Under New Ownership
4 Tarsakh 1492, Waterdeep
Companions:
- Aurora Moonwhisper, an elven ranger
- Casindra “Casi” Naïlo, a half-elf warlock
- Devotion, a tiefling cleric
- Lekslufer Biswell, a half-elf rogue
- Phelan Bloodwave, a half-elf druid
- Popdaka “Pop” Veinfinder, a dwarven paladin
- Thava Norixius, a dragonborn sorcerer
- Thokk, a half-orc monk
I was too full of thoughts and ideas to get much sleep that night, and even before the sun had crested the horizon, I left Casi in our shared room to venture down to the common room of the Yawning Portal. I settled down at what I had come to think of as “our” table near both the stage and the Well, drawing out the leather-bound journal I had selected to record this very tale and penned the preceding pages with great haste. As I glance over my shorthand notes scribbled throughout the last several hours, I lament again that I really do need to research a spell which allows me to dictate entries as I go, that I might record my observations more fully as I witness them. Instead, I find I must wait hours later to attempt to translate my scratchings: I pen this now while my companions scour our current location for clues, and I might be missing an opportunity to help them interpret or contextualize their findings.
Perhaps I should lay down this pen and check for myself the journals left by the creator of this magnificent magical mansion, for she seems to have been a prolific writer of observations
Morning Repast
Having fervently worked to document the events of the previous night, I took a moment to order a spread to feed my companions when they finally joined me.
The first to come downstairs were Renaer Neverember and Floon Blagmaar, the younger man still looking haunted by his ordeal but appearing to bear no physical marks from the encounter thanks to the healing potions he was given. A bath and a change of clothes had done Floon a great deal of good, but I suspect Renaer felt that a return to his home and family would do far more to help Floon recover than any amount of sleep in an unfamiliar bed at a common inn. Renaer paused only long enough to ask me the address of the tavern our party was being gifted—Saerdoun and Thunderstaff—then he and Floon were out the door and into the bright morning.
Shortly after, the tavern door opened again, admitting the dragonborn sorceress Thava, and the wayward elves, Aurora and Phelan. All looked disheveled and perhaps a little sleep-deprived—Aurora less of the latter, for being of full elven blood, she could get by on fewer hours of reverie than could others sleeping the “usual” way—and appeared to have had a long and difficult night. Rather than asking any questions of them, I simply gestured to the food which was still being brought out from the kitchen—I had ordered plenty, but I was surprised at the bounty which was arriving—and invited them to help themselves.
Aurora and Phelan fell upon the food like wolves, which given what I vaguely knew of them, was less surprising than it would have been from anyone else.
Thava was more graceful and gracious in helping herself to the meal. “Did Casi find her way?”
I nodded. “She did! She’s asleep in my room upstairs. She made her way through the sewer on her own and caught up to us just in time to help rescue Floon Blagmaar.” Sensing her next line of questions, I then assured her that all the rest of our group were well, thanks in no small part to Devo’s divine gifts and the potions Renaer had helped us to locate in the warehouse. Next, I caught her up on Volo’s deception regarding his ability to pay our reward as-promised, which came as no great surprise to the sorceress.
Around that time, the rest of our troupe began to trickle into the common room, joining Thava, “the wolf cubs”, and I in breaking our fast. Givran, the tiefling waiter who was tending to our meal, ensured our mugs never remained empty, and I wondered if a certain red-headed nobleman was behind the extra generosity we were being shown: he had clearly made arrangements with the staff to secure a bath and a change of clothing for Floon, after all, and in the short time of our acquaintance, he struck me as the type who didn’t mind using the influence of his title for mild conveniences, though he likely chafed at the greater implications of that same influence.
By the time the entire party was at last gathered in the common room and helping themselves to the food—which had never stopped being replenished by Givran—ten bells had tolled from the distant tower at the church of Gond, and Volo was to be expected at any moment. I was just explaining Renaer and Floon’s departure when Volothamp Geddarm made his appearance, this time dressed in a dark maroon variation of his usual outfit with his ever-present—and extra-dimensional—floppy hat.
“Good morn to all!” Volo greeted us brightly. “A dear friend of mine has helped me to secure the services of a dray to carry the whole lot of us north to the Trades Ward, that you might inspect your new property for yourselves. I’ve already arranged a meeting at high sun with a magistrate for the transfer of the title, so we should make all haste.”
There was a bit of grumbling as those who hadn’t yet eaten their fill complained about the interruption, but after some shuffling—and likely the stuffing of cheeks and filling of pockets—we filed out of the Yawning Portal Tavern and into the waiting dray, a double-decker carriage pulled by a team of four large horses. A dray is not a speedy mode of transport, but one would not want it to be: stops are frequent on Waterdeep’s busy streets, and since a dray can carry as many as fourteen passengers at once, stopping a carriage so heavily burdened could prove dangerous at more than walking speed.
This dray was privately-hired, however, so there were no stops on our route north along the great wide High Road, which was predictably bustling by this late in the morning, further slowing the already plodding rate of the dray. Nevertheless, the greater benefit of us all riding within the confines of the dray meant no surprise detours by the easily distractible among our ranks. Conversation was relatively subdued given the late night we’d all had, and the dray turned onto Delzorin Street with little conversation of note, though I admittedly found myself drifting a little as the carriage swayed soothingly over the cobbles of Waterdeep’s streets.
Trollskull Tavern
Our carriage stopped in front of an overgrown building with several boarded-over windows and a number of cracked, broken, or missing roof tiles. There was little remarkable about the architectural style, to my knowledge: there were hundreds of buildings like it throughout Waterdeep, and it was constructed with the usual tan clay brick crafted east of the city, along the muddy banks of the Dessarin River. I was fairly certain the masonry was imported from Mirabar, having passed through that city on my journey back to Waterdeep from the east, which marked the structure as having been constructed at least two hundred years ago: masonry from Mirabar used to be fairly common back then, and is becoming so again now that High Captain Kurth is restoring peace to Luskan. I couldn’t begin to guess at the source of the timbers: Waterdeep imported wood from all over the Sword Coast North, and the druids and rangers who protect those forests often have agreements with the loggers that their cutting operations are always transitory.
I shaded my eyes against the morning light as I looked upward, noting the northwest-facing turret and its many windows—what a lovely reading room that would make!—when I noticed a number of rusted and broken pipes jutting out from the walls just below the roofline. Though the building was three stories tall on this side, it had a fourth story—or perhaps an attic—on the northeast side of the building!
It’s rather unusual to see pipes on the outside of buildings in Waterdeep, however, as this is a very cold climate. I wonder, if perhaps these pipes were a late addition to the structure and if, perhaps, that misunderstanding of the climate is the reason why they are broken.
Volo led the way up onto the covered porch, picking his way carefully for the steps were slick with morning dew and the lack of handrails offered no assurance of safety. A number of the porch flagstones were cracked, pitted, and stained, and mildew, mold, and other growths took advantage of the shade provided by the overhanging upper floor.
One of two keys on a ring opened the door into the tavern, and the hinges groaned as the door swung open to reveal a taphouse in a sorry state: dust, cobwebs, broken, furniture, and a scuffed wooden floor. Here and there was also a wooden stain I dearly hoped came from spilled wine, rather than another substance of the same color. Nearly all of the furniture was ruined, save for a single battered stool in front of the scratched bar. A dented pitcher and stein rest on the bar in front of the stool, suggesting this is where Volo did much of his study of spirits of the not-so-supernatural variety.
The support pillar at the corner of the bar is broken in half, sheared away as though something was thrown through it, and my mind immediately conjures up the image of Pop flying through the air as hurled by Thokk the night of our first meeting, and I let out a soft huff of amusement as I realize that was only last night. The upper half of the post rests top the shattered remains of a table at the northern end of the room, next to the broken-down door of what I assume was once the bar’s indoor privy.
My companions spread around the room, unsure of what to look at first, but they were soon drawn to the strange cabinet behind the bar and the mysterious holes in the floor and ceiling it presented. Volo informed them it was for a dumbwaiter, which both Thokk and Lek found to be rather insulting, and the predictable confusion ensued as others attempted to explain to the less-worldly pair that the dumbwaiter was neither a waiter, nor was it stupid, but was actually a mechanical contraption called in some parts of the world an elevator, or in other parts a lift. I attempted to interject that some mountainous places also have a contraption called a “funicular” which serves a similar purpose, but that may have been a means of locomotion to far for Lek, who seemed to already been feeling a little overwhelmed—and therefore, defensive—so I bowed out of that conversation. Taking a moment to slip my spare notebook out of my pack, I drew out the magical self-filling ink pen my aunt had given me as a parting gift, and began to jot down shorthand notes as I returned to observing, learning at the very least that the mercurial Lek had a sister who apparently liked to hide in cupboards when they were younger.
Apparently, our new dumbwaiter, when at last repaired and turned to service, will no longer be referred to as such and will instead be referred to as “Ellen”.
Webs of Deceit
The rest of the party spread out, poking through the remains of the shattered furniture to see if anything else interesting had been left behind by the tavern’s previous occupants. Lek expressed his displeasure that the place did not, in fact seem to be haunted after all, to which Volo heaved a commiserating sigh. Thava half-heartedly pushed at some of the trash on the floor, thinking to get a start on cleaning the place, but I reminded her we had only a little time this morning to look the place over before we were expected at the magistrate’s to sign the deed.
They decided to begin their search in the area with the most light. Pop, with his years of experience studying tons of unremarkable rock to discover traces of valuable ores and gemstones—Veinfinder was his surname after all—was unsurprisingly the best at this sort of work, and he methodically picked through the smashed table in the base of the turret, assisted by Thava, Phelan, Thokk, and Casi. He found nothing of any interest, but it was as he was finishing that he noticed something that he hadn’t found.
“Me hands went right through the spider webs!” Pop declared, and he swiped through the spider webs again. “Watch me arm!”
Others gathered around and watched, then began to reach out and attempt to touch webs themselves, noticing the same phenomenon.
“That’s a pretty strong web!” Thokk exclaimed.
“It’s not real!” Pop corrected. “Ye can’t touch it!”
“It’s not real? What are you talking about, it’s right there?” Lek asked, moving over from where he’d been examining a window—for traps, I think—to test a cobweb for himself.
“I don’t feel good about this place!” Aurora declared.
“There’s no such thing as ghosts!” Lek insisted, and I felt a chill go up my spine. “The only spirits in this building are right on that bar!”
“We all have spirits!” Devo argued. “That’s how I’m able to heal you!”
“Boom!” Thokk chortled. “Destroyed with magic logic!”
Casi’s eyes took on an otherworldly glow. “I’m seeing blue and orange magical auras… lots of it, everywhere. Mostly along the walls, the ceiling, the floor, but also everywhere there are spider webs. So… there’s something here, I just don’t know what.”
Thava thought for a moment. “Blue is usually the abjuration school: protective magic. Where are you seeing that?”
“Mostly along the walls, ceiling, and floor.”
“And the orange?”
“They’re focused around the spider webs.”
Aurora stiffened. “My mom… when pixies would play pranks with illusion magic, she said those auras were orange.”
Casi winced. “So we might need to be careful around the webs, then. If pixies are involved, we maybe shouldn’t touch them. Can anyone dispel magic?”
I shook my head sadly. “I think that’s magic beyond us.”
But Volo straightened with pride. “I’ll give it a whirl!” he declared, stretching his hands out before him and chanting a brief incantation. Having heard my mother and aunt cast it often enough, I recognized it as the correct spell—though as I told Casi, it was one beyond my current ability to cast—but when Volo finished, nothing happened. He looked around, noted the spider webs yet remained, and rolled his shoulders. “Well,” he observed drily, “they’re still here!”
Aurora decided to follow her curiosity about the spider webs, and wanted to find more of them, so we trailed around behind the bar and into the rundown kitchen in search of more spider webs. Deciding I’d like to see what Casi was seeing, I cast my own spell of detect magic, and as the other half-elf had described, the room around me lit up with auras of blue and orange: strong azure and cobalt along the walls, less pronounced hues against the ceiling and floor, then surprisingly bold splashes a near-match for Devo’s striking coloration gathered around the illusory spider webs, with little dots of orange floating throughout the air like dust motes.
The hue of a magical aura correlated with the source of the magic in both origin and intensity, as I recalled, and the stronger the color, the more powerful the magic. The walls and windows, then, were more-powerfully protected than were the ceilings and floors, and the illusory spider webs were even more powerful magic still. But why?
Before I could even set foot inside the kitchen, the rest of the group was turning around and heading down into the cellar, having already investigated that room and having found nothing of any real interest. The cellar was very dark, the small northern window looking out at street level offering little light, but as we were all gifted with darkvision—Volo was human, but as a wizard, I’m sure he never let that stop him—we were able to look around the mostly-empty chamber well enough to determine it was, in fact, as mostly-empty as it appeared to be.
It was Phelan who first noted what else had been missing with the illusory spider webs. “There are no vermin,” he observed, “nor any remains. No mice, no rats, no droppings, even.”
Everyone found that to be more than just a little unsettling, especially after Lek yelped and stuck his finger in his mouth, muttering something about a splinter when everyone turned to him in surprise.
Thokk decided he didn’t like the cellar because it was too cool in there; Thava, having also come from Baldur’s Gate, commiserated with him on that.
“I didn’t want to come down here in the first place,” Lek muttered.
The Boarding House
We returned upstairs, then headed outside and to the north side of the building so we could enter the second floor of the tavern by the exterior entrance. Pop expressed some dissatisfaction with that arrangement, wondering if we should reconfigure the entrance somehow so it could be accessed from within the taphouse. I noted that the current configuration allowed significant privacy: we could have the taphouse open to the public but keep the living quarters above exclusively to ourselves, as only “Ellen” had access to both.
Speaking of Ellen, her cabinet was completely broken away, the hole for the lift largely covered by the remains of a smashed dining table. The crank for the lift jutted out from beneath the debris, but the mechanism otherwise seemed intact.
The floor in the center of the common area gave a disconcerting groan and sagged noticeably, and it took only a moment to recall the broken support beam at the corner of the bar below: that would need to be one of the first repairs made to the tavern once we took ownership of the place, I decided. I knew once we returned from the magistrate’s, we’d need to do a more thorough walk-through of the place and begin making a plan for the renovation. Said renovation would be fairly costly, but it need not be done all at once, and the end result would be a very fine establishment indeed, if what little I had seen of the place so far was any indication.
The room in the turret appeared to have once been a library, based on the broken shelves which sagged against its walls, and I imagined it again fulfilling that purpose one day. My companions debated among themselves the merits of searching the battered old mattresses and other debris, and ultimately Thava decided to do just that, turning one of the straw-stuffed sacks inside-out and dumping its contents out on the floor to prove to the others there was nothing of any value contained within.
As though Lady Tymora chose to mock us all in that moment, Thava did find a literal needle in that haystack.
We took that for the sign it clearly was, and returned to the stairs. Pop hesitated before leading the way up and instead turned to Volo. “Who originally owned this place?”
Volo crossed his arms. “Aha, a very good question! I purchased the property at auction, but truly I have no real knowledge of who owned it before. It was, uh… Well, I suspect the prior owner perhaps failed to pay their taxes?”
“Taxes will always get you,” Lek observed.
“It was a city auction, after all,” Volo finished.
“What are taxes?” Thokk asked.
“Ye have a name o’ who didna pay their taxes?” Pop pressed, but Volo only shrugged.
Lek attempted—futilely, I fear—to explain the complex principal of mandatory funding of communal infrastructure and services through the lens of his aristocratic upbringing. From the looks of confusion which crossed the faces of Lek, Thokk, and Devo, it indeed went poorly.
I caught bits of a whispered conversation among Thava, Aurora, and Phelan, but not enough to fully understand what they were talking about. I think Aurora was convinced that the illusions were the work of pixies inhabiting the otherwise-abandoned house, and if she could just catch sight of one, she might be able to persuade it we weren’t there to hurt them.
The first moment I had a chance, I desperately needed to research a way to keep a record of conversations as I heard them: even documenting events in shorthand, there was far too much happening at once!
We continued on up and found the third floor to be in far worse shape than the second floor, quickly discovering that a broken and only partially boarded-over window had allowed significantly more debris and detritus to settle into the rooms than had been found in the lower level. Further, nearly all of the doors were broken or missing entirely, and very little remained of the furniture or plumbing which should have been here.
“It does not smell so great in here,” Thokk observed, wrinkling his nose.
Thava and Pop half-heartedly poked through the piles of rotted leaves, but didn’t find anything of interest, though they immediately looked to Casi when they realized that the floor beneath—though it appeared to be stained—seemed to be undamaged despite the decaying matter and moisture resting atop it.
My own spell of magical detection had long-since ended, but Casi’s could be invoked far more easily, and her eyes glowed again as she looked around, noting that while the walls, floor, and ceiling still held the usual blue glow, the orange was far less-pronounced than it had been, and indeed, there were far fewer spider webs here than in the taproom.
Lek peered out one of the southern windows, pointing at a large metal tank resting on the roof over the lower floors, which Pop readily identified as a water tank.
Rather than attempting to further disturb the leaf piles or approach the filthy mattress, we returned to the stairs and climbed into the attic, which as I had noted from the outside, was not immediately apparent from the western side of the building. The attic was in similar condition as the second floor, being full of cobwebs and shattered furniture, but having far less debris from outside of the tavern.
The attic contained a washroom and two bedrooms—both missing all furniture and fixtures—but aside from that, the primary feature of interest was a broken-down boiler: it was cracked and seemed to be missing several parts, and a hand-crank on the southern wall was rusted into place. A sign above it read “cistern pump”, and likely would have been the means for water which entered the boiler to have been heated before being passed to the washrooms in the rest of the house—and to the huge cistern sitting on the roof of the kitchen via the external pipes, I realized.
Hot running water? Our new home was once a fancy establishment indeed!
Pop swiped his arm through one of the illusory spider webs. “The boiler an’ pipes we can re-forge. How do we get rid of the durned webs?”
We looked at one another and shrugged. How indeed?
“Maybe we missed somethin’,” he continued, stroking his gray-streaked beard as he thought aloud. “We didna notice the attic.”
I didn’t point out that I had, as that matter was, as now, moot.
“Maybe there’s a hidden basement! We still haven’t discovered whatever’s bein’ hidden by the pixies.”
“They’re very good at hiding,” Lek agreed.
There were other murmurs of agreement, and we turned around and trooped down the stairs.
No Bones About It
Volo locked up the hostel behind us, and as we began to make our return to the taproom, a familiar voice called out to us. We re-entered the tavern to find Renaer Neverember standing near the fireplace, looking around with his hands on his hips. During his time away, he’d found the time to bathe and dress in clothing more suited to his title.
“A bit of a fixer-upper,” Renaer joked, though he seemed to approve of our new tavern, “but it has great bones. No, ah, literal ones anywhere, I hope?” He turned to Volo and gave him a look of amused exasperation, and the writer suddenly paled at the thought of literal bones being found on-site. “You did claim this place was haunted, as I recall.”
Renaer turned to the rest of us and grinned. “At any rate, I thought I’d stop by to thank you all again for last night’s timely rescue, and to offer assistance in the forthcoming battle in which I am unfortunately most adept: bureaucracy. It’s not long ’til highsun, so we should be on our way to the magistrate for the deed transfer.”
Casi stepped forward. “Do you know anything about who used to own this place?”
The nobleman shook his head. “I do not, but I promise to introduce you to a good lady who should be able to find that out for you,” he replied.
Pop hesitated, halfway around the bar toward the cellar already. “Do we all need to go with ye?”
I nodded. “I promise it will be worth your while.” Both he and Thava seemed hesitant, and I could see the wolf cubs were planning to take their cues from Thava. “We should all go,” I repeated again, knowing I needed them all if my plan for the adventuring company was to work.
“I was gonna have others hunt fer that hidden cellar,” Pop stubbornly insisted, but he nevertheless came around the counter and exited the tavern, clambering up into the waiting dray.
Volo locked up the tavern with his key, then we set off back toward the Castle Ward. Renaer started up a conversation about the recent strike of the Fellowship of Carters and Coachmen, and I could soon tell by the glazed-over eyes of our companions that they were far-less interested in Waterdhavian guild politics than Renaer and I were, likely finding themselves in as position much more similar to the one Volo espoused: neutrality whenever possible.
“Boring,” Lek muttered under his breath.
I grinned at that. “If we hope to re-open the tavern at Trollskull Manor one day, at least one of us will need to join the Fellowship of Innkeepers,” I pointed out. “Without it, we’ll have a harder time negotiating for food and ale supplies or hiring any staff we might need to run the place.” I thought for a moment, trying to recall what I knew so far of my companions. “Do any of you have any aspirations of a profession? Aside from adventuring, of course.”
Thokk, I thought, had mentioned working with wood, while Pop had been a miner and perhaps a jeweler? Casi’s parents had been farmers, but I wasn’t sure if she had experience as a butcher, baker, or cook. Devo’s and Thava’s cloistered origins could have lended themselves to all manner of scholarly pursuits, and wilderness survival skills such as those surely acquired by Aurora and Phelan often lended themselves to the pursuits of apothecaries and herbalists. As a noble, Lek had undoubtedly been trained in many endeavors, though he probably was never expected to use any of them for employment.
“Ooh, me! Me! Me!” Thokk exclaimed. “I do! I would like to volunteer! To innkeep.”
My jaw dropped. “Innkeeper?You would like to do that?”
“Yes!” he confirmed gleefully.
“Well,” I began, unsure how to take his eagerness. “That… would be a marvelous profession for you! You’re… very friendly. That would be… great.”
“Yeah! I mean, I don’t know anything about it, but, dude, I have a dad.“
It finally clicked into place what he was getting at: Thokk was an adventurer only because he was hoping to earn enough money to build his father a new house to replace the one that had been destroyed by rogue waves, so the moment there was the prospect of another job where he could earn additional coin when not actively adventuring, he was understandably eager to jump in, even if he had no idea what all the job entailed.
We would need a bartender, but I doubted it would be Thokk.
Lek jabbed his finger at Devo. “Put this one right next to him.”
Devo frowned at Lek, but then turned to Thokk. “But sometimes people are… unkind?“
“I don’t know,” Pop began, following Devo’s concerns and mine, “he’d be letting people stay for free if he felt sorry for them.”
I nodded. “It’s true: he’d make a poor bouncer.”
Thava put her chin on her fist. “Then who would be a good bouncer?”
“Patty?” I suggested, and those who’d met the furious halfling roared with laughter.
“Can you imagine?” Lek exclaimed. “There’s an ogre causing a ruckus—”
“Who’s Patty?” I heard Aurora ask, and Pop leaned in to explain she was a halfling we’d met during the time she, Phelan, and Thava had been away from our group.
“—and Patty just jumps up, grabs him by the ear, ‘all right, buster!'” Lek mimicks.
“All three feet of her,” I laugh, “and just throws him out the door!”
“We’re gonna have Patty run the inn?” Pop asked, having missed the exchange.
I shook my head, still laughing. “Oh, no, we’ll just have her as the bouncer!” Pop roared again, having made no secret of his admiration for the surprisingly stout halfling woman.
“But no, we cannae be havin’ him run the inn, he’d be lettin’ too many people stay for free,” Pop agreed, indicating Thokk.
“Well, just the tavern, not the inn,” I pointed out, “but we also can’t be letting too many people drink for free.”
“Why not?” Thokk asked, bewildered.
“Profit,” Thava explained. “That’s how we earn money to fix everything up.”
That explanation definitely went over Thokk’s head, making it clear that no: he was not going to be our barkeep, but we did agree he might serve as our tavern’s mascot or even as the namesake for our new tavern: the Friendly Orc might do as a new name for the establishment.
The conversation then turned to other interests: Thokk’s woodworking knowledge, Pop’s talent for stonework, Aurora and Phelan’s mutual interests in herbalism, Casi’s agrarian pursuits, and Thava’s interest in cartography.
“You know,” added Renaer at one point, “there was that blank spot on the wall directly across from the entry of the tavern next to the bar. I think you should put a board up where people can put up fliers and poster for jobs: a job board.”
Devo perked up. “That is a good idea!”
Renaer nodded his head toward the tiefling. “Take the jobs yourselves, or invite other adventurers to come in and take jobs off the board!”
“A web of jobs!” Lek exclaimed. “Then we can spread it, Waterdeep-wide: the Waterdeep-wide web!”
“The ‘Waterdeep-wide web’,” I echoed, liking the alliteration. “Especially with all the illusory spider webs we have in the tavern already, it’s like we’re… a web… site.”
One Good Deed Deserves Another
Fortunately, we soon arrived at the courthouse, a large stone building on the southern side of Selduth Street which bore the double-setting-moon crest of the City of Waterdeep. As bells from the distant temple of Gond began to toll the twelfth hour, we disembarked from the dray, and our arrival was immediately noted by an auburn-haired dwarf pacing the courthouse steps.
Clad in a purple tunic with a gold hexagonal badge pinned to her collar, she waved at our group and called down in her thick brogue, “Oy, Geddarm! Wi’ such fine business decision as ye been makin’ lately, ’tis nae wonder yer skint!”
Thokk and Lek both looked at one another in confusion, not understanding her accent despite exposure to Pop.
“Right you are, right you are,” Volo sighed, fiddling with his scarf. “Shall we go in? Magistrate Silmerhelve is ready for us, I believe.”
Curiously nervous again despite having spent most of the morning relatively at ease, Volo led the way into the large building, guiding our party into the east wing and past a few queues to a small antechamber. Shortly after our arrival, a secretary seated near the far door called for “Saer Geddarm and associates”, and we were ushered into a large meeting room, though it was a little crowded given our number, including Volo, Renaer, the dwarf woman, and the golden-horned tiefling woman seated at the far end of the table. The black-robed magistrate gestured for everyone to sit, and Volo, Renaer, the dwarf woman, and I found our seats nearest the magistrate.
Introducing herself simply as “Silmerhelve”—the surname of one of the Waterdhavian noble families—the magistrate got immediately to the business at hand. “I underssstand the matter before usss today isss the transssfer of the property known asss Trollssskull Manor. Have you the deed, Sssaer Geddarm? And which of you isss the ressseiving party?”
Having placed my pack on the floor next to my chair, I immediately produced the pair of scroll tubes from within its capacious interior and unrolled both documents as the tiefling slipped on a pair of half-moon spectacles. “Legends Unsung, Your Honor,” I explained, giving the name I had decided three days ago would be what would be the legal name of the band of adventurers I’d be at least partly responsible for managing. “The deed should be signed over to the Legends Unsung company, and we’ll also be adding each of my companions as partners of that company.”
The dwarf woman let out a small squeak, slapping her hands over her mouth to cover her sudden grin, then waving off the looks of surprise and confusion which came her way. Magistrate Silmerhelve was unbothered, and merely began to quickly skim over the provided documents, then glanced over her lenses at the dwarf. “And I take it you are here asss the offisssial represssentative of the League of Caravaneersss, Landlordsss and Property Managersss, Sssaer Flintblade?”
“Aye that I be,” the dwarven woman replied with a grin, tapping the hexagonal badge which was the indicator of her guild affiliation.
Silmerhelve went to work, setting up a document-copying apparatus common in Waterdhavian official records which the Scriveners’, Scribes’, and Clerks’ Guild alternately loved and reviled: a blank parchment was placed atop an enchanted slate, and the document to be copied was laid under a sheet of glass, also enchanted. Any words or images which were not to be duplicated were then to be carefully blotted out with wax, after which a magical quill was activated, whereupon it began to immediately duplicate onto the blank page everything visible beneath the glass except the areas covered by wax. The remarkable quill matched the penmanship of the original document stroke for stroke, and even the ink color was a perfect match.
While the magical quill did its work, Silmerhelve read the original deed aloud, noting that Trollskull Manor was a four-story brick-and-wood structure at the corner of Saerdoun Street and Thunderstaff Way with a below-grade cellar, and rattling off a number of plat and survey markers relevant only to Waterdhavian bureaucrats and members of the Surveyors’, Map-, and Chart-Makers’ Guild, though perhaps Thava might also have found it fascinating.
The quill finished its work far faster than a mortal scribe could have—to the eternal consternation of the Scriveners’, Scribes’, and Clerks’ Guild—and returned itself to its case before Silmerhelve had even reached the end of her reading.
“The Sssity of Waterdeep asssesssesss a fee of twenty-five dragonsss for transssfersss of property,” Silmerhelve stated, folder her hands in front her again, her sibiliant lisp drawing out all of the ‘S’ sounds in her speech, “usually to be paid by the ressseiving party of the transssfer.”
“Here, Your Honor,” Renaer replied, plucking a small bag of coins out of his belt pouch and sliding it across the table. He smiled at everyone. “Consider it my reward for your services rendered.”
Silmerhelve stood, counted the coins in the pouch, then stood, affixed a seal to the head of the new document, then handed it to Volo, gesturing toward the inkwells and quills at the center of the table. “Your sssignature on the firssst line pleassse, Sssaer Geddarm. Sssaer Flintblade, the third line.” She then turned around and went over to the cabinet at the back of the room, retrieving a document from a drawer before returning to the table again to add a few lines to it with a fresh quill dipped in blue ink. After sprinkling powder on the ink to set it it, she handed it to me, bidding everyone who wanted to be named a partner in the company of Legends Unsung to sign our names to a blank line, and noting that the City of Waterdeep would assess a fee of one shard per signatory partner.
I quickly signed my name, then passed it down the table so I could draw out my coin purse and count out nine silver coins. Once everyone signed it, Silmerhelve signed it as well, then set her magical quill to work again to create a duplicate copy. Original and copy were then both stamped and embossed, and the copy was given to me while the original was set aside beneath a brass paperweight. I rolled up my copy of the company charter and stored it my scroll tube, which I then returned to my pack.
“Now that you’re all offisssially partnersss of Legendsss Unsssung, only one of you need sssign the company name to the sssecond line of the deed,” Silmerhelve explained.
“Why do you pronounce your S’s like that?” Thokk asked, apparently unable to contain himself any longer. Devo gasped.
“Why do you ssspeak the way that you do, sssir?” Silmerhelve countered, apparently unbothered.
“I don’t know!” the half-orc answered genuinely. “I’m just curious.”
“Then I sssuppose we each have our own way of ssspeaking,” the magistrate concluded.
“I’ll sign,” Pop declared, practically leaping across the table to end the awkward exchange.
Silmerhelve instructed Pop to sign “Legends Unsung” on the second line, rather than his own name, then signed her own name on the final line. As she had with the company charter, she then allowed the magical quill to make a complete copy of the entire document, then stamped and embossed each to make them official. She then affixed a different stamp to the original copy of the previous deed before signing it with red ink.
“That settles it, then,” Silmerhelve declared, moving all of the completed documents into the same stack. “I sssuggessst your nexxxt visssit be the regissstry offissse at the other end of the building ssso that you can update your residensssy. Now if there’sss nothing elssse, I wissh you all a good day.”
Apparently deciding she was done with us, Silmerhelve gathered up the coins paid and the completed documents, then moved to her overflowing desk where she immediately began to make notations in a giant ledger. Shaking my head, I stored the new deed in my second scroll tube and similarly safeguarded in my pack as I had the company charter.
No sooner were we out of Silmerhelve’s office than Volo shoved the keyring into my hand, babbled some excuse about needing to meet with his publisher, and practically fled the courthouse, leaving the rest of us surprised he hadn’t left a trail of burnt shoe leather in his wake.
Managing Expectations
“Blusterin’ buffoon,” Flintblade muttered. “Oy, ye lot are off to a better start than that puffed-up peacock, though: smart move with the company!”
I blushed. “It seemed the most fair way to distribute the earnings and expenditures of a group of adventurers,” I explained, “which was my original reason for creating the company. I had no idea its first real ‘earning’ would be a property investment, though I suppose I should have expected we’d be paid in material goods given the current… economy.” I found my gaze drawn involuntarily toward Renaer, who of course knew exactly why I couldn’t help but look his direction.
“Copper, copper, everywhere,” he quipped, “but scarce a dragon to spare. Despite my father’s many shortcomings, there’s more wealth than ever in the city, but surprisingly little of it is currently ‘mobile’. Noble families, the banks, and the guilds alike are all quietly accusing one another of hoarding gold, while others claim the Cult of the Dragon stole much of it in their bid to restore Tiamat in ‘89. Word is Gauntlgrym’s scouts have sourced a gold seam that should see the Sword Coast back into a decent supply of minted coin if it pans out, but it’s going to take people with better heads for trade than I to figure out what goods and services King Bruenor and his people need that Waterdeep can supply in exchange.”
Flintblade shrugs her shoulders. “Better put yer growers and brewers to work, then, ‘cause a dwarf always needs food an’ ale.”
“Aye!” Pop agrees heartily.
“If’n it were any other clan or hold, wizards could sell enchantin’ services to add some extra might to the dwarves’ weapons an’ armor,” the woman continued, “but the hold is built around an ancient forge of great power, the Battlehammers’ve been friends o’ the Harpell wizards o’ Longsaddle for o’er a century, and we’ll not even touch the rumors o’ allies from farther doon.”
Lek offered up some word or phrase I couldn’t translate, possibly a native expression from the Moonshaes.
Flintblade turned to Pop, suddenly curious. “Yer from Gauntlgrym, ain’t ye?” she asked.
“Aye!” Pop agreed again.
“So ye be knowin’ about the Battlehammer princess.”
“Yah.”
Flintblade nodded. “An’ she be a mighty powerful magic-wieldin’ one herself, so I hear.”
Pop nodded happily. “Oooooh, yah.”
“The more Gauntlgrym prospers, the madder it makes my old man,” Renaer smirked.
“Aye, there’s a bonus!” the dwarf laughed. She turned to the party, noting a few puzzled expressions. “Ol’ Dagult Neverember was less-than-friendly to King Bruenor when me kin marched to take back the hold from the stinkin’ drow an’ had the gall to try to claim the foothills ‘round Gauntlgrym were the territory o’ Neverwinter an’ no dwarves were to settle on the surface.”
“So King Bruenor builds a town on the surface populated by his halfling friends from Aglarond,” Renaer added, shaking his head. “Oh, I’d have loved to have seen my father’s face when he learned that!”
Flintblade smacked her lips. “Mighty good wine them halflin’s make, but that dinnae help Waterdeep with its gold shortage.” She gestured at the party. “But adventurers goin’ out an’ reclaiming lost treasures, now… aye: ye dinnae get much more Waterdhavian than that.”
Renaer smoothed his tunic. “I may be able to help get something lined up to that extent,” he began, returning his attention to the party, “which was one of the other reasons I wanted to meet with all of you today. It could take a little time to set into motion, though, but expect to hear from me—or one of my associates—within the next tenday.”
“One of the other reasons?” I asked.
Renaer clapped his left hand on the dwarf’s shoulder. “I pulled a small string to get Ember here as the guild representative for the deed transfer because I wanted her to meet you. She’s a tough negotiator but fair, knows the city and its guilds better than almost anyone, and is in need of a… different direction for her career. If you need a manager for Trollskull Manor—and speaking as someone who has inherited a number of properties in the city, you need a manager for Trollskull Manor—Ember Flintblade’s the best dwarf for the job.”
“Ye’re makin’ me blush,” Flintblade deadpanned, punching Renaer in the side and making him wince at the impact. “But aye: me last employer an’ I have parted ways, so I’m available to manage yer new property if ye be amenable. It’ll buy ye a six month grace period from needin’ to join th’ Caralanproman yerselves—”
“Caralanproman?” I began. “Oh! Right, the League of Caravaneers—”
“—Landlords, and Property Managers,” Ember finished. “Bit o’ a mouthful, it is. Like any guild in the city, ye dinnae have to join, but it suren makes fer a harder goo if ye doon’t.”
“I like this lass,” Pop declared.
“Ye’re makin’ me blush,” Ember repeated.
“We’ve got a property manager, yes?” Lek asked, sounding surprised.
“I’m okay with it!” Devo agreed. “Definitely sounds like she’s qualified.”
“What’s your rate?” I asked.
“Twenty-five dragons a tenday,” Ember answers, “plus a two-percent stake in yer profits.”
“Sounds fair,” Pop agreed.
It was fair, but I also knew Ember likely expected us to negotiate. “Twenty dragons a tenday and a five-percent cut,” I countered.
Ember beamed, likely hoping we wouldn’t fold so easily. She held out her hand to shake on the agreement. “Deal. I knoo the neighborhood, an’ if ye’ve an eye ta sell, yer buildin’ll be worth a fair amount more fixed up proper. O’ course, ye’ll also pull in a fair sight more customers tae yer taphouse if ye have a nice place fer them rest their rumps an’ fill their cups. In that part o’ town, could be lookin’ at seventy to eighty dragons a night in straight earnin’s done up right an’ proper.”
“You mean seven to eight hundred shards,” Renaer corrected, holding up his hands in surrender when Ember narrowed her eyes at him. “I jest! The gold shortage isn’t that bad,” he relented with a small nod of his head, “but it won’t fix itself, and an old friend of mine is trying to do what she can about that even now. In fact, I am to meet with dear old Sarkyn this very afternoon to recount my recent… detention, so… I thank you again for the rescue, my friends—” the young lord swept into a courtly bow “—and with that, I bid you good fortune and a good afternoon.”
As Renaer made his exit, Ember tapped the hexagonal badge on her collar. “I’ll make a stop at th’ guild hall to collect some documents fer ye including a basic contract fer service, an’ I’ll meet ye at Trollskull Manor in aboot three hours to formally sign a contract and start a management plan.” She nodded her head respectfully at the group as a whole. “Yer next stop should be the registry office, like Silmerhelve suggested,” she said as she turned to go, then added over her shoulder, “an’ after that, I suggest ye start brainstormin’ a better name for yer new waterin’ hole than ‘Trollskull Tavern’. That name dinnae make me wanna goo inside fer a pint.”
Waterdeep’s Newest Residents
As Silmerhelve and Ember both suggested, we made our way to the western wing of the courthouse, but then found ourselves in a queue of several others waiting to be seen by the trio of dour-faced clerks staffing the raised desk in the registry office.
Since we had a little bit of a wait, I explained a little bit of how the registry and residency taxation process worked for my companions, as none of them were natives of Waterdeep, nor had any spent much time here. Each had paid a head tax upon their entry to the city—presumably—so they had experienced a limited form of the magically-assisted bureaucratic effort that went into keeping track of who all lived within the walls of Waterdeep at any given time and whether or not they had paid their residential tax for the duration of their stay. The truly astounding part of the entire complex system was that it was rare that anyone successfully evaded paying their residential tax for the month, but also that it was almost unheard of that anyone was inadvertently double-charged.
Would-be tax evader often attempt to vacate their rental spaces shortly before the end of the month so that they can’t be found on tax day only to turn up again—often in the same place they left—after the start of the next month. Those who are caught evading the tax must report to the registry office to pay a fine or offer up a good explanation for their lapse in habitation, which is why the office is so busy: it’s only the fourth day of the month.
Aside from those few who have creative tales for why they just so happened to be staying with a sick friend or a dying relative on tax day, most of the others in line were like us: new residents to the city who are making a record of their addresses in place which are not bound by guild reporting rules. As the line slowly moved, we heard snippets of their stories: some were refugees from Elturel, a city to the south which had apparently gone quite literally to Hell. Devo looked particularly pained when a group of tieflings warned of how their people in particular had been driven from the nation of Elturgard and hadn’t found a welcoming environment in neighboring Baldur’s Gate, forcing them northward to Waterdeep.
A group of ruddy-skinned humans declared themselves to be from the Moonshae Isles, and warned of an incursion from the Feywild onto their island home. Both Lek and Casi questioned them about the assault on their island, learning that the fey invaders were dark fey subjects of the Queen of Air and Darkness. Far from being mischievous sprites who might be convinced to peacefully coexist with the inhabitants of the Material Plane, as is often the case with the fey of the Summer Court, the dark fey were often cruel and malicious, and the survivors were lucky to escape.
Also standing proudly in line are four tabaxi who “self-liberated” themselves from the nation of Amn to the south. Though an increasingly-important trading partner with Waterdeep, Amn is known for its practice of slavery, which has unlawful in nearly every surface city of this part of Faerûn. Even Luskan, once a haven for pirates, smugglers, and slavers, has recently outlawed the ownership and trade of sentient beings, and its small-but-powerful navy has begun enforcing this new law in its coastal waters with lethal efficiency.
And speaking of Luskan and rumors regarding that city, there was also a pair of hooded figures line, cowls drawn over their heads not so much to conceal their identities—the dark gray skin showing on their slender exposed arms and hands identified their heritage easily enough—but to shield them from the bright-to-their-eyes lighting in the room. The dark elf couple’s command of the Common tongue was limited and heavily accented, and the clerks—one of whom was a moon elf practically glaring at the pair—didn’t seem to have much patience for them.
As the line moved forward, it was nearly our turn while the dark elf couple continued to struggle to be understood and the moon elf clerk’s patience grew increasingly thin. Lek also recoiled from the pair, and Aurora and Phelan looked similarly nervous: dark elves had a powerful reputation for cruelty, after all.
Among the deities I hold dear in my heart is Eilistraee, an elven goddess of swordplay and dance, of magic, moonlight, and outcasts, and she also happens to be a dark elf goddess, and as the male drow turned his head to look tiredly at the line of patrons behind him, I could see the telltale sword-dancer-and-moon pendant around his neck that marked him as a follower of that goddess.
Casi must have seen it, too. “I think these two dark elves are different.”
“Aye!” Pop agreed whole-heartedly. “Not all dark elves are the same… Drizzt Do’Urden be me hero!”
The dark elf pair whirled around, eyes wide. “Drizzt?” the woman exclaimed. “Drizzt! Drizzt!” She pointed happily to Pop. “You know? Hero! Hero!”
The moon elf clerk grumbled. “Would someone send for a translator who speaks Drowish?”
“Do any of us speak Drowish?” I asked, glancing at my companions.
Unfortunately, the dark elf couple’s Elvish was just as heavily-accented as their limited Common, but Casi soon found that they spoke Goblin passably enough. Sadly, the Goblin vocabulary lacked nuance, but we were able to get the gist of the couple’s intent: they had come to Waterdeep to join the Eilistraean temple which was being built just outside of the city proper in the Field Ward, though they also had a small shrine inside the walls not far from Trollskull Manor in the North Ward. Soon realizing the pair understood both Common and Elvish well enough but had difficulty pronouncing it, I cast a spell of understanding upon myself, then encouraged them to speak Drowish while I translated for them directly to the clerk, thereby expediting the process more efficiently.
With that accomplished, and with the gratitude of the Eilistraean followers who encouraged us to visit the Dancing Haven shrine at our first convenience—which I, as a follower of the Lady of the Dance, certainly intended to do!—it was our turn at the clerk’s counter, and the grumbling moon elf clerk soon had our residency updated to “Trollskull Manor, Saerdoun Street, North Ward”. We were each pointedly given a copy of the Code Legal, though I’m certain that was standard procedure and not simply because we were obviously adventurers with an impressive array of weapons and magical abilities at our disposal.
That accomplished, we returned to the foyer of the courthouse, where I pulled Pop and Thokk aside so I could encourage them to transfer the silver bars they’d collected the previous night into my pack, demonstrating how it didn’t change the weight of my bag in the slightest; Thokk was, of course, very impressed, but I dissuaded him from trying to climb into the pack himself to see if he would fit. After that, we headed out to the courthouse steps, where I suggested everyone should go find themselves a midday meal and that if anyone wished to save some coin, they should return to wherever they had been staying and cancel their rooms, though of course we’d be “roughing it” in Trollskull Manor for a time yet until it was fully repaired. Since Ember had said she’d meet us back at the tavern in three hours once she’d had a chance to gather her contract and some research about the property, that gave us roughly two hours to make our own return to Saerdoun Street.
“I’m off to the Market to see if I can’t get us a fair price for the goods we collected yesterday,” I explained, hefting my pack. “I’ve a feeling we’re going to need plenty of coin to get Trollskull Manor back into shape.” I paused and grinned. “Or whatever we decide to name.”
“I thought we were going with the Friendly Orc!” someone called out as I headed north for The Market, and I laughed.
“Meet you back at the As-Yet-to-Be-Named Manor in two bells!” I shouted over my shoulder.
Mind Your Manors
After a successful trip to the Market, where I found buyers for both the silver trade bars and the set of painted plates, I made a stop at a reputable bank and then a wider detour to a property manager’s office in the Sea Ward for a follow-up on a job I planned to present to the party, then hastened back to Trollskull Manor, arriving fifteen minutes later than I’d intended and finding Ember howling with laughter while half the party stared up at the broken window on the third floor and the other half is stared at Lek shaking his set of lockpicks furiously at the tavern door and cursing about malevolent pixies.
Phelan, curiously, was nowhere to be seen.
“Could’ve told ye that’d nae work!” Ember laughed.
A lizard skittered across the pavement then transformed into a disgruntled-looking Phelan. “It’s like there was an invisible wall there!” he complained.
I glanced down at the keyring in my hand. “We’ll need a locksmith to craft extra keys for us,” I realized, then unlocked the tavern door.
“Ye’ll need more ‘an that,” Ember corrected, pushing the door open and marching into the taproom. She dropped her pile of documents onto the bar, accidentally knocking the empty tankard over into the battered pitcher, which tumbled off the bar top with a dull crash. Wincing at the noise, she hoisted herself up onto the lone intact barstool. “Ye got me pay?”
“You got our contract?” I countered. Ember nodded and pulled a sheet off the top of the stack.
I quickly scanned the contract, but as Renaer had promised, Ember was tough but fair: she was to be paid the value of twenty gold pieces each fourthday, as well as five percent of the taphouse’s net profit for the tenday. In exchange, she would bear responsibility for all bookkeeping, negotiating with vendors and contractors, handling guild memberships and legal obligations, and ensuring the timely payment of wages, dues, taxes, and any other property-related expenses of the holdings of Legends Unsung. Notably, she made it clear in the contract that she was not responsible for tending the bar or performing any kind of food, beverage, sanitation, or maintenance service duties except in case of a staffing emergency.
Signing the contract, I drew out ten small bags of coins which I had already portioned out accordingly. “Twenty gold, as promised,” I announced, and then turned and handed one bag to each of the other members of the party, making a show of returning the last bag to my pack, “and the same to each of us. The rest of the money I put in a bank account to be used for repairs and… not a locksmith?” I raised an eyebrow, curious as to what Ember had meant.
Our new property manager hefted the bag of coins, assessing its weight, but apparently decided it was accurate and tucked it away without counting the coin in front of us. She then signed the contract and handed it to me, and I rolled it up and tucked it into my pack to be added to my trove of other documents.
“Oy, so I got copies of whate’er I could find on the history o’ this place. Ye want the long version or the short one?”
“The long version, of course,” I answered, as did one or two others, but we were drowned out by calls for “The short one!”
Ember rolled her eyes, sliding a sheaf of papers across the bar for me to tuck into my pack while she took up a single sheet. “Aye, the short version. This inn was built by a half-elf wiggle-fingers named Zalif Moonvale who died in the Spellplague without an heir. It went to city auction an’ was bought by Rolley Haskett who later died of the regular kind o’ plague, so his family sold it off an’ after some shenanigans involving a child-snatching hag, it eventually wound up involved in some devil-worshippin’ tomfoolery which got the owners booted from the city an’ the property up fer auction to pay their fines. That’s where yer pal Saer Geddarm offered to pay far more ‘an he should’ve ‘cause he weren’t exactly thinkin’ straight at the time o’ the sale on account o’ another feller at the auction windin’ him up.
“An’ of course he didn’t have the coin fer it; noo, he ended up havin’ to barter an’ trade away a noomber of valuables an’ favors to finally come up with the scrap, an’ I’m pretty sure he told his publisher he was buyin’ it fer research fer his next book soo they’d give him another advance ta boot. Sure, the place has a bit o’ the spooky ambiance to it, but the only ones who e’er claimed it was haunted were a few dumb lackeys the Birch-Dowells let hole up in the place one time, an’ that ended up on the record ‘cause the city was concerned one o’ the damned fools summoned an imp or other devil into the place.”
“Did they?” I asked, wondering if the problem wasn’t a pixie but an imp.
“Nae, a couple o’ Lathanderian priests inspected th’ place from top to boottom afore the sale, an’ concluded there weren’t nothin’ evil here to worry aboot.”
I sighed with relief. “So what’s our first step to getting this place back up and running? Besides a lot of cleaning.” Singing the notes of a simple cantrip, I caused a swirl of dust to lift from the taproom floor and hurl itself out the still-open front door. The point of origin for the spell was noticeably cleaner than the floor around it, but it was a small patch. “Yes… that could take a while.”
Ember snorted. “Aye. Fer ten dragons—maybe fifteen—I can get a crew here from the Loyal Order o’ Street Laborers who’ll clean this place top to bottom an’ haul away all the junk fer ya, get ya a fresh start o’ things. An’ while I supervise their work, I’ll see if I can’t get an estimate from the Guild o’ Glassblowers, Glaziers, an’ Spectacle-makers on replacin’ the windows. We’ll also need the roof repaired—I noticed a broken tile or ten on me way in—an’ the broken pipes in yer plumbin’ system fixed—that was certainly visible enough from the ground if’n ye knows what ye’re aboot.”
“What about the chimneys?” I asked.
“What aboot them?” Ember gestures to a drawing of the building. “There’s really only one, and that’s fer the attic bedrooms, so I’ll have the labor crew check that afore they start cleanin’ up there. All the other fireplaces vent into pipes what come out directly below one o’ the two cisterns to keep the water from freezin’ in the cold months. Even with the broken pipes outside, I dinnae think there’s anythin’ to worry aboot: just snap your magical fingers a few times to blow any lingerin’ soot out o’ the pipes an’ that’d take care o’ the matter as good as anythin’.”
“Now, ye’d be welcome to stick around to help, but I’m guessin’ ye lot got better adventurin’ sorts of things to do than ta stand around here washin’ windows, so I’ll scout aboot an’ see what else needs on the list. Leave th’ keys with me an’ dinnae worry: I’ll be here to let ye back into the buildin’ even if I have to camp here all night… It’s partly why yer payin’ me twenty-an’-more dragons a tenday, after all!”
“How’ll ye get rid of the spider webs?” Pop asked.
“I dinnae think ye have to!” Ember answered. “Moonvale was a crafty bugger, and those spells o’ his have lasted a mighty long time. As the place gets cleaned up, the illusions he crafted are like tae change suit.”
“So they only looked like spider webs before because it made the place look more run-down?” Casi guessed.
“Exactly!” Ember exclaimed. “An’ if it looked run-down, then people stayed away and did nae bother the place.”
“So it wasn’t pixies, then,” Thava reasoned.
“’Twas nae pixies,” Ember agreed. “But ye knoo: a hunnerd years ago, it was all the rage for taverns an’ inns tae boast o’ a harmless resident ghost or two roamin’ their halls, an’ word is it’s makin’ a bit o’ a come back now that the Spellplague is gone. Most inns did nae have such a thing, o’ course, but a few enterprisin’ folks’d rig simple mechanisms like self-slamming cupboard doors, or hire a wizard to cast a few permanent illusions to ‘haunt’ an otherwise ordinary tavern. Could be ye do somethin’ wi’ yer illusions like that, give the guests a bit o’ fun.” She shrugged. “If’n there’s nae more at this time…”
I took the sack of coins I had initially reserved for myself back out of my pack and tossed it to Ember along with the key ring. “Go ahead and get started on getting the second, first, and third floors cleaned out as quickly as possible, then at least a temporary beam set in place to shore up the joists in place of that broken one there. After that, we’ll start a list of all the other work that needs doing and start prioritizing it.”
The dwarf snapped a jaunty salute, pushed the remainder of the papers she had brought with her into a stack on the wall-side end of the bar—out of the way, but close enough for quick review—and began her own inspection tour of the tavern.
The Missing Estate
I rummaged in my pack onto and pulled out a my canvas-covered “scratch” notebook. “As I started to say last night—” and it hardly seemed that it had only been last night “—I already had a job lined up before the gang brawl broke out, but it wasn’t going anywhere, so we were fine to take Volo’s missing persons case. The fact that it isn’t going anywhere is exactly part of the problem, but let me start with some context.”
“When my family left Waterdeep nearly eighteen years ago, we moved to the great library at Candlekeep, roughly five days’ journey south of the city of Baldur’s Gate. No storehouse of knowledge in all of Faerûn—perhaps even all of Toril—rivals the depth and breadth of Candlekeep’s archive, but in order to gain access to the library, visitors are required to donate a repository which is not yet in their collection: an original novel, a journal, a researched treatise on a topic, an intact memory shard, a completed score, or something of similar merit.” I grinned, unable to resist a jab at Volo’s expense. “Mass-produced volumes like the Volo’s Guide series are usually donated by the authors or publishers themselves to maintain their access to the library.”
“As is the case with many magic users, my mother went there to try to find answers to a personal magical mystery, but then the Spellplague ended and the research she was doing became, for her, moot. Nevertheless, she and my father quite enjoyed the work they had done for the library for years in retrieving rare and forgotten volumes, and they are happily employed there still as retrieval specialists.
“Candlekeep always needs retrieval specialists because there are always books which need to be recovered, and that’s where we come in. A magical researcher by the name of Fistandia disappeared two years ago, and according to the stipulations of the will she filed with Heralds, her personal library was to be donated to Candlekeep if she did not return there after no less than five hundred days. It has now been nearly six hundred days, and her collection has not yet been recovered. No one was quite sure where Fistandia lived, but she was a specialist in extra-dimensional spaces so she could easily have called ‘home’ anywhere she could put down a magical mansion spell as long as she packed up her belongings again each time the spell expired, or she could have carved out a permanent extra-dimensional space of some kind of she had a physical home somewhere to which she could anchor it.”
I flipped the book open to a page I had previously marked with a dark blue ribbon, resting my finger on a page showing the likeness of a stern looking human woman with her arm draped over the shoulder of a smirking tiefling. “I recently found out that Fistandia’s long-time partner is a wizard by the name of Freyot, and that Freyot’s specialization is in alchemy and specifically, the pursuit of a philosopher’s stone with long-term viability. A philosopher’s stone, if you’re unfamiliar with the concept, is an alchemical marvel reputed to turn inexpensive metals into precious ones, like silver or gold. Now, given the current shortage of gold on the Sword Coast—and in Waterdeep in particular—I thought it possible one of the noble families here may have decided to fund Freyot’s work.”
I turned to the next page, where I had used a pre-Spellplague cantrip my mother taught me to copy a document directly into my notebook. “And I was right! Just over two years ago—shortly before Fistandia disappeared—Freyot rented a small flat on Whim Street in the Sea Ward, but the price for the rental seems extraordinarily generous for that particular neighborhood: only a shard per tenday, which is more the rate for a one-bedroom hovel in the Dock Ward, not a two bedroom flat in a much nicer neighborhood. Undervalued rent like that is often used as part of an employee’s wages.”
“I checked around, and no one’s seen Freyot in years, but according to city records, his lease is still active and the city continues to collect the unit’s two-shard-per-month personal tax from the property manager.” I took a dramatic pause to emphasize my next point. “Two shards per month in personal taxes: someone was living there with Freyot, and though I couldn’t access the tax records to find out who, it seems likely he was living there with his longtime partner, Fistandia.
“This afternoon, after I’d finished at the Market, I made a slight detour past Whim Street on my way back here and, ah, ‘happened’ to meet with the property manager for the building, Davon Barrow. He said he hadn’t seen anyone come out of the flat in well over a year and only occasionally sees a flare of green light through the windows. He also explained that a privacy clause on the rental contract prevents him from entering the flat himself or sending in an employee or hireling without invitation from the residents.
“Just yesterday, Saer Barrow was approached by a man he didn’t know but who he said looked the part of a scholar or mage. That man—Matreous, he thought it was—claimed to be in search of the tiefling wizard and asked to enter the flat. When Saer Barrow brought up the matter of the privacy clause, Matreous pointed out that so long as Saer Barrow didn’t hire him, he wouldn’t be violating the letter of the contract. He went in, but hasn’t come back out, and Saer Barrow is concerned the City Watch may have to be called about the missing people.
“Naturally, I convinced Saer Barrow to let us go in there and learn what we can before he resorts to calling for the City Watch. Obviously, there’s a monetary reward for retrieving Fistandia’s library for Candlekeep—or for reporting back to them that she’s still alive, if that’s possible after all this time—and if we do take the collection to Candlekeep, then all of you will have access to the greatest library in the world! Any question you might have about whatever sort of business brought you to Waterdeep, you just might find the answer to it in the stacks at Candlekeep. Does that sound like a plan?”
For the first time in our surprisingly short acquaintance, I could see that I had Lek’s full and undivided interest. “I’m in,” he agreed instantly, and there were murmurs of assent from all around.
Candlekeep, here we come!