198
to exclusive trade agreements with various caravans.
As soon as mid-afternoon a rrives, however, shoppers
are shuffied back out the arched gates, and the only
non-Calishites still allowed within the neighborhood are
those who've married into a Little Calimshan family or
otherwise earned the sacred trust of a drudach"s resi-
de nts. While many residents of Little Calimshan venture
into the larger city for business or pleasure, not even
the Flaming Fist is able to force its way into the neigh-
borhood-turned-fortress after hours except in the direst
circumstances, and each drudach is instead patrolledby a militia of young unmarried warriors (guards with
scimitars instead of spears) called amlakkars.
While Little Calimshan presents a unified face to therest of the city, it has all the problems of any settlement.
Income inequality is made all the more obvious by
density, with paupers living literally side-by-side withwealthy genie-binders. Older isolationists clash with
young folk eager for more interaction with the wider
city. Yet by far the largest issue is the gang war currently
ravaging Little Calimshan. Seeing the Guild as fun-
damentally an outsider organization, a Calishite gang
called the Right Pashas seeks to oust Guild agents from
Little Calimshan's underworld. The Guild's popular
half-Calishite kingpin, Rilsa Rael (see the accompany-
ing stat block), naturally objects to this insult, and each
night residents bar their doors tight as a turf war of
thugs and thieves rages across their rooftops.
Among Little Calimshan's most notorious locations
is the Calimjewel Emporium, widely regarded as the
best jeweler in the city- and the best place to fence
BALOUR'S CAT£ CAZEITEER.·
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rr- I
stolen gems, as it's also th e local Guild headquarters. In
addition to hosting regular public forums in her shop,
Rael tacitly oversees the Garden of Whispers, a maze of
wood-and-paper screens where people from across the
city can buy and sell secrets with Guild agents and each
other, speaking through the barriers so as to maintain
anonymity. Also popular are schools like the Lamp of
Learning and the Verdashir Academy (also known as
the De rvis h Academy), which train spellcasters and war-
riors in the styles of their ancestral homeland, allowing
only the most talented outside rs to access their archivesor join in their lessons. And, of course, every patriar
in the city has visited the famous Oasis Theater, home
of the city's most daring-and sometimes dangerous-
productions.OASIS THEATER
Baidu r's Gate plays home to a variety of small theatersand cabarets, but none can hold a candle to the epic
spectacle of the Oasis. Theate r owner and director Jonas
Goodnight, a chaotic neutral male human spy, puts on
shows even more outrageous than his magnificently
crafted outfits. Productions involve everything from live
monsters to powerful illus ion magic, whHe also show-
casing the most talented performers in the city. Actors
and musicians perform thei r songs and monologuesfrom atop flaming trapezes or huma n towers, wbiJe ac-
robats s hock the audience with physical feats bordering
on the supernatural.
Even lowbrow theatergoe rs unable to decipher