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Thieves' Quarter: A City Quarters Sourcebook
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Thieves’ Quarter
A City Quarters Sourcebook
by JD Wiker and Christopher West
Additional Design: Gary Astleford
Editing: Marc Schmalz & Rich Redman
Creative Direction: Stan!
Proofreading: Vincent Szopa
Art Direction: Stan!
Cartography: Christopher West
Credits
Layout and Typesetting: Marc Schmalz
Cover Artist: Clarence Harrison
Cover Design: Marc Schmalz &
Christopher West
Interior Artists: Toren “MacBin” Atkinson,
Clarence Harrison, & Pete Schlough
Requires the use of the Dungeons & Dragons ® , Third Edition Core Books, published by Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
This product utilizes updated material from the v.3.5 revision.
™
™
The Game Mechanics, Inc
P.O. Box 1125, Renton WA 98057
www.thegamemechanics.com
‘d20 System’ and the ‘d20 System’ logo are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast, Inc., a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc., and are used
according to the terms of the d20 System License version 6.0. A copy of this License can be found at www.wizards.com/d20.
D UNGEONS & D RAGONS ®, Dungeon Master®, and Wizards of the Coast® are registered trademarks of Wizards of the Coast, Inc.,
and are used with permission.
Thieves’ Quarter: A City Quarters Sourcebook ©2004 The Game Mechanics, Inc. All rights reserved.
For information on the designation of Open Game Content and Product Identity in this publication, refer to the OGL page.
T HE G AME M ECHANICS and The Game Mechanics logo are trademarks of The Game Mechanics, Inc. All rights reserved.
This material is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or unauthorized use of
the material or artwork contained herein is prohibited without the express written permission of The Game Mechanics, Inc.
This product is a work of i ction. Any similarity to actual people, organizations, places, or events is purely coincidental.
Made in the U.S.A.
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Contents
The City Quarters Series..............................................3
The History of Liberty.................................................3
Thieves’ Guild...........................................................11
Ponthis Krahl, Prodigal Noble...................................59
Starpa Rozimur, Slumming Scribe............................59
An Unwilling Slyss Dealer........................................63
The Cult of the Silent Heart.......................................65
The Kunarath Syndicate............................................65
About the Authors
JD Wiker is an Indianapolis native who has been professionally
designing games since 1995. While working as Customer Service
representative for Wizards of the Coast, JD designed material
for the Ars Magica roleplaying game and Vampire: Dark Ages . His
experience led to a change in jobs in 1998, when the roleplaying
game team at Wizards hired JD to write for the ledgling Alternity
line, including the Dark*Matter campaign setting. In late 1999,
JD began work on Wizards of the Coast’s Star Wars Roleplaying
Game , and he became the primary Star Wars RPG designer until
he left Wizards of the Coast in 2002. A few short weeks later, JD
began making plans with Rich Redman, Stan!, and Marc Schmalz
to create The Game Mechanics. JD continues to freelance for
Wizards of the Coast on such titles as the d20 Menace Manual
Christopher West has been doing professional cartography
work in the roleplaying industry for only a few years, but his
credits are extensive. His work irst appeared in print in Dungeon
Adventures #86, and has been featured in nearly every issue
since. Christopher’s other work in periodicals can be found in
Dragon Magazine , Star Wars Gamer , and Polyhedron , but he also
illustrated the maps and diagrams featured in the Power of the
Jedi sourcebook, published in 2002 by Wizards of the Coast.
Christopher holds a bachelor’s degree in Applied Media Arts from
Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, and lives in Northwestern
PA with his beloved wife Angela and their son Ethan.
About the Company
The Game Mechanics is a company dedicated to creating d20
gaming material that is as good as you’ve come to expect from
the industry leaders. Founders JD Wiker, Rich Redman, and Stan!
have a combined 23 years of experience working full-time in the
hobby games industry (22 of those years working on the Dungeons
& Dragons RPG for Wizards of the Coast). The idea for the
company sprang from conversations held in the wake of a series
of corporate layoffs, when the three designers, together with
former Wizards of the Coast web manager, Marc Schmalz, knew
the time was right to pool their combined knowledge and skills.
The Game Mechanics use their experience and expertise to
create and publish products whose quality meets the stringent
standards set by Wizards of the Coast and other top publishers.
Our designers’ names can already be found on the covers and
throughout the credits of many of the current top selling
roleplaying products—and you can expect to see the same level
of quality and attention to detail in every release from The
Game Mechanics.
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Introduction
The Thieves’ Quarter is not your typical fantasy setting. It is
not even typical of the rest of the City Quarters series. It is
brutal, dirty, dangerous, and unforgiving, just like its inhabitants.
The Thieves’ Quarter is the worst elements of human nature
concentrated into one dark, impoverished, crime-ridden area.
Don’t expect last-minute rescues or great heroics here. If one
gets in a tight spot in the Thieves’ Quarter, one has only one’s own
wits, relexes, and bravery upon which to rely. Of course, maybe
your heroes will be the exception: the irst to change the Thieves’
Quarter and not be changed by it. If you think your heroes are up
to its challenge, read on.
When designing fantasy cities, a certain school of thought
among Gamemasters asserts that, somewhere in each city,
regardless of how big or how small, there lurks a kind of
society of footpads, cutpurses, and burglars: a Thieves’ Guild.
Almost always located in the rough part of town and frequently
headquartered in a fortress-like building, the Thieves’ Guild
controls crime in the city and, more often than not, knows about
every illegal act, illicit pact, and secret plot going on. The head of
the Thieves’ Guild is often thought of as the “true ruler” there.
He can reach anyone in the city and either bribe, blackmail, or
extort that person into doing his bidding.
This book endeavors to take that concept a step further.
Thieves’ Quarter: A City Quarters Sourcebook provides a complete
mini-setting, full of cruel characters, vicious plots, murder,
thievery, and all manner of strange goings-on. This book describes
how the people of this quarter interact with one another and
with the rest of the city, serving as a springboard for an urban
campaign. Rather than the city being merely a place to buy
supplies and sell treasure, the city becomes a labyrinth of lies and
intrigue for the heroes to explore. The Thieves’ Quarter is, in
many ways, as dark, mysterious, and as dangerous as any lost tomb
or forgotten ruin.
Most importantly, the Thieves’ Guild itself is presented as a
realistic criminal organization. From its oficers to its footsoldiers,
the Thieves’ Guild in the city of Liberty is disturbingly eficient
and brutally effective, dealing in everything from stolen goods and
drug traficking to extortion and murder. In the Thieves’ Quarter
(and in various other parts of the city as well), the guild is the
ultimate authority, and even the city guard is reluctant to confront
them directly. What the Thieves’ Guild wants, it takes by whatever
means necessary, and its members care little for how many lives
they ruin in the process.
In these pages lurk true villains, just daring someone to
oppose them.
of the city as a whole, with its own rulers, laws, authorities,
customs, and commerce. The people of the quarter share more
than their neighborhoods: They are bound together by their social
conditions and ambitions, their rights and their resources. The City
Quarters series addresses each quarter as a distinct social entity,
detailing life in the quarter, the political and commercial structures,
and the places, people, and plots of interest.
The goal of the City Quarters series is to provide GMs with
complete mini-settings, which can be used wholesale or cherry-
picked for the parts that it best into the GMs own game world.
Although the quarters are linked to the maps and histories
provided with the sourcebook, the truly important elements—
the individual buildings, residents, and relationships—can be
mixed, matched, and rearranged however the GM likes. For
example, the Thieves’ Quarter described in this book functions
equally well in any setting, given a few minor tweaks and
adjustments.
Rather than simply supplying a random assortment of
locations and NPCs, the Thieves’ Quarter is also perfectly
serviceable as presented. The GM can drop the quarter, map and
all, into his designs for any fantasy city, building around it so that
the rest of the city conforms to the boundaries of the Thieves’
Quarter. Indeed, that is essentially the intent behind the entire City
Quarters series. The fantasy city of Liberty grows—both in size
and in the imagination—with each installment until, with the inal
book, the complete city becomes its own campaign setting.
The History of Liberty
The city of Liberty began as a convenient place for ishermen to
tie up their boats when the sea became too rough. Pirates soon
learned of the site and drove out the ishermen, converting it to a
hideout where they could winter safely. The more it was used, the
more pirates learned of it, and the more pirates who learned of it,
the larger it grew. The original few shanties became hovels, then
houses, then taverns, inns, and so on. Some pirates retired from
the seafaring life to take up permanent residence. In just a short
while, the place marked on pirate maps as “Cove Haven” became
an actual village, with merchants, craftsmen, and all the trappings
of a real settlement, albeit a settlement of pirates.
As the village grew into a town, the lawless nature of the place
began to take its toll. Some part of Cove Haven was always ablaze
due to one rivalry or another. Bandits, and even a few monsters,
drifted in from the surrounding countryside, took up residence,
and raided their neighbors as they pleased. A secretive order of
sorcerers and cultists established a temple on the hillside to the
south, and rumors about abductions and blood sacriices began
to surface. A bronze dragon had reputedly taken up residence
in a hidden cave further up the coast. Finally, one pirate captain
had had enough. After a nearby ire spread and destroyed his
The City Quarters Series
Many fantasy cities are divided into individual quarters, usually
along inancial or cultural boundaries. Each quarter is a microcosm
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Introduction
4
The City of Liberty
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