Grand Master
@TheEdVerse
, could you tell us about the Bank (financial entity) that operates in Baldur’s Gate? My Campaign works in this city and I need a little of your knowledge! Thank you and big hug!
Banking in the Gate, as in most cities in the Realms, is primarily done by three groups of people: temples, moneylenders (wealthy private individuals), and guilds. There are also rollcoins and manycoins businesses (see the…#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) May 5, 2021
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…“Money Matters” chapter of the “Ed Greenwood Presents Elminster’s Forgotten Realms” sourcebook). In addition to these groups, the larger shipping fleets and trading costers (overland trading companies) have always functioned… 3)
…as banks for some of their clients (often as a way to “tie” those clients exclusively to them).
Dissatisfaction with such practises, and with the increasingly shady tactics of some moneylenders (who, with all the local…#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) May 5, 2021
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…competition, have had to cater to increasingly desperate/financially unstable/long-odds-mercantile-gambles clientele), led to the establishment of the Counting House.
Located on the waterfront of The Steeps, overlooking… 5)
…Gray Harbor, and run in 1492 DR by the rather sinister (and aloof, guarding his words carefully and spending much of his time looking calmly expressionless; his beard has two dark streaks down either side of his—hidden by…#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) May 5, 2021
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…it—chin) LE gold dwarf Rakkath Glitterbeard. Who is publicly the treasurer for both the city-sponsored Council’s Eminent Fellowship of Financiers and the Honorable Order of Moneylenders—and far less officially, Kingpin of… 7)
…the Steeps in the criminal organization known as “the Guild”—which means he governs and settles disputes among the less forgiving lonesharks and the “enforcers” they employ, following a policy of “dire warnings are fine, but…#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) May 5, 2021
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…a dead deadbeat can’t be squeezed; leave them alive—just—as a more effective dire warning.”
The Counting House is the center of official trade and business in the Gate, offering banking safe storage (vault) services, … 9)
…currency exchanging for bulk amounts no independent moneylender could easily manage as well as small transactions, and investment (in Gate cargoes, businesses, real estate, warehousing rental space, and both land and naval…#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) May 5, 2021
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…shipping) banking services. It’s open dawn to dusk, and is famous for its polite, unflappable staff.
The Counting House is built like a fortress, with thick stone walls and windowless upper floors. Belowground, it descends…11)
…for many levels in a cylinder of thick stone guarded by water-warding spells (against coastal flooding) and some secret devices and guardians surrounding that cylinder, and within the cylinder and very much menacingly…#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) May 5, 2021
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…visible, stone golem sentries that patrol the deepest levels in such a manner that two are always within sight of each other.
These deepest levels store the wealth of many Baldurian families—not to mention many treasures… 13)
…stolen by the Guild, and quietly placed there by Glitterbeard.
Local rumor in the Gate says that the regalia of several fallen thrones are among the contents of the Counting House vaults.#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) May 5, 2021