What They Don't Tell You About Baldur's Gate - D&D

today we're going to talk about one of the most popular cities in Dungeons and Dragons a city that has pawned multiple award-winning games novels and storylines throughout the years and of course the namesake for one of the biggest video games this year Baldur's Gate 3. now this video is not going to have any spoilers for the game Baldur's Gate 3. this video is about the city called Baldur's Gate not the video game itself however much of what I will talk about today of course will be relevant for the game since of course the game features the city but we're going to talk about the city's history why the city is the way it is why it is so popular and why they just will not allow dogs in the city it makes no sense or maybe it does we will cover that too however before we begin a reminder guys that my monster classes 4 is out a PDF that I have written to improve your 5th edition experience play as a mind Lord and I AI Tyrant or a serpent folk they come with racial features and class features allowing you to play these monsters in the exact same way as you would play a traditional 5th edition DND class the mindlord has over 36 new psionic spells that you can use can mind blast enemies to stun them and can even eat brains in order to abscond with some of their Memories the Italian can perform a vast array of i-beams to or disintegrate those who oppose them while also being extremely good at using its extreme power of the doctrine in order to find Clues and solve puzzles as well as having an unnatural ability to formulate plans with a somewhat guaranteed chance of success and lastly the super folk uses its conning to deceive and poison their enemies but the type of serpent fault that you choose will also change the kind of playstyle that you do pureblots are saboteurs who rely mostly on their poisons to do their dirty work while also gaining abilities similar to that of the Rogue the half breeds are the front liners of the serpent folk Society mastering weapons and strategy they're good at determining the power of their enemies and can use Battle Master Maneuvers to enhance their tactics and then we have the Abominations who gain access to powerful enchantment-based spells to enthrall and manipulate while also being tough to defeat and Powerful of body check out my monster classes 4 or any of my other monster classes at Mr Rex dot store playing monsters is a lot of fun and I have added a ton of role play help so that you can add them to your campaign without issue including reasons as to why these monsters might be good-natured or might have reasons to follow a non-evil party any purchase directly supports the channel and of course it's all crafted and written by me I don't use ghost writers or by anyone to do these designs for me I make them all myself to make sure that the quality is as high as possible mrex.store the link is also on the video description thank you all so much and now on to the video yeah this is the map of fair Rune now pharoon is one of the many continents on this planet where Dungeons and Dragons is set but it is the main continent where 99 of the books video games and novels are located now to understand why Baldur's Gate is so important we need to look closely at its location and it'll basically tell us everything that we need to know this area right here is called the sword Coast now the reason it is named that way is because the land on the coast juts out into the sea in such a way that kinda looks like little blades basically this entire Coastline right here is very Jagged and what that does is it prevents ships from being able to safely dock in those areas but further some of these coastlines can be as tall as half a mile high so even if you were to somehow avoid the jagged blades and then find a place a dog it makes it so that making it up into the land is very difficult but also constructing buildings like settlements for example or any kind of Harbor on the coastline is just frankly impossible because there isn't enough land and you can see that this map here portrays that with this little Cliffs right here that the artist drew and you can see that these Coast Cliffs basically extend for all of this Coastline now docking safely is also particularly important on these areas because the Sea of sorts which is this whole area of water here is extremely turbulent the sea is rough the waves are big and storms constantly form all of which are enormous threats to Sailors so having places to safely dock is very very important and in the case that you do end up stuck on a storm it is always better to find a place to dock rather than to venture out and continue your travels now it just so happens that there are two locations within the sword Coast where where a ship can dock one is here in Deepwater Harbor on the Bay of the great city of waterdeep right on the mouth of the river deserem and then the other is a few miles deep into the river kyonthar where balder's gate is located so as you can see the location for both water deep and Baldur's Gate makes them Prime candidates to become power houses for ship trading considering that they both are the only locations that Sailors can go to on the mainland if they are sailing through this large section of the Sea of sorts okay now to be fair there is also daggerford right here and chips can indeed dock there however attacker Ford never really developed harvers large enough to accommodate a lot of ships and the river it's also very shallow so it can't really be accessed by particularly large ships and so a water deep instead would become the main destination for Sailors that would sell this far north on the continent rather than daggerfork but okay so outside of this pristine and important geographical position on this map the actual land itself where Baldur's Gate is located it's absolute trash the ground itself is not particularly fertile and the location is basically set upon a Roth inclination meaning that buildings have to be constructed to accommodate a lot of verticality in the terrain which is not at all ideal and to make matters worse there is a lot of fog in the area and we will talk a little bit more about the fog later but the point is there is a reason why Baldur's Gate did not quite grow as big and prosperous as waterdeep see water deep has a population of about 1.3 million people while Baldur's Gate has a population of only 125 000 comparatively so basically 10 times smaller now all all these people don't live in the city of course in fact only a small percentage of all of these people do these numbers just account for the area of influence around the city so basically it would include the people that live on the farms and the small settlements within a few miles of the city proper but in any case these differences matter a lot in water deep and Butler's gate are tremendously different cities with very different fields waterdeep is a city of unimaginable size the city of splendors as it is called it is the capital of fashion it has major temples for a large roster of gods they import Machinery from the Gnomes of lantern so they do have constructs uh the Magics that you can find in there are wondrous I mean generally waterdeep sort of exudes something more of a high fantasy Vive just based on how rich and populous it is a Baldur's Gate on the other hand is grimier it's dirtier is darker it is very wealthy but there is much stronger say wealth difference between the rich and the general inhabitants and the thing is there are a lot of reasons why this is the case and it's not just because the land is bad but to cover that we need to go and talk a little bit about its history see originally the place where a Baldur's Gate is currently located used to be something of A Pirate's Den the fog that has always existed on this place was used to great effect by the bandits who used to trick ships who otherwise couldn't see through the fog into going aground the bandits with a ground vessels by tricking them with lights before aborting them and then stealing their cargo eventually though what started as a Pirate's Den a place with some Harbors evolved into a real Harbor where Sailors could pay money to have their ships fixed have their sales changed or you know higher guides or crew for a few hundred years the place grew and grew more until it became a small village of farmers and sailors then one day a particularly daring sailor that was born on the village decided to make the craziest Voyage of its life the guy was called balderan and he got together a sizeable crew and then sailed all the way across the sea okay so the thing about the Forgotten Realms as a planet is that it shares a fair amount of similarities with planet Earth so if you were to see Fair Rune as Europe then mastika over here could be considered to be kind of like the equivalent of the Americas overall this entire section of lands to the West is seen as mostly unexplored territory filled with riches and the unknown even us as dungeon Masters don't really know much about what's out there well balderan wanted to make an expedition to see what he could find out there on the west and in particular he made it all the way up here to a land called ankarome and when he came back he brought a ship full of riches stories of great and Grand adventures and of course many legends about those mysterious lands much of this wealth that he brought back is said to have been buried or hidden throughout the sword Coast or even under the ground in what is now Baldur's Gate but alas a sizable chunk of this treasure was invested right onto the harbor which again was the place where balderan himself had grown that was his home so he commissioned a great wall that would protect the city using this newfound wealth the wall was successfully constructed and the main gate on this wall would go on to be named after balduran since of course he he paid for it so it would be called Baldur's Gate which of course as we know would go on to become the name of the city proper over time now the reason why this gate became important enough to become the name of the city was actually because the walled compound did not actually Encompass the harbor itself see let's look at this art of Baldur's Gate where you can see it a little bit more clearly see the original wall the one that was commissioned and paid for by balderan is this one the one that we call the inner wall so if you land it on this Harbor would say your car go back in the day with whatever it is that you wanted to sell either here or in some other town in the area you would basically have to enter the world compound before you could go anywhere else thing is the farmers that would inevitably move on to this walled settlement for protection started to heavily tax any cargo that went in or out of that settlement so for the sailors or Traders or Travelers calling this place the gate started to catch on because it was kind of a big deal it was a big tax that they had to pay passing by the gate mattered a lot to them so the place got the moniker of the gate or Baldur's Gate which was again the actual name of the gate so yeah it could on as a de facto name for the settlement but in any case uh balderan would actually go on to plan yet another Expedition onto this mysterious set of lands far to the West he got himself another crew and then sailed away but unfortunately he was never heard from again this sailor baldern has been the source of a lot of myths and legends not just because of the large amount of money that he allegedly hid away in many places around the sword Coast not just because the city is named after him but because of how interesting the concept of his voyage ended up becoming for the people of Baldur's Gate this after all is a sailing City and so sailing into the unknown and search for adventure and wealth just really hit home with the inhabitants of this place who saw him as an idol as someone to be emulated in fact they respect him so much that they specifically get upset when people call the citizens of the city baldurrens uh the demonym for these citizens is baldurians not balderans they claim that misusing the found Founder's Name by calling people baldurrens it's just a grave disrespect now this here is the coat of arms for the city and you can see that it is a single ship with race sails floating across Still Waters in front of the Clear Blue Sky now the ship of course represents the uh the status of the city as a trading Hub but it also represents balderan who is considered to be the spiritual founder of the city the calm sees here signify peaceful neutrality and the sky its promising future now we will talk about its neutrality a bit later but first to finish up with the important historic stuff about the city uh the taxes that were imposed by the gate towards the sailors back in the early days uh interestingly enough became such a burden for the sailors that something of an Insurrection ended up happening uh the sailors slash Pirates slash Bandits that did trading with the harbor eventually invaded and took over the city in protest of these high taxes when this happened the sea captains actually overthrew those Rich farmers and then decided that they would rule the settlement instead electing four of their eldest and most experienced to rule it and then in mockery of their position they called themselves Dukes but even though originally it was supposed to be ingest it did ended up catching on as things naturally do and so this ended up becoming overtime the actual form of government for the city that would grow then from this settlement so even to this day Baldur's Gate is ruled by four people who basically make all the decisions for the city and of course they are called the Grand Dukes so here we have a second piece of the Apostle as to why Baldur's Gate is the way it is the first one had to do with the land just being so awful that they basically are completely reliant on trade the second is that they have a legacy that is built by sea captains who likely were pirates and smug and of course it was them that made the laws they set the temple for the culture of what would become the city oh actually we also do have a third parcel piece here which has to do with the walls which you might not think are that important but they really really are see eventually over time a new set of walls would eventually be made to cover the harbor for protection but but then that made it so that now we had outer walls and then inner walls and the inner walls were never taken down so basically you had a situation that slowly built up where the rich people of the city would move and build their manners inside of those inner walls making beautiful gardens constructing wide elegant streets and really just investing all of their money on that area the rest of the people had to build their houses outside of those inner walls where it was cheaper even though there was substantially less space even though the land was even more inclined around the harbor making construction even harder so basically a situation developed where the houses on what we now call the lower City are built extremely tight together and with a lot of verticality in order to obtain extra space so the lower city is this cramped up claustrophobic relatively poor section of the city while the upper city is this elegant opulent expensive fancy section of this city now as you can see from a lot of these Maps the population of Baldur's Gate has exploded in such a way that the city itself just cannot contain this many people many of these people have actually just spilled outside of the walls into Shanty Towns now in order to prevent the upper City from having its Elegance be solid by too many buildings or too many people within it and they basically made it so that you can only live on on the upper City if you already lived in the upper City meaning that in a lot of ways the right to live in the upper city was basically inherited that law alone effectively created a nobility class within Baldur's Gate since this was a privilege that you could not simply buy with money you effectively had to be of the right family lineage to have the privilege of living in this luxurious part of the city though of course the vast majority of the time these families also happen to be extremely rich of course though it is worth noting that that wasn't always the case and there are families in there that do their best to maintain an image of prosperity that is simply not true for them in any case these families are called the patriarch families now people are allowed to enter the upper city of course even if they don't live there however there is a curfew that happens at nightfall where the guards will expel every single person that is either not a patriarch or a servant of a patriarch further exacerbating that feeling of exclusiveness to make matters even worse you have to pay a fee every single time that you enter the upper City at least effectively discourages people from just casually walking in and further spoiling the beautiful look of the wide open streets of the upper City but you know a big reason for this is that it also basically prevents Beggars and poor people from making their way inside because of course they don't want them there further only one gate is allowed to be used by trade and by people which is the gate called Baldur's Gate which is the main gate that separates the upper City from the lower City and there are four more gates around the inner walls but those are made exclusively for the benefit of the patriarch and no one else is allowed to go through them oh and I should clarify uh people can also freely use the Black Dragon Gate which is the gate that leads outside of the city from the upper City or you can also come in through it as well but you would have to pay the very same fee it is also worth noting that all of these fees that you pay at the gates are erratic and always changing which has to do a lot with the pervasive Corruption of the city which is going to be my next point so again so far we have three puzzle pieces as to why the city is the way it is I should also mention to clarify this uh the awful sloped terrain is mostly concentrated on the lower City but also um the constant annoying fog that is pervasive on this city is also concentrated exclusively on the lower City thanks to the fact that the lower city has a lower elevation is of course at around sea level whereas the upper city is actually substantially higher but anyways uh the fourth and final puzzle piece is the Flaming fist the Flaming fist are the guards the police and the army of Baldur's Gate but the interesting thing about them is that they are get this a mercenary company Baldur's game it has for its police force and as an army a mercenary company in exchange for allowing the Flaming fist to have their base of operations within the city and of course all of the Privileges that that may contain the Flaming fists sell themselves to the benefit of the city at a greatly discounted rate but otherwise yeah the Flaming fists are an independent force of almost 10 000 Warriors that have full autonomy about whatever it is that they want to do they could sell themselves to another country if they wanted to say you know to fight some war in the far north or to protect some keep from a Siege in some other land with the only caveat that whatever it is that they choose to do they cannot go against the interest of Baldur's Gate itself now the way that they go about at least making sure that the Flaming fist has the best interest of the city in mind and say not just try and destroy it or take it over is that by tradition the leader of the Flaming fist always has a seat in the group of four grand Dukes that rule over the city now this is not a rule that literally exists but traditionally this has always been the case now it is worth noting that the Flaming fists do not police the upper City the upper city does have their own watch and many wealthy families also carry their very own personal guard but the Flaming fist does indeed police all of the lower City and part let's say of the outer city which are all of the houses and Shanty towns that exist outside of the walls for the most part the outer city is not really policed or really guarded and uh many terrible things happen out there it is not really the safest place to be around on the city but now the flipping fist being a mercenary company is not completely beholden to the city say in the same way that a guard in Water Deep wood or a cop in the real world the city of Baldur's Gate itself doesn't really have much jurisdiction addiction when it comes to individual flaming fist members for that you would have to go to the Flaming fist organization itself but the organization itself really only cares about one thing and that is money these members are not patrolling the city out of the kindness of their hearts and for the most part they don't have to worry about the bureaucracy of the city so logically you do end up with an extremely corrupt police force they are there for the money as much as a mercenary might take on a job to protect a caravan from one town to another ultimately it is just about the money and they are in it just for themselves it also doesn't help that the Flaming fist hires Warriors primarily into their ranks these are mostly adventurers that seek to retire or members from other armies in other countries so you end up with a lot of blow Hearts people that have spent their entire lives fighting and killing and really not a lot of Charmers or Talkers in other words they are not hiring people that have a good aptitude for public support or those that are are good at de-escalating conflicts or random people from the city that may feel positive about their Hometown and might feel that it is their civic duty to protect it no instead they hire Warriors and Fighters and Warriors and Fighters are what they get so again outside of the upper City they have guards that are mean-spirited corrupt is all hell quick to lose their temper and show a lack of care for the very same city that they are indeed supposedly meant to protect in total it is estimated that the Flaming fist mercenary group has around 6 000 members though the lore states that a bit under half of that is stationed in Baldur's Gate while the other half would be then spread around all of the fortifications and contracts that the organization has all around the continent which of course includes Schult as the Flaming fist does indeed have a big forward in the children's Peninsula which you can actually visit while playing the adventure tomb of annihilation but now when we put all of these possible pieces together we do end up with what I said closer at the beginning of this video Baldur's Gate is a dirtier grittier city than perhaps some of the ones that you might be accustomed to such as water deep for example unless you're in the upper City at which point it is everything that you may have wanted and more but otherwise it is a city of terrible wealth inequality corrupt guards who are also prone to violence and very interesting architectural layout if you ever plan to play a grim dark Style Adventure Baldur's game would actually do amazing at it see in the lower City all of the buildings are made out of stone there is a constant pervasive fog that can make it very difficult to see sometimes and people can actually get lost on the city thanks to it there are literally guides on the city whose entire job is just to guide people from one end of the city to the other because it can be hard to see through the fog and again the city is kind of a labyrinth as well now further it rains all the time in Baldur's Gate so the city can showcase a somewhat depressive feeling as one walks around its Stony wet floors through the fog further because of the constant rain and the salty fog the lore states that it is very rare to see colorful landmarks as The ever-present Damp discourages the use of banners open shops and the like so outside of the upper City where you do have this area called the wide which is like a massive Market in the lower City there are no open shops or many vendors really at all that walk around everything is inside then to make matters worse The Damp atmosphere also creates mildew and mold which is a severe problem on the city and to compound to all of that because so many people build their houses and such a small amount of land and because the terrain itself is on erratic inclines there are a fair amount of buildings constructed over other buildings there are passageways that goes under small Bridges or small tunnels and the actual streets are so thin sometimes that they're only meant to fit like two people walking shoulder to shoulder sometimes even less than that all of this fomented a type of culture that actually reinforces a heavy dislike of I don't know fun I guess it's hard to put it into words because of the way the city is constructed if you were to be drunk and obnoxious say like in a bar it is likely that many people would actually hear you be obnoxious since everything is just so close but further if a drunkard were to like vomit on the street everyone would have to walk over it because the streets are so small there's also no space to create parties but even if there were there's houses everywhere and any kind of noise would be heavily disliked by everyone else in the immediate area now of course not all sections of the lower City are exactly like this but this can indeed become a recurring theme in many of its areas so overall a drinking in general is just not a positive thing anywhere here in the city and people hate those that disturb the peace all of these things combined are also the reason why there are very strict limits on the types of animals that are allowed inside of the city basically the law states that nothing bigger than a peacock can enter the city walls the reasons for this varies but generally there's just no space for mounts on the lower City just because the streets are so narrow but the main other reason is for cleanliness horses of course would defecate all over the street but not just them dogs for example would have to be somewhere look if you have been in New York in real life you know that there is piss everywhere and to be fair some of that comes from humans okay maybe most of it comes from humans but without grass animals just they have to go to the bathroom somewhere and there isn't that somewhere inside of the walls even small animals such as chickens would be severely restricted and might even get you in trouble just because of how loud they are the only exception to this rule are cats of which there are many in the city cats of course notoriously avoid defecating on public property which is a bonus but they also clean themselves and more importantly they kill rats it's not necessarily that the city has a massive problem with rats though likely it would be if it wasn't for all the cats but rats can be a problem which lets people soften their hearts for the fit lines of the city a cats are also extremely popular Mainstay on the ships that dock in the city because of course even ships suffer from rats so naturally many of those cats that travel on these ships inevitably do end up in the city in one way or another so at this point it is just an understood fact that cats are okay in Baldur's Gate and so yeah I think Baldur's Gate truly encompasses that evocative feeling of a medieval city that looks like this there is a grittiness to it that I really like and that I think sells itself as a great dinosaur dragon's location but the Baldur's Gate 3 portray it like this I actually do not know since I haven't gotten that far yet I'm going really slow to really sink deep into it but I but I do hope that once I get a glimpse of it that it is hopefully what I want it to be and more oh I think it is also important to mention that one of the reasons why this city has somewhat exploded in population has a lot to do with the tolerant nature of its people when it comes to who they allow into the city not every city in the Forgotten Realms allows just anyone to live within it but Baldur's Gate alongside other cities such as waterdeep are generally known to allow species such as I don't know drought teeth flings half Orcs And The like species that are generally frowned upon in other places that is of course provided that they follow the laws but that is a huge reason why the city has also grown up so much but that's about it really there is just so much to talk about Baldur's Gate but anything else and I would have to I would have to delve really deeply into very specific things about the city that would mean I would just never finish I think keeping it broad allows me to hit the most important factors less I end up making a I don't know Baldur's Gate Series where I commit to like five videos to talk about the city which I just I just cannot do right now I just figured that you guys would want to know about the city since of course Boulder Skate 3 is doing great at the moment and yeah it's just a great City anyway so there you go foreign if you guys are ever interested in learning more about Baldur's Gate I do recommend checking out the adventure uh descent into avernus which has a big chapter on Baldur's Gate alongside some adventuring that happens within it unfortunately though I have heard from a lot of people that the hell part of descendant to avernus is just not very good but at least the butler's gate section does have some good info on the city it has great adventuring locals and as always great art even if the actual battle maps are unpainted and in many places with completely blank rooms with no art on them which is just kind of terrible but all the other art is good also if you want to support the channel then please check out Mr rex.store where you can find all of my monster classes and some really useful content like what they don't tell you about magic items or my armor redesigned PDF any purchase directly supports the channel so thank you all so very much for it and I'll see you all next time

Channel: MrRhexx

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Id: JX-DVKmd1xg

Length: 31min 29sec (1889 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 14 2023