Baldur’s Gate Primer
Regardless of your reasons for being in Baldur’s Gate, it doesn’t take long to work out how the city works.
Lower City
A crescent of steeply sloping neighborhoods plays home to the common folk of Baldur’s Gate. The Lower City is a chaotic tangle of conjoined, slate-roofed buildings, its narrow cobblestone thoroughfares spanned by bridges and buttresses designed to keep overflowing tenements from tumbling into the streets. As cramped and noisy as the Lower City can be during the day, bustling with business from a thousand shops, the district turns eerily quiet at night. Though lit by street lamps and traversed by hired lantern bearers, the darkened streets are far from safe, and those citizens not running taverns or other late-night establishments tend to lock their doors and bar their colorful window shutters as the river’s dense fog rolls in.
Nearly everyone in the Lower City is engaged in some sort of trade. Crime of all sorts is rampant, from petty smuggling to outright robbery and murder. Though the city government tries to curtail this by paying the Flaming Fist to patrol the streets, the mercenaries sometimes seem more like an occupying army than a true police force, better suited to indiscriminate head-cracking than delicate investigation. As such, while most residents are happy to shout for the Fist when beset by obvious criminals, they also band together into local crews to better watch each other’s backs and settle more subtle scores. In such an environment, laws are often treated as suggestions, and while most residents are just ordinary folks trying to get by, there’s truth to the old adage that everyone in Baldur’s Gate has a secret to keep.
Lower City Gates
The three gates of the Lower City are ripe with logistical, historical, and metaphorical significance. Though tokens are not required to pass through the gates connecting with the Outer City, using any gate comes with a 5 cp entry toll and erratic investigation of cargo and suspicious individuals.
Baldur’s Gate. The oldest and least impressive of the city’s gates, Baldur’s Gate nevertheless remains the city’s heart. As the only gate allowing ordinary people through the Old Wall, Baldur’s Gate embodies the power imbalance between rich Upper City patriars and Lower City commoners. Once the sole gate leading to the harbor, it’s still the primary route by which the city’s wealth flows from port to patriar.
Basilisk Gate. Piercing the city’s eastern wall, this statue-lined gate connects the Lower City to the great Coast Way, stretching through the majority of the Outer City and then southeast toward Amn, Tethyr, and Calimshan.
Cliffgate. This foggy minor gate grants access to the Tumbledown neighborhood and its graveyards. Many stories claim that Cliffgate is haunted by the spirits of former citizens seeking reentry to the city and passage back to their homes, but locals know that any mysterious disappearances are more likely the result of a quick mugging and a long fall to the river below.
Lower City Neighborhoods
General wealth, predominant profession, and traditions divide the Lower City into several neighborhoods. These divisions foster stereotypes and rivalries between city residents, some comical, some age-old insults that can quickly turn violent.
Bloomridge. The wealthiest and most fashionable Lower City residents gravitate toward the commanding views of Bloomridge, where townhouses squeeze in among upscale boutiques and cafes, their rooftop gardens and tiled terraces creating explosions of cheerful color.
Brampton. The easternmost Lower City neighborhood, Brampton is notoriously poor, its location making it the worst for residents seeking to serve Upper City denizens—but the best for smuggling in untaxed goods from Rivington.
Eastway. Home to the Basilisk Gate, Eastway is the city’s primary gateway to the Outer City and the world beyond, catering to travelers with its profusion of inns, porters, and caravan supplies, as well as to Outer City residents looking for reasonably priced Lower City luxuries. The flow of travelers and strangers through this neighborhood makes it one of the most dangerous parts of the city, as criminals prey on those unfamiliar with the city and without local ties to avenge them.
Heapside. A solidly middle-class neighborhood, Heapside has its share of shops but tends to be more residential, catering to the city’s workforce with ancient but reasonably priced homes and only a moderate likelihood of being stabbed in the street.
Seatower. Everything in this neighborhood revolves around the Seatower of Balduran . The best armorers and weaponsmiths in the city can be found here, along with residences for Fist mercenaries and their families. Dance halls, fighting dens, taverns, and other delights jockey for position near the fortress’s causeway, hoping to be the first place a carousing mercenary stumbles into, and each Flaming Fist payday sees the neighborhood swell into the most boisterous corner of the city as soldiers celebrate with riotous good cheer and flagrant street brawls
The Steeps. As the most direct route from the harbor to the Upper City via Baldur’s Gate, the Steeps has a natural advantage in securing business from wealthy travelers, and many of the city’s most successful merchants maintain lucrative storefronts along its dramatically steep thoroughfares. This also makes it the Lower City neighborhood most likely to be visited by patriars, and thus the Steeps sees more than its fair share of patrols by the Flaming Fist.
Lower City Crew Territories
The fact that city’s numerous crews can be based on both geographical and professional communities means that their territories often overlap or stretch beyond the borders of any particular neighborhood. The Harborhands, for instance, can be found across the Lower City wherever a neighborhood touches the water, but would rarely try to flex its claim outside of the actual docks and piers. More common is the situation of groups like the Greengrocers’ Guild or the Brethren of Barbers, who operate out of all corners of the city and therefore claim no physical territory at all, banding together only in the interests of their trade. For many such crews, there’s often no need for a formal meeting place—they meet whenever and wherever necessary, in shop stockrooms or around kitchen tables, and have little interest in banners and sigils.
Still, there’s no denying that certain crews dominate certain corners of the city. Sometimes this is the result of a community forming its own crew in a direct attempt to control and protect its neighborhood. Such is the case with the Bloomridge Dandies, wealthy merchant scions who loudly proclaim that the Flaming Fist isn’t doing enough to protect their neighborhood, and who relish the opportunity to display their bravery by patrolling neighborhood taverns wearing expensive swords and purple armbands. More often, physical territory is the result of a citywide crew having a natural local nexus, such as the Porters’ Union and the Butchers’ Block tending to dominate Eastway, as their members congregate near the Basilisk Gate for easy access to the stockyards and incoming caravans.
Unless there’s active conflict between two crews, most members are content to work with members of other crews, and see little point in staking out physical turf. After all, a neighborhood needs many different professions to thrive—carpenters and cooks, grocers and apothecaries—and the fact that siblings and spouses often belong to different crews helps keep inter-crew conflict to a minimum.
Upper City
The Upper City, home to the patriar aristocracy of Baldur’s Gate, is a place of beauty and splendor, where magnificent public sculptures stand alongside historic manors, upscale theaters and boutiques, and tiny stone-walled gardens tucked among the streets like hidden jewels. Flowers bloom along the tree-lined streets, ushering away any stray miasma that escapes from the less fortunate quarters below. Silks and velvets, gold braid and mink, water-clear diamonds and luminous pearls: these are common sights in the Upper City, and hardly glimpsed elsewhere except as cheap imitations.
Everything in the Upper City speaks of privilege and wealth. Magical lights illuminate the clean-swept streets, some bearing enchantments that hold back the river fog. Most of the city’s major temples are located in this district, flagrant evidence of how the faiths value the city’s wealthy elite over congregants with shallower pockets. The finest wine shops, ateliers, and jewelers are all in the Upper City, where the Watch’s nightly ritual of expelling all non-residents reinforces their air of luxurious exclusivity. Those without either Watch-issued tokens or a patriars’ vouchsafe must leave at nightfall, without exception.
Residents of the Upper City feel great pressure to maintain outward appearances, and will keep their estate’s facade finely maintained even at the cost of pawning everything within. Admitting to poverty in this district is admitting to shameful failure.
The patriars’ unabashed snobbery fosters deep resentment among denizens of the Lower City and Outer City, who can see the good life enjoyed before their eyes but are excluded from all but the smallest tastes. The Watch is merciless about turning beggars and malcontents away from the gates, where an erratically enforced entry toll for non-residents and those without Watch tokens or escorts effectively bars the poor from setting foot within this district. A patriar caught outside the Upper City after dark, therefore, is at high risk of robbery, beating, or worse.
Upper City Gates
The Old Wall, built at Balduran’s behest centuries ago, surrounds the Upper City. Six gates pierce it, channeling the district’s visitors and commerce. Entering the Upper City requires either being a patriar, having a patriar’s letter or livery, showing a Watch token issued to the Upper City’s residents or licensed to its few inns for guest use, or paying an entry toll. Tokens and tolls are only accepted at Citadel Gate, Baldur’s Gate, and the Black Dragon Gate, since the other gates are reserved for the exclusive use of patriars, their servants, and their guests.
Black Dragon Gate. Named for the dragon’s head that a victorious knight once hung upon its arch, the Black Dragon Gate faces the road heading north toward distant Waterdeep. The original dragon’s head is long gone, but a stone replacement snarls above the gate’s arch. Local legend claims that the stone head will magically spew acid at attackers if the city should ever fall under siege.
Citadel Gate. The only entrance to the Watch’s fortress, Citadel Gate nestles into the Upper City’s landward wall. The Watch maintains a small cavalry, nominally for defense and crowd control, but primarily for parades, honor escorts, and other ceremonial functions. Because of this, the Citadel maintains the only stable within the city walls.
Patriar Gates. The four gates known collectively as the patriar gates—Gond Gate, Heap Gate, Manor Gate, and Sea Gate—are smaller and are generally not accessible by the general public. They were built after the construction of the Lower City walls and were intended to offer patriars convenient access from their homes to their business concerns and back. Privately funded by the patriars, and thus serving as a display of their personal success, these gates are more ornate and tightly guarded than the public gates. Officially, none may use them without bearing a patriar’s livery or letter of permission, although rumors persist that Guild kingpins and veteran servants among several patriar staffs know exactly which guards to bend. Regardless, the visible double standard imposed at these gates is a constant gall to Lower City residents forced to take longer routes through the public gates because they cannot use the ones in their own neighborhoods.
Upper City Neighborhoods
While most outsiders see only rampant luxury among the Upper City’s streets, the district’s residents perceive a wide spectrum of style and status. Wealth and taste as much as location serve to divide the Upper City into a variety of distinct neighborhoods.
Citadel Streets. The northern part of the Upper City is dominated by the Watch Citadel, where the Watch conducts training, maintains its barracks and stable, and keeps a few jail cells. Beyond the Citadel, this neighborhood includes many shops and the comparatively modest, though still grand, houses that belong to the few non-patriar residents of the Upper City.
Manorborn. The most palatial residences lie on the Upper City’s west side. Most of the Parliament of Peers live here, as do the old, proud families who trace their lineages back to Balduran’s day. Climbing gardens, fountained courtyards, and private orchards adorn many of these elegant homes.
Temples. Grand cathedrals and shrines shape the skyline in this central neighborhood, with Gond’s High House of Wonders foremost among them. Priests in ceremonial finery and congregants dressed for the public eye are a common sight in this part of the city. Humbler petitioners are rare, though some come doggedly day after day, paying the tolls for hope each time.
The Wide. The primary market and largest civic space in Baldur’s Gate is the Wide, where sellers set up their stalls and put out their wares each day at dawn. Street music and noisy performances are forbidden, and every night the sellers who are not Upper City residents must pack up and leave. Bustling by day, the Wide is desolate at night, except on holidays and when hosting grand celebrations.
Upper City - The Old Wall
The original wall built during Balduran’s day, which encloses the Upper City and separates it from the Lower City, occupies an outsize place in the city’s history and imagination. As the original relic of the city’s first borders—and, more importantly for daily life, the physical embodiment of the division between patriars and ordinary citizens—the Old Wall is a symbol for much that Baldurians both admire and resent about their city.
Most of the Old Wall was rebuilt following revolts early in the city’s history, then reinforced during every major period of tumult that troubled Baldur’s Gate afterward. Each push for renewal saw a conflict between Gondan engineers advocating for new building techniques and materials, and patriars and preservationists striving to protect the original architecture. Meanwhile, smugglers and Guild agents bribed building crews, altered blueprints, and otherwise put their fingers in the plans at every turn to steer reinforcement efforts away from their own secret passageways or induce builders to make new ones.
After centuries of such unreliable maintenance, the Old Wall stands proud and strong, but only outwardly so. In truth, the barrier is riddled with numerous secret holes through—or, more often, underneath—its stones. Knowledge of such secret passages’ locations is jealously guarded, and the hidden ways are used only sparingly, for the risk of discovery is too great to use them routinely. Nevertheless, if the Old Wall were ever to be seriously tested, its defenders might find it far less impenetrable than it seems.
Outer City
Dirty and uncouth, the Outer City holds everything the elite of Baldur’s Gate resist allowing within their walls: the poor, refugees, tanneries and stockyards, and other industries that offend highborn sensibilities. Stretching forth from each of the city’s external gates, the Outer City sprawls in a chaotic tangle of shanties and shops, carts and tents lining the roads in hopes of bleeding off enough city trade for their owners to survive. And indeed, much of the commerce in Baldur’s Gate happens in these unregulated markets, with even patriars shopping from inside perfumed litters.
While smaller neighborhoods such as Tumbledown and Blackgate squat outside their respective gates, the majority of the Outer City runs along the Coast Way as it curves around the foot of Duskhawk Hill, between Wyrm’s Crossing and the city proper. Residents of these neighborhoods are not technically citizens and receive no representation in the government, nor do they receive the benefit of the city’s police forces. The Flaming Fist rarely patrols the Outer City, usually emerging only to pursue Outer City residents for crimes committed within the walls.
The Outer City’s challenges lead to small, tightly knit communities, where a person’s honor and social connections are the only things standing between them and a quick death.
Approaching the City
Visitors approaching Baldur’s Gate by road first pass through the Outer City’s ramshackle neighborhoods, their traffic hemmed in by cook fires, market stalls, and industries too noisy or repugnant for more genteel citizens. Here travelers must leave any sizable mounts or beasts of burden at one of countless stables and caravanserais before paying the fees to pass through the gates into the city proper. Travelers from the south are twice blessed in this regard, paying once for the bridge at Wyrm’s Crossing and again once they’ve run the gauntlet of Outer City neighborhoods circling Duskhawk Hill.
Travelers arriving via the river wait in the center of Gray Harbor, under the watchful eye of the Seatower, until one of the harbormaster’s agents approaches in a fast-moving skiff. Protected by coteries of Gray Wavers these customs officials assess the boat’s cargo, collect taxes, and sell hourly berth assignments at one of the city’s many docks and piers. Large vessels may also pay to make use of the city’s marvelous mechanical cranes, dramatically accelerating their unloading process.
Outer City Neighborhoods
The following neighborhoods make up the Outer City.
Blackgate. The Outer City settlement beyond the Black Dragon Gate, Blackgate serves those traveling to and from Waterdeep on the Trade Way. Huge stables cater to travelers’ mounts, while a community of shield dwarf ironsmiths draws even residents of the Upper City with their skill.
Little Calimshan. This walled community’s Calishite inhabitants fiercely guard their home from the Guild and the rest of Baldur’s Gate.
Norchapel. The quietest of the Outer City neighborhoods, Norchapel caters to those residents willing to pay more than the usual protection money to the Guild, in exchange for having their safety and security.
Rivington. This self-contained village of anglers and river-powered mills is the first neighborhood encountered by travelers approaching from the south. Dominated by a local gang called the Rivington Rats, it’s also a haven for smuggling thanks to its river access.
Sow’s Foot. Here, expatriates from dozens of far-flung nations mingle with races ranging from lizardfolk to svirfneblin among the scents of exotic food and the calls of strange animals, banding together against a city that views them as outsiders.
Stonyeyes. Just outside the Basilisk Gate that gives it its name, this neighborhood is full of stables and stockyards. Many Outer City residents who work within the city live here to be as close as possible to their places of business. Among them is a significant community of half-orc porters.
Tumbledown. Off by itself overlooking the river, this perpetually foggy neighborhood hosts the Cliffside Cemetery.
Twin Songs. Standing ready to welcome visitors as they cross the river, Twin Songs is renowned for its enormous diversity of shrines and places of worship, from tiny roadside altars and idols to home-based temples. While those in search of significant magic must still generally visit the larger temples in the city proper, no god is too foreign or obscure to be worshiped in Twin Songs’ divine sprawl, where even non-criminal worship of fiends and the Dead Three goes unchallenged.
Whitkeep. This neighborhood takes its name from the white manor house at its center, which houses the city’s largest enclave of gnomes. Free-spirited and home to hordes of artists, the neighborhood would likely attract trendy city folk and price out the resident radicals, if not for its odoriferous tanneries.
Wyrm’s Crossing. This massive bridge crosses the Chionthar River. Shops and homes gird the bridge’s edges
