⚔ Aᴅᴠᴇɴᴛᴜʀᴇ ⚔

The Counting House of Baldur’s Gate stands as a bastion of economic might, a fortress of ledgers and lockboxes trusted by patriars, traders, and foreign dignitaries alike. Operated under the strict oversight of the city’s merchant elite and heavily entwined with the Council of Four, it serves as the beating financial heart of the Gate’s sprawling mercantile network. Here, fortunes are made, debts recorded, and currencies from across Faerûn exchanged and stored. Though outwardly unassuming to passersby, the Counting House is a place of quiet tension and quiet power. Its staff—known as the Ledgerkeepers—are trained in both arcane wards and complex contract law, ensuring that everything within is protected by both blade and clause. Beneath the surface, the vaults are said to house dragon hoards, infernal bonds, and relics best left untouched—watched over by silent sentinels and magical traps no thief has breached in living memory.

The Counting House looms on the harbor’s edge like a block of quarried night, its squat, granite walls pitted with age but unmarred by time. Torches in iron sconces line the street before it, casting wavering amber light on a double door of burnished steel, embossed with ancient merchant sigils and watched by impassive guards in crimson-trimmed mail. Its windowless upper stories resemble a prison more than a bank, and above the heavy doors, a carved frieze depicts stoic dwarves balancing scales atop chests of gold. Inside, the air is cool and dry, carrying the faint scent of ink, leather, and wax. The lobby features thick oak counters, barred teller windows, and an ever-present hush broken only by the scratch of quills and the clink of coin. Behind polished doors and locked grates, narrow stairwells descend deeper than the sea breeze dares follow, vanishing into the vaults below.