Games We Play

(The following journal is from the viewpoint of Foley, a halfling thief, some years later.)

Now I know some of you have never been to the big city, and you’re just going to have to muddle through it and listen. Now that I’ve got you kids quiet for most of the story I’ll entertain questions if they make sense. Ask me questions that don’t make sense and I’ll think of something entertaining for your next training. Something involving blades and pits and lemons.

So we were being led into Baldur’s Gate on the ship, guided by the experts in the eddies and flows. The city must make a mint on these people, the dozens of boats coming into and out of the harbor to the sea every day. The docks look like a forest of masts on ships almost as large as the merchantman we were on. While standing on deck, impatient to get home, I easily counted sixty merchant ships.

I neglected to tell the other guests of the Gate, which was everyone else but Nosmo who was just a street rat anyhow, about what the city does to visitors. Instead of building outward of the city, which is dangerous and expensive, they discourage visitors. The Flaming Fists keep tabs on everyone and visitors can be denied entry into some quarters without the right kind of pass. Some visitors aren’t even allowed out of the Adventurer’s Quarter by night. My slave-ship companions were almost marked as adventurers without some fast talking and warnings from myself and Nosmo.

As dangerous as the lands outside Baldur’s Gate is, adventurers could be better welcomed. Trolls, hill giants and bands of orcs and goblins infest the countryside and threaten caravans. They must, like the mercenary Flaming Fist, be important for the city’s survival. Instead, this works against them, because there are so many opportunities to do whatever it is adventuring companies do there are so many adventurers. As many of you might not know, adventurers are usually not interested in their civic duties or willing to wait for reasons before acting. Sully is a perfect example of an adventurer.

I also neglected to tell my companions about the Adventurer’s Quarter. There was no reason too, anyway, since these people were just folks who helped me get back to the city. I had no plans on sticking around with them as they were simply ragtag and violent tallers. Sure, they saved my life, but I also saved theirs. I was just hoping they didn’t realize that of the spoils of the adventures, I had the most advantage of it. They did not forget this, which is a surprise from the minds of most of them, but they surely did forget I bartered a better price on almost all of it. It is important to know, for all of us independent businessmen, to try your very best not to get caught getting the advantage over others until it’s too late for them.

The Adventurer’s Quarter is one of the ways Baldur’s Gate accepts their necessary burden without having to put up with them disrupting trade and little old ladies. This works in the favor of the Thieves’ Guild that has a little freer reign to access the rest of the city without loincloth-wearing grunts getting in the way.

It is the Thieves’ Guild that we ran into just off the docks, staring at people and signaling other members further down the way. It’s a good way to get information flowing to the Guild and if there’s an easy mark the collector down the street would get someone working on the guy. Pointing Dane at them to start a scruff may not have been a good idea, but I was about to fade into the background and pick up my life where the slavers so rudely interrupted it, but one of them said right to him, “You with Foley?”

Some of the others talked to the pair while Kumar confronted the collector, or at least distracted him.  I was trying to remain small, but I owed the Guild twenty gold for yearly dues. Kumar was smart enough to ask where to pay and we were directed to the Blushing Mermaid.  This is good because I’d never paid in person before and had no idea where to go. This was bad because the Mermaid was in the Adventurer’s Quarter.

Okay, it looks like Makar has a question about what I’ve got against adventurers. This isn’t too stupid a question coming from someone whose parents spent their lives walking the rim of Anuroch looking for secret caves. It’s because adventurers disrupt the normal lives and laws of civilization. As a thief, you bend the rules and expectations, but this is in the dark when nobody’s looking. Without us, civilization wouldn’t properly work. Adventurers have their place, but that isn’t in the city.

The Blushing Mermaid was even worse. Not only was it a silver just to get inside, but it was nothing more than a constant party and brothel. No wonder the Guild claimed the tavern as a place to meet. Mark my words, a lot of the time the noise keeps anyone from overhearing conversations.

Everyone came with me. Kumar remembered how much money I owed and was coming along to protect his investment and to talk with the Guild for joining up. Nosmo was interested in spending what little coin he had. Everyone else, I think, was just interested in a good honest drink except for Rokellen who just sat around looking uncomfortable.

We lost track of Nosmo almost immediately. I saw his legs push through the heavy crowd toward the rooms in the back. Kumar and I asked the bartender where to find the man for payment. The Mermaid was a good place to be obvious because if you ended up talking to someone you didn’t have to talk to you could probably be found out back the next day without even a pair of breeches to keep you decent. This passes for security where hushed voices can’t be had.

We were directed to a senior man named Robert near the back. Sully had disappeared and some disturbing howling noises were coming from one of the rooms up above, to the amusement of everyone else in the bar but put me off my drink. Robert gladly took my gold and answered questions from Kumar, who was not doing a very good job at asking about joining the guild without admitting to being a practicing pickpocket, but paid for a half-year’s membership all the same.

The largest drawback to the Blushing Mermaid is there were no rooms to actually sleep in, at least not those that aren’t rented by the hour. This probably wasn’t so bad since with all the noise it’d be impossible to sleep anyway. Instead, everyone else went to a small, strict and dry inn called the Blade & Stars.

I went back to the securities group that I was apprenticed to and crashed there. Fanmar, my mentor, simply noticed I was back, which was a relief. I didn’t want to answer questions, and he probably knew the answers already.

What I did next was perhaps the biggest mistake since being captured by slavers. I went down to the Blade & Stars to tell them I was quite all right. I should have stayed and disappeared into the city until they got bored and wandered off somewhere, but instead I showed up and that’s when they mentioned how much of “their money” I had spent while training and traveling. I may be a thief, but I’m honest, and it was clear they needed help if they were going to stay in Baldur’s Gate.  It also helps to have other targets around.  I agreed to stay with them, but only if we did not market ourselves as adventurers and if we agreed to have nothing to do with the name “the castaways”.

This meant we would have to get a small office space somewhere in the city proper.  For this, we returned to the Mermaid once again, though Nosmo was going there anyhow to pick up an embarrassing disease so it was not a difficult decision. Kumar and I talked to Robert about finding some rental space and a believable and trustworthy man to watch it should we travel out of town. He got us a third floor space about large enough for one halfling to live near the Temple District.

Then we went out to look for work.

I’ll make the long story short, since it is such a long story filled with quite a lot of walking around and occasionally being followed by the Flaming Fists, probably under suspicion of being adventurers. Kumar and Rokellen almost got hired on by an ancient human woman to protect her allegedly precious storefront of string and thread. Dane was desperately looking for a woman who offered to sell him a map, which right away is suspicious but that’s wood elves for you.

We didn’t find a job but we did find the woman. The map was a dud, leading right up to a pit of undead in the mountains to the north of Baldur’s Gate. Everyone knew about it, and nobody went there. Except for Rokellen, who for the first time sounded excited. Yes, the Judge-God of the Dead, Kellemvor, believes dead things should stay dead. For once, I have to agree with the opinions of a god.

We met again that night at the Mermaid, partially out of habbit but mostly because of Nosmo’s squeaky insistence. There we asked around (after the incident with the map) and were pointed in the right direction by the honorable men of the Guild. We were instructed to go talk to a man at the south merchant’s gate who offered us a job as lowly guards for a caravan of rope and fabric and other inconsequencials, but it paid and we went. They even provided horses for the length of the trip.

Honest work is often not too dangerous, but by the gods is it boring. Up until the second day when an orc — a full-blooded orc for once — told us to give up our goods or be killed. And instead of learning in previous experiences with this situation, we went ahead and attacked, risking blood and life for what was basically somebody else’s stuff. Learn from my mistakes, kids, gold can be stolen but you’ve only got your one life. The gods have a few more spare that can be loaned to you, but gods are fickle about that as you all well know.

At first it seemed to just be the leader and bowmen in the bushes to the side until we were hit with magical effects. No one else seemed to notice, and magi tend to be both annoying and easy pickings, so I went off by myself, on foot, through the high grass to confront the orcish spellchucker.

I don’t remember a lot of what happened next. There were caltrops, nasty things but easily spotted in everything but high grass, and there was flashes of power and quite a bit of pain. When I came to, it was all over and we were all rather battered. That’s when I learned that you should always negotiate a hazard portion to our agreements.

Now go away, I’m tired.