Keep the Blood Off the Streets
3 Tarsakh 1492, Waterdeep
Companions:
- Devotion, a tiefling cleric
- Lekslufer Biswell, a half-elf rogue
- Patty Proudfoot, a halfling barbarian
- Popdaka “Pop” Veinfinder, a dwarven paladin
- Thokk, a half-orc monk
Satisfied we’d gotten all we needed to from the kenku, we used some of the pieces of rope lying around in the warehouse to securely tie the creature to one of the posts supporting the warehouse’s upper level, though it was hardly in any shape to do more than squawk in protest.
As the adrenaline began to subside, we assessed our wounds, and it turned out that only Casi and Thava had emerged from the fight unscathed. Renaer Neverember ventured out further into the room, moving slowly in a manner I at first thought was due to injury or his previously cramped confinement, but I soon realized was because he could barely see: my companions and I were all gifted with darkvision, but Renaer was a human and lacked that capability.
Moving quietly so as to not alarm Thokk, we examined the bodies of the fallen kenku, discovering little of interest on them save for a handful of small coins. The fallen Zhentarim and Xanatherians had already been stripped of their valuables—possibly the source of the coins the kenku had in their neck purses—and had nothing further of interest about their persons. After examining the pile of weapons heaped in the corner of the room near the Zhents, Renaer selected a rapier and a dagger, while Lek collected a saber to add to his collection of blades. Deciding it never hurt to have a back-up—or a back-up to my back-up—I added the best-looking of the daggers to my pack.
It was then that Thava cleared her throat, expressing her concern over the continued absence of Aurora and Phelan. Had they not been able to find where we went after leaving the Skewered Dragon? Had they found trouble on Zastrow Street? Admitting that tonight was not the first time she’d met the elf and half-elf and she’d grown rather fond of the excitable duo, Thava declared her intent to set off to find the pair.
I didn’t like the idea of any of us going off alone on the darkened streets of the Dock Ward, but before I could ask Thava to wait until another of us could join her, Casi volunteered to accompany her. As the only other member of the party who’d not been injured in the skirmish with the kenku, it made sense for the 0dd-eyed half-elf to go with her, and the rest of us declared our intent to “take a breather” while we awaited their return. However, as Floon Blagmaar was still imperiled, the rest of us agreed we’d wait no more than a few hours before venturing into the sewer to find the “yellow signs” the kenku had said we should follow, and that once they were able, Thava and Casi should do the same or meet us back at the Yawning Portal.
Treasure Hunters
As Casi and Thava left the warehouse, we who remained closed the double doors tightly, then began to look through the broken and opened crates scattered around the warehouse floor. Pop wandered around the perimeter of the room, poking idly at the crates and moving past the stairs to the small end of the “L” shaped room, where he stopped in surprise.
“There’s a secret door!” he declared gleefully, then disappeared toward the back of the stairs.
Surprised, the rest of us moved to where he’d been, finding Pop searching along the stone blocks with his fingers. After a moment, he let out an “Ah!” of satisfaction, and a section of the wall swung out into the room.
A pair of bells loudly clanged from somewhere above us, and we winced at the noise and prepared ourselves for another fight. After a few moments, however, it seemed nothing else was amiss, so we relaxed our guard.
Stepping into the small room he’d discovered, Pop emerged triumphantly with a leather-wrapped bundle, which he opened out atop a crate to reveal a set of porcelain plates upon which had been expertly painted landscapes of the cities of Luskan, Neverwinter, Waterdeep, and Baldur’s Gate, each as viewed from their harbor. I resolved to identify the artist so that we might be certain to have the plates appraised appropriately, and the fragile pieces were carefully re-wrapped and tucked into my pack.
Pop re-entered the hidden room, then came back out carrying a black metal bar in each hand, setting them down onto the crate as before with a solid thunk. There are few who know metal as well as a dwarf, so when he declared them to be “oxidized silver”, I believed him without question.
“Good thing we have Thokk here to do the heavy lifting!” Pop exclaimed, returning again with another heavy bar in each hand. In total, there were 15 of them, which the sturdy dwarf and the muscular half-orc split between them. I thought about mentioning the nature of the pack I carried, but the pair seemed unbothered by the weight, so I let it slide for the time being. Though silver wasn’t as scarce in Waterdeep right now as was gold, it was still a valuable haul!
This discovery sent everyone else into a flurry of exploration, but none of the remaining crates held anything else of great worth, though Renaer was grateful when Lek found a crate containing bullseye lanterns and lamp oil.
“It’s the first time I’ve seen more than a few feet in front of me in hours,” Renaer half-joked, sweeping the lantern’s beam around the room in satisfaction. He was no-less pleased by the discovery of some packs of field rations—we collected only those undisturbed by rodents—as he likewise hadn’t eaten in many hours.
We took that opportunity then to rest, eat a little, and bind our wounds. The lone kenku survivor remained silent the whole time, either having passed out again from its own injuries, or because it witnessed us helping clean the blood of its splattered companions off of Thokk’s hands and didn’t want to call any more attention to itself lest the half-orc find himself in need of a new punching bag.
While we ate, Renaer revealed a little more about his abduction and captivity, noting that he’d been awakened in a small office upstairs by one of the Zhents pouring a potion of healing down his throat. During their less-than-gentle interrogation, they’d had to give him a second potion from the same small crate. Though he couldn’t be certain there were any more potions left in the box, he considered it advisable we check out the offices upstairs, particularly as the kenku had told us earlier that the Xanatharians hadn’t bothered to check the place over thoroughly before racing off with Floon in tow.
From the grim look on the nobleman’s face, I have a feeling he was thinking of the condition we’d find his friend in when we at last caught up to the Xanathar Guild attackers. I didn’t want to think about what it could mean for poor Floon if the Xanatharians had already discovered they’d taken the wrong redhead.
Finally feeling a little more refreshed and ready to face whatever came next, we trouped up the stairs to check out the street level of the warehouse. As with the lower level, most of what we found among the crates was junk—dented helmets, padded armor with split seams, and cracked wooden shields—and most of the papers we examined were useless scraps and ordinary maps of northern trade routes. Lek expressed dismay at the lack of valuable intel about the Zhents, to which I pointed out there had been a still-warm pile of ashes in the warehouse’s courtyard: it seems likely that the Zhents were already in the process of abandoning this warehouse even before the Xanatharians attacked them.
Lek, Pop, and Devo went on to search the offices while Renaer, Thokk, and I remained on the walkway overlooking the warehouse, not wanting to crowd the small rooms unnecessarily, and I suspect Renaer simply had no interest in returning to the place of his earlier torture and confinement. Pop soon called out something about “the bells from below”, which I took to mean he’d found the source of the ringing noise we’d heard earlier when he opened the secret compartment near the stairs, so that was one minor mystery solved.
After a few minutes, Devo successfully found the crate Renaer had mentioned, and after confirming the contents were indeed magical potions of healing, he handed one each to Pop and Lek, then stepped back out of the office to give another to Thokk. After I declined the last bottle, Renaer asked for it, and the tiefling gladly handed it over to the nobleman.
Watchful Eyes
Just as Lek emerged with a folded paper bird which he said had some as-yet unidentified magical purpose, there came a loud crash. We all turned around to see the double doors at the back of the warehouse fly open, and a squad of armored figures streamed into the room with their maces, swords, and crossbows at the ready.
“Stay where you are!” commanded the figure wearing a shield-shaped brooch that marked him as a senior civilar of the City Watch.
“Captain Staget?” Renaer asked, obviously recognizing the man.
The recognition was mutual. “Lord Neverember?”
Renaer’s jaw twitched in a way common to young men with famous fathers, and I wondered how many times he’d said, “Lord Neverember is my father” before he finally gave up attempting to correct anyone. “Aye, Captain,” he agreed instead, “and it’s all right: these adventurers rescued me.”
“Word is you’ve been missing since Caravance night,” Staget noted with a frown. “You’ve been here all that time?”
“I assume so, yes,” the nobleman agreed, gesturing toward the covered bodies near the feet of the Watch. “A childhood friend and I were set upon by Zhentarim mercenaries and brought here, but sometime in the past day, the Xanathar Guild attacked and overwhelmed the Zhents.” He motioned toward the other collection of corpses, then to the dead kenku. “My new friends here—” and now he indicated the party gathered in the upper level of the warehouse “—took care of the remaining Xanatharians. Well, except that one,” he amended, pointing to the surviving kenku still tied to the support post.
Staget’s hand finally left the hilt of his sword, and he made a series of quick gestures to his squad. Two crossbowmen left via the double doors, presumably to take up a guard position in the courtyard, while two others went to secure the prisoner. The others lit magical lanterns and began to examine the bodies and take stock of the warehouse. Thokk bounded down the stairs and began to question the watchmen, openly admiring their armor and liveries. The captain chuckled at the half-orc’s eager questions and suggested he visit a magistrate’s office if he wished to enlist.
Our party moved down the stairs, and Captain Staget likewise crossed the floor toward us. “Any idea what they wanted?” he asked, looking around the warehouse but obviously directing his question at Renaer.
To my astonishment, the nobleman lied, or more correctly, very deliberately revealed far less than what he actually knew. “The Zhentarim? Something to do with my father, I suppose,” he said dismissively. “The Xanatharians? Their grudge seemed to be with the Zhents.”
If Staget realized Renaer was withholding information, he didn’t call attention to it. “That is certainly true enough,” he admitted. “This is the fourth scene I’ve been to tonight where those two groups came to blows.” He shook his head bitterly.
“The three of us witnessed a bar brawl initiated by a Xanatharian,” I agreed, gesturing to include Pop and Thokk, then I turned to address the confused expressions on Lek and Devo’s faces. “A different tavern, earlier tonight.”
“Have you seen Broom Flagface?” Thokk asked.
“Floon Blagmaar,” Renaer quickly corrected.
Staget shook his head. “Who’s that?”
“The childhood friend I mentioned earlier, the one who was grabbed off the street at the same time I was. We have reason to believe he was abducted by the Xanatharians when they attacked—” he nodded toward the kenku, having obviously overheard our interrogation earlier “—and we intend to go look for him.”
The watch captain frowned and crossed his arms in front of him. “Unlike Luskan, Waterdeep is a city of laws: criminal matters are to be handled by the City Watch.”
“They took him into the sewers,” Renaer pointed out.
Staget heaved a sigh. “Where the City Watch doesn’t go, of course. Very well, then: keep the blood off the streets.”
By this point, roughly two hours had passed since Thava and Casi left to locate Aurora and Phelan, and since Floon’s chances of survival lessened with every hour we delayed further, we decided to continue our search, now accompanied by Renaer. With any luck, Thava and Casi would remember the plan, and rejoin us as soon as they’d found Aurora and Phelan.
The Stormwater Tunnels
We left the Zhentarim warehouse via its street level door, then immediately began our search for a nearby sewer entrance. Thokk was the first to spot a manhole cover, and as the rest of us joined him at it, he lifted the heavy metal disc out of the way. To everyone’s surprise, a halfling woman was nearly at the top of the ladder, and she was no less surprised to see us than we were to see her.
“Have you seen any yellow signs in the sewers?” one of my companions asked, and the halfling nodded.
“One,” she said succinctly, staying where she was on the stone ladder.
I felt my brow furrow, as she looked familiar. “Would you like to come up, or…?”
The halfling shrugged, and climbed back down into the sewer, waiting at the bottom of the stone ladder for us to join her below. We looked at one another in askance and confusion—had she actually been on her way down, rather than up?—and then decided to go ahead and follow the taciturn woman into the sewer.
Once most of us had reached the tunnel floor, the halfling pointed to the wall opposite the stone ladder, and with our darkvision we could all make out two eye-shaped marks on the opposite wall, though of course that most wondrous of abilities lacked color definition. It wasn’t until Renaer made it to the bottom of the ladder—having closed the manhole cover before he descended—that we were finally able to perceive the hue of the markings.
The upper one had been marked in yellow chalk, but the lower one had been made with blue chalk. While the usual symbol of the Xanathar Guild was a circle surrounded by ten radiating spokes and a smaller filled circle inside the first, these emblems instead had triangular “pupils”, and we quickly made the assumption that the triangles doubled as arrows pointing in the proper direction. We followed the yellow triangle to the left, and soon enough found ourselves at an intersection with yet another set of markers.
As we looked behind us, we noticed that the somber halfling was trailing along, keeping fairly close to Renaer, the lone member of the party carrying a light source. I fell back a few paces to walk with the two—still puzzling over the halfling’s familiarity—and the others were forced to stop when they reached the next intersection and had to wait for Renaer’s lantern to determine which of the two signs was the yellow one.
Seizing the moment, Pop introduced himself to the halfling first, and he was quickly followed by Thokk and Lek, the latter of whom cheekily asked, “So what’s your name, Little Shortstack?”
I winced, as did Pop—halflings sometimes didn’t like it when the Tall Folk made light of their stature—but the woman took it in stride. “Patty,” she answered.
Lek laughed. “Patty? Patty Cake? A short stack of Patty Cakes!”
“Patty Proudfoot,” the newcomer corrected, unbothered by the half-elf’s humor. It was then that I recognized her from my journey through Mirabar, as we’d both signed onto the last autumn caravan taking the Blackford and High Roads to Waterdeep. I hadn’t seen her through any of the winter months in the city, and I wondered what she’d been up to for all this time. Noting the impressive collection of sharp implements she carried—a large axe strapped to the back of her pack, two smaller ones tied to either side of it, and a pair of javelins poking out of a leather quiver—I figured she’d probably found plenty of work despite the seasonal slump in trade caravans.
We finished the introductions, then, and Patty nodded when I introduced myself as though we’d never met. She didn’t indicate if she recalled meeting me before, but if I found an opportunity to play my viol, I was confident she’d remember the gentle melodies she’d greatly enjoyed listening to around the campfire at night.
Though he wasn’t an ideal scout, Pop took the lead because he could “read the stone”, which was nearly as true in a constructed cavern as it was a natural one. I didn’t think it my place to advise my companions otherwise, and the trio of Devo, Lek, and Thokk seemed to be enjoying one another’s conversation.
“How come this place doesn’t stink?” I heard Thokk ask after we’d been walking for several minutes,
The weather had been unusually dry the last few days, so the bricks beneath our feet were mostly dry and littered only with leaves and random flotsam, and the odor in the tunnel was that of decaying vegetation. “The first level of the sewer is stormwater run-off,” I explained, gesturing to the storm drains above us through which the nearly-full moon shone. “The, ah, nastier stuff flows to the levels below us. Actually, if we were going north, we’d eventually come to a juncture where our level continues straight into a waste level, while stairs lead upward to the stormwater level of that higher part of the city.”
“You know a lot about sewers,” Lek remarked.
Renaer was similarly eyeing me. “I’m not sure whether to be impressed or disturbed by your knowledge.”
I felt my cheeks heat. “Both,” I admitted. “Impressed that I remember it all after 20 years gone, but disturbed that an eight year-old child asked her civilar father so many questions about the city’s underworks.”
“I never asked my father about sewers when I was that age,” Lek joked, and while I had to agree that it was a rather unusual thing for a child to have asked about, I’ll freely admit to having been an unusually curious child. I think myself no less curious as an adult, just significantly more tactful about it than in my younger years.
Lek and Devo then began to share a little of their own childhood experiences. Devo explained that he had been raised in a cloister by ten elven priestesses, and he offered to “share” his moms with Thokk after remembering the half-orc’s dislike for his own mother. Thokk thought that a grand idea, but wondered aloud if Lek would also like to share in Devo’s bounty of mother figures. Lek dismissed the notion, claiming to be minor nobility from a city whose name I didn’t recognize, but when that part of the trio’s conversation devolved into a joke about food—Pop cheerfully joined the exchange once that topic came up—I wondered then if Lek wasn’t making up the whole thing.
Patty took it all in stride, though I noticed an occasional hint of a smile on her face from the antics of our younger companions. Renaer seemed to be in constant rotation between amusement and utter disbelief, and I have a feeling my face was similarly running a gamut of expressions.
As we proceeded through the tunnels, generally following the twists and turns of the streets above us, we occasionally came to a gate secured with a padlock bearing the city seal or heard the distant sounds of footsteps echoing at a junction, but our passage was uneventful. The eye marks weren’t the only symbols scrawled onto the walls, and there were even some eyes that were different colors or had different symbols in lieu of the pupil, but since we didn’t know what any of those meant, all we could do was to keep following the arrows of the yellow eyes.
We soon came to our first level change, making our way down a set of stairs curving along the wall of a cylindrical juncture. Before we’d reached the bottom of those steps, we were assailed by a foul stench, and it didn’t take long for any of us to realize the fetid odor came from beyond the gate situated beneath the platform from which we had just come: the sewer level beneath the stormwater level, as I had previously explained. Someone had scrawled a crude illustration of a skull and crossbones next to the gate.
Fortunately, the yellow mark we were looking for was pointing to the tunnel opposite that gate, and we continued along the lower stormwater level. The malodorous stench from the sewer level seemed to have quelled the conversation, and we continued on in relative silence broken only when a pair of drunken men staggered past a storm drain with a bawdy song on their lips. Lek couldn’t resist calling out to them, though regrettably we didn’t get to see how they reacted to the sewer suddenly “talking” to them.
The Yellow Eye
Not long after passing through another level change, Pop held up his hand when we neared an intersection. “Floating blob ahead!” he warned.
The “blob” hissed and descended from the ceiling, its intended ambush foiled by the dwarf’s keen observation. Lek drew out his shortbow and attempted to shoot the thing out of the air, but the creature dodge the arrow. It then fired off two magical beams of its own, one each striking Lek and Devo, though thankfully to no effect other than ruffling their hair and causing Devo to momentarily shiver.
Thokk tied a quick lasso into a rope he had been carrying looped at his belt, flinging the circle at the little creature but failing to connect, and Devo called down a bolt of holy fire that missed the dodging monster by mere inches.
“It’s a gazer!” I called out, recognizing the shape at last: ovoid and roughly eight inches in diameter, the gazer was roughly the same size and shape as Xoblob, the stuffed beholder we’d seen hanging in the window of its namesake shop earlier that night. However, it had only four eye stalks above its central eye, and though its teeth would certainly hurt if it managed to bite something, it could hardly swallow a human whole as could a mighty beholder.
I felt a pang of momentary guilt, realizing I had failed to warn my companions of an important piece of information about where we were heading, and I could see from the expression on Renaer’s face he was reaching a similar uncomfortable realization.
Patty plucked one of the javelins out of her quiver and charged forward, using her sudden charge to propel the weapon at a speed greater than her arm alone could manage. Despite what would have been dim lighting for her, the javelin creased the monster’s side before clattering off the sewer wall behind it.
“Nicely done!” Pop called out, his own shortbow already in hand and aimed at the gazer. His arrow struck the aberration next to its hissing mouth and drove it backward against the brick, where it fell to the floor, never to rise again.
As Renaer’s lantern settled on the gazer’s body, Lek studied the shape curiously. “Would you call that yellow?” he asked after a moment.
“Ochre, but yes,” I agreed, naming the more appropriate hue to describe the creature’s yellow-brown coloration.
“Think that’s the yellow ‘eye’ we’ve been led toward?” Devo asked.
Renaer and I exchanged a look, for we’d taken for granted what was relatively common knowledge to Waterdhavians. “The Xanathar Guild has historically been led by a beholder,” the nobleman explained. “Like that, but bigger.”
“Much bigger,” I added, “and with ten eyestalks instead of just four.” I didn’t think they yet wanted to hear about the deadly magic rays wielded by beholders.
“How much bigger?” Thokk asked.
“Six to eight feet in diameter,” I guessed, not recalling the specifics exactly.
Pop yanked his arrow out of the gazer’s body and scowled at it. “And they’re meaner. A whole lot meaner.”
Lek eyed Thokk. “Uh… how tall are you?”
“Six-and-a-half-feet tall,” Thokk answered proudly. Lek and Devo exchanged a nervous look, no doubt imagining a scaled-up version of the gazer that was as wide as Thokk was tall.
“Historically, the Xanathar’s lair has been deep in Undermountain,” Renaer pointed out, “while the directions we’re following have kept us to the upper stormwater levels. With any luck, we’re dealing with only a low-level gang leader and not one of the guild higher-ups.” He swung his lantern around to the wall of the corridor to our right, illuminating the next yellow eye symbol which led us onward, which Pop confirmed had us now heading west.
Archers’ Ambush
It seemed that we had a collective but unspoken agreement that the fight with the tiny beholderkin was no coincidence, and we moved more quietly now as we pressed onward. No more than about five minutes later, we reached another intersection much like the one where the gazer had waited, but instead of a ladder off to the side, there was raised stone platform just to the south, and behind it, a metal-reinforced door with a familiar-looking eye engraved into the wood. Nearer to the north side of the cylindrical junction was a rectangular gap in the wall.
Lek slipped noiselessly across the floor to examine the door, while Pop boldly strode forward and put his face directly in front of the gap. He had barely a moment to look into the dark space before he was greeted with an arrow clanging noisily off his helmet. The impact caused him to stagger back a few steps, though it did him no actual harm.
Thokk attempted a quick look into the gap himself, but then busied himself with lighting a second lamp, while the rest of us readied ourselves in case we were under attack. Lek noted a second gap on the curved wall opposite the first, but his warning had scarcely passed his lips before another arrow flew out of each gap, just barely missing both Pop and Lek.
Growling in annoyance, Patty hustled forward, unslinging her large axe as she moved, and I followed in her wake, drawing out my shortbow. Devo ducked low and scrambled through the intersection, and then Thokk tried again to look into the gap on the western wall.
“Hey there, little buddy… you wanna come out?” he asked whatever he saw on the other side, but apparently disappointed by its response, he moved away from the arrow slit.
While Thokk distracted the hidden archer, Pop moved over to the door, grunting in frustration as he found the wood had swollen enough it was stuck in its frame. Taking the half-orc’s cue, Lek sweet-talked whatever he saw inside the eastern arrow slit, eliciting a surprised, “Are you friend?” from a small, croaking voice with a goblinoid accent. Before Lek could answer, he took an arrow in the back of his shoulder, courtesy of the archer Thokk had attempted to engage.
“Move!” called out Patty, and Pop just barely dodged out of the way before three feet of solid muscle rushed past him, slamming into the wooden door and sending it crashing against the wall just inside the room beyond, then the halfling disappeared around the corner. Pop gave a low whistle of appreciation.
As most of the others quickly moved to join Patty, I stepped in front of the western arrow slit, took aim where I saw a vaguely goblin-shaped figure move, and let an arrow fly. There was a startled cry and a thud, and I dodged to the side in case there was a reprisal.
Lek’s goblin squawked in protest. “You killed me buddy!” it cried, and from the fading sounds of footsteps, it quickly moved away from the arrow slit, possibly afraid I’d get as lucky shooting at it as I had the first.
“I’m going to find where he went,” Lek declared, moving down the south tunnel, Devo following gamely along.
“This is where the eye symbol is,” I noted, pointing to the door.
“We won’t go far,” Devo promised.
There came an anguished cry from within the room the others had entered, and I raced inside and through the next door to find Thokk cradling the body of the goblin I had killed, my arrow embedded squarely through the creature’s eye.
“He was just a little guy!” Thokk sobbed in protest.
“A goblin,” Pop pointed out, “and he shot at me first!”
“What if he was just defending his home?”
Pop gestured around at the nearly-empty chamber and another nearby that held a few small piles of junk, as if to say, “You call this a home?”
Lek and Devo returned only a moment later, calling out that they’d found a pipe that led to another room. Seeing Thokk’s empathetic reaction to the dead goblin, Lek couldn’t resist needling the half-orc over his tender heart, causing him to sob and clutch the creature’s body all the tighter. The half-elf attempted to search the goblin to see if it had anything of value on it, and when Thokk tried to block him, he quickly snatched away the crude pouch tied around its scrawny neck.
“What if I give it back two coins to give to the ferryman over the River Styx?” Lek teased, dangling the softly clinking pouch in front of Thokk’s face.
“What’s a river of sticks?” Thokk asked, confused.
“I dunno, just something I heard once,” Lek replied with a grin, having successfully distracted the half-orc. “A river of sticks!”
Pop sighed and shook his head. “It’s a river through Tartarus,” he grumbled under his breath, using an archaic name for the Lower Plane of Carceri.
I smiled at the dwarf, unsure when he would have learned such a thing, for he’d mentioned no formal education in planar cosmology. Rather than pursuing that oddity, I asked Devo, “You said something about a pipe and a room?”
Patty Smells a Rat
The pipe was south of the door with the carved eye, and though it was clean inside, it was only about two-and-a-half feet in diameter: traversable by any of us, but a tight fit for Pop and Thokk. The latter decided against going in favor of “burying” the dead goblin beneath rags in the room full of scrap, and Renaer opted to stay with him. As there were lit torches nearby and Thokk’s own lamp still burned, Renaer handed Patty the lamp he’d collected from the warehouse, as she was the only other among us who needed its illumination.
Devo led the way, horns scraping the upper surface of the pipe lightly as he traversed the relatively smooth metal. Lek followed close behind, then Patty went next, her smaller frame giving her a far easier time moving through the passageway even as she carried Renaer’s lantern with one hand. I entered the pipe after Patty, and Pop brought up the rear, his chain armor occasionally squealing when it dragged against the metal pipe.
The room at the other end seemed to belong to some kind of inn or hostel, as it held two neatly-made beds and little else of interest, with no sign of any personal effects. As Devo and I moved toward the stairs leading up, there was a hiss, and then a small figure with red eyes leaped out of the shadows of the closet at the bottom of the stairs.
I drew my saber, unsure what to make of the figure. Perhaps sensing my hesitation, it leaped forward, sword outstretched and raking a painful line down my side. Patty dropped her lantern and darted between me and Pop, swinging her battleaxe with a triumphant cry and driving it deeply into the creature’s leather jerkin. Devo drew his mace and thumped the creature on its side, then used that as a distraction to put a little distance between himself and the surprisingly vicious humanoid rat.
Lek attempt to shoot the attacker with his bow, but as he was trying not to hit any allies in the close quarters, his arrow went high. Pop likewise fired over Patty’s head, but the figure nimbly evaded the shot. Realizing my wound could soon prove fatal if I didn’t tend to it, I hit the floor in a roll that quickly put me out of the small rat-man’s reach, then sang the words to a spell of healing once I had my feet under me. Having been deprived of me as its target, the rat slashed its blade at Patty, and when that did little more than draw a thin line of blood, it lunged at her with drool-covered fangs.
“Don’t let it bite you!” Patty yelled, shoving the creature away—a wererat, I now realized—but doing no actual harm to it. She sidestepped to give Lek a clearer shot, and the half-elf gladly took that opportunity to pierce the lycanthrope’s side with an arrow.
Pop growled, dropped his bow, and stepped forward with his warhammer, and though his blow caught only air, it forced the wererat to move away—
—straight into my waiting saber.
As the wererat crumpled to the floor, Patty gave its twitching corpse a solid kick, then whirled about and marched up the stairs.
“What a woman,” Pop gawped appreciatively as the sturdy halfling disappeared.
Devo and Lek hustled after, but returned to the basement a short moment later, shaking their heads: the establishment above was a halfling hostel, and Patty had disappeared out of the common room into the night. It was clear she had no love of wererats—truthfully, I couldn’t recall there being much she did like other than my music—and I wondered if Patty and I would cross paths again another day.
“They told us we stink,” Lek grumbled, “wrinkling their noses at us and trying to point us to the nearest bathhouse.”
I grinned at that, because the halfling hoteliers probably had a point: we had spent the night engaged in one battle or another, then the better part of the last two hours wandering through Waterdeep’s sewers. True, the stormwater tunnels were less pungent than the sanitation levels, but I doubt any of us smelled pleasant at this time.
A Familiar Foe
“Let’s get back to the others,” I said, gesturing toward the pipe leading back into said sewer. I led the way this time, and we were soon back to where Thokk and Renaer waited for us, the latter keeping watch with his hands on his weapons, and the former idly poking through the assorted scraps in the junk room-slash-goblin tomb.
After a quick explanation that Patty had apparently done what she came to do and was off again into the night, I returned Renaer’s lantern to him. Its light had been extinguished when Patty dropped it earlier, but there seemed to be several torches lit in the Xanatharian lair, and I motioned us toward the stairs which led down from where we currently stood: if we didn’t stink already, we surely would once we’d spent time in the sewer proper.
To my surprise, the area ahead was similarly clean and dry, and the straw pallets strewn about the room suggested this place had been used for sleeping quarters fairly recently. While the room itself was empty, there was a door set into the middle of one wall, and we could hear a muffled argument and the slide of wooden furniture from the other side of the door.
Apparently deciding to forego subtlety, Lek yanked open the door and leapt into the room, but I was not yet in a position to see what he saw beyond. Pop followed Lek through the door, then I heard him growl out a curse in Dwarvish—not a language I know, but I could follow the meaning well enough—and then came the crash of steel upon steel.
All the rest of my companions charged through the door, and by the time I reached a better vantage point, Lek was stabbing his shortsword into the chest of a familiar-looking man whose head was covered in eye-shaped tattoos: the instigator from the bar brawl at the Yawning Portal.
Pop used his shield to deflect a swing from his similarly-sized opponent, then drove his warhammer into the other figure’s armored shoulder. As it spat curses at him with a heavy accent, I quickly realized this was not just another dwarf, but a duergar: an Underdark-dwelling cousin to the shield dwarves. Knowing as I did that broad malignments against the deep dwellers were not always true—certainly, the Sword Coast had a growing population of dark elves who declared they wanted only to live in peace—I could not fault Pop’s enmity toward the duergar, as the two were snarling Dwarvish epithets at one another while each attempted to bash in the other’s skull.
Renaer’s rapier darted forward once, glancing harmlessly off the duergar’s armor, but he apparently found the measure of his opponent, for his next two attacks struck home: once each with his dagger and rapier.
Thokk again attempted to hurl a lasso—this time around the gray dwarf—but had no more success at it than he had against the gazer earlier. Lek stepped over the body of the fallen Xanatharian, but his shortsword merely glanced off the duergar’s armor as the latter attempted once again to skewer Pop with his heavy pick. Pop caught the blow with his shield, then slammed his warhammer into his opponent’s unarmored head, dropping him with a sickening thud.
There was a final gasp from the tattooed man, then all fell silent once more save for an ominous gurgling sound from the far side of the room. From the state of the broken furniture piled against the door there, I realized then that the pair we had just faced had likely been trying to keep something else at bay…