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City of Westgate
Westgate is the major trading city on the Dragon Coast. It is the western terminus for sea routes leading to Shou Lung in the east of Toril. The meeting of east and west creates exotic trades and encounters. Known as the Gateway to the West, Westgate is a port metropolis filled with dangerous opportunities. Coin can buy almost anything in Westgate. And what coin cannot afford, blood certainly can.
Everyone who holds a position of power in Westgate is connected directly or indirectly to the city’s criminal enterprises. Power shifts frequently between merchant houses and powerful gangs who rule from the shadows. Governance in Westgate rests, supposedly, in the hands of an appointed council of its most powerful merchants, presided over by an elected Croamarkh, the first lord and the city’s official voice of authority. Elections in Westgate are never free or balanced. The word of the merchant lords is what truly anoints a Croamarkh. Despite occasional tumults, this corrupt arrangement has proven surprisingly, dangerously stable.
The Night Masks
Historically, the Night Masks were the undisputed lords of Westgate’s underworld. A thieves guild faithful to Mask, the God of Thieves, it became so powerful they ruled the city from the shadows. The leader of the Night Masks was known as the Faceless. For years, Victor Dhostar was the Faceless and held the guild and the underworld together.
But setback after setback brought the Night Masks low. Their leader was slain and the guild teetered on the edge of collapse. Into this power vacuum, stepped something far darker than any common thief.
Orbakh and the Court of Night Masters
Beneath Westgate’s streets lurked the vampire Orlak, the self-proclaimed Night King who had made his lair in the catacombs below. Orlak discovered one of the unawakened clones of the infamous Manshoon, wizard leader of the notorious criminal syndicate, the Zhentarim. In his arrogance, he turned the clone into a vampire, believing he had created a loyal and powerful servant. The clone’s first act was to destroy Orlak, taking his title of Night King and adopting the name Orbakh. Orbakh observed the city carefully, then seized control of the leaderless Night Masks.
As the new Faceless, he created servitor vampires and installed them as his Court of Night Masters, the new leadership of the thieves guild. Each Night Master was given dominion over a segment of Westgate’s criminal empire. Their vampiric nature hidden from the populace, they operated as shadow lords with ambitions that stretched far beyond a single city. Orbakh and his court planned to build a kingdom across the entire Dragon Coast, with vampires as the dominant force. They moved swiftly ensorcelling and turning nobles into vampires and forging alliances with dangerous organizations.
The Fire Knives
Soon, Orbakh and his Court of Night Masters dominated most of Westgate’s power structure, entirely from the shadows. But a turning point came when the Fire Knives, a small but deadly band of aristocratic assassins arrived in Westgate. The Fire Knives were a society of skilled murderers who based themselves among the nobles in Cormyr. They were driven from their homeland when their role in a nobleman’s assassination was exposed.
Many of the Fire Knives are noblemen of House Bleth and House Cormaeril of the nation Cormyr. They needed a new power base to plot revenge on the Cormyrian nobles who persecuted and exiled them. With the Night Masks’ permission, the Fire Knives established their new headquarters beneath Castle Cormaeril in Westgate. An alliance formed between the two, with the Fire Knives focusing on assassinations while the Night Masks controlled the city’s criminal landscape.
Lord Tagreth Cormaeril, the Grandfather of Assassins, led the Fire Knives. Unlike many, he knew exactly what Orbakh was, understood the nature of the Night Masters, and watched their encroachment upon his organization with growing fury. Orbakh’s manipulations were subtle and patient. He seduced younger Fire Knives with visions of a vast empire, making the Fire Knives’ mission of revenge against a handful of Cormyrian nobles seemed petty by comparison.
The Eye of Justice
But challenges to the Night Masks’ dominance rose from within. Gedrin Thalavar, a young Night Mask thief, experienced a profound conversion to the faith of Torm, God of Justice. His transformation would spark a radical new faction. Gedrin founded the Eye of Justice, recruiting crusaders from the Night Masks’ own ranks. Combining rogue skills with a paladin’s righteous might, the Eye of Justice fought for good in the city of evil, becoming a formidable force against the Night Masks.
Fall of the Night Masks
Right at this time, the catastrophe of the Spell-plague tore across Faerûn, disrupting the fabric of arcane magic. For Orbakh and his vampire court, whose power relied on dark magic, the timing was devastating. The Spellplague disrupted Orbakh’s magic, leaving his vampire court exposed and weakened. For the first time, the Court of Night Masters could be challenged. An alliance of enemies saw their long awaited opportunity and seized it. An unprecedented alliance of merchant lords, the Fire Knives, and the Eye of Justice, joined by outlander adventurers, purged the weakened vampires of the Night Masks from Westgate in a campaign of bloody and decisive violence.
Orbakh retreated to his secondary lair, the haunted castle of Stormwatch on Dragon Coast. Defeated but not destroyed, he turned his ambitions from Westgate toward consolidating power within the Zhentarim as a surviving clone of Manshoon. With the Night Masks broken, the Fire Knives ascended to fill the power vacuum. Jaundamicar Bleth became Croamarkh, while House Bleth took command of the Fire Knives, becoming Westgate’s new dominant criminal power.
For years, Jaundamicar Bleth harbored the ambition to change his title from Croamarkh to King. But House Bleth and the Fire Knives’ dominance did not last.
The Nine Golden Swords
After the Spell-plague ended, waves of Shou refugees from the distant country of Shou Lung flooded into Faerûn. Many of them settled in Westgate’s district of Tidetown, but was subjected to brutal oppression in the city’s unforgiving slums. Nine heroes arose from the ranks of the poor. Great warriors and wizards from Shou Lung, they declared all Shou in Westgate under their protection and carved out a sanctuary in the city’s east end by force. But noble ideals alone cannot endure without power and resources.
The nine heroes accepted funding from Shou criminal organizations of the city Telflamm. It was a fateful compromise that would corrupt everything they had built. The Nine Golden Swords became a city-wide thieves guild. Criminal agents from Telflamm had exploited the nine’s heroic legacy, first winning the Shou community’s trust, then building their own criminal empire beneath that banner. The Nine Golden Swords transformed from a band of heroes into a full criminal organization.
What had begun as protection became a gang empire, bankrolled by Telflamm interests hungry for a Westgate foothold. More than one of the original nine heroes objected to this alliance with gangsters. But in the end, as always in Westgate, the gang’s seemingly endless flow of cash won out over the nine’s example of gallantry.
The conflict between the Nine Golden Swords and the oppressing Fire Knives escalated into all out war. Blood soaked Westgate streets as the two most powerful criminal organizations fought for the dominance that only one could hold. The Nine Golden Swords murdered most of House Bleth’s leadership in a devastating strike. With his lieutenants, sons and wife dead, Jaunda-micar Bleth’s grip on Westgate crumbled, leaving the once powerful man a hollow figure.
Bleth became a broken old man, commanding little of the respect or fear he once inspired. His subordinates looked past him toward his last heir, his daughter, Rigante, hoping for her to ascend and restore the family’s power. Known as the Fire Princess for her fiery temper, the daughter of Jaundamicar Bleth has only recently returned to Westgate after a long absence. If the Bleths are to hold onto power, Rigante Bleth is their best chance.
The Night Masks Reborn
One figure has worked quietly to rebuild the Night Masks. The half-drow Tebryn Dhialael was once a lowly Night Mask member whose roots in Westgate run deeper than memory. A duel with a rival forced Tebryn underground and into exile. He returned a decade later, only to fall prey to Orbakh himself. Tebryn rose as a vampire to become one of the original Night Masters. As a Night Master, Tebryn’s extensive knowledge of Westgate and its criminal networks proved invaluable to Orbakh.
He survived the fall of the Night Masks and took refuge with the secretive Zhentarim. Decades ago, at Orbakh’s instruction, Tebryn donned a new identity. Disguised with powerful illusion magic as an elderly Shou wise man named Kirenkirsalai, he embedded himself deep within Westgate’s growing Shou community. Kirenkirsalai, or Kire, became one of the original Nine Golden Swords, perfectly positioned to corrupt their ideals from within, laying the groundwork for the Night Masks’ return.
Behind the Nine Golden Swords heroic facade, Kire methodically perverted their ideals and engineered the rise of a city-wide thieves guild, advancing Orbakh’s game with each carefully calculated move. With the Nine Golden Swords crippling the Fire Knives, Orbakh rewarded Kire by placing him in command of Westgate’s underworld. Kire recruited his own Night Masters and declared the Night Masks reborn.
Corruption of The Eye of Justice
Amidst the turmoil in Westgate, the Eye of Justice had fallen far from its noble founding. Its knights still spoke of protecting the weak from the predations of darkness, but their actions resembled those of brutish enforcers. They dispensed justice as they see fit, using their original righteousness as an excuse to justify their corrupt agenda. Though publicly noble, they compromised justice for vengeance, take bribes, and betray the spirit of their oaths.
The Vigilant Seers, five powerful knights who oversaw the Eye of Justice, were interested far more in coin and power than in duty. Each maintained deep ties to Westgate’s criminal elements, a necessity for keeping their seats. Most of Westgate’s citizens had come to see the Eye of Justice as well-connected thugs. Frequently serving as muscle for hire, they were a weapon wielded by one merchant house against another, justice sold to the highest bidder.
The 4 Gangs in Westgate
Westgate today is a city fractured between four criminal powers, each fighting to dominate the others. The Fire Knives, Night Masks, Nine Golden Swords, and Eye of Justice vie endlessly for supremacy in the city. The Fire Knives, with Rigante Bleth as heir apparent, fight to reclaim what was taken from them. Though weakened, they remain deadly, and Rigante’s fury makes her perhaps more dangerous than her father ever was. The Night Masks, reborn under Kire’s cold leadership, grow stronger by the day.
Orbakh maintains distant oversight, but the management of his long game in Westgate rests in the hands of his vampire lieutenant. The Nine Golden Swords retain their power in Westgate’s east end, but the gang has long since traded the ideals of its founders for criminal pragmatism. The banner of heroes now flies over an empire of vice. The Eye of Justice plays all sides, their divine mandate long since buried under layers of corruption and self-interest.
They serve whoever fills their coffers, turning righteous judgment into the most lucrative of criminal enterprises. On the surface, Westgate endures. Corrupt, dangerous, and magnificent. Ships sail in, merchants trade, and the Croamarkh holds court. But beneath the surface in the shadows, the war for the city never truly stops. It merely pauses, waiting for new players to change the game. Each faction seeks capable hands to tilt the balance in their favor.
Into this web of power and violence come outsiders, adventurers drawn by coin, mystery, or destiny. Westgate watches their arrival with calculating eyes, each faction wondering the same thing. Whose side will they choose? The balance of power is never settled for long. Opportunity waits at every corner. The Gateway to the West is always hiring. Where will you stand when the shadows come for you?
