Upper City
Every Upper City citizen is either a patriar; a servant of a patriar, often coming from a proud line of retainers to the nobility; a Watch member, often also a hereditary post; or an affluent business owner. Upper City establishments serve the patriars and other wealthy customers almost exclusively. This part of the city has few inns and no public taverns. Patriars do their drinking at home, in private clubs, or on overnight soirees into the Lower City. Few doors in the Upper City are open at night, and the streets are devoid of activity except for Watch patrols.
The Gates
The Old Wall, the original wall built at Balduran’s behest, contains the Upper City. Six gates pierce it. The Black Dragon Gate protects the northern entrance into the city and is named for the black dragon head a victorious knight displayed there. The head is long gone now, but a stone replacement projects from the wall above the inner gate’s arch in honor of the old trophy.Originally, the only gate leading to the harbor was Baldur’s Gate, the passage that gave the city its name. It is still the only gate in the wall segment separating the Upper and Lower cities through which normal traffic and trade is permitted. This segment is typically referred to as “the Old Wall,” even though the original wall enclosed the entire Upper City. Ironically, despite the gate’s history as the flashpoint of the tax revolt that established the dukes’ control, nonpatriar merchants and travelers passing through the gate are subject to tolls and taxes. The Watch always guards Baldur’s Gate, and the Watch and the Flaming Fist use the site to transfer prisoners destined either for trial in the High Hall or confinement in the Seatower of Balduran.
Sea Gate, Manor Gate, Gond Gate, and Heap Gate, the other four Old Wall entrances, are smaller structures created for the patriars’ convenience after the Lower City was enclosed. Those who are not in the company of a patriar, not wearing a patriar’s house livery, or not bearing a patriar’s letter of employment must use Baldur’s Gate.
The Wide
The Wide is the city’s only large civic space and serves as its market. By law, all buying and selling in the city not completed in a licensed and taxed establishment must be done in the Wide. Sellers at the daily market set up their tables, accoutrements, and wares just after dawn. At dusk, the Watch clears the streets of visitors and vendors.Decorum and order hold sway; street music and noisy activities are prohibited. This rule does not pertain on days when the dukes declare that the Wide be used for civic purposes and traditional market holidays, such as Highharvestide. At these times, vendors suited to the festivities set up on the Wide’s fringes while the area’s central expanse is given over to dances, contests, and games.
Most nights, the Wide is an empty space whose perimeter (and only that much) is illuminated by light from the buildings that ring it. A patriar sometimes schedules the space for an evening social event, such as a concert, a grand ball, or a wedding.
High Hall
The building known as the High Hall was once the city’s last bastion against invasion, and it served that function again when Balduran’s associates led their tax revolt. Since then, alterations to let in more natural light and make the space a more comfortable place from which to govern have weakened its status as a fortress. The High Hall is used for professional guild meetings, civic events, court trials, tax counting, real-estate and law record-keeping, and anything to do with governance, including meetings of the Parliament of Peers and the Council of Four.The long-held tradition of the whole citizenry voting to elect dukes to the four lifetime posts ended after an attempted coup. Today, a parliament of representatives chosen from among the patriars and the most wealthy and influential Lower City residents elects new dukes. One of the four dukes holds the title of grand duke and is empowered to break ties when the council’s vote is evenly split. By tradition, and in the interest of good politics, one duke is always a high-ranking member of the Flaming Fist, the mercenary company that is the city’s de facto army.
Watch Citadel
The Upper City’s police force uses the Watch Citadel as a barracks and for training, storage, and organizational needs. The citadel has only a few jail cells, which the Watch uses to temporarily hold those awaiting a trial in the High Hall or a transfer to the prison in the Seatower of Balduran.The Watch staffs the Upper City’s walls and runs interior patrols day and night. The Upper City is the exclusive domain of the Watch; the Flaming Fist has no jurisdiction here. And, conversely, the patriars do not call upon Watch members to work outside the area’s bounds. Watch members all live in the Upper City, and most belong to families that have a proud tradition of loyalty to the patriars.
At night, the Watch evicts everyone from the Upper City except for residents and their guests. All Watch members know every patriar by sight. Anyone else is detained and politely (at first) questioned. Watch patrols release anyone who has a good reason to be out and is dressed in a patriar’s house livery, bears a patriar-signed invitation, or carries a Watch-issued stamped and numbered wooden or silver badge. Passes that the Watch supplies are collected and changed often to foil counterfeiters.
Temples
Most of the city’s longest-standing and most influential temples are located in the Temples district. Several shrines and small temples dot the Upper City’s other districts, and an oft-frequented temple to Umberlee is located in Gray Harbor.Baldurians of all sorts give honor to Gond, and the temple complex to the god of labor and inventions is the grandest of them all. His primacy has much to do with the city’s shipping and shipbuilding industries. Hundreds of rail carts and seventy-six worker-powered, wheeled cranes aid movement of goods in the port, and dry docks outfitted with hoists and pumps of Gond dot the quays.
The High House of Wonders is a vast structure that serves as the official temple and workshops of Gond. The nearby Hall of Wonders is a museum open to the public that displays the clergy’s inventions. The influence of Gond’s temple in the city has led to many attempts to co-opt its power, most recently by Brevek Faenor, loremaster most high of Oghma. The election of patriar Torlin Silvershield, the high artificer of Gond, to the Council of Four quashed the loremaster’s influence and reduced him to presiding over Oghma’s old shrine and the library in the High House of Wonders.
Manorborn
The city’s nobles have blood ties to the people who rose to power following Balduran’s triumphant return. They largely consider themselves the rightful rulers and owners of the Upper City, that being the old city—the true city.The patriars’ palatial homes are found in every Upper City neighborhood, but the grandest residences blanket Manorborn, the Upper City’s western district. Most members of the Parliament of Peers and their families live here.
Grandest of all the manors, the Silvershield Estate occupies the district’s westernmost edge. It boasts ornamental and kitchen gardens as well as a small orchard. The Silvershield family’s reputation and power were established more than a century ago, and High Artificer Torlin Silvershield is the latest member of the family to be elected to the Council of Four.
Remove these ads. Join the Worldbuilders Guild
Comments