A Day in Baldur's Gate
First light finds the Upper City almost in silence. Only a few black-clad Watch patrols sidle along the streets, moving as soundlessly as drifting ghosts. As the foredawn tints the darkness, fires are built up, lanterns are allowed to gutter out, delicious cooking smells strengthen and drift through the streets, and liveried servants emerge to run urgent errands for their masters or head to the Wide to await merchants’ arrivals.
Kitchens in the grand homes have been bustling through the night. Servants use hand pumps to draw water from cisterns in cellars and on roofs, heat it using coal or wood hauled in the previous day, and then pump the heated water into bath and kitchen basins. Downspouts and underground drainpipes, rarely large enough to be thought of as sewers, drain away used water.
On the other side of Baldur’s Gate—the great dark arch in the old city wall for which the city is named— merchants and their assistants stamp their feet and mutter in the cold gloom, trying to keep warm as they wait for the gate to be opened so they can start selling in the Wide. They hold their carts, covered trays, and cloak-bundled warm foods, and they wear carry sacks and folding stools slung on harnesses.
These merchants and assistants have been awake for hours, preparing and loading their wares in the Lower City. If they sell out before highsun, or noon, they’ll have earned a little leisure and sleep—after they buy or fetch from storage the ingredients and other raw materials they’ll need to make the next day’s wares. Afterward, they’ll seek early beds so they can rise in the middle of the night, sup on long-simmered tea and stew, and prepare their wares all over again. When the gates to the Upper City open to merchants and travelers, the Lower City’s steep streets remain shrouded in shadow. They stay gloomy until the sun climbs high enough to lance over the bluffs and shine down into the steep-sided crescent of crammed-together, motley buildings that descend to the tall and narrow dockside warehouses, which the mists surrender last of all. [p[As merchants set up their stalls in the Wide, servants of the wealthy mingle among them to purchase the choicest products and freshest food. These servants shop in the Wide throughout the morning. Their masters rise late and rarely emerge out of doors before highsun, when their working days begin—if they work, that is.
Most Upper City patriars linger over their morning feasts and contemplate the coming evening’s social engagements. Entrepreneurs among them wake early and dine on sideboard meals of hot, smoked flaked fish or eels and fresh-baked nut buns slathered in flavored butter. Then they set out to see to their investments and make deals, often in Lower City trading houses or small upscale taverns, where outsiders come to negotiate. In the afternoon, the late-rising patriars leave their homes to shop, make business deals, and inspect new wares or hear proposals. The rounds of dining and revelry that dominate the lives of the Gate’s wealthy and powerful start in early evening and often continue late into the night.
The leisurely lives of the wealthy take place in the eye of a storm. Around the patriars, servants bustle continually. By dawn, kitchen fires have been burning for hours. The daily flurry of cooking, cleaning, fetching, and organizing of affairs begins before first light as well and continues throughout the day, out of sight of the servants’ masters.
In the Lower City, shops and cafes open their doors for business while other Baldurians begin their daily routines. The city clogs with people climbing and descending the steep streets. In the harbor, the docks never sleep, but daylight brings with it increased ship traffic and movement of goods between ships, warehouses, shops, and the Wide.
Just as merchants wait for dawn to enter the Wide, peddlers, travelers, and day laborers pack the northern road outside Black Dragon Gate, awaiting entry into the Upper City. The Upper City acts as a toll stop on Trade Way traffic, halting southbound travelers in Blackgate while those who journey north can enjoy the Lower City’s hospitality all night, unless they did not make it through Wyrm’s Rock before nightfall. The fortress raises its drawbridges at dusk and lowers them again when the morning’s light first strikes the top of its towers.
Most merchants traveling the Trade Way or the Coast Way use the city as the end point of their journeys, unloading goods and picking up new cargo for their return treks. Caravans that pass through the city use Baldur’s Gate as an opportunity to exchange beasts of burden. They leave their horses or mules in Blackgate or the Outer City, have their goods hauled through town, and pick up new animals on the other side. Indeed, they must do so, since animals larger than a peacock are banned within the city’s walls.
By the time the land routes into the city are opened at dawn, business in the port has been roaring for hours. Never truly at rest, work in Gray Harbor picks up in the misty predawn shadows as the previous day’s fishing fleet returns and cargo vessels awaiting morning entry jockey for the best available dock. Soon the sounds of rumbling carts on quay rails, creaking worker-powered crane wheels, rattling and snapping ships’ rigging, and squawking gulls and harborhands mingle in the unmistakable hubbub of the city’s port.
As any day unfolds, Baldur’s Gate becomes steadily noisier and more bustling. The bulk of business is conducted in the middle of the day, so sit-down highsun meals aren’t common in the city. Patriars living their lives of leisure, however, do dine at midday, drinking cordials, or watered-down wine or fruit brandy, and nibbling on handtarts. These small pastries have either sweet or savory fillings. By tradition, the savory hors d’oeuvre are diamond-shaped and the sweet are round.
Most everyone else spends the day in hard work, buying and carrying food with them to eat at random times “on the hob,” a common saying that refers to the hobnailed boots most Lower City residents wear to lessen their chances of falling on the slick, cobbled streets. Baldurians who have time to spare typically frequent cafes and relax with a cup of tea or coffee and a bit of sweet bread.
City happenings reach a frantic peak just before dusk. The last deliveries to Upper City mansions are hastily made, the Watch begins clearing the Wide, the most fearful citizens work to finish their chores before darkness descends and “the wrong sort” emerges, larders are hastily inventoried, and runners are sent to make last-minute purchases or place orders for goods to be delivered on the morrow.
Bakers who first threw open their shutters to sell steaming pork buns or dusky rolls (the latter are filled with chicken, turkey, or game bird, such as pigeon) to fellow Lower City folk in the foredawn are preparing to close up shop. Their runners bring the last deliveries of rolls and loaves to cafes, inns, and taverns as bakers wrap up leftover merchandise to sell at discounted rates the next day.
Patriars dine again near dusk. Then they either go out to feasts or revels or engage in leisure pursuits, such as reading, acting, listening to music, gaming, and wooing. Quiet evenings are enjoyed at home or another’s manor. If the latter, Watch soldiers later escort sober visitors home while drunken ones typically sleep over. Meanwhile, patriar revelers dance, drink, nosh, chatter, and engage in “sport,” such as putting on plays and solving in-house, arranged mysteries. Drunkenness and debauchery, considered scandalous at other times and occasions, are perfectly acceptable at such fetes. In contrast, strict etiquette prevails at patriar feasts, which involve political conversations, business proposals, metaphysical discussions, and entertainments featuring bards, musicians, or actors.
Sunset sees the closing of most shops. But trading appointments that often involve complicated patterns of knocks or pass-phrases ensue, and Lower City and Outer City folk who have the desire, energy, and coin head to taverns, such as Elfsong Tavern and Jopalin’s, and other entertainment locales. During “the winding down,” as most locals call this time of day, hired musicians give brief street performances to hook the ears of passing folk and entice them inside the taverns, inn lounges, and clubs. Stiff drinks, large bowls of hearty stew, bread and apples, and fried fish are staples in such establishments.
Afterward, the Gate’s workers return home to fall asleep—sometimes on the floors of their own shops— and do it all again the next day.
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