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The City of Ravens Bluff
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City of Ravens Bluff
by Ed Greenwood
Contents
The Living City .................................. 2
Local History .................................... .2
Lost Sarbreen ................................... .8
Life in Ravens Bluff .............................. .10
Where to Buy ................................... .13
Dark & Deadly Secrets ............................ 15
Secret Societies ................................. .17
The Wizards Guild ................................ 19
Temples & Religion ............................... 26
The Fellowship of Bards ............................ 32
The Silent Network ............................... 35
The Knights of Ravens Bluff ....................... .37
The Nobility .................................... 46
The Authorities .................................. 63
Law & Order .................................... 69
Merchant Houses ................................. 76
The Guilds ...................................... 80
The Game of Masks ............................... 91
Monsters of Ravens Bluff ........................... 92
The Magic of Ravens Bluff ......................... .97
Landmarks of Ravens Bluff: The Walking Tour ........ .101
Beyond the Living City: The Vast .................. .143
City Locations Index ............................. 159
Credits
Design: Ed Greenwood
Editor: John D. Rateliff
Brand Manager: Lisa Stevens
Cover Art: Jeff Easley
Cover Graphic Design: Tanya Matson
Interior Graphic Design: Dee Barnett
Interior Art: Valerie Valusek and Paul Phillips
Cartography: Rob Lazzaretti and Dennis Kauth
Typesetting: Nancy Walker and Eric Haddock
Art Director: Paul Hanchette
Dedication
To all who have played in L IVING C ITY events, roleplaying or
live, and otherwise helped breathe life into this most shared
corner of the shared world I began so long ago.
To those scribes and supporters of things Ravenaar who have
gone before me, including (but not limited to, as Charles
Oliver OKane would say) the following:
George Aber, James Alan, David Carl Argall, Tim Beach, Eric
L. Boyd, Laura Braslow, James Buchanan, Brian Burr, David
Zeb Cook, Richard Dold, Barbara Donnelly, Tia Doran,
Scott Douglas, Rollin Ehlenfeldt, Errol Farstad, David Feest,
Jr., Dr. Edward R. Friedlander, Vince Garcia, Dave Gross, Peter.
Hague, John A. Harnes, Byron Heim, Claire Hoffman, Keith
Hoffman, Mechele Hunt, Harold Johnson, Angelos Kaldis,
Daniel Kramarsky, Jim Lowder, Jeff Martin, Catherine Mc-
Clurkin, Lee McClurkin, Kevin Melka, Robert Nichols, Wes
Nicholson, Tom Nolan, Steve Null, Rembert Parker, Hubert
Phillips II, Francis Poulin, Tom Prusa, Jean Rabe, John
Rateliff, Nicky Rea, Rita Rivera, Richard Rydberg, Todd
Smart, Ed Sollers, Gail Straiton, Wayne Straiton, Keith Fran-
cis Strohm, John Terra, Jay Tummelson, Jim Ward (the Charles
Oliver OKane), Don Weatherbee (a stalwart), Shannon
Whitworth, Robert Wiese (a workhorse for us all in dark
times), Skip Williams, Malcolm Wood, Lew Wright.
To Dan Donnelly, who kept the torch burning.
And most of all, to Steve Glimpse,
all Ravens Bluff.
whose heart was as big as
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The Living City
n many folktales of Faerûn there is mention of a City of Ad-
venturers, where every citizen is a mighty and famous delver,
monster-slayer, explorer, or smiter of foes, from the bread-
bakers to the roofers, the dung-sweepers to the high judges.
The very cobbles of the streets are gold, they say; handfuls of
gems serve as small change, and the humblest houses crammed with valu-
ables of gleaming beauty and glowing enchantment. Folktales are like that.
Most cities are grubby, crowded, dangerous places, where coins are hard
won and easily lost, and few folk are mighty or famous. Reality is like that.
Reality in Faerûn, however, does hold a City of Adventurers. A young and
vigorous city, where magic does dazzle and wealth is heaped in plentyfor
some. Danger lurks there, too, never far from the elbow of the visitor. A
stranger here will share crowded streets with more than the usual share of ad-
venturers, eyes sharp and alert, swords swinging ready, and deadly spells just a
mutter and gesture away. Its a city of watchful black ravens; a port often raided
of old by orcs and hobgoblins and worse, that still lurk not so far away in the
frowning mountains; a place where pirates walk the streets in the thinnest of
disguises. A city of the bold and the grasping, of the youthful and daring. Home
of the reckless and the wild-spirited, where a dragon lies atop heaps of gold in
the city coffers, and so much magic crackles and sparkles in the very stones un-
derfoot that disenchanters are drawn to it from around the world . . .
A real place, not a folktale. A place called Ravens Bluff, where adventurers
are at home and wonders almost commonplace. A place where Faerûnian eves
that crave excitement are looking over even now. A place that is truly alive.
This book is a campaign introduction to the Living City made famous in the
tournament adventures of the ROLE-PLAYING GAME ASSOCIATION
(the RPGA® Network). Over more than a decade, hundreds of gamers have de-
signed little bits and pieces of Ravens Bluff for the love of the game. This book
cant do more than skate over the surface of the ice their hard work laid down.
but it pulls together much of it into organized form. The sharp-eyed will note
that not every secret is revealed nor every alleyway explored; these deliberate
omissions of lore are done to avoid pre-empting future Living City revelations,
to keep tournament play exciting, and to allow every Dungeon Master elbow
room to make Ravens Bluff more easily fit into his or her individual ongoing
campaign. No book can ever hope to comprehensively detail a whole city, but
this one sets forth the bones of the Bluff, from nobles to city government to
guild intrigues. Adventurers will find a homeand adventures galorehere.
Welcome to Ravens Bluff.
The City
R
the north, the desires of the pirates of the Fallen Stars to control a secure
mainland port, and the more subtle menaces of the Zhentarim, the Red Wiz-
ards of Thay, and even the Lords of Westgate. Only recently the city fought
off a devastating attack by a combined army of humanoids and mercenaries
under the command of a shadowy figure known as Warlord Myrkyssa Jelan;
the reason for the attack, and her current whereabouts, are alike unknown.
Folk of all races and origins rub shoulders in Ravens Bluff; an annual average
of about forty thousand of them. The city boasts a good and very busy harbor,
defensive walls, and bustling commerce. This book goes into all matters Raven-
ian in detail, but the first-time visitor should know that rich, semi-wooded agri-
cultural lands surround the city on its landward sides. These are home to rich
estates, many of them belonging to nobles and to successful adventurers with
an eye towards eventual ennoblement. The Vasts major coastal road crosses
the Fire River near the Bluff. The city walls enclose several distinct major dis-
tricts: Southside (that part of the city south of the river), Crows End (a run-
down but thriving area on both banks of the river), Harbor (the dock area on
the Dragon Reach itself), and the sprawling Uptown district (which encloses
the Temple and Market districts). A small seaward area, with its own walls,
houses the Foreign Section, given over to embassies and consulates of outland
realms and cities. Ravens Bluff even has its own monthly broadsheet newspa-
per, the Ravens Bluff Trumpeter, edited by Fred Faber. Its staff includes the so-
ciety beauty and gossip Jacinth (Jackie) Moonspring, Tomaldi Everspring, the
highborn Silva Sinaran, and the earthy man of the streets Guido.
Adventurers are more a part of everyday life in Ravens Bluff than they are
in any other city of the Realms. In many ways, they are the safety valve
standing between the entrenched interests of the established nobility and
the aggressive, fast-rising power of the merchant class. Magic abounds in this
cityand one would think the explosive mixture of spells galore, swords a-
plenty, and opposed powers battling for control of this city in transition
would make for total war and the destruction of the city. Some folk do think
that way and think those who willingly head for Ravens Bluff are dangerous
fools. Others, of course, already define adventurers as dangerous fools, even
walking dead fools. So far, Ravenians have proven them wrong, and their
town has thrived on what looks from afar like chaos. So far . . .
Local History
avens Bluff straddles the mouth of the Fire River on the eastern shore of
the Dragon Reach, that most northerly arm of the Sea of Fallen Stars
(the Inner Sea). Ravens Bluff stands just north of the Earthfast Mountains,
on the site of the onetime dwarven city of Sarbreen. It commands access to
the rich agricultural coastlands known as the Vast, its only rivals in this role
being the cities of Tantras and Calaunt. All too close to the rich lands of
Sembia, Ravens Bluff has always walked a delicate line between the interests
of that rich Realm of Merchants across the Reach, the greed of Mulmaster to
he city of Ravens Bluff stands on the site of the lost dwar-
ven city of Sarbreen, City of the Hammer, begun sometime
around the Year of the Normiir (611 DR) and completed
in the Year of the Ensorceled Kings (616 DR). Sarbreen
was a large stone city of squat, fortress-like keeps and very
thick, labyrinthine city walls, situated so as to enclose a series of connected
courtyards and paddock-areas in concentric defensive rings. There were no
streets as humans know them, and much of the city was underground (with an
elaborate series of pumps and sluices to keep water in one place and the dry
ness needed for storage and living space in another). The dwarves who built
and dwelt in Sarbreen were chiefly of the Boldenbar and Shattershields clans,
among the richest of the Stout Folk to call the Realm of Glimmering Swords
home. Sarbreen made them richer. Built as a secure trading center, here dwar-
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ven gems and trade-metals could be exchanged for cloth, livestock, and ex-
otic foodsGlimmering Sword dwarves are known to have developed a great
fondness for honeyed dates and the various spiced, ruby-red liqueurs popular
of old in Unther and Mulhorand.
For an all too brief time, Sarbreen flourished. It stood on an ideal site, com-
manding a small but sheltered natural harbor at the mouth of the Fire River.
The river could carry goods inland by barge or float logs from the tall forests
down to mills at the Prow (the litter of dwellings just east of the fortress-like
City of the Hammer). Ships came calling from all over the Sea of Fallen Stars,
and Sarbreen became the Gate to the Vast. The thriving timber industry
cleared mile upon mile of forests, and the dwarves (accompanied by oppor-
tunistic gnomes and halflings) tried their hand at farming in a big way.
Orcs attacking on the surface and drow striking in the depths put a sud-
den and brutal end to dwarven rule in the Year of the Bloody Crown (649
DR). The Realm of Glimmering Swords fell, and Sarbreen was abandoned.
Orcs promptly pillaged and burned the fallen city, and its ruins became the
haunt of monsters, pirates, and brigands; heaps of stone rubble aboveground
and a maze of abandoned dwarven tunnels and chambers below. For more
on hidden dwarven caches and unfound traps that remain to this day, see
the chapter on Lost Sarbreen (pages 8-10).
Another, the Glartaree out of Hlath, was left blazing; it burned to the waterline
and sank, scattering its cargo of stone bowls across the harbor bottom (nearly
eighty years later, smooth dark gray bowls still turn up from time to time in
nets dredging the river ooze).
The shocked Ravenaar (the term Ravenians didnt come into use until
about the time of the Champions Games, and the older term for the citizens of
Ravens Bluff is still heard, particularly among the poorest folk and the most
long-established nobles) spent many nights shouting in meetings about what
to do when the pirates come again! The orcs of the Earthfast Mountains
didnt wait for them to reach any conclusions: that winter, they came down
from the mountains by night to slash and hack, emptying outlying steadings of
livestock and people alike to fill their cooking-fires.
Ravens Bluff became a grim, embattled place. The farmers turned to their
self-styled lords and demanded protection, and the summer of the Year of the
Talking Skull (1293 DR), and throughout the decade that followed, those
lords spent coins like falling rainwater to import mercenaries and equip and
train all their farmhands for the pirate and orc raids that kept coming. At the
same time, a small but steady trickle of folk began to steal away from the twin
dangers of coast and mountains, moving north and east into the interior in
search of safer lands to farm in. Meeting in a grim council in the autumn of
The Year of the Stag (1304 DR), the lords could see a future ahead of them
that looked all too much like their not-too-distant-past: a few beleaguered
homesteads, beset by wolves, orcs, and brigands in the winter, and all three
plus pirates the rest of the year. And yet the Bluff was their home now; the
graves of their parents and grandparents whod founded the now-sprawling es-
tates stood like silent, reproachful reminders of lifework that would be thrown
away by those who left for the safety of walled cities elsewhere.
warven dreams may have lain in ruins, but the site of Sarbreen was
still important for the very reasons the city had flourished: the meet-
ing place of a good harbor, the Fire River offering a water-way into the in-
terior, and a surviving bridge a few miles upriver carrying the coastal road
across the river. As humans wrestled the Vast out of orc domination and
settled along its coasts, local merchants and farmers gathered to trade their
goods at the Fire River Bridge (today called Mossbridges). The nearby ruins
remained dangerous, but they crumbled year by year and the everpresent,
squawking ravens made ambushes and stealthy stalkings almost impossible.
Pirates and other mariners began to put in, anchoring alongside the rubble-
strewn docks. Folk would materialize out of the lands around, bringing carts
of their farm produce, hides, and woodcarvings to trade in earnest.
The possibilities offered by shattered Sarbreennow reduced to low mossy,
rocky hills-caught the eyes of several folk who passed through, particularly
after clergy of Chauntea settled south of the river, bringing a fresh wave of
human farmers with them. Among the folk who saw a bright future in settling
at the raven-haunted mouth of the Fire River were adventurers from Murann
(whod worn out their welcome up and down the Sword Coast), ambitious
war-captains from the Vilhon Reach who despaired of ever owning land in the
crowded countries along the southern shores of the Sea of Fallen Stars, and
weary homesteaders from the Sword Coast who were in search of a land where
foes were fewer, sick of fighting barbarians as well as orcs. Enter the Daefihlars
(later DeVillars), Moorlands, and Therogeons, respectively. They mustered
armed companies who could build and defend homesteads, arriving in the
spring of the Year of the Horn (1222 DR). Settling at the mouth of the river, a
few miles downstream of the old bridge but much closer to shipborne supplies,
they struggled against harsh winters, marauding monsters, and orc raids for
three seasons. Their mere survival inspired others, and in the Year of the Black
Buck (1226 DR) over a dozen new families arrived, each with a small army of
hired bodyguards, servants, and farmers to work the land. Suddenly the river-
mouth settlement became a community rather than three beleaguered
steadings. Trails and patrols were established, boundary disputes settled, and
an inn and stockyards built out of the riverside wreckage to serve the traders.
The inn was Luskers Ravensgate, named after its owner, the ravens, and the
feeling that this fledgling community had become the Gate to the Vast. A
primitive bridge, often replaced, was even thrown up between the village and
the will owisp-haunted dwarven ruins on the rivers northern shore.
More settlers came, most finding employ on the estates of the founding
families. As the generations passed, these wealthy and long-settled founder-
families began to style themselves lords and ladies, in the manner of petty
barons everywhere (the Border Kingdoms provide a good present-day example
of such self-proclaimed titles), passing their own laws and jostling for su-
premacy as the settled wealth of the Vast grew and trade quickened. Things
even grew civilized enough that mages began to settle in the area-few
enough, but wizards nonetheless. Folk both high and low watched them warily
but found no trace of dark brotherhoods or schemes to rule the land,
In the Year of the Wandering Waves (1292 DR), the first pirate raid struck
the harbor of Ravens Bluff. Hastily-mustered local forces drove back raiders
who dared to try plundering ashore, but one visiting merchant ship was seized.
Walled cities . . . That was what was needed, both for defense and to shore
up the crumbling power of the founding families! Ravens Bluff needed a wall,
and grand houses, and secure warehouses, and a bridge across the river within
the town, and chains across the river, and gates to prevent anyone using either
river or bridges without paying tolls. The deep passages of Sarbreen could serve
as sewers, draining away filth; the river could provide clean water; nearby
abandoned dwarven quarries in the Earthfasts would yield building stoneit
was all so simple!
Well, simple to say, yes. Fired by the idea (which seemed good to almost
everyone except those whod recently moved from corrupt, crime-ridden cities
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From the Ashes
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such as Westgate and Arrabar), the lords set to work building a great encircling
wall. While the original settlement had been based south of the river, this area
was hemmed in by the surrounding mountains and fully two-thirds of the set-
tlement was now to be found on the northern bank. Fired by the project, the
lords made the new wall much larger than the existing town so that some crop
land fell inside the walls in case of siege. Folk high and low could live within
the walls, in houses as grand as they desired, safe from marauders at last. Work
continued through the year, and the folk of the city became skilled in the use of
crossbows, using every height raised by the builders to fire down on wolves,
orcs, and brigands. Fearful that brigands and pirates (or indeed one of their own
to find some sort of hope for their city, at times being moved to tears or to
draw daggers on each other. When fear overmastered greed or miserliness,
this or that noble would break down and hire mercenaries in Sembia,
Cormyr, Westgate, or along the Vilhon Reach, buying another season of
safety for the city until the surviving mercenaries fled for less perilous terri-
tory, leaving the Bluff unprotected once more.
A Champion, A Mayor
DeVillars, one of the wealthiest and most civic-minded of the lords, con-
vinced her fellow peers to hold a grand tourney, a Champions Games. The
winner would become Lord Mayor of the city, given a personal salary that
would free him of the need to work at anything else, and charged with mak-
ing Ravens Bluff great.
number) might move in and seize control once the walls were complete, several
of the lords quietly began the first undercover spy force Ravens Bluff had ever
known: the Vigilant, whom some say still exist, so well-hidden and covert in
their actions that theyve left no trace in public for decades.
When Coins Were King
T
hroughout this period the Bluff remained open to the sea, defended
against pirates only by a lone seatower on Ladyrock Isle that lacked
any catapult or ballista. That changed in the Year of the Catacombs (1308
DR), when the landwards walls were completed. The nobility promptly
hired a Lord Protector and a Lord Treasurer to see to the defense of
their new city and to ensure that it swiftly repaid the crippling expenditures
its creation had made necessary. These officials were puppets of the lords,
who did not hesitate to murder (for embezzlement or disobedience) or dis-
miss (for incompetence or willful nature) city officials and any members
of their staff throughout the decade that followed; in the Year of the Fallen
Throne (1319 DR, referred to locally as the Year of Rolling Heads), there
were no less than fourteen Lords Protector and three Lord Treasurers
though the last one fled (burdened only by some thousands of gold pieces)
months before the end of the year, leaving the city effectively without a tax
collector until the next spring.
Not that the lords were overly concerned. People were flocking to the new
city, and revenues from the businesses owned by the noble families (notably
builders, shippers, and bodyguards-for-hire) poured into their coffers. Em-
boldened, they plunged once more into their games of oneupmanship that
barely masked the underlying private battles for true supremacy in the Bluff.
When old Ravenaar families use the phrase When coins were king, this
is the time theyre speaking of; when the lords openly named and dismissed
city governments on a whim, pirates used the harbor as a safe haven and
openly raided other ships in port (in return for not-so-secret payments to the
lords), and the city Watch were in reality only bands of private warriors in
service to this lord or that, often fighting in the alleys at the behest of their
masters. The law in Ravens Bluff was what any lord said it was, and a well-
organized Thieves Guild, initially the champion of the people against the
lawlessness of the lords, became a power unto itself. A black market sprang
up, in which increasingly desperate citizens sold objects stolen in order to
get money enough to eat and to replace whatever had been stolen from
them in turn. Press gangs openly walked the streets, and pirates took unwill-
ing wives as they pleased or else carried off pretty girls who refused them to
either ransom or sell as slaves elsewhere. Angry citizens mounted raiding ex-
peditions of their own, sometimes preying on outlying farms when food ran
short or sacking temples, set up by priests who dared not enter the city,
carrying off whatever temple furnishings they could to sell off in order to
ransom their daughters, pay their ever-increasing taxes, or simply feed their
families. To top things off orc, goblin, and hobgoblin raids began in earnest
again, slaughtering hundreds of citizens in 1321 DR (the Year of Chains)
and the years that followed.
Merchant shippers began to avoid Ravens Bluff as a known trouble spot,
trading with Tantras or Procampur instead. As revenues began to drop off,
the lords looked for fresh solutions. Amandas Blerune hit upon the idea of
hiring gnolls (from a band dispossessed and on the move north of the
Moonsea, whod been seen by one of his trade agents) to defend the city
against the orcs, by promising them free and unmolested ownership of the
foothills between Ravens Bluff and the mountains. The cold-blooded
scheme worked like a charm: for two years gnolls and orcs slaughtered each
other until no gnolls were left, and orc bones littered the fields south of the
city. Yet even the most cynical and self-interested of the lords could see that
there was no fresh supply of gnollsand that things couldnt go on like
this, with no common law, no leadership, and no comfort or protection for
anyone who couldnt buy it. The parties held by the nobles took on a des-
perate edge, and many lords were overheard arguing and plotting feverishly
It was a desperate gamble; many of the lords quietly moved moneys to
other lands, and arranged ships and packing to make swift escapes, if need
be. Some bitterly opposed the plan; there were real fears that the city could
end up under the boot-heel of a ruthless pirate lord or some adventurer
sponsored by evil mages such as the infamous Red Wizards of Thay. In the
event, the Games went forward, and a charismatic swordsman named
Charles Oliver OKane wonand the gods smiled: the gamble paid off.
OKane rolled up his sleeves and set about the task of transforming the Bluff
into a prosperous economic power. Lacking the funds to do what he saw was
necessary, he went to the lords to beg for coinsand to the people to share
his dreams. Any lords who were reluctant to part with their moneys heard
the excitement of the citizensand the dark looks directed at the lords
when money seemed unavailableand thought better of it. OKane prom-
ised them ways of getting rich along the way, by strategic investments and
preferred business positions, and forged ahead. His bold schemes continued
to work, he won popular support by encouraging the founding of guilds to
prevent the exploitation of citizens by charlatans and by the lords, and the
Bluff prospered. As the winds of bright change blew, support for OKane
flared up in houses both high and low across the city.
Along the way, OKane received unintended help from an unlikely
source: Lord Lashan Aumersair of Scardale. Planning his conquest of all the
Dales, the proud and ruthless Lashan purged his forces and court of all offi-
cers and advisors he deemed disloyal, exiling them to the lands east of the
Dragon Reach in the Year of the Worm (1356 DR). Some found their way
to Ravens Bluff, where they willingly placed themselves at OKanes dis-
posal. With these able subordinates behind him, the Mayors next action
was to restructure the government. He began rooting out corruption, re-
moving from power those accepting bribes from known criminal organiza-
tions. He divided the governments work into several branches, appointing
trusted and capable men to fill the new posts. One of those posts was the
Chancellery, which was charged with stabilizing trade conditions in the
city. Merchants and craftsmen were organized into guilds, each regulating
its own particular craft or service. The Lord Chancellor was entrusted with
insuring that all trade and tax laws were obeyed, that the currency and ex-
change rates were stable, and that harbor traffic was managed. A strong
City Watch was organized under the Lord Marshal to rid the city of crimi-
nal elements, a task they continue to this day.
With the government strengthened, OKane began using his influence
to bring peace and stability to the surrounding area. He offered to extend
the resources and protection of the city to nearby lords if theyd commit
troops to him and place their lands under the jurisdiction of the city courts.
He guaranteed that these courts would have no say in their internal affairs,
only to settle disputes between lords. OKane would recognize the lords
boundaries and would swiftly bring the citys forces to the defense of any
lords lands. The lords, the weakest ones in particular, quickly saw the ad-
vantages of working with the Mayor and soon adopted his plan. This system
has developed into a mutual protection pact among the lords: only four of
the thirty-six noble families in the region (the Ampters, Hawkdragons,
Liontowers, and Yarvandars) still hold themselves aloof.
The harbor also underwent dramatic changes. Its greatest attraction had
long been the natural protection it provided from the savage storms that
claw the eastern shore of the Reach (and from crushing winter ice). OKane
realized it had to offer protection from pirates as well. OKane charged his
sages and engineers with implementing a plan to make the necessary
changes. Their efforts resulted in one of the most ambitious sea construc-
tion projects Faerûn had ever witnessed. Two large and well-armed towers
4
n the Year of the Gate (1341 DR), someone found hopeor rather,
reached out and made hope with her own two hands. Lady Lauren
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