hair and single eye.
Years later, when she was a rising Guild operator, she found her kidnap¬per in a pipe den, where he was feeding his sable moonflower addiction.
Nine-Fingers blinded his remaining eye and cut off all but the little fingers on both of his hands. She then bought the pipe den and instructed its proprietor to make sure the elf always has enough food, drink, and smoke to stay alive and maintain his addiction. The addict’s sable moonflower is laced with the dried yolk of cockatrice eggs, which Nine-Fingers procures at great expense, to transform his smoke dreams into nightmares. Because he’s an elf, Nine-Fingers expects her kidnapper to outlive her, so she has made advance payments to ensure that his tor¬ture endures throughout his natural life.
Nine Fingers is now patient and calculating: the passion of her youth has faded. She seeks revenge for offenses against the Guild only when doing so will increase the cabal’s profits. A meticulous planner, Nine-Fingers anticipates treachery. She pits trouble¬some Guild members against each other to blunt any internal threats while simultaneously discouraging open bloodshed.
The guildmaster never goes anywhere without her personal bodyguards, whom the kingpins call the Lady’s Court. The six women-two wizards and four accomplished warrior-rogues-are utterly devoted to Nine-Fingers, and she lavishly rewards their loyalty. She prefers anonymity, so her bodyguards accompany her invisibly, sometimes in disguise and sometimes at a distance. When Nine-Fingers speaks with a kingpin, a patriar, or an underworld figure, she often appears to be alone, but she almost never is.
Under her guidance, the Guild has become an inte¬gral part of the city’s businesses and politics. It polices its own activities to minimize interference from the Flaming Fist and the Watch, and Guild enforcers keep unsanctioned crime to a minimum. Nine-Fingers has invested her substantial wealth (or the portion of it left over every month after she pays off politicians, patriars, judges, and officers) in numerous legitimate businesses. In a city full of spies and informants, her intelligence network is unequaled. Nine-Fingers can guarantee a majority of votes in the Parliament of Peers on any
subject, including the selection of a new duke. Her tools against the patriars include coercion, manipulation, graft, and the threat of exposing their secrets, both true and false. The last thing Nine Fingers wants is open confrontation with the Fist or the patriars, which would mean blood in the streets. Blood is hard to control and bad for everyone’s profit margins.
Rilsa Rael
When Rilsa Rael joined the Guild, she had nowhere else to turn. The Flaming Fist had hanged her father for harboring her uncle when the mercenaries were after him. So her beautiful mother had become a patriars courtesan to support Rael. When the man’s wife discovered the trysts, she demanded that Rael’s mother be imprisoned in the Seatower of Balduran, where the woman wasted away and died while her lover went unpunished. Left on her own, Rael joined the gang in Norchapel, where her mixed Tethyrian and Calishite parentage and language skills gave her a natural advantage in bringing Little Calimshan fully under the Guild’s influence.
Rael’s talent at going unnoticed and her skill with a knife earned her a position on the Lady’s Court as one of Nine-Fingers’ bodyguards-the guildmaster’s favorite, in fact. Her loyalty, ruthlessness, and inventiveness in dis¬creetly solving problems fueled her rise. Acknowl¬edging Rael’s potential,
Nine Fingers removed her bodyguard from the court and installed her as Little Calimshan’s kingpin.
Rael’s status as Nine Finger’s favorite hasn’t changed, making her heir presumptive to the Guild leadership.
Rael learned how to exploit others from
Nine-Fingers, but she does not use intermediaries and scapegoats to insulate herself from her affairs as Nine- Fingers does. Instead, she takes a personal hand in most matters. She moves openly through the Outer City, alter nating between helping the poor, slinging insults at any Fist patrols moving between Wyrm’s Rock and the Lower City, and occasionally breaking the nose of a reluctant shopkeeper. She even holds a public audience at her headquarters in the Calim Jewel Emporium to hear the complaints of Outer City residents.
Rael’s opinions of the Gate’s leaders and institutions were formed during her rough childhood. She thinks the Flaming Fist is cruel and uncaring, and the patri ars are hypocritical and self-serving. She sympathizes and identifies wholly with the poor in the Outer City
and blames the Fist and the patriars for the terrible conditions there-and the fact that, in her words, “The people need the Guild to protect them from the city and from themselves.”
Fruward the Nail
Few members of the Guild know Fruward except by reputation. They know only that “the Nail” works for the Guild, and that you’ll know him when you see him because of the nail driven right into his forehead. The three-inch long spike has a wide, square head, the gleam of which Fruward keeps hidden under a hand¬kerchief he wears beneath his battered hat.
Fruward came by his strange injury due to a dis¬agreement with members of the Builders Guild. What Fruward was told would be a late-night negotiation over work contracts in the dry dock where he worked turned out to be an ambush. He was held down, ham¬mered in the head, splashed with ale, and then laid on his face among his tools so that his death could be called an accident.
Later that night, the young Nine-Fingers entered the dry dock to hide from a pursuing Flaming Fist patrol that had spotted her climbing out of a window. She happened upon Fruward lying facedown and heard him struggling to breathe. She turned him over to find him miraculously alive despite the nail in his head-and then Fruward awoke while his head was cradled in her hands. That’s when the doors of the dry dock rattled open, and the Fist patrol entered along with Fruward’s would-be murder ers. Disoriented but enraged, Fruward leaped forward, incoherently screaming accusations. A battle ensued, and Fruward escaped with his life only due to the aid of the one who would later become master of the Guild.
Returning to a normal life wasn’t an option—not after killing some of the Flaming Fist and his enemies in the Builders Guild-and the despondent Fruward began to wish the nail had killed him. But Nine Fin gers helped him again. She set him up with a place to live and provided him what he needed to keep going until he came to terms with his new life-as a secret member of the Guild.
The Nail is unflinchingly loyal to Nine-Fingers and carries out her commands without comment. He acts as a buffer for Nine Fingers, arranging things when she would prefer that her name or the Guild not be directly involved. Few in the Guild recognize Fruward after meeting him unless he reveals the nail in his forehead to them. His face is otherwise unremarkable, and the nail tends to attract the eye, so that the rest of Fruward’s features fall away from memory.
Despite their close association for several years, Fruward and Nine-Fingers now rarely meet. The Nail receives most of his orders by way of message spells cast by a member of the Lady’s Court.




MERCHANTS AND TRADE
Many outlanders think of Baldur’s Gate as a noisy, crowded, bustling, stinking, and often fogbound port city that never sleeps. They say it is a place where everyone works hard at trade and craftwork, coins are king, and there’s no shortage of muscle and gumption.
And they’re right. The Gate is a city of traders through and through, and most Baldurians take to heart the motto “Claw hard, or fail and be forgotten.” It’s one of the busiest Sword Coast ports. It processes streams of nigh countless goods that constantly flow through it in all but the coldest winters, when the Chionthar ices over and Trade Way travel trickles to a stop.
Most days, though, trade is in full swing. Merchants and couriers in the Wide carry goods in baskets atop tall poles, which they harness to their backs and shoulders, to keep their wares out of the way of bustling crowds. Bulk goods that can’t be carried in this fashion, such as coal, firewood, potatoes, and casks of drinkables, are often sold sight unseen from shops in the Wide or the Lower City and delivered in handcarts.
As a way to pinch coppers, some Upper City citi¬zens send servants with carts to fetch items rather than have tradesfolk make deliveries to their doors. Nevertheless, when the gates to the Upper City open at dawn every morning, porters flood in, hastening to Upper City addresses to make the day’s first deliveries. The moment the flood of deliveries passes, a reverse flow of Upper City servants converges on the Old Wall gates to run errands in the Lower City.
Citizens of the Gate see themselves as vital to com merce, prosperity, and fulfdling the needs of the wider Realms. New ideas, new technologies, and new wares flow through Baldur’s Gate. It is where fashions begin or are anointed and where dreams are dashed or forged into real wealth. Baldurians are proud of being at the heart of it all, and they loudly assert their supe riority over their rivals in Waterdeep and Athkatla. Locals sneer at the so called City of Splendors, calling it a place of leisurely trade, where decadents play at being merchants rather than really working at it. And they deride folk in Athkatla as being too wealthy to know enough about the world, real work, or how to be good traders.
Professional Guilds
Baldur’s Gate is home to almost ninety professional guilds. Most guildhalls are located in the Lower City, even when their members keep shop and live elsewhere. Since the troubles involving the Iron Throne, the Council of Four has required all guilds to acquire and maintain official charters, and it has outlawed unofficial associa tions. Such charters must be renewed every year.
The three classifications of charters and the divisions within them create a structure among the professional guilds based on their wealth, traditions, and members’ social status. Those that provide goods and services to the Upper City have the “Council’s Eminent Fellow¬ship” honorific, those belonging to the Lower City use the “Parliament’s Distinguished Union” honorific, and those belonging to the Outer City have the “Balduran’s Honorable Company” designation. For example, the bakers, millers, and salters were granted their char ter in the Outer City, so they are known collectively as Balduran’s Honorable Company of Provenderers. Membership in a professional guild is mandatory in the Lower City, strong in the Upper City, and considered entirely optional in the Outer City.
The city’s official professional guilds are organized in the structure outlined below. Each guild is grouped according to the classification of its honorific, and the guilds within a united group are arranged in hierar chical order from the top down within each category.
Council’s Eminent Fellowship of . . .
Seafarers (includes ship captains, pilots, naviga tors, and cartographers)
Traders (caravaneers and guides)
Financiers (bankers, moneychangers, and minters) Healers (alchemists, surgeons, apothecaries, bota nists, and herbalists)
Furriers (furriers and skinners)
Sages (sages and wizards)
Parliament’s Distinguished Union of . . .
Clerks (barristers, accountants, scribes, bookbind¬ers, and printers)
Handlers (butchers, woolers, chandlers, fishmon gers, and beekeepers)
Metalworkers (blacksmiths, goldsmiths, silver¬smiths, armorers, and weaponsmiths)
Shoemakers (cobblers and cordwainers)
Master Builders (architects, engineers, stonema sons, glaziers, and plumbers)
Clothiers (tailors, milliners, weavers, dyers, and perfumers)
Balduran’s Honorable Company of . . .
Brewmasters (vintners and brewers)
Publicans (innkeepers and tavernkeepers) Builders (bricklayers, plasterers, joiners, and roofers)
Leatherworkers (tanners, saddlers, and curriers) Artisans (painters, sculptors, poets, jewelers, and mosaicists)
Vesselmakers (potters and coopers)
Tinkers (tinkers, toolmakers, locksmiths, braziers, glassblowers, and smelters)
Woodworkers (shipwrights, carpenters, wain- wrights, and woodcarvers)
Loremasters (mathematicians, philosophers, astrologers, astronomers, and seers)
Outfitters (ropemakers, sailmakers, wagoners, and wheelwrights)
Provenderers (salters, bakers, and millers) Harborhands (porters, sailors, harborhands, and couriers)
SECRET GUILDS
The establishment of laws for professional guilds officially ended the public presence of the Iron Throne in Baldur’s Gate, but it didn’t spell the end for the organization. Simi¬larly, the Merchant’s League was originally based in Baldur’s Gate, and even though prominent patriar families such as the Irlentrees, Miyars, and Sashenstars disavowed the group, its influence remains.
Iron Throne: The Iron Throne has always focused on con¬trol of weapons, armor, and trade in iron. After the trouble in Baldur’s Gate many decades ago, a crisis in its leadership led to its decline for a time. But it now secretly maintains a controlling interest in arms and armor made for the Watch and the Flaming Fist.
Merchant’s League: The Merchant’s League was once fully backed by the Council of Four, but its growing control overtrade in the city and its failure to effectively counteract the Iron Throne caused the dukes to ban the organization. Although officially dissolved, the Merchant’s League con¬tinues to do business through its member families, which control the Seafarers, Traders, and Woodworkers guilds.
Knights of the Shield: The Knights of the Shield is a vast secret society to which nobles, traders, and shopkeepers belong. Members pass information that seems like it might be economically useful to other members and up the chain of command so all can profit. Its members have kept a low profile throughout the group’s existence, and they intend to keep things that way.
SHOPS AND OTHER BUSINESSES
The Upper City boasts decorous storefronts, chic arti¬san studios, and the Wide marketplace. Meanwhile, the Lower City is chock full of shops and workshops, and the area’s rapid growth has pushed many other businesses into the Outer City. The first floors of most Lower City buildings contain businesses of some kind or at least maintain street-frontage shops.
Describing the vast variety of Gate establishments could fill its own book, so we encourage you to consult the Murder in Baldur’s Gate Dungeon Master’s Screen when you need to generate a shop name and describe its services or wares. The entries below describe a handful of notable businesses in Baldur’s Gate.
Baldur’s Mouth
Baldur’s Mouth, the city’s news carrier, provides a great service to people at every level of society. Town criers and printed broadsheets are its two methods of spreading news.
The city has used Baldur’s Mouth many times to spread word of new laws that the Council of Four passes, to broadcast holidays, and to communicate election results. Criers announce news of the affairs of kingdoms and nations throughout Faerun, opening every declaration by shouting, “Harken, people of Bal¬dur’s Gate, to Baldur’s Mouth! The land changes, and Baldur would have his people know!”
Ettvard Needle, the son of a wealthy Lower City tailor, founded the Mouth. After growing up watch¬ing Upper City citizens compel his father to bend and grovel, Needle decided to give power to the people in the form of information. So he began paying lamp lads and lamp lasses to shout his stories of various injustices during the day. Since many of his employees were illiterate and had to memorize his news articles, Needle decided to teach them to read so he could give them written copies. As his expenses mounted, Needle sought out sponsors, which led to his attracting adver tising and diversifying his criers’ stories.
Baldur’s Mouth now earns its keep through adver tising and is a functioning business. Formerly, to publicize his sponsors, criers would hand out wooden chits that afforded the recipient a discount when redeemed at a particular shop or merchant stall. Now, Needle uses several mechanical scribes that he pur chased from the Hall of Wonders to rapidly produce pamphlets and broadsheets that have advertisements in them.
USING BALDUR’S MOUTH
You can use the Gate’s news service to give your players a sense that city happenings are continuing in their absence while their characters are engaged elsewhere. You can also use Baldur’s Mouth to express how the heroes’ actions make news. For instance, if the characters are successful in aiding or thwarting one of the factions in a public incident, they could hear about the situation when they pass a crier in the streets.
From time to time, the broadsheets of Baldur’s Mouth have included caricatures of important citizens, such as dukes or parliament members. As the adventure progresses, this practice of satirizing important people happens more often as the city veers out of control. Characters might even find flattering or unflattering images of themselves in the paper, depending on what they’ve been up to lately.
Baldur’s Mouth also has a darker element to it. Even though Needle dislikes the Guild almost as much as he loathes the patriars, he is a good friend and an admirer of Rilsa Rael. Her commitment to the Outer City’s residents impresses him, and the newshound hopes to persuade the Guild kingpin to help transform the Guild from a predatory criminal organization into a mercenary citizens’ watch not unlike the Flaming Fist. He continues to support Rael through Baldur’s Mouth unless someone persuades him that she is causing more harm than good. That task wouldn’t be easy to accomplish, since Needle chooses not to acknowledge the Guild’s role in the city’s growing instability.
Candlekeep Chandlery
On the signboard hanging above its door, the Can dlekeep Chandlery proudly advertises the “Longest Lasting Lamps and Magically Made Missives in the Lower City.” Marcela Idhra, the proprietor of the place and a wizard of some talent, came to Baldur’s Gate from Candlekeep when her magical research and experiments became too disruptive for the other schol ars there.
Her shop sells candles, soaps, and cosmetics to well- heeled customers in the Upper City. Her claim to fame is her whispering candle. Each such item has a fire mephit magically trapped in its tallow. As the candle burns, the mephit continually voices back whatever sounds it heard while the tallow was being prepared, in the voice of the speaker. Different voices can be recorded in different candles, so that when they are all burned they can make the sound of a conversation or musicians playing together.
Many people find this feature both charming and useful. Whispering candles are popular at patriars’ galas; one candle burning at the entrance can welcome guests as they arrive, and many can be placed around
the wings of a ballroom to whisper pleasant reassur ances or create an air of mystery. The Watch uses whispering candles with imbedded commands to time its shift changes. It has long been a fashion among patriars to record their wills in whispering candles.
The candles are also appreciated by those who need to communicate discreetly. The Guild, the Flaming Fist, and the patriars use whispering candles to com municate with agents, spies, and secret lovers. The chandlery has a secure room where messages can be whispered through a speaking tube into the boil ing tallow. Once a candle is formed, the only way to release the message (and return the mephit to its home plane) is by burning the candle normally. If the candle is destroyed—smashed underfoot, for example, or tossed into a fire-the message can’t be recovered, even if the tallow is re-formed into a new candle.
Candles that contain vocal performances by noted bards or readings of epic poems are popular items in the shop. Idhra also carries a small line of novelty candles that unexpectedly utter the roar of an owlbear, for example, or some embarrassing sound. The price of a whispering candle depends on its size, the circum¬stances of its recording, and the beauty of the candle itself. The smallest and plainest whispering candles, which burn for only a minute, cost 25 gp. Grand and complex arrangements of candles, such as the operatic chandelier employed at the cotillion ball of Duke Sil vershield’s daughter, cost several thousand gold pieces.
The Counting House has stood as a center of trade and business in the city for centuries. A thick-walled and heavily guarded edifice on the waterfront, it serves as the primary location for exchange of currency and valuation of gems and jewelry.
Its owner, a stern and aloof dwarf named Rakath Glitterbeard, holds the key positions of treasurer for the Council’s Eminent Fellowship of Financiers and is also the kingpin in the Steeps for the lawless Guild. Loans and other debt markers, both legal and other wise, that he holds make certain no one in the city dares to challenge Rakath’s positions or attempts to rob the Counting House.
Danthelon’s Dancing Axe
This new but widely known business on Wyrm’s Crossing is named for its owner, the jovial seller-of sundries Entharl Danthelon. The blond bearded dwarf deals in assorted quality secondhand goods, ranging from pots and pans to rope, armor, and weaponry.
A flying, animated, double-bladed axe that obeys only Danthelon is said to guard the shop at night. The proprietor tells anyone willing to listen that a grate¬ful elf princess who was also a peerless sorcerer gifted
the axe to him while he was on a daring adventure. The truth is a lot less romantic. The “dancing axe” is an illusion-cloaked, tamed stirge. Danthelon looses the creature when he closes the shop. Appearing as a double-bladed axe, the stirge can be glimpsed through the cluttered windows of the shop as it flits around the darkened interior.
The two crammed floors of Danthelon’s shop con¬tain items that an adventurer might need, including empty barrels and cages of all sizes, just for show armor, peddler’s carts, folding boats with oars, and large lanterns fitted with candles the shopkeeper guar antees will burn for an entire day and night.
Danthelon’s has a third floor and an attic, both of which are occupied by a tenant, Yssra Brackrel. The half-elf is small and gaunt, and looks as if she might be starving. She has glittering eyes, disheveled black hair, and a habit of humming to herself. Fierce “Yes!” and “No!” whispers punctuate her wordless tunes.
Brackrel advertises herself as a makeup artist and hairstylist; a sign dangling from the stairs that run up the front of Danthelon’s building says as much. Brack rel has those skills and often uses them to maintain her charade, but she makes her real living as a wizard for hire, and is often in the Guild’s employ.
Felogyr’s Fireworks
Avery Sonshal sells pyrotechnics out of the four story workshop in the Steeps known as Felogyr’s Fireworks. The business has been in his family since Felogyr Sonshal founded it and gave it an alliterative name more than a century ago. Customers often call Son¬shal by his ancestor’s name, and he never bothers to correct them, believing there’s no sense in changing a recipe that works-especially when dealing with smokepowder.
Sonshal has a plump, young-looking countenance and shaves his head. If not for his thick, mutton- chop sideburns, he might be considered baby faced.
A wizard and an alchemist who is a member of the Council’s Eminent Fellowship of Healers, Sonshal detests the presence of nonmagical hangers-on in the guild, such as botanists and surgeons.
Felogyr’s Fireworks has retained a monopoly on smokepowder production in the city since the busi ness’s inception. Even the priests of Gond come to Felogyr’s to fill their needs. In exchange, Sonshal has never sold smokepowder to anyone not of the temple of Gond or the Council of Four, except in the form of fireworks. The shop does sell other items to a broad cli¬entele, specializing in torches and candle wicks whose flames burn in various hues; smoke and flash effects for stage productions; and various flashfire rubs, which are spread on meats before they’re set alight to add distinctive smoky flavors.
Torches that burn a rosy red are Sonshal’s top¬selling item. Baldurians use them to illuminate a traditional cobble party, or outdoor storytelling ses¬sion. When passersby see a rose torch lighting a street corner, an alley, or a courtyard, they recognize that the symbol signifies an opportunity to hear and tell tales of all kinds. The stories can be true or fiction. By custom, cobble parties are quiet and polite affairs that do not involve drinking or music.
Hissing Stones Bathhouse
In Seatower squats a low, stone structure built in the classic Chessentan style. When the High House of Wonders and the Hall ofWonders were erected, an enterprising Baldurian decided to capitalize on the popularity of all things Chessentan and built a bath house, complete with hypocaust floors, mosaic tiling, and artfully painted walls. The bathhouse was hugely popular for a time. After changing fortunes and hands over the years, it’s now enjoying a renaissance due to Duke Abdel Adrian’s practice of visiting the location.
The Hissing Stones Bathhouse is built around a central cloister that encloses its cold baths, which are beautifully decorated. An impressive mosaic in the center of the cold baths dominates the scene. It shows an arresting image of a wizard grappling with a dragon as the two fall through the clouds. The dragon is wrapped around the wizard’s body, and the wizard’s free arm is pointing a wand into the dragon’s roar ing mouth. Refracted light and rippling water seem to animate the figures, as though wind were ruffling the wizard’s robe and the dragon’s wings were moving.
The Hissing Stones offers a number of amenities in addition to its cold baths. Steam rooms are available in its western gallery and hot baths in its eastern gallery. A day at the baths costs 5 sp. For 1 gp, a customer can pur chase time with a sinew soother, who relieves knotted muscles. For 2 gp, a patron can soak in a curative salt bath, which is said to help ward off or remove illnesses.
The Hissing Stones has a special niche in city poli tics as a neutral and safe meeting place. Its proprietor, a moon elf named Merilyn Allaryr, doesn’t allow patrons to bring anything inside the baths other than the cotton and silk bathrobes she provides, which lack pockets and folds. All patrons must entrust Allaryr with all the belongings they bring with them, includ¬ing garments, jewelry, arms, armor, potions, tools, magic items, and anything else they happen to be toting around.
Allaryr won’t be bribed, and she makes absolutely no exceptions to this policy. She arranges a lot of important business meetings and knows that the suc¬cess of the Hissing Stones depends on its reputation as a safe place. Allaryr also pays her stewards and aides well enough that they are unlikely to accept less than
a mound of gold to break the rules. Even if one were persuaded to do so, the attendant still wouldn’t allow inside anything that might be used violently, since each acts as the sole custodian over his or her desig¬nated chambers and would be instantly implicated in any incident.
Sorcerous Sundries
The tall, round building currently known as Sorcer¬ous Sundries has the most magnificent roof in the city, a vast dome seemingly made entirely of stained glass. Inside, arched stonework that supports the roof above the uppermost floor compromises the illusion, but its effect is impressive nonetheless.
Over the years, the structure has been employed as a residence, a clothier’s shop, a restaurant, a green¬house, and a flower shop. Its current owner has returned the building to its original purpose, doing business as a magic shop.
The ground floor, the only area into which patrons are permitted, is awash in silk curtains, thick rugs, and luxurious furniture. Magical symbols liberally adorn the Sorcer¬ous Sundries’ decor, and a sign inside the entrance assures customers that the symbols are protective in nature. The ceiling is made of multicolored glass, as are the outer rims of the structure’s upper floors. When light filters through the stories of the building, moving rays and splotches of multicolored light dance in the shop. Minor enchant ments enhance the effect, making for captivating skygazing as patrons wait for the proprietor to fetch ritual components or consult otherworldly entities.
The wizard in residence, an aged human who calls himself Rivalen Blackhand, claims to have come from Halruaa. Blackhand says he was once capable of mighty magic before a battle with a demon blackened and withered his right hand, forcing him to end his adventuring ways.
Now Blackhand earns a large, steady income from the import and sale of components for rituals and spellcasting, dubious fortune-telling, and even- more-dubious spells of good luck or greater skill. Blackhand flatly refuses to sell spells, and he denies having magic items for sale. However, to keeps the rumors alive and his prices high, the wizard sends his apprentice, a gnome named Gilligunn, to contact seekers of such items and make transactions “away from the master’s eye.”
CAFES, INNS, AND TAVERNS
The Gate’s economy relies on and caters to traders and travelers who journey to the city by land and sea. Thus, the city has an expansive array of cafes, inns, and tav erns from which to choose. Most such establishments are both inn and tavern, as the tavernkeepers and inn keepers guilds dictate. Cafes remain outside the guild system and sell only alcohol-free beverages, snacks, and other light fare.
The Blade and Stars
This inn is named for its unusual signboard, an enchanted shield that was looted from a ruined village in Amn following an old trade war. A circular piece of wood painted black, its front displays a curved silver saber and a female’s pale, slender arm whose long fingers grip the hilt of the blade. The enchantment on the shield, still strong after decades of hanging out in all weather, causes glimmering motes of light to wink on and off as they travel across the saber. Many local legends have sprung up about the shield’s power and the saber depicted on it, but the inn’s proprietor insists that the illusion of “stars” is the shield’s only magic. Meanwhile, the shield still does what the inn’s founder intended it to do when she brought it back and hung it above the door: It draws business.
The interior of the Blade and Stars is an unre markable yet comfortable inn. Lacking a tavern and a dining room, the long, tall building is filled with bed rooms and small apartments in which travelers can stay for fair prices and have food and drink sent up to them. Many of the rooms have private balconies over hanging the street, providing visitors with a great place to stay while watching the city in full swing.
Because eating requires renting a room, locals avoid the Blade and Stars unless they need space for a pri vate gathering. The inn’s current proprietor, a Turmian female named Aurayaun, is happy to rent rooms for a few hours, provided that the renters also place a large order of food and drinks.
The Blushing Mermaid
The Blushing Mermaid is a noisy establishment whose clientele is known to break into brawls over a spilled mug, a funny look, or an ugly face. It’s infamous throughout the Sword Coast as a place to do illicit business. Baldurians often warn travelers against visit ing the Blushing Mermaid unless they’re well armed, know how to use their weapons, and bring plenty of like-minded, trusted friends.
The Blushing Mermaid consists of a confusing maze of wings and oddly interconnected floors. It
has at least four levels of cellars. Its rooms are low- ceilinged, dingy, and furnished with mismatched, secondhand items. Its windows have iron bars on the outside and heavy wooden shutters with wooden bars on the inside. Patrons are told, “The boards are there to use. Management is not responsible for losses of any kind, including life and limb.” Not many people actu¬ally sleep in the Blushing Mermaid, since raucous bar fights are liable to erupt at any hour.
The lobby is the only high-ceilinged room in the place. A life-sized, crudely carved, wooden mermaid hangs above the reception desk. A score or more shriv¬eled, blackened hands are nailed to the mermaid’s body. According to the staff, “Folk who forgot their coin purses donated ’em.”
Most of the Mermaid’s patrons are old, scarred sea dogs who whittle away the day and night nurs ing drinks and swapping tales. Each one is a contact for this or that cabal, thieving brotherhood, smuggler, bandit group, fence, panderer, or some other shady dealer. Some work for the Guild. Negotiations with such contacts begin with a palmful of silver to loosen one’s memory. If such a contact pushes a tankard toward a visitor during an interview, the sea dog is looking for a refill, but not of ale.
The fare prepared at the Mermaid is simple and filling. It’s all decent except for a vile stew based on pickled fish. Many sailors order crusty nutbread rolls with thick gravy ladled over them or handwheels of cheese. The Mermaid also serves raw fish on wooden platters, a tradition its chef (born in Kara-Tur) brought to the tavern. Its house beer is a thick sea ale that’s more bitter than most tongues find enjoyable. The establishment also serves stout, a Mintarn lager, and whiskey strong enough to strip paint from wood.
Elfsong Tavern
One of the most well known establishments in Bal dur’s Gate is located a few blocks from the Basilisk
Gate in Eastway. The name of this tavern comes from its unearthly tenant-a disembodied elven voice whose song occasionally fills the tavern. The singing isn’t loud enough to disrupt conversation, but it is clear, beautiful, and lamenting. The ballad’s lyrics make clear that the ghostly lady is lamenting a lover lost at sea, but no one is sure how she came to haunt the tavern.
The song often moves folk to tears, even when they can’t understand the archaic dialect. Many customers frequent the tavern just to hear the melancholy ballad.
During the song’s infrequent occurrences, a customary hush overtakes the crowd, and any noisy patrons find dangerous looks leveled at themselves. Customers are expected to be armed, and the known custom is that all patrons need to watch their backs except when the sad lady’s singing.
Elves hearing her song for the first time often appear stunned. By tradition, the bartender silently serves a first-time elf customer a free tallglass of elver- quisst. First time customers of any race who weep upon hearing the song usually find regular patrons putting comforting arms around them. By tradition, music of any sort is not sung or played in the tavern. The ghostly lady has the audience to herself.
The Elfsong Tavern’s ground floor is a taproom that serves hearty, salty meals and saltier snacks-to encourage drinking, of course. Blue glassed lanterns with blue flames (a Felogyr’s Fireworks product) light the dark interior. Several cramped, twisting stairways lead from the taproom to upstairs meeting rooms that can be rented by the hour. Staffers politely warn occu¬pants when time is running short.
Alan Alyth, the tavern’s handsome, graying pro prietor, has run the establishment for decades. His half-elf mother’s elven blood has kept him living longer and looking better than full-blooded humans his age. Alyth continues his mother’s tradition of offer ing patrons an informal, secret banking service. He provides an extension of sorts on bar tabs, enabling customers to deposit money or take out loans, if Alyth trusts them enough.
The Helm and Cloak
Located at the heart of the Upper City, just steps from the High House of Wonders and the High Hall, the Helm and Cloak serves the upper crust and has prices to match. Its food is excellent, and its accommodations are sumptuous. The Helm is a fashionable place to dine and chat. Patriars and Lower City residents who have lofty social ambitions favor it.
Unlike other high-priced establishments, the Helm and Cloak doesn’t follow the latest fashions. Its propri etors devote themselves to providing patrons with a warm and comfortable environment in which to stay, conduct business, or have a quiet meal or drink. Tradi¬tional good taste, plush furnishings, a quiet atmosphere, and attentive service keep the Helm and Cloak busy.
The upscale inn and tavern consists of two con¬nected buildings. The Helm is an old rooming house that faces Gond’s High House of Wonders. A massive iron helmet once worn by a titan (according to the wait staff) shadows its entry. The smaller Cloak, an old house that fronts a courtyard offWindspell Street, faces the High Hall. A cloak hangs over its porch. As the story goes, a priestess of Sune once owned the house and had lurid pictures painted on its ceilings. The original cloak was hers, but many mantles of dif¬ferent colors and fabrics have been displayed above the Cloak’s door since then.
The Helm’s common room holds a marble unicorn bust whose bronze horn is touched for luck. The statu¬ary is a symbol of the Knights of the Unicorn (see page 50), a group of chic younglings-turned-adven- turers who used the Helm and Cloak as an informal headquarters.
A Cormyrean husband-and wife team runs the inn and its large staff with smooth efficiency. Unknown to most, Vedren and Halesta are retired members of the Knights of the Unicorn. The organization has grown far beyond its humble beginnings and now boasts members across Faerun. After Vedren and Halesta’s adventuring party fractured, the two humans came to Baldur’s Gate to share a less dangerous life together. The unicorn bust is a reminder of what brought them together. Still, old habits die hard, and the innkeepers keep their ears to the street and their swords sharp.
Jopalin’s
Once a seedy dockside tavern catering to sailors with thin purses, Jopalin’s transitioned into a cafe when coffee and tea drinking became fashionable-and as membership fees increased for the tavernkeepers guild. The low-ceilinged eatery and its dockside seat ing is now an establishment that sailors largely spurn. Merchants and traders frequent Jopalin’s when they want to appear fashionable and sophisticated but are too busy to leave the port to take meals elsewhere. Jopalin, the cafe’s owner, is the half elf son of the tav¬ern’s founder, after whom he was named.
The Low Lantern
An aging, three-masted merchant ship rocks gently in the water alongside the Stormshore Street dock on the harbor’s east side. Ostensibly a festhall, a tavern, and a gambling house, the Low Lantern also serves as a place for covert meetings in which sensitive and illicit plans can be discussed without fear of eavesdroppers.
The open upper deck is a place of hanging lamps, genteel repartee, smoking, and drinking. All the wilder goings on at the place normally happen belowdecks, but special parties can be arranged to take place in the rig¬ging and sail booms for those who are willing to brave the heights and able to pay the high fee.
Most patrons arrive armed, and rowdiness is common, but the Low Lantern’s ex-pirate “crew” moves quickly to quell large brawls and prevent fires. The “Lady Captain” Laraelra Thundreth—a gambler, a sorcerer, and a secret Guild member-owns the oft- leaking and hastily repaired vessel.
The Splurging Sturgeon
The Splurging Sturgeon struggled as a threadbare tavern for decades until its most recent owner, Hennut Griot, took its humorous name seriously. Originally from Ormpur, Griot discovered that her traditional fish dishes were too spicy for the local palate, so she hired Baldurian cooks to teach her Sword Coast reci¬pes. After she mastered those and earned a stellar reputation, she expanded her menu to include dishes of her own for locals to try out. That success led Griot to hire a series of cooks from many lands, and from them she learned to prepare exotic fish fare.
Now the Splurging Sturgeon cooks just about any¬thing that’s pulled out of the river or sea, and in dozens of ways. The Splurging Sturgeon rotates its dishes based on popularity and availability. It also offers spe¬cials for the adventurous eater.
Three Old Kegs
One of the most cozy, welcoming, and tolerant establishments in Baldur’s Gate, Three Old Kegs is named for its sign, featuring three lashed together bar rels hanging from a pole.
The place is immensely pop¬ular, so much so that regular wayfarers’ donations have rebuilt the business after fire gutted it on three sepa rate occasions.
The current Three Old Kegs features a large, central feasting hall whose entrance faces the bar and opens directly into the main common room. The Kegs serves hearty, simple food and good brews and wine. The establishment also rents out two private dining rooms, which are flanked by the kitchen and the pantries. Three of the Kegs’ floors are open to patrons, and its small, spartan guest rooms boast individual chimneys. The Kegs is known for the welcome it gives to travel ers, and it offers mending, laundering, and weapon and tool repair and sharpening services to guests. The building’s two levels of cellars and its attic serve as housing for the staff and as storage and work areas.
The first of the fires toasted the Kegs’ original thick rugs and wall hangings, which have for the most part not been replaced, but the beloved inn and tavern offers just as many crowded bookshelves as its prede¬cessors did. The Kegs remains a quiet establishment that patrons seek out as a refuge from revelry and the bustle of the streets. A popular spot for reading, nap¬ping, and idle gambling, the Kegs prohibits rowdiness. Patrons may wear weapons only in their rooms and in the arming lobby adjacent to the structure’s entrance.

Roisterers are warned that Three Old Kegs has a resident population of more than a dozen full-season renters who are retired from the Flaming Fist. These “weather eyes” won’t set foot outside the Kegs on any¬thing called an adventure, but they do defend the inn staff, keep order, and dispense advice and useful con tact information to guests who seem in need of it. They make their coin as recruiters and watchers for the Flaming Fist, message holders, and occasional armed escorts for merchants who are transporting goods.
Alstan, Brunkhurn, and Klalbrot Wintersides, known collectively as “the Old Toads,” own the Kegs. Kindly but gruff, the three wart-covered brothers work tirelessly and watch over the two score world-wise widows and middle-aged females who work for the Kegs as maids, cooks, and servers.
Unknown to most patrons, the Old Toads are not wholly strait laced. Deep inside one of their locked keg cellars is the Big Hollow, a huge empty barrel that sports a concealed door and vent holes. The Winter- sides rent it as a hideyhole for brief periods. Anyone who uses the Big Hollow to imprison or mistreat some one is reported to the authorities.
The Smilin' Boar
The Smilin’ Boar was once a failing tavern, until its new owner, Jentha Allinamuck, took advantage of its Bloomridge locale to convert it into a trendy cafe. The enterprising halfling knocked down a wall to create harbor-view seating. She bought and demolished an adjacent street front shop and installed a veranda whose comfortable and colorful dinette sets are almost always filled.
Allinamuck kept the old tavern’s name and its rude sign of a grinning boar mounting a sow. To play up the silly sign, the proprietor has stocked her cafe with tea and coffee mugs in the shape of pigs’ heads and crafted a menu whose light appetizers have names such as sow’s delight, three pigs in a blanket, and corkscrew sausage.
The Undercellar
A cluster of chambers in a warren of storage cellars beneath the city has been used as a seedy tavern and festhall for most of the Gate’s history. Archways, some with iron barred, lockable gates, link the cobbled, vaulted chambers of the Undercellar. At least two dozen ways in and out of the popular establishment exist. About half of them connect to other buildings. Not all are widely known, and a few are purposely kept secret.
The affable Heltur “Ribbons” Ribbond, a gaunt, bearded man, runs the Undercellar. Ribbons is always smiling, has never publicly lost his temper or shown fear, and throws daggers and bottles with deadly
accuracy. His cadre of toughs, which everyone calls “the Cellarers,” guard the festhall.
It’s rumored that Ribbons is actually a front, the fall guy in case something untoward should happen. According to gossip, a shadowy owner known only as “Tallhat” employs Ribbons. Some whisper that Tallhat is really Duke Silvershield, while others say Tallhat is the wizard Lorroakan (see page 63), or is actually Guildmaster Nine Fingers.
The Watch and the Fist never police the Under¬cellar. Thus, the underground locale serves many unsavory characters, functioning as a meeting place for the Gate’s underbelly professionals and bottom feeders. Visitors are routine in the festhall’s popular areas, but anyone who wanders farther afield quickly runs afoul of the Cellarers. If Ribbons doesn’t recog nize someone, he pointedly questions the patron about his or her business in the Gate’s belly.
Several notorious characters, such as the Fetcher, have put down professional roots in the Undercellar and have created Guild-approved corner offices for themselves. The Fetcher is almost always in. Ribbons directs many patrons to the Fetcher’s private cham¬ber. It’s rumored that he’s a Guild agent whose hands dance as he attends to numerous dirty strings, which happen to be attached to Baldurians in the highest and lowest of places.
The Undercellar is also a place of business for Alfrus Manyblades, a fly ridden, scarred, rasping old dwarf who sells weapons to anyone; Vug Gorkul, a sophisticated, effete yet monstrously large half-ore herbalist who purveys potent medicaments, exotic liqueurs, and vitiating toxins; and Nasparl Nintan- ter, a sardonic male half-elf who wears an eye patch and sells disguises ranging from the simple to the elaborate.
As a festhall, the Undercellar isn’t riotous or obvi ously bawdy. Its public areas function mostly as guarded gambling dens and dining areas in which “sociable friends” lounge, chat, and sip drinks that their suitors buy them. For private liaisons, compan ions sashay their suitors over to the Cellarers, who escort the participants to secluded quarters. Mis-treatment of a sociable friend results in a Cellarer immediately whisking the victim away and deserting the offender in the perilous maze of darkness that is the Undercellar’s undercellar.
CITY GATES
The commercial blood of Baldur’s Gate is channeled through its guarded gates. Eight gates allow traffic through the city walls. Three face outward from the city, five face inward toward the harbor, and one pro¬tects the Watch Citadel. Only the Citadel Gate houses no tax or toll collectors, because its use is restricted to the Watch. The gate toll is a trivial amount for anyone of even modest means-a few coppers at most-but it does curtail the comings and goings of beggars and the very poor. Merchants who pass through a gate pay taxes on the goods they bring to market. All these fees are low individually, but so much commerce moves through Baldur’s Gate that transit fees fund much of the city’s needs.
Citadel Gate: Citadel Gate is the only entrance to the Watch’s fortress and barracks, which nestles in a salient of the Upper City’s landward wall. The gate has Watch soldiers on duty day and night. The Citadel is one of the few places inside the city walls that has stables. The Watch maintains a small cavalry force, nominally for defense and crowd control, but its chief function is riding in parades and providing honor escorts for aristocrats and visiting dignitaries.
Black Dragon Gate: Facing the Outer City neigh borhood of Blackgate, Black Dragon Gate is also called the Landward Gate and the Wrist of Baldur’s Gate, the latter being a poetic reference to the city’s shape curv ing around the harbor like that of a hand grasping for gold. The great Trade Way to Waterdeep and the north passes through Black Dragon Gate. Outside the Upper City, the road extends through miles of sprawling slums, paddocks, cut rate inns, and stockyards.
The gate takes its name from the story about a Knights of the Unicorn adventurer who triumphantly displayed a black dragon’s head above the structure. As the tale goes, a dragon had threatened the city to gain food and gold. A knight hid among the offered tribute, supposedly covering his scent with pig dung, and ambushed the dragon as it slept. After birds picked clean the creature’s head and souvenir hunt¬ers snatched most of its teeth, the Council of Four elected to have a sculpted stone black dragon head installed over the gate’s inner entrance. Persistent rumors claim that the head can magically spew acid at attackers during a siege, but no one can prove to have seen it do so.
Baldur’s Gate: Despite being the city’s name¬sake, Baldur’s Gate is the oldest and least impressive of its entry ways. The gates that lead out of the city are necessary for its defense and thus have been well maintained and bolstered through the years. The Old Wall’s other gates were built later, at the behest of wealthy patriars who could afford to lavish them with fine doors and carved stone. In contrast, Baldur’s Gate
looks much as it did when the Old Wall was first built, although the tread of millions over the centuries have worn smooth the cobbles running under it.
Public vehemence against taxation at this gate sparked the popular revolution that led to the instal lation of the first dukes centuries ago. Yet now the gate is a collection point for taxes that help fund the city government, because the original Council of Four instituted taxation at the gate soon after the rebellion. The irony of this situation is not lost on the citizens, but it provokes little bitterness; as the saying goes, “The insult to history is history.”
Old Wall Gates: Four smaller gates pierce the Old Wall within the city. From west to east, they are the Sea Gate, Manor Gate, Gond Gate, and Heap Gate. During the daytime, small Watch detachments guard these gates to ensure that only those under a patriar’s order use them, and to protect the ubiquitous tax and toll collectors. These gates are guarded more closely at night, because no one is allowed into the Upper City after dark unless in a patriar’s company or livery or in possession of a patriar’s invitation or Watch token.
Basilisk Gate: Piercing the city’s eastern wall, this gate connects the Lower City to the road that stretches through the Outer City slums and southeast to Wyrm’s Crossing. The route eventually reaches the great Coast Way that leads south to Amn, Tethyr, and Calimshan.
The many statues inset in the walls and looming from the battlements above earned the gateway its moniker. After an effigy of the first Duke Silvershield was installed near the gate following his death, it became popular among the patriars to place statues of family members at the gate or to fund carvings of heroic historical figures. The display became clut¬tered, though, and fashion turned against the custom decades ago.
Cliffgate: This minor gate gives access to the Tumbledown district and the cliffs overlooking the Chionthar River upstream from the harbor. Long ago, the Szarr family, whose members were merchants and farmers, owned an expansive holding that sprawled over the area. But on a frosty, mist-shrouded night, a rival family crept inside and slew them all, looting and burning as they abandoned the scene. Now tales abound about ghosts of the Szarr family wandering Tumbledown’s streets on murky nights to steal folk away. Sheltered from landward winds by the hill, Tumbledown is often fogbound, which would seem an environment conducive to ghosts. But a more likely explanation for those who mysteriously vanish are rough handling, followed by tight bonds, a thick gag, and a brief fall into the river.
DEATH AND TAXES
Baldur’s Gate has become home to vast numbers of refugees who sought to escape a brutal regime, a dead¬ened economy, war, miserable family politics, or any number of other social issues. But just like in the home they left, death and taxes await them in the Gate.
Cemeteries and Tombs
As in most walled cities, the most valuable commod¬ity inside the walls of Baldur’s Gate is space. As such, traditional graveyards are a luxury that the Upper and Lower cities can’t afford. The High House of Wonders entombs its greatest leaders and saints in catacombs beneath that edifice. Most smaller temples and some of the large family estates in Manorborn have burial niches in which patriars enshrine the cremated ashes of their revered dead for posterity. Everyone else who dies is left in the paupers’ ossuary in the Shrine of the Suffering (see page 49) or buried outside the city.
Small cemeteries dot the crowded neighborhoods of the Outer City. Most are disorganized affairs hemmed in by rough stone walls or encroaching buildings. A shared respect for the dead keeps people from living in or building over cemeteries, but it doesn’t stop them from grave robbing. Thus, few Baldurians bury valu¬ables along with their dead.
The largest cemetery is on a sprawling plot of land near the cliffs in Tumbledown. This resting place has grown up around the tomb of the Szarr family, which had claimed the area before the Outer City expanded over it. A few decades ago, some of the cliffs fell away, dropping portions of the family’s plots into the water below and revealing crypts embedded in the cliff that were apparent to anyone with a vantage from the river. Tomb robbers have come and gone, so now only bats and cliff-dwelling birds haunt these crypts. Even so, eerie red and green lights are sometimes spotted in the exposed chambers.
Hauling the Dead: For as long as anyone can remember, the Candulhallow family has operated the city’s dead carts. Bodies of the dearly departed are loaded onto these hand-drawn wagons and carted to the Shrine of the Suffering or outlying cemeteries.
The Candulhallows, meanwhile, have a secret smuggling arrangement with Nine Fingers to con ceal goods in the shrouds and funeral wrappings of corpses in transport. Guards and toll assessors never search the dead, so this scheme has worked flawlessly for years. The discovery of this closely guarded secret would rock the city as well as ruin the Candulhallows.
Funding the City
Entry into Baldur’s Gate comes at a cost-literally. Everyone pays 2 cp to enter the city through either the Basilisk Gate or the Black Dragon Gate. Folk looking to cross through Wyrm’s Rock must pay 2 cp apiece if they’re on foot or horse or 1 sp apiece if they’re haul¬ing carts or wagons. Sailors don’t pay a landing tax, but ships do pay 1 gp for any day in which they load or unload cargo.
Everyone who leaves the city with a handcart or carrying a litter pays 1 sp-even if the cargo is night- soil, goldflow, or trash. Or a person can pay 1 cp to exit “unladen” with whatever goods can be carried in hand or on one’s back.
People exiting with handcarts or litters pay addi tional taxes based on the amount and the nature of what they carry or haul. Nightsoil carriers pay the lowest taxes, often amounting only to 1 cp more than the usual exit fee. Goldflow is useful for various manu¬facturing work, so exiting with it costs an additional 3 cp. Trash is judged based on its potential resale value. Those who can’t pay are turned back or have some of what they carry confiscated as payment. Needless to say, many of the Outer City’s poorest residents never see inside the city’s walls.
Even though tolls apply to the patriars, too, most of them typically give collectors a sizable, one-time bribe and never pay again, simultaneously gaining the right to skip to the head of the queue.
Inside the city, anyone bringing goods to sell in the Wide, through Black Dragon Gate or Baldur’s Gate, must pay half of what the cost would be to take the merchandise outside the city as a fee for a stall space in the Wide. Thus, to avoid doubling up on fees, mer¬chants try to sell all their goods in the Wide each day, and the last hours before dusk are a frenzy of deal-making.
Twice-Yearly Taxes: The Watch and the dukes provide no law or civic services outside the walls, but that doesn’t stop the Council of Four from send ing tax collectors to all Outer City building owners on a biannual schedule. The collectors also circulate through the Lower City, but their Flaming Fist guard contingents are much smaller inside the walls. The collectors’ take varies by building size.
Upper City citizens and businesses pay biannual taxes, too, but they negotiate their levels of taxation, deferment, and tax forgiveness in private meetings. Patriar families pay the highest taxes in Baldur’s Gate. As a way of legally buying power and influence in the city, many wealthy families regularly cover the tax bur¬dens of their servants and favored businesses as well.
DRAINPIPES, CISTERNS, AND SEWERS
Baldur’s Gate is blessed with plenty of rainfall-too much, according to some. The disadvantages of all that rain are that wooden buildings deteriorate faster than they would in a drier climate, many buildings feel perpetually clammy inside, the Outer City’s unpaved streets are often rivers of mud, and the Lower City’s streets are always slick. Benefits of the abundant rain include the city’s beautiful window gardens and the fact that the Upper City can collect plenty of clean drinking water in rain-catching reservoirs instead of carrying or pumping all its water up the hill from the river.
Above Ground
The roofs of the High Hall, the High House of Wonders, and the Hall of Wonders are all efficient rain-catchers, thanks to the engineering skill of the priests of Gond. Over many years, the system expanded to include most of the Upper City’s large buildings. Clean water runs from hundreds of roofs through intricate downspout systems into aqueducts coursing beneath the streets to four separate, under ground catch basins. Two are located beneath the streets ofManorborn, one beneath the Temples dis¬trict, and one beneath the Wide. Atop each cistern is a monumental fountain from which residents draw water. Several of the largest estates in Manorborn have their own similar but separate catch systems built around cisterns fed from slate roofs.
The plentiful rain also provides natural flushing for the Upper City’s sewage system. The sewage tunnels are much older than those of the drinking- water system. The two systems are mostly, but not completely, separate. A few underground sites exist where a person can cross from one set of tunnels to the other. Ideally, of course, water flowing through the sewage lines doesn’t cross into the aqueducts.
Even with plenty of rain and the expert engineering of Parliament’s Distinguished Union ofMaster Builders, the Upper City’s sewage system still depends heavily on physical labor for most of its maintenance.
It functions remarkably well, provided that the laborers-all of whom live in the Outer City-stay on the job.
The Lower City’s sewage system is comparatively primitive. Most Lower City residents set their garbage and sewage in the streets each night and morning. They depend on, and pay fees to, collectors of nightsoil, goldflow, and refuse. However, rain washes anything that isn’t disposed of or collected appropriately down the steep streets. Because the Lower City is built around a crescent’s inside arc, everything drains naturally into the harbor, floats from the harbor to the river, and drifts down the river to the sea. Meanwhile, Lower City citizens catch most of their clean water in rain barrels. The area also boasts a few small wells and fountains, which are replenished by runoff from the Upper City.
Rain barrels are common in the Outer City, too, but the area’s topography also allows people to dig wells. Refuse is another matter entirely. Everything ends up tossed into the streets or “gutterbrooks,” which are dug haphazardly between buildings to drain standing water.
Below Ground
The sewers and aqueducts beneath the Upper City are much the same in design. Most pipes and channels are small enough to be a tight squeeze for a cat, while many others are just big enough for a human to crawl through.
In one of the large tunnels, a water channel runs down the center or along one side, and a narrow walkway spans one or both sides. The tunnel’s ceiling is arched and about 6 feet high. Such tunnels are never more than 10 feet wide and often are smaller than half of that.
Locked iron gates are meant to bar residents from entering the sewers. But no one worries much about people sneaking into the sewers, so the locks of these barriers are mostly rusted into uselessness and the gates are sometimes lashed open to prevent them from rusting shut.
The aqueducts are a different story. To safeguard the public, the master of drains and under ways ensures that the aqueducts’ gates and locks are well maintained. Every entrance to the aqueduct system is locked, and iron gates close off the tunnels every 400 to 500 feet. Only the master of drains and underways and the highest-ranking High House of Wonders priests have keys to the system.
The Upper City’s four water storage cisterns are cavernous, brick lined rooms that house deep, circular, artificial lakes at their hearts. As many as eight water channels enter one of these chambers. Iron gates block the tunnels, and pumps of Gond send cistern water up to street-level fountains.
MYSTERIOUS LOCATIONS
Baldur’s Gate is home to many strange locations, such as Mandorcai’s Mansion (page 18), Ramazith’s Tower, and Seskergates mansion. A few of its more notorious sites, including the Undercellar (page 58) and Wizard Cave, reside under the city’s skin.
Ramazith’s Tower
Ramazith’s Tower is a six-story, pagoda-style, cylin¬drical structure of brick. Its numerous roofs jut from the building every half floor, and a pointed roof tops the structure. Whether the tower is a unique Baldur’s Gate landmark or a deplorable eyesore depends on one’s opinion.
The tower is named after Ramazith, the sailor- turned wizard who designed and erected it. During his days as a mariner, Ramazith acquired vast knowl edge of the sea. He became a full fledged wizard to
further his interest in what lay beneath the waves. He must have discovered something of great value in the watery depths, because he had never been known as a wealthy person before construction began on the tower that would bear his name and whose exotic architecture would remind him of his home in faraway Durpar.
Eventually, Ramazith disappeared. No one knows where or how, but the most popular rumor is that he met his doom during an ill-advised dalliance with a nymph.
The tower is now home to Lorroakan, a young, short-tempered, red haired mage known for having expensive taste and being chronically short of funds. He is a recent arrival from Athkatla. Some Baldurians gossip openly that he is the mysterious “Tallhat,” reputed owner of the Undercellar. Others whisper cautiously that he is an exiled Cowled Wizard and a fugitive from the arcanist cabal’s founders, House Selemchant in Amn.
Even though Lorroakan performs almost any magic service for pay, he most often enchants clothes to make them water and mildew-repellent, which is quite handy, given the Gate’s constant rain and moisture. Lorroakan refuses to sell the ritual to anyone.
For more than a century, this tall structure adjacent to Mandorcai’s Mansion housed the Sesker merchant family. The reclusive Osimund Sesker, the last of his line, died alone in this mansion two winters ago.

Imbralym Skoond, an aspiring young wizard from Athkatla, bought Seskergates to use as his home and magic workshop. Before doing so, Skoond arranged to be introduced to Torlin Silvershield. The duke imme¬diately saw a use for the man’s ambition and amorality and seized the opportunity to gain a completely loyal “personal wizard.”
After Skoond purchased the Seskergates man¬sion, popular gossip held that the gaudy manor was a perfect match for his outlandish, foreign customs.
Its garishness was only part of its appeal to Skoond, though, whose real interest lay in the structure’s his¬tory. Entwhistle Sesker, a successful smuggler who made his home a warren of secret passages, hidden rooms, false walls, and concealed entrances and exits, built the mansion in the Gate’s early years. By Skoond’s time, all but a few of the house’s more whim¬sical secrets had been generally forgotten. Skoond, however, sought out the manor after reading about it in an old history of Baldur’s Gate.
Skoond’s tall, narrow mansion is barely furnished. The wizard uses it only for sleeping and storage; he eats his meals out and spends every waking moment running Silvershield’s errands and furthering his own plots. The young peer also secretly houses several alchemists and guards in Seskergates, using an alley behind his home to cover their comings and goings.
Wizard Cave
Rumor has it that a tower of stone, whose origin is unknown, stands on the brink of a vast crevasse some¬where deep beneath the Upper City. A wizard who used it as his home reportedly spoke of it on his infre quent trips to the surface. No one has seen the wizard in thirty years. Now his tower stands empty in the dark, awaiting anyone brave enough to search for the secret sewer to cavern path leading to the structure. Baldurians call the tower’s location Wizard Cave, and the term has become synonymous with “a fruitless and foolhardy endeavor." For example, “So you’re going looking for Wizard Cave?” or “Steal from the Counting House? That’s a Wizard Cave!”
Few believe the rumors. But the tower and cavern do exist, and the wizard did die ... after a fashion. The magic of the tower’s mysterious builders has trapped the wizard’s spirit in undeath within the structure-to what purpose, no one knows. Perhaps the tower was originally a conqueror’s vanguard outpost, or maybe the structure stands in defense over such a location.

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