Overview
The City of Sails often conjures romantic images of a magnificent port metropolis, majestic merchant ships with bright sails, and dashing swashbucklers who greet their enemies with a playful wink and a tip of the hat.
In reality, Luskan is anything but that. It's a dirty dive with filthy streets, squat buildings, ramshackle docks, creaky old
longships, and crass pirates thinly disguised as sea traders. Rising above the fog and the stench is the Hosttower of the Arcane, home of a league of greedy, power-hungry wizards called the Arcane Brotherhood. Their ghastly tower branches into multiple thinner spires at the top. From a distance, the Hosttower might be mistaken for a giant, leafless tree. To those who have the misfortune of seeing it up close, it looks like a clawed hand bursting out of the ground, each of its fingers a tower with many peering windows.
Five High Captains rule the city. Each one is a glorified pirate lord who controls a fleet of longships. The five fleets serve many purposes: they defend Luskan against seafaring barbarians and other enemies, they conduct legitimate sea trade up and down the
Sword Coast, and they raid and plunder the island kingdoms to the west (and the occasional settlement on the Sword Coast). The High Captains have no influence over the actions of the Arcane Brotherhood, nor is it apparent that the wizards have any allegiance to Luskan.
Luskan's best-kept secret is that the High Captains are under the sway of
Jarlaxle Baenre, the leader of a clandestine brotherhood of
drow mercenaries and rogues called Bregan D'aerthe. Jarlaxle is a master schemer (and a master of disguise) who would like to bring Luskan into the
Lords' Alliance, but the City of Sails has such an unsavory reputation and so little to offer that most alliance members won't allow it. That doesn't stop Jarlaxle from trying, especially now that the alliance has lost two members:
Everlund and
Sundabar.
The Ships
Within the city walls and on the nearby waters, Luskan is ruled by its Ships and their five High Captains:
- First High Captain Beniago Kurth
- Second High Captain Barri Baram
- Third High Captain Dagmaer Suljack
- Fourth High Captain Throa Taerl
- Fifth High Captain Hartouchen Rethnor
The five High Captains take the names of their Ships when they ascend to leadership. The captains are the highest authorities in Luskan; they and the members of their Ships conduct themselves as a sort of nobility, albeit one that isn’t hereditary.
Despite the name, each Ship is not a single vessel, but an organization of stalwarts owing allegiance to one another and to their captain, whom they elect for life. To be a member of a Ship is a select privilege, one that only one in ten of Luskan’s residents can claim.
The five Ships of Luskan are more than gangs of pirates. They are fellowships of people who live, train, work, make love, and go to war with each other. To join one is a mark of honor and continues a grand tradition that Luskar associate with democracy, self-determination, and individuality.
Each Ship has its own symbol and colors. Members of a Ship often wear their colors, decorate their round shields with the symbol and colors, and tattoo themselves with the symbol. Like their Northlander relations, Luskar Ship members regularly tattoo their faces, but instead of representing their island, the tattoos are either personal marks or tattoos of their allegiance to their Ship.
Membership in a Ship is voluntary, but once undertaken it is until death. To join a Ship, a Luskar must be of fighting age (fourteen or so, for
humans), and possess at least one sword or axe, one
spear, and three of the sturdy
shields the Northlanders prefer. Each Ship accepts new candidates from time to time to fill vacancies caused by death, but as a rule, the Ships don’t expand their ranks by taking on a large number of new members at one time.
Each Ship has some number of sailing vessels, the size, crew, and type of which help to determine the influence of the Ship’s High Captain and its rank within the city. The current First Ship, Kurth, has so many vessels that it nearly outnumbers the next two Ships combined, and its membership is so numerous that Ships Suljack, Taerl, and Rethnor could merge and still not equal it.
The laws of the city govern the behavior of the Ships and their captains, decreeing the Ships responsible for the city’s defense, its administration, and the management of its resources. Beyond these universal tasks, each captain takes on other duties as desired in order of that Ship’s standing in the hierarchy, leaving less glamorous and less lucrative tasks to the captains and Ships of lower rank.
Since each of the Ships has the ability to take what it likes and leave what it doesn’t want to the lesser Ships, a strict division of duties has arisen among them.
Ship Kurth controls the city’s docks and activity occurring thereupon. Among the most profitable of the merchandise that passes through the port are weapons and tools from
Ironmaster, and materials for the
perfume trade.
Ship Baram operates Luskan’s fishing industry. The food it provides is so vital to the city’s welfare nowadays that Baram has risen to Second Ship on the strength of its successful forays out to sea.
Ship Suljack holds sway over, and conducts most of, the piracy and raiding that originates out of Luskan. It occasionally passes the more meager opportunities down to Taerl.
Ship Taerl, recently elevated from Fifth Ship, had been accustomed to taking the hindmost. Now its workers and sailors happily accept chances for profit handed down from above, and just as happily delegate the most menial and undesirable chores to Rethnor.
Ship Rethnor engages in few worthwhile activities aside from guard duty, which is a poor source of income. Rethnor toughs sometimes roam the streets of Luskan, looking for a quick and perhaps violent way to grab some coin.
People and Laws
Without question, the people of Luskan show their Northlander heritage. They raid ships and coastal settlements, engage in interdiction and piracy, and value strength of arms above most other qualities. During Luskan’s long history on the
Sword Coast, however, the city has adopted many of the attitudes of mainland folk. Luskar don’t kidnap people from other settlements or tribes, and they hold that women have social standing equal to men (two of the High Captains, Suljack and Taerl, are women). They don’t distrust magic, as their island brethren do. Slavery is, at least nominally, illegal in Luskan, though a slave taken and sold at sea is usually overlooked by authorities.
The law in Luskan is supposed to be upheld by soldiers of the Ships, who are empowered to arrest criminals and bring them before the Magistrates of the city. In practice, arrests are often made by mobs, but the result is the same: an appearance before the Magistrates. Each of the five Magistrates is chosen by a High Captain, but need not be a member of that captain’s Ship. The Magistrates are, at least officially, neutral. Most citizens have their cases decided by a single one of these judges, but a dispute involving a Ship member is heard by all five.
Trade and Commerce
Luskan doesn’t officially tax its citizens; the city makes its money through trade, fishing, piracy, and raiding. The defense of the city comes at the expense of the Ships, paid for by the profits of those activities as well as the protection money the Ships extort from businesses and homes to keep the thieves and gangs at bay. Bribery is a common practice, a seemingly accepted means of gaining the favor of one of the High Captains to obtain fishing rights, earning an advantageous decision from the Magistrates, or having a business rival or undesired suitor arrested, accosted, or roughed up.
Given its status as the harbor that feeds the goods of
Mirabar to the
Sword Coast, bridging the coast with the utter north, and offers the only convenient crossing of the River Mirar for many miles, Luskan makes considerable coin as a crossroads. Merchants wishing to avoid Luskan can choose to use the Blackford Crossing, some thirty miles upstream, eventually connecting with the Blackford Road on the northern bank, but the savvy know that Luskan’s Ships control the cable-guided ferries at the crossing, and demand tolls based on the size and contents of the goods being ferried across. The Blackford Road still bears the ancient marks of the dwarven realm of Gharraghaur, reminding travelers of whose wealth sustains the region.
North of the city, the Northern Means heads up toward
Icewind Dale. Not many take this route without purpose, but scrimshaw from the dale finds its way into Luskan, where those who would purchase it can do so without going any farther into the frozen terrain.
The north side of the city, known as North Bank, is devoted almost entirely to warehouses, caravan yards, and workspace. It includes the Mirabar Shield, the fortified compound that represents Mirabar’s trading interest in Luskan. Mirabar uses it as a base to trade with the Sword Coast and the islands of the Trackless Sea.
The main city stands on the southern side of the River Mirar. North of Reaver’s Run is the Reach, where most of the homes and smaller businesses are located. South of the Run are the slums, the “bad” area of town. Near the slums is the Captain’s Close, where the residences of High Captains Taerl and Suljack stand, but the area is otherwise quite poor.
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