Thief Stronghold – Baldur’s Gate II

This guide will walk you through the Thief Stronghold quests in Baldur’s Gate II.

Overview

After completing Renal Bloodscalp’s quest in the Docks District, he’ll give you control of Mae’var’s Guildhall (assuming you’re a thief). This will allow you to manage several thieves and their crews. To do this, you’ll need to talk to Jariel on the ground floor of the guildhall. He’ll describe your duties and allow you to issue instructions.

In a nutshell, you’ll be able to tell your thieves to take more chances or fewer chances. The riskier your instructions, the more money your crews will make, but the higher the chance that they’ll get caught and put in jail — which will require you to pay a small bribe to get them out.

The crews will give you their profits every five days. A couple days after that, Bloodscalp’s man Joster will show up in the guildhall (right next to Jariel) and wait for your quota. If you ignore him for more than five days, then he’ll leave empty-handed, and Bloodscalp will take the guildhall away from you. To get the guildhall back (if you want it back), you’ll have to visit Bloodscalp in the Shadow Thief Guildhall and pay him 4000 gp.

Note: The game will tell you when your crews have delivered their money and when it’s time to pay Joster.

Along with managing your thieves, you’ll also have to complete a pair of quests. You’ll learn about these quests from Lathan, who can be found in the same room as Jariel. The quests are described below.

Quest 1: Ama and the Night Knives

When you talk to Lathan for the first time, he won’t have anything for you to do, but at the end of your conversation, a woman named Ama will enter the room. She’ll claim to be the Shadowmaster of eastern Esmeltaran, and she’ll have a signet ring to prove it. She’ll demand that you help her deal with a troublesome politician in Waukeen’s Promenade at night. However, as soon as Ama leaves, Kamuzu (assuming you freed him from his cell while clearing out Mae’Var’s Guildhall) will reveal that Ama is really Mae’Var’s lover and probably wants you dead.

Note: If you exit the guildhall via the front entrance, then Brannel, your door guard, will also mention that Ama seems suspicious.

When you head over to Waukeen’s Promenade, it’ll become nighttime, and you’ll automatically move to Ama’s meeting place. Ama will be there, and she’ll tell you that the politician is on his way. She’ll also ask you to hide your weapons, but you’re not required to do this. A few seconds later, the “politician” Sir Greshal will arrive, a handful of muggers will appear, and Ama will reveal that you just walked into a trap set up by the Night Knives!

The battle should not be difficult, even though you’ll start out surrounded. You’ll earn 7600 xp for defeating the ambushers, and you’ll find a Mace +1 and some Poisoned Throwing Daggers on the corpses.

When you return to Lathan, he’ll be embarrassed about what happened. If you dismiss him, then you won’t receive the second quest. Otherwise, Lathan will immediately give it to you.

Quest 2: Kretor and the Skimming Thief

Lathan will inform you that your thief Kretor has been struggling with his payments because one of his crew members has been skimming off the top. Worse, you’ll learn that all of the other crew members know who’s responsible, but are keeping mum about it. You’ll be given a variety of options for how to deal with the problem, but they’ll come down to two possibilities:

• You can kill Kretor’s entire crew, or you can kill the wrong crew member, or you can let Kretor figure it out. For all of these cases, Kretor will quit, and you’ll lose his crew, which will reduce your profits for running the guildhall.
• If you kill the right crew member (Darronal Gwin II), or if you dock the crew’s pay (which will cause them to eliminate the skimmer for you), then Kretor’s crew will return to normal.

That’s it for the thief stronghold. If you don’t want to keep schlepping back to the guildhall every few days to deal with payments, then after completing the two quests, you can just ignore (and lose) the guildhall, and you won’t miss anything.

Note: If you side with Bodhi in her dispute with the Shadow Thieves, then you’ll lose the guildhall.