Outer City
Even though the dukes tax the Outer City and nominally rule the area, they rarely exert control over it. Neither the Watch nor the Flaming Fist patrols these poverty stricken districts. In times of siege, Outer City residents can flee inside the Gate’s walls—if they’re fast enough. In normal circumstances, Outer City residents must rely on neighbors and friends for justice or pay for the Guild’s protection. Despite this state of affairs, the leaderless Outer City is not ripe for conquest, since the Flaming Fist would brutally quash any such attempt. Thus, even though crime and open violence are commonplace in the Outer City, people are still able to do business.
Unlike in the Upper and Lower cities, the Outer City’s days and nights are much the same. People live in shifts and sleep when they can, so their filthy surroundings are always bustling. For instance, although Hulthar the swordmaker might be unavailable at a particular time of day or night, several of her competitors will be open for business then.
Noisy and Noisome
Businesses considered to be public nuisances because of the sounds or smells they produce are prohibited within the walls of the city, so the Outer City houses the Gate’s loudest and smelliest trades. Butchers, blacksmiths, tanners, dyers, masons, animal breeders, and fullers all ply their trades outside the walls and sell their merchandise inside the city’s fortifications. The most successful tradespeople have Lower City shops to which they bring their goods; the rest end up selling their wares in the Wide. Of course, sales to Outer City residents are handled directly, thereby avoiding the city’s taxes and tolls.
Despite the reduced costs of operating in the Outer City, merchants still take their best wares inside the walls, leaving the poorest districts to serve as marketplaces for substandard, defective, or stolen goods. Crime pays well in the Outer City, where pickpockets are rampant; undercloak slavers buy, drug, and hide new “stock”; and sellers of poisons make a killing.
Defences
Wyrm’s Rock stands between the bridge’s lengths, and land traffic must pass through the Flaming Fist’s fortress to reach the other side. The fort leaves both drawbridges lowered until dusk, unless an enormous merchant ship in need of quick passage pays a hefty fee to have the northern drawbridge raised.
A stone-lined tunnel, replete with arrow-slits, portcullises, and murder holes, passes through the fort. Before travelers can enter it, they must pay a toll. Folk on foot pay 2 cp apiece, and people traveling with a cart or wagon pay 1 sp. For 1 gp, an individual can buy a writ of passage that allows an unlimited number of crossings for a month. To decrease the chance of fraud, both a court official and the purchaser must sign the document at the time of purchase so the writ holder can be identified.
Infrastructure
Stockyards, Stables, and Storage: Due to the city’s narrow and steep streets, and the patriars’ desire to keep Baldur’s Gate clean, no animals larger than a peacock are allowed within the walls. (The beasts most often seen in the city are cats, both domesticated and feral ones. Baldurians believe it’s bad luck to kill a cat, especially since they help to control the ever-present influx of shipborne vermin.)
This ban on large animals means that Outer City establishments are responsible for receiving caravans, unloading goods into warehouses for later portage into the city, and stabling horses and beasts of burden. In addition, flocks of sheep and goats and herds of horses, pigs, and cattle available for purchase are penned in paddocks along the Trade Way. The Flaming Fist pays some Outer City stables and liveries to maintain groups of horses and mules that are kept in reserve for when the mercenary company’s members need to ride out.
Guilds and Factions
The Guild: Like any other conclave of thieves, the Guild tries to keep a low profile, and much of its effort inside the walls deals with policing crime so that the illicit activities don’t draw too much attention. The criminal organization doesn’t rule the Outer City in anything resembling the same way, but it’s the only group that has any significant control in the area.
Many Outer City businesses and residents pay protection money to the Guild. In return, these cooperative establishments and people are marked with a special sign as off limits to would-be burglars or vandals, and the Guild makes an effort to hunt down anyone who flouts its decrees. Pleading ignorance earns offenders nothing.
History
Culture Cauldron: Baldur’s Gate does not take sides in the conflicts of other nations and city-states. Nor does it form grudges or permanent alliances based on the Flaming Fist’s actions outside the city. This policy of noninvolvement has earned the city a not-quite-deserved reputation for tolerance and has made it a magnet for refugees looking to escape wars and other disasters.
Battles in Calimshan have driven many of that nation’s people north. In fact, the Calishite immigrant population has built a walled-in village in the traditional Calishite style. Baldurians took to calling it Little Calimshan, and the residents eventually adopted the name for themselves.
Similar but smaller communities dot the Outer City, giving immigrants of different sorts pockets of their homeland in which to rest their heads and weary souls. Halflings exclusively occupy a larger tenement on Wyrm’s Crossing; several half-orcs who work as porters have taken lodgings in Stonyeyes; shield dwarves do farrier and ironsmithing work in Blackgate; and gnomes in Whitkeep perform most of the city’s tinsmithing.
Tourism
The Outer City threatens to overwhelm visitors to Baldur’s Gate. On any given day, a passerby could encounter packs of stray dogs, people hawking wares, stable hands fighting over potential customers, braying animals penned near the road, flocks of chickens and geese, beggars raising their hands and mumbling in unknown tongues, and a riot of pungent scents. Patriars who need to run this gauntlet do so inside closed and curtained carriages filled with fresh-cut flowers or perfumed cushions. Other visitors carry a handkerchief dipped in rosewater or a cut citrus fruit shipped in from Calimshan. Folk who live in the Outer City just get used to it.
Architecture
The Outer City sprawls without rhyme or reason, its muddy streets a tangle of shanties, forges, tanneries, dye works, slaughterhouses, stables, stockyards, paddocks, and dung heaps. Its layout and architecture are a mess of unregulated construction and styles. Many buildings are made of wood or wattle. A significant amount of daily trade takes place in this unpoliced, dangerous area, where live “outsiders” (foreigners too poor to lodge in the Lower City, farmers, dabblers in unwanted or illegal trades, and the lawless).
No laws control construction in the Outer City, including on the bridge spans that comprise Wyrm’s Crossing. Tenements, taverns, and shops heap up on both sides of these stone spans. Many cantilevered structures extend out over the Chionthar, and others loom above what has become a shadowy and crowded alley down the bridge’s center.
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