Silvershield Estate

High Artificer of Gond Torlin Silvershield stands as the latest in a nearly unbroken line of Silvershields who have been elected to the Council of Four. Power has afforded luxury to the Silvershield family. Its estate, roughly the size of a city block, attests to that. It was built up over several generations on land the Silvershields purchased or were gifted as a show of gratitude or to solicit the discreet Silvershield touch.

Architecture

The estate is located in Manorborn’s western corner. A thick, 12-foot-high wall surrounds the compound before joining the Upper City’s walls. Even though the neighborhood is a safe one, Silvershield always assigns a handful of retainers to patrol the estate’s periphery for burglars and beggars who manage to sneak past the Watch.

The Silvershield estate dwarfs most other patriars’ manors but has little of their coziness. When Silvershield hosts a revel, sounds of music and laughter can seldom be heard beyond the walls of the behemoth estate. Deserved or not, the place has a reputation for unfriendliness.

Armed guards are stationed at the gate of the complex. A white-graveled courtyard extends from the gate to the house’s portico, where a beautiful Gondar invention is suspended. This self-refueling oil candelabra is designed to appear as eight miniature geysers spewing gold and silver flames.

A long outbuilding on the manor’s northern side houses palanquins and sedan chairs. Silvershield seldom rides in such conveyances, but he strives to provide every courtesy and comfort to his guests.

The grounds’ extensive gardens might be the estate’s most distinctive and envied feature. The duke is fond of strolling as he meditates, and he often fusses over his garden as though it were a fourth child. The lush gardens have been designed with the cool climate and damp weather in mind so that they display splashes of color regardless of the season. Over the years, the Silvershields have imported flowering plants and colorful shrubs from as far north as the High Forest and sent master gardeners as far out as the Moonshae Isles to collect specimens. Newly arrived plants and those that need special care grow in a glass-walled greenhouse with mirrors set around its exterior to catch and concentrate the meager sunlight. Although few in the city know it, Silvershield uses the greenhouse to grow his own supply of sable moonflower. It’s not for his own use, of course—Silvershield doesn’t allow himself to become intoxicated—but for the entertainment of certain dissolute guests at revels whose secrets might not otherwise be prized away.

The garden has green lawns with a white-gravel path that meanders past exquisite statuary, through flower beds, and around trees and bushes. Peacocks strut freely across the property, and songbirds roost in the trees. Pears and persimmons grow in the compound’s small orchard. Silvershield’s are the only persimmon trees in Baldur’s Gate. Around back, near the kitchens built against the outer wall, the path wends past a small gazebo that houses a shrine to Gond, then leads to vegetable and herb gardens set amid lines of blueberry bushes.

Duke Silvershield is most proud of his estate’s topiary maze. He commissioned master crafters at the High House of Wonders to make several modified, steam-dragon powered miniature cranes. They are arranged and camouflaged within the topiary, making the necks and tails of the animalshaped shrubbery move. Silvershield, who claims he animated the topiary to amuse his children and visitors, enjoys the maze immensely, particularly when his real peacocks investigate and confront their leafy counterparts.

On the manor’s ground floor, the Silvershields receive guests, play host to revels, and attend to minor business. The level hums with the soft, whirring sounds of dozens of fragile, intricate clockwork inventions brought here from the High House of Wonders. In the grand foyer, a mosaic depicting the Silvershield coat of arms above the ship from the Gate’s coat of arms—chosen to remind visitors whose city they’re in—stretches across the room’s ornate ceiling. A ballroom and a performance stage dominate the rear of the building, and a handful of sitting rooms and salons complements them. In the western wing, a spacious feasting hall easily seats forty while providing plenty of room for servants and entertainers to move about.

Below the ground floor, servants’ quarters provide personal space to maids, valets, retainers, cooks, and the many other staff members that support the patriars’ luxurious lifestyle. The manor’s wine cellar, storerooms, and servants’ common areas complete the basement level. The estate is in a constant flurry of action, especially down here. The Silvershields have approximately fifty servants on hand at any given time, twenty other retainers and guards elsewhere on the estate, and another ten to twenty out running errands in Baldur’s Gate.

The family lives on the manor’s upper floors. The floors above the main house contain a private parlor, a nursery for Alana and Entar III, a bedroom and playroom for Skie II, and other rooms reserved for the children when they outgrow the nursery. The round tower has three upper floors and is composed of a small dining room, a half-dozen guest bedrooms, a guest parlor, a library, and the master suite. Silvershield also maintains a home office in the tower, but he seldom uses it. His real office is hidden behind a second-floor, hinged bookcase that leads out to a private walkway on the manor’s roof. Atop the roof, Silvershield has a workshop and study within a small solarium. The family and servants are well aware of the “secret door” behind the bookcase, but the duke prohibits others from walking the roof or entering his hideaway, which is where he conducts secret business and lays the groundwork for his most sensitive schemes.

Type

Estate

Parent Location

Upper City

Owner

Torlin Silvershield