Waterdeep: Dragon Heist

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"Well, I don't mean to make you feel uncomfortable. I'd like to get to know you mostly for my own curiosity. I've no real loyalties to the Watch, I'm simply assigned to assist them on occasion." He nodded in agreement a few times as Alveron went on about their concerns. At the idea of shopping he looked down at his old leathers and agreed that an upgrade would be nice if he was going to join them on a mission.
 
After Alveron and Biz rejoin the group, Renaer encourages you all to get a move on, both for Floon's sake and because there is a 'high concentration of wealth in a rather shady district' as he put it. He joins you to the edge of the Dock Ward where he hired a private carriage for the day to cart him around, leaving you with the knowledge that he'll be joining Volo at the Yawning Portal until he's heard from you on Floon's fate.

As the carriage pulls away, you're able to hail a cart, the driver of which refuses to make change for your dragon. After several minutes of unsuccessful haggling, you pay the drastic over charge and he carts you all the way across the city to the Trade Ward. There you're able to bank some of your new funds in a joint account, break some of your coinage into easier denominations, sell of some of your excess gear from the two members of the party currently heading to sentencing in the Castle Ward, and find the time to stop by a leather working shop and bow makers for armor and arrows.

Finally, about three hours after leaving the Dock Ward, you hail a new cart which returns you to Candle Lane. At the end of the lane, after some searching you find a circular metal cover inset in the pavement. Lifting the cover reveals a ladder down into the sewers. There is no natural light in the sewers, but those with dark vision can see a putrid stream which flows along the sewer tunnel and leads in two directions. In each direction, you see a tiny symbol drawn on the wall: a palm sized circle with ten equidistant spokes radiating out from its circumference.

As Tristan casts light on a coin and holds it out to illuminate the area, it is easy to see that the symbol to the right is drawn in yellow chalk, to the left it is drawn in a red chalk. After a short discussion you all decide to follow the yellow chalk as the kenku had instructed. After an hour of following signs through the tunnels, you come to a three-way intersection where a ladder leads up into a stone shaft capped by a circular metal cover. One of the familiar chalk symbols is marked on a wall nearby, and floating near the symbol is a spherical, grapefruit-sized creature with a bulging central eye and four stumpy eye-stalks. It bares its teeth at you.

Alveron quickly draws her bow, rounding the corner and taking up a perch further back the intersecting tunnel. She drew an arrow, awaiting to loose it for the opportune moment. The creature, like an underdeveloped beholder, focused an eye stalk on Alveron, an icy ray springing forth, but the spry rogue dodged out of the way. At the same time a second stalk turned its gaze on Tristan, locking eyes for a moment; a wave of fear began to rush over the cleric, but he deftly pushed the terror from his mind and approached the small beast. Summoning Wuakeen's holy radiance does little to the surprisingly stout creature, as Alveron's arrow passes wide over his shoulder. Biz attempted to insult the gazer, but his insult fell flat as the creature twittered and chirped incoherently in response. With the others in the fray, Yorin roars with rage and moves to cleave the many eyed aggressor. In his haste, his blade misses its mark. Alveron looses a second arrow, which pierces the central eye down to the fletchings. The beast wails in a high pitched voice, and bursts into a harmless cloud of smoke and shadow which quickly dissipates.

On the wall, another yellow chalk marker indicates the appropriate direction for you to continue. Behind you, the ladder leads up to a circular metal cover. Without the distraction of the gibbering creature, Alveron takes a moment to look up, recognizing a mark on the underside of the metal cover, thieves' cant carved in with a stone or knife, it reads Safe Rest.
 
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As you travel on, eventually the sewer narrows to a small path just wide enough to pass, every so often another yellow sigil tells you that you're traveling the correct path. Yorin's keen senses are put to good use watching for traps, but he doesn't find more than a little trash in the sewage which might have made some noise if stumbled over. Finally, the main sewer tunnel expands into a circular hub with a pair of arrow slits carved into its outer walls, directly across from each other. Tow passages continue on to the north and south. A stone door is set into the back wall of a stone ledge to the west. East of the door, Alveron spots a seam in the wall, a hidden door. And further to the south, there's another, narrow tunnel may provide ingress or egress.
 
Curious but wary, Tristan tosses the illuminated coin through one of the arrow slits to see what's behind it. Unfortunately this action rouses a goblin to attack and it nearly kills Tristan with a single shot through a chink in his armor. The sudden searing pain and quick loss of blood causes Tristan to lose his footing and fall into the muck of the sewer.
 
Biz saw a small amount of movement through the slit as the glowing coin flew inside. He instictively cast sleep to try to keep himself and his new companions safe. It didn't seem to work when an arrow slammed into Tristan's side, knocking him to the ground. Biz went over and saw Yorin attacking through another slit and he shouted "How dare you fire on my companion, you sniveling twat," and he allowed a bit of energy to go out with the words, and he heard the goblin fall from his spell. He went over to find that Alveron had stabalized Tristan, and he cast healing word to bring him back to his feet.
 
Moving through the sewers, Alveron crinkled her nose from the smell. Her attention was caught for a moment by something along the wall, only to watch Tristan toss his glowing coin through a slit in the wall -- leading to a noise of surprise and the newest group member of the party casting something. Soon after Alveron barely saw Tristan slump to the ground with an arrow sticking out of him. Fumbling in her pack she reached for the newly purchased healer's kit, with an internal groan -- they didn't expect this to be useful so soon!

Attempting to move closer to the downed cleric, she pulled out her lantern so she could try to see before managing to try and deal with the arrow, then kept herself low incase more arrows came. Seeing Yorin -- though more hearing him with his growl -- move further away and proceed to smash doors, she followed, her bow drawn in case there were any new surprises. As she followed, under the familiar growl of Yorin she heard more noises coming from below.

Continuing to follow she saw the sleeping goblins, where Yorin had proceeded to easily kill one, and reached to her new bandolier and slit the remaining one's throat with ease. As the others followed in, she whispered and pointed down the stairs, "There's more below -- can potentially try to draw them to us if I toss a ballbearing." Returning the dagger to her belt she collected a few coins from the goblins and an arrow that seemed reasonable.
 
Yorin snarled, trying to ignore the foul stench of the sewer as they trekked through. He watched as the cleric fiddled with his magical glowing coin, tossing it into the room, and was almost instantly impaled with an arrow. Yorin growled and dashed forward, noting the strange opening in the wall and hurling a javelin through the gap at Tristan’s attacker. After seeing the goblin fall to Biz’s magic, Yorin set to work on getting to the other two goblins, taking down two doors before cleaving the sleeping creature in two. He let out a low growl as his primal fury ceased and turned to Alveron with a shrug. “Lay the trap as you see fit.” He grabbed a scrap of the goblin’s clothing and wiped viscera off of his axe’s blade.
 
After Alveron attempted her strategy of baiting out any foes with the sound of a ball bearing, Yorin strained his keen senses to see if he could hear any sort of reaction. The voices he heard sounded strange and unnatural, as if they were echoing off of something. "No, no! You gotta stick the cloth under the door so it don't seep out!" Yorin raised an eyebrow at the strange conversation, feeling the odd sensation that he recognized the man's voice. Regardless, he decided to risk a peek into the hallway and confirmed that there was no one in the room ahead. He turned back to the group and spoke in a low growl."People talking aren't nearby. Voices are traveling through sewer. Voice... I feel like I know the man, but can't be sure. Talking about using cloth to keep something from 'seeping'?" Yorin scratched his head, unsure what they were actually talking about.
 
Tossing the small metal sphere, Alveron prepared herself for anything to approach and be ready to fire, only for Yorin to turn back and speak. She frowned as she slowly moved forward to collect the sphere and investigate the area ahead, only to begin to hear the voices as well.

Moving into the next room she saw six mattresses, but heard two voices -- one dwarvish and one that, like Yorin had said, sounded familiar. Thinking back on those they'd heard recently, she returned to the group, "I don't have many ideas on 'seeping', but the one voice is that thug from the bar fight earlier today -- the guy who went after the half-orc. I think someone called him Krentz?" She glanced towards Biz, "Kind of where our day started before we got asked to find Floon and the rest of this."

Tossing the bearing in her hand for a moment she continued, "Looking at how the other room is placed and roughly where things line up, if my mental map is right ... I think it might be wise to investigate another door I saw before, on the other side of the passageway. It could be a back door into the room they're in, and given that it was hidden, doubt they expect anyone to use it. Plus, there were six mattresses in there, and as far as I know, we've only killed three." Alveron looked over the group, waiting for their own ideas on how to move forward -- it didn't sound like time was on their side.
 
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Making your way back passed the messy room and out into the sewer once more, you travel south to a smaller, narrow tunnel. Traversing the tunnel takes time and constricts your movement, but it's not so long or tight that it prevents you from passing with some effort. Alveron reaches the door, from this side, a simple wooden door with a visible track and a simple rope tied to a wooden nob to make the door easier to pull to one side.

Pulling the rope, slides the door effortlessly in the track, but makes a slight scraping noise as rough wheel turns. Opening the door reveals a cellar with two adjoining store rooms and stairs leading up. The cellar itself contains very little in the way of contents, two larger boxes with the lids ajar and the false shelf that acts as a door. In the southern storeroom, boxes and barrels. In the northern store room, barrels and a small humanoid rat man brandishing a short sword and clearly displeased.
 
Biz followed along after looking around through the room full of oddly shaped armors. He watched as the group went into the narrow passage, opened the door, and immediately decided that it was not where they wanted to be. He caught sight of the small rat man, and had a moment of animalistic desire to kill it, but he's been successfully suppressing those feelings for most of his life. He allowed everyone past him and followed into the next room, noticing the Xanithar Guild sign. "We may want to proceed with caution," he whispers, gesturing toward the scrawled symbol.
 
Moving back out into the main area, the group decided to check out a small hallway that seemed to lead to something, only for that something to be a small wererat. Alveron locked eyes with the creature for a moment before sighing, looking back at the group, then the wererat, "Look, I was curious, I pulled a thing, honestly, we're here for things that aren't you. Can we just close this and forget it happened?"

Inside the room Roscoe bared his teeth, "You go. Roscoe forgets you. You forget cellar. You live."

Nodding with a wave, Alveron turned and began to usher the group back out, closing the door behind her. "Not really in the mood to deal with that ... and we were sent here to try and find Floon anyway."

Leading the group across the passageway she opened a hidden door that led into a small hallway before stairs led down into a room with the symbol from earlier. Recognizing it, Alveron whispered back, "So ... would this maybe be a good time to look like one of their guild members? Unfortunately all the ones I've 'met' so far have been dead, so I don't know what codes and such they have -- but at the same time, there's been a pretty severe lack of any scrawled messages since we got to this part of the sewers."
 
"Just a second," Tristan says to the group as he ducks down a side door. Looking around the small room, he sees a dead goblin and a javelin lying on the floor next to an arrow slit peering out into the sewer tunnel. Tristan performs a cursory search for valuables and then rejoins the rest of the party, now carrying an extra 6 nibs and Yorin's javelin.
 
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As Alveron pushes open the door, she finds a large room. Threadbare curtains hang on the east wall of the long hall, in the middle of which a muscular half-orc in dingy robes stands with his foot on the chest of a male human with wavy red-blond hair. Fire burns around the orc's clenched fist, and his victim lies limp and helpless beneath him.

Seated on a raised platform to the south is a nightmarish figure wearing black robes. It has large, white eyes and rubbery purple skin with four tentacles encircling its in-human mouth. It cradles and gently caresses what looks like a disembodied brain with feet.
 
Opening the door slowly, Alveron drew a dagger from her bandolier, finding a concerning sight before her -- the half-orc standing above the man they could only assume at this point to be Floon.

As Biz and Tristan made their strikes, she noticed the half-orc seemed barely standing, and with the glow that now coated him, it was easy to throw her dagger, slicing easily into the side of his head as he turned. Hesitating as he toppled over, she moved to Floon, checking him over, seeing he was stable for the most part, but clearly very battered, bleeding from his ears -- similar to the half orc.

With a sigh she began studying the half-orc, since he potentially might be useful later on, and glanced towards where the other creature had fled. Pulling out her healer's kit she started trying to clean up some of Floon's injuries, "So ... we found Floon at least. Any idea what the hell that other thing was? Should we ... go after it too?"
 
Biz saw the large green creature standing over a body, and became so enraged that he shouted, "Get off him, you gollumpus!" As he did so, he strummed a note on the viol he kept strapped to his belt that intoned his words with magic. The insult seemed to cause the half-orc to reel slightly, allowing for his new allies to finish him off. He saw the odd purple skinned fellow and his brain companion take off, but was more concerned with ensuring that the victim was alright. He seemed to be stable, so Biz looked around for a few minutes, not really wanting to try to give chase to anyone who spent time in the company of ambulatory brains.
 
Stuck behind the crowd as Alveron opened the door to a scene of violence, Tristan ran to open the other door. As he threw it open he whispered a word of magic and sent a bolt of divine radiance hurling toward the half orc's head. As the creature stumbled back, apparently surprised to find itself still alive, the magic bolt dissolved into a shower of dazzling motes. The look of confusion on the half orc's face didn't last long, as Alveron stabbed it in the head.

With the orc dead and the other monster vanished somewhere, Tristan begins to look around the room. In all he finds: what appears to be a wizard's spell book, 16 dragons, 82 shards, 250 nibs , and two glass vials of unidentified liquid. Popping one open to smell, he quickly identifies them as potions of healing.
 
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Kicking open the door, Alveron had her bow ready, only to see a surprised looking Krentz and find herself pushed aside as Tristan stomped through to join the fray.

Moving into the room and into a corner to prevent anything sneaking up on her, she aimed for the dwarf, only to miss while the rest of the group took their strikes -- then a strange blob-like creature entered from under the door and took a swipe at her allies, namely Tristan who once more found himself on the floor. Taking a few shots with her bow at the creature it fell apart while the dwarf disappeared in the confusion.

Rushing over quickly, she began to pull out her healer's kit once more, only to remember the potions Tristan had found -- digging through his pockets she found one and dumped it in his mouth, bringing him back awake and healed.

She sighed as she looked around, "Well ... this has definitely been weird. Not sure where the dwarf went, but I think it's time we collect the tabaxi and Floon and get out of here. Well, and collect the ballbearings I put in the other hallway."
 
Tristan grins as he runs into melee range with Krentz and the duergar, only to be knocked down almost immediately by a massive gray jelly thing that suddenly emerges from under the crack of the door. The impact knocks him unconscious and the acid left on contact with the gray ooze begins to corrode his beautiful golden armor.

When he is revived he sees Krentz and the ooze dead, and the duergar nowhere to be found. Seeing his lustrous armor pitted and scarred from the acid fills Tristan with cold rage. With no living enemy around he is reduced to mutilating Krentz's corpse to work out his anger. He stomps on the head several times, fracturing the skull and drowning any facial features in a pool of blood and bone. "None of this would've happened if you'd kidnapped the right $&*%T^ person!" Tristan shouts. Still unsatisfied Tristan takes his mace and swings wildly to crush the corpse into a rag doll, beyond the possibility of recognition, hurling invective all the while.

Eventually he sighs and shakes his head. "Whatever cost isn't covered by looting Xanathar, I'm billing to Neverember..." He opens the door from which the ooze sprang, only to find an empty lavatory.
 
As Alveron kicked down the door to the room, Yorin barreled into the room with a howl, embracing his bestial nature as the coarse hair that covered his body sprouted, and his canines elongated to long, dagger-like blades. With a single blow, he split Krentz’s skull with his axe, although he was far from satisfied with the strength of the strike. He whirled back around to face the now enormous dwarf in the corner and pounced forward, snapping his long fangs at him, but failing to gain purchase. He felt a thrill of anticipation as he prepared to fight his giant enemy, barely registering the cries of his ally as he fell to the oozy opponent. Suddenly, the dwarf disappeared. Yorin moves to hunt him down, but paused as he reached the door and glanced back at his allies. With a low snarl, he stopped and guarded the door while Alveron helped Tristan up. As Tristan pulverized the body, Yorin growled to Alveron. “Short fat coward. Should have fought like man.” He aggressively holstered his axe on his back as his features slowly returned to normal.
 
His new allies find Biz trembling behind the curtain. "Uh... our squid-faced friend and his gross dog came back..." he mumbled as he tried to regain his senses. He stood up, checking on Floon once again before he walked over to the stone and the inky black portal that was created by it. He pulled the stone out of the pole in hopes that it would keep reinforcements from coming to meet their crew. He pocked the black stone, noting that it was like a key to this portal. "We should get him out of here, now." Biz's hands continued to shake slightly as he speaks.
 
Having gone to check the ball bearings in the hallway from before and noted the path through them, Alveron nodded, "I assume they're the ones who ran through my pseudo-trap." She grinned, "May have pissed them off given that I'm pretty sure one of them tripped."

Alveron watched with interest as the tabaxi messed with the strange portal and the stone, "I agree -- think we've found all we're going to down here, and it's time to get our reward for this pretty boy." She glanced between Tristan and Yorin, "Which of ya' is gonna carry him? I'm the least worn of us all, I can try to scout ahead and make sure no one's comin' back to check on things down here, and if they are, I can try to deal with 'em quick."
 
Yorin grunted to Alveron and bodily threw the man over his shoulder. "I'll carry him. Weak creatures here were hardly a threat, besides rat man. Smell was the worst enemy. Pretty man is not a burden." He shifted the weight of the man slightly to make him a little easier to carry before looking to Alveron. "You can scout if you want. Good fortune on your hunt." He gave her a small nod, eager to escape the foul place.
 
Tristan finishes wiping the gore from his mace onto the curtain and turns to the party. "Hey, watchman," Tristan says as he walks over to Biz, "let me see that stone a minute. I want to know if it's worth anything."
 
Following the group out of the sewers through the tunnel and into a cellar, Alveron glanced over the writing that caught her eye, but not recognizing the language. Always eager to potentially add a language to their resources, she copied a few of the words onto a spare page to investigate later, then continued forward up the stairs to listen at the door. Hearing some conversation, she slowly pushed the door open, finding herself looking at a short hallway, two doors closed but one with the conversation behind it -- was that ... two women...? A woman and a child? This seemed like a normal household from the cellar, so that probably wasn't too far off. Attempting to move quietly she went to approach the silent door, hoping to find an exit for the group without too much fuss...
 
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