High Hall

The High Hall is the center of almost all governmental activity in Baldur’s Gate. The Parliament of Peers and the Council of Four meet here, and each of the four dukes has a sumptuous office and discreetly appointed meeting rooms. Criminal trials, tax counts, and professional guild meetings also take place in the High Hall.

Purpose / Function

Almost all the governmental business of Baldur’s Gate is conducted here. The Parliament of Peers has a dozen small meeting rooms and one large chamber for whole-body deliberations. The chamber’s gallery seats an audience of three hundred. Those seats are almost always filled when parliament is in session; on rare occasion, though, parliament clears the house for closed-door debate over matters considered too sensitive or inflammatory for spectators.

The High Hall also contains court chambers where the dukes sit in judgment (individually, seldom as a group) over accused criminals. The dukes often assign this duty to proxy judges on a rotating basis. Proxy judges are not paid a salary, yet a temporary assignment to the High Hall’s bench is a plum duty for any patriar, because hefty gifts and bribes flow to judges from the Guild, from those grateful to be exonerated, and from those hoping to be exonerated.

Serving as a judge is not light duty. The only cases that require the decision-making of a judge are those that involve real doubt about a defendant’s guilt, or unclear points of law. When someone is caught in the act of committing a crime, or close enough to the performance of the act that the presiding officer is reasonably certain that the suspect is guilty, the individual’s “trial” boils down to a simple administrative and sentencing process that the Flaming Fist or the Watch directly handles. It’s not uncommon for someone arrested for picking pockets in the morning to be already serving a sentence in jail by evening.

Alterations

The High Hall once stood as the central bastion in the defense of Baldur’s Gate. In its heyday, it was an ugly, powerful, and functional fortification. Its years as a defensive structure ended long ago, though. Since then, so many modifications have been made to the building in the interest of comfort and beauty that the lines of the original fort are hard to see. The basic structure remains, however. The building encloses a  central courtyard, which was once a bailey. Graceful windows now pierce the heavy walls, and soaring spires and leering gargoyles stand in place of the original battlements.

Architecture

All dukes have the right to be buried in the mausoleum, and most of those who are entombed on the site lie under the floor, so that anyone who walks through the room is stepping over graves. Because of the vaulted dungeons beneath the High Hall, those interred in the floor end up suspended somewhere in the stonework between the museum’s floor and the dungeon’s ceiling. Some graves have collapsed into the dungeons below, a fact detectable from above by the hollow boom of footsteps on particular flagstones. The Parliament of Peers decided not to address the issue of these “fallen heroes,” since they were assured by dwarf engineers that the floor of the museum is in no danger of collapse.

The building’s entire structure is part of the Gate’s advanced water system. Below-ground catch basins collect rainwater that runs off its roof. That water flows through aqueducts to a cistern beneath the great fountain in the Temples district. Thanks to the innovative pumps of Gond, the Upper City’s fountains are both beautiful works of flowing-water art and sources of safe, clean water for residents.

The original fortification’s dungeons still exist. Unlike the High Hall above them, they have seen little renovation and no beautification since they were excavated. Under vaulted ceilings supported by thick pillars lie dozens of brick-lined chambers linked by winding, rock-cut passages into a labyrinth that few dare to traverse. Entrance to the underground area can be had by way of a handful of staircases tucked into odd corners of the High Hall, as well as an unknown number of connections to the Upper City’s water system.

A handful of chambers nearest the stairs have been converted into jail cells, but they are seldom used. The near-constant rain keeps the dungeons perpetually damp and dripping. The only dangers in the area come from swarming rats and the threat of becoming lost in the unmapped, echoing darkness. No one knows whether the master of walls, the master of cobbles, or the master of drains and underways should be in charge of the dungeons. Consequently, no one takes responsibility.

Tourism

Aside from the aforementioned governmental offices, the High Hall is a place that Baldurians can enjoy. It includes a feasting hall that is used for both public and private banquets and a wing of meeting rooms that are available to everyone on a first-come, first-served basis. The courtyard contains a small public garden that features walkways and benches. Theoretically, anyone is welcome here. In practice, though, hardly anyone except for patriars uses the space. Everyone else is too busy working to spend much time lolling in the High Hall’s garden.

The High Hall houses several small libraries tucked in and about the structure on different levels and in different wings. These libraries contain all the city’s records going back hundreds of years. Laws, contracts, architectural plans, court proceedings, government appointments, accounting documents, tax rolls, census information, land grants, guild charters, and other documents are packed into rows upon rows of shelves and tall scroll cases.

In theory, the libraries are divided by topic of inquiry, but in actuality only the librarians (devotees of Oghma who volunteer their time) can make much sense of them. Some frustrated patriars and various barristers have campaigned in the past to have all the libraries combined and catalogued in a sensible way, but there’s never been enough political will behind the effort to dedicate funds for it.

In addition to being a place of civic activity, the High Hall also serves as a kind of secular temple. The ground floor of the easternmost wing is a museum to the history of Baldur’s Gate and a mausoleum for its many dukes and heroes. There, a statue of Balduran looms over the city’s “holy relics” in a glass case. The items inside are things he supposedly owned: a battered helmet, tattered pieces of a cloak, a longsword in a cracked leather sheath, a steel shield, and, oddly, a butter knife. Lesser heroes recline in marble upon beds of stone or sit enthroned, bronze upon bronze, gazing toward some unseen horizon with resolute nobility, their bones dry as twigs in the caskets beneath them.

Type

Government complex

Parent Location

Upper City

Owner

Dillard Portyr

Owning Organization

Council of Four