Blackwater

Blackwater is surrounded by an extensive stone wall made of large blocks of limestone and the black clay from the Blackwater Swamp to the north. The Townsfolk built the wall many years ago when the rise of barbarian activity in the region threatened the local trade routes. Now that the Empire has secured the countryside and the price of building within the city walls has gotten so expensive, some daring folk have started to build outside the wall's protection.

The wall follows classic Imperial design and consists of two 4-foot-thick, 40-foot-high walls about 15 feet apart. The void was supposed to be filled with packed earth but some sections ended up being filled with garbage and refuse instead. This cost saving / beautification measure proposed by past City Councils has resulted in several sections of the wall deteriorating to the point of requiring refurbishing and one section requiring total reconstruction after a gas explosion several years ago. This flaw may be exploitable by hostile forces in the future and attempts to correct past failures have been sadly stalled in the City Councils endless meetings.

To breach Blackwater's wall is no easy task though. Any foe who penetrants the wall must still contend with the packed-earth interior, and eventually the inner wall. Each 10-foot-wide section of city wall has the following statistics.

Stone Wall (Outer or Inner): 4 ft. thick; hardness 8; hp 360; break DC 60; Climb DC 20. Once the walls are breached, climbing over the 25 feet of packed earth lodged between the walls requires a DC 15 Climb check.

Creatures: Patrols of guards (human warrior 1) walk along the walls at all times, although in times of peace, these patrols consist of only a single guard stationed between each watchtower. When the city raises the alarm, this number increases to three guards per wall section.

The watchtowers provide wall access and add additional defense to Blackwaters’s wall. The majority of these towers stand along the eastern portion of the wall, where the open country and swamps are notorious for hiding tribes of dangerous humanoids and bandits. Each watchtower is made of stone and stands 80 feet in height. A single door provides access to the ground floor inside, which is split into three rooms: a holding cell, a small armory and storeroom, and a guard room. The upper floor holds a barracks for the guards posted at the tower and exits onto the city wall. The roof is armed with a single light catapult. A spiral staircase in the tower’s center provides access to all three levels.

Creatures: Each watchtower has a contingent of three guards (human warrior 1), who live on the second floor and work in 8-hour shifts to patrol the roof and the nearby wall sections. These guards are recruited from the militia and are not part of the actual city watch. When necessary, they report directly to the Watch Sergeant at any city gate command post, or to the Watch Captain at the city barracks.

Four gates, control land access to Blackwater. The townsfolk simply refer to them as Westgate (which controls access to the farmland), Northgate (which follows the Blackwater River), Merchants Gate (which opens directly to the Merchants Square), and Seagate (which opens to the shoreline).Each gate consists of a 60-footby-25 foot structure shaped roughly like a large “H”—a walkway over the road flanked by two towers. Each tower stands 60 feet in height, with the walkway bridging the two about halfway up. A large iron gate between the towers can be closed to control access to the city; the gates are left open during the day and locked at night.

Each tower consists of three internal floors and a roof armed with a heavy catapult. The ground floor of each tower has a guardroom, an office, and a holding cell. The second floor is mostly taken up by the machinery that opens and closes the massive iron gate. The third floor contains doors that allow access to the walkway above the gate, along with barracks for the guards stationed in the towers.

Blackwater lets most visitors into the city. As long as visitors can pay the entry tax or provide citizenry papers, the guards will let them in. A character can become a citizen of Blackwater at the town; noncitizens must pay a gate tax of 5 cp per individual. Merchant caravans can gain entry to the town for a single caravan tax of 2gp; this covers all members of the caravan as long as the merchants promise to do business in the town. No tax is charged for leaving the city. In the case of unusual cohorts, mounts, familiars, or animal companions, the guards call upon their commander for assistance and make sure that the suspect creature is well behaved and under the responsibility of its group. A DC 15 Diplomacy check convinces the guards of this, at which point they charge a 1 gp exotic animal tax for each unusual creature granted entrance to the city. If the Diplomacy check succeeds by 15 or more (in other words, if the travelers make a DC 30 check), the guards agree to charge the standard entry tax of 5 cp per individual instead. Obviously evil or dangerous creatures, such as undead and creatures of size Huge or larger, are flatly refused entry. If things begin to turn confrontational, four guards gather reinforcements from the watchtowers and alert the garrison.

Creatures: Each of the gates is staffed by a group of eight warriors (human warrior 1) recruited from the city militia. A warrior from the city watch commands each gate; they take their posts very seriously and don’t suffer fools or horseplay among the guards or from anyone trying to gain access to the city when the gates are closed. During the day, two sentries watch over each tower, and a third sentry stands guard on the ground to the right of the gates. The ground sentry collects taxes from those entering the city and provides direction and aid to visitors. The commanders remain in their offices on the ground floor unless summoned by the sentries.

To send messages to distant locations, one visits the Scribes Guild of Blackwater. The services offered in this brick building vary greatly, from simple letter delivery to sending spells. The Scribes Guild does not ship cargo or other physical objects above the size of a letter, but it does maintain good relations with The Blackwater Trading Company and often refers its customers there for such needs. Written messages are the most popular services, but those who cannot write or would rather not have written evidence, can hire employees of the Scribes Guild to memorize messages and deliver them orally.

Creatures: Saltmarsh Sendings was founded recently by a human wizard named Mylor Brank, who had grown frustrated with the logistics of keeping in touch with his family in distant Nyrond. Messages went missing as often as they were delivered. Finally, Mylor decided to do something about it, buying the deed to this lot and constructing a solid brick building. With Saltmarsh’s growth, the message services he provides have proven quite popular, and he now subsidizes a large number of similar services in no fewer than five other cities. While Mylor isn’t of high enough level to cast sending himself, he maintains a good relationship with the nearby temple of Fharlanghn (area 9), whose clerics are pleased with his devotion (and donations) and keep him supplied with wands of sending.

Adventure Hook: Mylor sometimes receives requests to send messages into dangerous territory. In these cases, he hires adventurers to serve as guards for his messenger, paying them 50 gp per character level upon the group’s safe return.