Seatower of Balduran
The Flaming Fist maintains two bastions in Baldur’s Gate, Wyrm’s Rock and the Seatower of Balduran. If Wyrm’s Rock is a symbol of the Fist’s unbreakable strength, then the Seatower is a symbol of its stature and success.
The Seatower serves the Flaming Fist as headquarters, barracks, naval base, prison, and fortress. The marshal and most of the officers responsible for day-today Fist operations typically work from the Seatower.
Purpose / Function
Its well-stocked armory houses longswords, short swords, cudgels, chainmail, bows, thousands of arrows, pots of alchemist’s fire, other assorted tools for waging war and policing the streets, and plenty of stone ammunition for the Fist’s three parapet-mounted trebuchets. A stone flung from atop the Seatower, with the added impetus of gravity behind it, is almost guaranteed to crash clean through any wooden-hulled ship it strikes. A capstan at ground level in the tower can raise a massive chain from the riverbed and stretch it taut across the harbor mouth from the Seatower to deep pilings under the easternmost wharf in Brampton. When the chain is raised, nothing bigger than a rowboat can sail into or out of the harbor. Except for drills and maintenance checks, the chain has not been raised for decades.
The last time the chain was raised for defense was to protect against a veritable fleet of Calishite ships. Fishermen and merchants arrived in the evening warning of a flotilla heading upriver, many of the ships flying Calishite flags. The dukes, having heard reports of war in the south but not having been informed by any dignitary of Calimshan’s need to use the river, feared invasion. When the ships arrived just after sunset, the chain had been pulled up across the harbor, and ships full of Flaming Fist soldiers floated just beyond it with catapults and flaming arrows at the ready. They needn’t have bothered. The ships held no Calishite warriors, just refugees from the war. When the dukes determined the truth of the matter, the chain was lowered and the refugees were allowed into Baldur’s Gate. Citizens didn’t repel them as invaders, but neither did they make the Calishites welcome. The incident set the tone for relations between the refugees and the people of Baldur’s Gate, and led to the founding of the separate settlement of Little Calimshan.
The Seatower houses about a hundred Flaming Fist soldiers on a rotating basis, billeting them in levels of the towers not given over to the prison and in the two buildings within the bailey. These buildings are the armory and the officers’ tower.
Although small caches of gear and weapons exist throughout the Seatower for ready access, the armory holds most of the Flaming Fist’s hoard of war-making materiel. The underground rooms beneath the armory are a virtual museum of every conflict in which the Flaming Fist has engaged. Everything from elephant barding to snowshoes can be found somewhere in the depths of the armory, all of the items carefully catalogued and regularly maintained.
The smaller officers’ tower serves as the quarters for the marshal and a temporary billet for officers of various ranks. There, the marshal frequently speaks with the officers of current events or plans campaigns. In addition to meeting areas and private rooms, it holds a collection of books and scrolls in a library that the officers can use to study tactics, consult maps, and review contracts. Beneath the officer’s tower are the Flaming Fist coffers, in a lead-walled vault separated by yards of solid stone from any other underground area. None but the highest-ranking officers knows exactly where the door to the vault can be found and what the secret is to opening it.
The Seatower’s least glamorous role is as the local prison. Long-term incarceration isn’t common, but plenty of people need to be locked up for a few days, tendays, or months. Three levels of dungeon extend beneath the Seatower. The two lowest are below the harbor’s water level, so they are always frigid and damp. The uppermost dungeon level is divided into small cells that hold one to five prisoners each. The lower levels consist of two large cells apiece. Under normal conditions, no more than twenty-five prisoners are housed together in a large cell. If the situation calls for it, however, up to ten times that many can be crammed cheek by jowl into each of those chambers.
Architecture
The Seatower is an impressive architectural work looming over the bay. It erupts from a rocky islet in the harbor in such a way that attackers approaching by boat will find few footholds at the tower’s base. Five stout towers provide firing lines along all the Seatower’s walls and away from the islet in all directions. Specially made Gondar trebuchets atop the towers can fire thrice the distance of a normal siege weapon, allowing hurled stones to reach atop the cliffs on the opposite side of the river (or even into the Upper City), although such shots must be calculated and “made blind” due to the low elevation of the Seatower.
A 400-foot-long causeway connects the Seatower to shore. No gate or drawbridge along the span exists; its length alone is considered sufficient defense, since attackers would be exposed to archers and missile fire along their entire approach. If enemies come to Baldur’s Gate, the Flaming Fist wants them to attack the Seatower, believing that the sooner they do, the sooner they’ll be defeated.
Tourism
A small section on the first floor is set aside as a gallery. There, on racks and in cases, rest the trophies of battles lost and won: Duke Eltan’s sword and armor; a coral trident taken from a leader of the Itzcali sahuagin; a tattered flag from Fort Beluarian; Kingscar, the massive sword of Sothillis the ogre king of Murannheim; and more. The armory also holds the Seatower’s kitchens and larder.
The causeway connects the Seatower of Balduran to the city’s Seatower district. The tower affects nearly every aspect of district life. Many of its residents are Flaming Fist members who prefer the comfort of apartments or family homes ashore to the spartan barracks of the Seatower. Many masters and veteran members of Parliament’s Distinguished Union of Metalworkers operate shops in the Seatower district, making it the best place in Baldur’s Gate to shop for high-quality weaponry and armor at fair prices.
The high population of soldiers in the Seatower district has inspired its thick concentration of taverns, festhalls, and gambling parlors. These businesses are clustered along the river, as far from the Old Wall and the trendy streets of Bloomridge as possible. On nearly every Flaming Fist payday, Seatower becomes the Gate’s most boisterous corner, and Flaming Fist officers field a profusion of complaints about noise and brawling from their Manorborn and Bloomridge neighbors.
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