City Watch

Lankhmar has both a standing army (the City Guard ) and a police force (the City Watch). Though they often work together, the average Lankhmart or visitor to the city will most often come into contact with the watch street patrols, and see the Guard only at city gates, manning the walls or boarding ships for harbor inspections. Through the years, watch patrols have had a variety of ranks, uniforms, and strengths, because the watch experiments continually with tactics, equipment, and ways of achieving two impossibly conflicting aims: to sometimes catch miscreants by surprising them with persons they don't identify as watch officers; and to usually reassure citizens and enable them to cry for ready aid by allowing them to readily identify watch officers from afar, on sight, due to distinctive uniforms (and at night, distinctive lanterns and the like).
Patrols pass along main streets once between bells, and vary their routes. River District, known frequent-theft areas receive around five patrols per bell, as do known "bad" taverns and inns. Temples are policed lightly, because clergy are assumed to police their own grounds and buildings. (The Bells known as city beats ring every 3 hours but temple bells strike more or less in unison, an hour apart.) Watch patrols are on foot but can call horse-drawn watch wagons and prison carts to carry off prisoners or confiscated goods.

Cooperation between the city guards and the Thieves' Guild is an old and venerable institution in the City of Adventure.

Justice day or night

The police are a lightly-armed civilian force. As such, they have little combat training and less esprit de corps. Although they're perfectly suited for arresting a clumsy-and unarmed-pickpocket, they're totally out of their league when confronted by an organized, armed, and Slayer­ escorted Guild raid ... and they know it! For these reasons, almost the entire city police force has been-at one time or another-on the unofficial pay­ roll of the Thieves' Guild. This bribery is well-organized and includes the upper ranks of the police force. Payments from Guild coffers are transferred to high-ranking officers; from there the money filters down to the police on the street. Sometimes, for special operations, individual police will receive "bonuses" for turning a blind eye or a deaf ear or to actively discourage interference ("Sorry, this alley's closed to all traffic.").

Type

Military, Paramilitary/Militia

Alternative Names

The Watch

Training Level

Untrained

Veterancy Level

Trained

Demonym

Watchmen