Descent into Avernus

While Danthelon may never have been a real adven-

turer, he loves associating with them, and constantly

keeps his ears open for rumors and opportunities,

which he happily passes along to paying customers. At

the moment, he's obsessed with reports of a group of

smugglers who recently went missing in the Riverveins

tunnels along with a chest full of valuable magic potions,

and eagerly encourages his shoppers to investigate- and

then return to tell him the story.

GARYNMOR STABLES AND MENAGERIE

As horses and other beasts of burden aren't allowed

inside the city walls, the Outer City overflows with sta-

bles and hostlers, ranging from muddy pens to barns

nicer than most inns. Of these, the largest is Garynmor

Stables, which offers the unique benefit of operating lo-

cations in both Stonyeyes and Blackgate; those travelers

passing through have the option of leaving their beasts

on one side of the city and picking them up on the other,

after grooms have ferried th em around the outside of

the walls. The stables are also unusual in their willing-

ness to rent mounts to city residents in need of transpor-

tation, cutting down on the need of city dwellers to own

their own horses. Yet the true gem setting Garynmor

Stables apart is its menagerie.

A former world traveler, Ubis Garynmor (chaotic good

male human common e r) has long had a fascination

with exotic beasts, and having already developed the

infrastructure to take care of large numbers of ordinary

animals, he found it easy enough to expand the scope of

his establishment. His menagerie in Stonyeyes contains

a variety of rare creatures both mundane and magical,

from an aged cockatrice and two wing-clipped hippog-

riffs to an owlbear. Always on the lookout for new attrac-

tions, he happily pays adventurers for healthy specimens

of rare creatures, sometimes reselling the smaller and

less dangerous species. While the menagerie is popular

with city folk who pay a few coppers to view the crea-

tures, many neighbors fear that Ubis doesn't take secu-

rity seriously enough, and that his desire to coddle such

dangerous beasts could lead to them breaking free and

rampaging through the district.

HAMHOCKS SLAUGHTERHOUSE

This huge complex of pens, barns, and abattoirs is

the largest slaughterhouse and knackery in Baldur's

Gate. Located in the Stonyeyes neighborhood so as

to be convenient to the city's butchers, the facility has

a generally adversarial relationship with neighboring

establishments, as other herders and hostlers claim

the omnipresent smell of blood makes their animals

nervous. Yet it's the citizens themselves who should be

nervous, for the slaughterhouse recently came under

new management.

Seeking to spread fear and chaos, cultists of the Dead

Three have infiltrated the slaughterhouse and begun

murdering people across the city, leaving the victims

in an alley behind the Smilin' Boar in Bloomridge. To

further fan the flames, the cult slices the corpses across

the wrists and inflicts a heart-piercing wound, giving

rise to rumors that the murders are the result of a super-

naturally deadly serial killer.

Pasque Enrial, a black gauntlet of Bane (see page

232 for his stat block), is the cult's mastermind. He

engineered the death of the slaughterhouse's former

owner so that be could take over, figuring that constant

blood, offal, and animal screams would provide a suit-

able cover for the cult's murderous activities. Since

then, he's been slowly laying off existing workers and

replacing them with cultists loyal to the group's mis-

sion. Assisting him are Corian Khee, a death's head of

Bhaal (see page 233 for her stat block) who spends

days crushing livestock skulls with a massive hammer

and nights leading the cult's murderous field operations,

and Jaemus Exheltarion, a half-elf master of souls (see

page 234 for his stat block). Of the three, Jaemus is the

least convincing in his role as the slaughterhouse's new

accountant, as he greets customers with an eerie stare,

openly reads strange-looking tomes. and spends entirely

too much time in the cult's trophy locker, a cold-storage

facility where he's using pieces harvested from victims

and livestock to construct a ram-headed flesh golem.

LITTLE CALIMSHAN

Generations ago, a fleet of Calishite refugees fleeing

war in the south came sailing into Gray Harbor. Rather

than opening their doors to the foreigners, the people of

Baldur's Gate quickly hustled them out of the city, forc-

ing them out the Basilisk Gate in the middle of the night

and taxing them for the privilege. Desperate and weary,

the refugees finally found succor in a caravanserai run

by a fellow Calishite in the Outer City. There they used

what little wealth they'd been able to bring with them

to construct a new home- a traditional Calishite settle-

ment that would be precisely as friendly to Baldur's Gate

as the Baldurians had been to them.

Though much time has passed since that ignominious

beginning, tensions remain high between Little Calim-

shan and the rest of the city, particularly with regard to

those Baldurians living in the city proper. Unlike most

of the Outer City, where neighborhoods blend into each

other and no one can quite say where one ends and

another begins, Little Calimshan is sharply defined by

brick-and-plaster walls, 15 feet tall, 5 feet thick, and

topped with minarets in the classic Calishite style.

These walls don't simply surround the neighborhood, ei-

ther. Little Calimshan is built like a traditional Calishite

city in miniature, with its interior divided into multiple

drudachs (neighborhoods). Each drudach is walled

off and inhabited by a particular family or tribe, with

its own religious site, inn or tavern, marketplace, and

places of industry such as smithies, armories, tanner-

ies, or mills. While such an abundance of walls might

make Little Calimshan seem fractious and standoffish,

in fact the opposite is true: the thick wall walks act as

elevated streets, with locals able to look out over the lay-

out from above and easily pick a path to their intended

destination.

Second only to the Wide in the chaos and liveliness

of its markets, Little Calimshan opens its gates to out-

siders for just a few hours each day. Inside its warren

of bazaars, local merchants have a near-monopoly on

many southern imports, from silks and fine blades of

Calishite steel to tomes of rare magical lore, thanks

BALDU'R.'S GATE GAZETTEER

197