Waterdeep : Dragon Heist

After the fast-paced excitement of Hope's Last Day, we slowed things down a little and returned to D&D 5e. We did not play in our usual Saltmarsh campaign, but went back to 2nd level to start a new campaign in Waterdeep. Again, we were six players and a DM until around half-way through when a couple of the players had to head off home.

Characters - I will update as and when I can...

G : Wizard - (left early)

J : Fighter - (left early)
Erlathan Sylmaer (Ranger)
Rexius Trannyth (Bard)
Zorrion Oakwood (Rogue)
Theratis Wyrmsbane (Cleric)

The new campaign module - Waterdeep

We had been travelling through the Troll Swamps for several days, cold, tired, hungry and in need of a good rest, when lights were spotted in the distance. We had, at last, arrived at our destination - the town of Waterdeep.

The first tavern we came to was the Yawning portal, where we grabbed a table and some well-deserved food and ale. Whilst enquiring about the massive hole in the middle of the floor, which was rumoured to be an entrance to the underworld, or maybe just the sewers depending upon you outlook, a bar-room brawl broke out. The well-oiled machine of the City Watch came in, crashed a few heads together, and carted off the guilty parties. As we enquired about getting work, the barkeep pointed us in the direction of a fellow named Volo, a writer and purveyor of books about monsters, at the far end of the bar, but before we could get there, a troll and a flock of stirges emerged from the aforementioned deep hole.

The barkeep kept the troll at bay whilst we eliminated the stirges and then we returned to help with the troll, but the majority of the tavern's patrons had left quickly by the door. Volo, the only other person who did not leave the tavern, noticed our competence and offered us a job as we looked like we could handle ourselves in a tight pinch. We were to track down a chap named Flum Blagma, who was kidnapped a few nights ago.

Our enquiries took us to a variety of places and we were able to pick up a few clues; Flum was with the younger Lord Neverember on the night of his disappearance, both were dressed the same, Neverember left the tavern before Flum, both were followed by people in black robes as they left the establishment, Flum was accosted by the Xantharum crew. At one point during our investigations, we noticed three ruffians watching us. We followed them only to come across the results of an alleyway skirmish, but we were ushered away by the Watch.

At the docks we gathered a few more clues; the Xantharum crew marked their properties with a yellow chalked eye symbol. Looking around we found an old warehouse that bore that symbol. Opposite the warehouse was a little curiosity shoppe, where we managed to get more details of the kidnapping after purchasing a few trinkets from the proprietor. So, we recrossed the street and entered the premises, the gate was unlocked after all, to look around.

Our rogue picked the lock on the main door and we slid inside only to find the main warehouse room to be full of boxes, crates, and a dozen dead Xantharum cultists. From the bodies we managed to procure a few weapons and a bag of silver coins, but we were interrupted by three small creatures (Kenku). The bird-like kidnappers yelled out that there was nothing to fear, but our wizard responded to their obvious ruse by yelling back that of course we had nothing to fear from budgie smugglers. The melee was short and bloody.

The budgie smugglers (Kenku)

A search of the rooms in the upper storey of the premises didn't reveal much except a paper origami bird, a pouch of gold coins, thousands of shipping rosters and a couple of alarm bells (we snipped their chords).

We returned downstairs to investigate the only room left - the one under the stairs. The small room was full of linen and rugs etc. under which we found Renier Neverember. The Xantharum cultists had taken him instead of Flum due to a case of mistaken identity. As a reward, he gave us a key that didn't fit any of the rooms in the warehouse, but we pocketed it anyway. At this point, the ever vigilant City Watch had been called and had filed into the warehouse to investigate what was going on. We explained all that had happened and the leader upon hearing that we wanted to find Flum gave us directions to a sewer entrance and a bag of Healing potions - he said that we would need them.

We entered the sewer system via a marked entrance in Shark Street. We splashed along a corridor and stopped at a junction with a large column that supported the roof and a couple of arrow slits. To the north-west was a ledge with a stone door.

We managed to duck under the arrow slits and get to the door without being shot full of arrows and bolts, and found that the key that Renier Neverember gave us turned the lock.

After passing through an obvious armoury we arrived at one of the rooms that held an arrow slit overlooking the sewer outside. The sleeping goblin that was supposed to be on guard was quietly dispatched. Moving along further we came to a small barracks room with another sleeping guard. He too was quietly dealt with, as was the grey ooze that had previously taken a couple of goblins for supper.

The final room was fairly long with a raised dais at the end. In the centre of the room, an orc was torturing Flum whilst being watched by what appeared to be a Mind Flayer and an Intellect Devourer. We froze in horror knowing how powerful such beings were, but after a few moments the Mind Flayer left the room via a wall covering/curtain.

The sewers of Waterdeep

The sewers of Waterdeep from a different perspective

The melee was brief, with the end result being that the orc was defeated and the Intellect Devourer was stamped under foot by the ranger. Flum was untied and rescued. A quick look around the room revealed a small chest behind the throne on the dais that contained a number of coins and a few potions of Healing. Behind the curtain was revealed a room with a hovering sphere with ten rays radiating from it. We just noticed that the Mind Flayer from the previous room had just fiddled with a stone and disappeared into a void that the process opened. We did not follow.

We returned to the Yawning Portal tavern and handed Flum over to Volo. Volo skirted the issue of our payment until we demanded it of him, but all he could promise was a run-down three-storey building in Troll Skull Alley. We were not happy but accepted it none-the-less, but were pleased when the notary sorting out the deal mentioned that when done up it could be worth a lot more than the gold we were offered for the job.

The following day we paid a visit on Lord Neverember to check in on Renier who we rescued, but no reward was forthcoming. The City Watch also only passed a few coins our way and thanked us for our diligent work as we told them about the sewer complex and what we had seen.

At this point two of our players had to leave.

Over the next few weeks we began to renovate our new house and discovered that the origami bird was a magical device where we could write a message on it, say the recipients name and it would deliver the message to them and return once read.

One day we got a knock at the door from the City Watch requesting that we attend the High Magistrate immediately. Upon arrival we are ushered into the High Magistrate's presence to be told that one of the other magistrates has been turned in to a rat and she was needed back urgently. We would need to head to the graveyard to recover a staff that could accomplish this.

We left straight away, the lure of 500 gold crowns being quite the enticer, and eventually found the Lord Greyforce mausoleum in the out of town graveyard. We opened the iron gated entrance and entered the tomb to discover a number of urns and a large stone coffin dedicated to the great wizard Nashblack. We slid the top off the coffin aside and climbed down the spiral staircase within.

At the bottom of the staircase was a large room, in the centre of which was a pedestal with the letters N, E, S and W written on raised disks at the appropriate cardinal points. Our rogue pressed down onto the S disk and was immediately transported off somewhere. Not wanting to be left behind, we all followed suit despite not knowing whether he had just been disintegrated for his troubles.

We ended up in a dark room with a large stone statue holding a sword and shield. This came to life as we approached it and we had to fight for our lives to overcome the guardian. We eventually defeated it and it crumbled to dust revealing a disc with a zig-zag design on it, which we picked up. Two doors were also revealed upon the guardian's defeat.

We exited the northern door only to find ourselves in a similar situation, only there were two statues this time. Again we fought the guardians and caused them to crumble revealing another graven disk and two more doors.

As we were now very badly battered and in need of recovery, we took a long rest and decided to carry on once we had recovered our strength.

After our rest we went through the north door of this chamber as the south door didn't open. The next room revealed another stone statue, as did a fourth room - an encounter with a stone Beholder. We now had four discs with varying symbols on them and knew how the chambers and doors worked.

Within the tomb

After we exited the fourth room with the Beholder statue we ended up back in the first chamber with the N, E, S, W pedestal. We deduced that the discs we had picked up in the other rooms would need to be placed upon the pedestal in the correct order. We gathered they were relevant to each direction and guessed first time - the pedestal began to grate its way open to reveal another descending spiral staircase.

The chamber at the bottom of this staircase was almost identical to the one above except the symbols on its pedestal were linked to the elements, and there were four mirrors in the room; one at each cardinal point.

As we had the gist of what was going on by now, we looked into the first mirror and got transported to a small room containing an air elemental. We fought this being, and like before, when it was defeated, a small white/grey disc appeared on the floor and a mirror appeared on the north wall. We headed on straight through the mirror and encountered an earth elemental. This fight took most of our strength so we took another long rest before continuing onwards with our newly found green/brown disc.

After our recuperation we stepped to the next mirror only to find that the room beyond contained a small earth elemental. We fought this being but got no disc for our troubles. A quick think resulted in us working out what had happened; the rooms had all begun to regenerate their defeated occupants and  had moved round ninety degrees. We fought our way through the last of the elemental rooms to collect the rest of the four discs and got transported back to the first mirrored room with the pedestal. 

Again, we put the discs onto the pedestal in the correct order and the plinth opened to reveal a golden staff. We picked up the staff, wedged open the pedestal just in case and climbed the staircase out of there. We then passed through the upper chamber and emerged back into the crypt.

Pleased with ourselves, we left the crypt in a joyful mood, only to bump into a bent-over wizard with a rat in a cage. The old man, who was familiar to us from somewhere, asked us for the sceptre so that he could change the rat back to a person again. We naively handed over the sceptre and the old wizard duly slammed it onto the ground and released the rat from the cage. The rat turned into a dark-haired male individual, not a female as we were told, and snapped the neck of the wizened man. He then demanded our subservience and, to our shame, we all cowered in fear except for our Ranger who fought the charlatan. We each eventually overcame our fear and joined the melee, and finally defeated the black-haired man by weight of numbers. We reclaimed the staff and two potions of Healing, a pouch of coins and two small candles from the old man's knapsack. After hiding the bodies, we headed back into town to see the High Magistrate.

It turned out that the real High Magistrate, the woman who had supposedly been turned into a rat, had been out of town for a short period of time and that we had been hoodwinked into getting the staff. The old fellow was her scribe but she was unaware who the other man was. She asked us to return the staff to where it came from and that as a reward we could keep anything we found in the scribe's house. This turned out to be a rather splendid magical short sword, a magical quill and ink well and a gold ring with an emerald in it. There was also a ledger detailing more about the family Nashblack.