Baron Sharid

Baron Sharid, usually just "the Baron", is a red-skinned tiefling of The Barons' Council of Sandwater Slough, whose horns circle twice and whose back room, crossbow bolts included, is solid gold. The party knows him chiefly as "the Baron"; the Baron of Sandwater Slough is Sharid.

He first summoned the party after the Low Lantern flood, told them the guard Rainclaw had saved (Veskan) had died of his wounds, and leaned on them to recover a stolen golden envelope, suspecting a patron of The Ember Parlour (Naesha Proudcinder). When Rainclaw's rats smoke-bombed his office he blamed workers' rights protestors. He paid 120 gp each for the envelope's return and revealed that the party had passed a loyalty test by not opening it.

The envelope held his King in Yellow infernal contract. The Baron made the deal to save the city; he ended slavery but not indenture, and his gold is his leverage. He was in a press-gang when the dwarves vanished and remembers it. Deals of this kind are made through a five-foot, white-skinned devil. He believes the King in Yellow is defeated and that someone else now holds his contract; he has heard, though nothing proves it, that Asmodeus bought it. He wants the second copy destroyed, by a journey to The Iron City of Dis or through Heishen the Deathless at Fort Obsidian. With Marya Velcrow present he hired the party for 2,000 gp (plus a 1,000 gp "donation" to the Star Dancer) to clear the aberrations from the undercity.

Later he covered for Slick with McScrooge, managed the power vacuum left by the fall of Proudsimba alongside Maribel Tansa, gave the party magically protected keys to an abattoir in Marrowhook Yard for interrogations, withdrew his forces from the north to give them a free hand, and began "dealing with" traitors among the dragonborn, a culling he suggested and Slick supplied with poison. He withholds why Veskan died "until the party is more friendly". Rainclaw wants him dead.