Descent into Avernus

200

One of the neighborhood's more outspoken critics of

the Gate's government. Pernilla "Prole" Cabrenock, a

chaotic neutral female rock gnome bandit captain, has

teamed up with an oddball inventor and arcanist named

Ardryn Deagle, a chaotic good male rock gnome mage.

Rumors spread by Prole herself s uggest that they've

almost completed a magical invention that will "finally

strip away the bonds of capital and free the people

to flourish," but security around the project has been

unusually tight, keeping even many members of the

commune in the dark. While most people assume this is

merely some strange new critique of the city's patriars,

both the Guild and the Flaming Fist would dearly love

to infiltrate the revolutionaries' project and make sure it

doesn't pose a threat to the status quo.

WYRM^1 S CROSSING

This neighborhood is actually two enormous bridges,

each spannfog half the Chionthar River and meeting at

Wyrm's Rock, a tall, rocky isle t in the center. While the

Flaming Fist maintains a fortress on the island to tax

travelers along the Coast Way and control city access in

times of trouble, the bridges themselves are fair game

for squatters. Ramshackle wooden tenements, taverns,

and shops crowd both sides of the arched stone spans,

leaning out over the narrow road between them. Even

more cling to the sides of the bridges, anchored to each

other or cantilevered over the water. The tendency of

these latter structures to occasionally drop into the

rushing river, pulling their neighbors down with them,

is not enough to deter residents who hope to be the first

to sell to travelers on their way into the city, or the last to

pick their pockets on the way out.

BA LOU R'S CATE GAZETTEER

Eve n among members of the Oute r City, residents of

Wyrm's Crossing have a reputation as rakes and riffraff,

and the neighborhood specializes in seedy dive bars and

gambling halls where belligerent drunks can be ejected

directly out over the river. At the same time. it also has

a l a rge and tight-knit strongheart halfling community.

whose low-ceilinged tenements and lighter weight are

pe rfect for the neighborhood's precarious architec-

tural s tyle.

While the Crossing is renowned for c heats and crim-

inals, the residents stick together, and a local crew

called the Crossers ensures that all predatory practices

are applied primarily to travelers, and never to fellow

bridge-dwellers. For those who cons is tently refuse

to play well with their neighbors, the ans wer is often

Sweetjen's Spices, a precarious bridge-s ide shop whose

halfling proprietor quietly sells some of the most potent

drugs and untraceable poisons in the city.

WYRM^1 S ROCK

This formidable fortress rises from the center of the

rive r on an algae-slick islet, its sheer walls nearly impos-

s ible to scale. Built by the Flaming Fist on a rock once

said to have housed a bronze dragon, the fortress is

the first checkpoint at which Baldur's Gate taxes north-

bound travelers. Anyone seeking to cross the river via

the fortress's two massive bridges must pay the 5 cp toll

and pass through the fortress via a long central tunnel

riddled with arrow slits and murder holes. Between

twenty-five and fifty Flaming Fist s oldie rs staff the

c heckpoint. which operates only during the day. After

dark, the drawbridges on either side of the keep are

raised, halting all traffic and forcing latecomers to take