Home
Table of Contents

Session 10 What the Dead Know

- Waterdeep Dragon Heist

The smoke was still rising from Trollskull Alley when the party understood that the world had just changed around them.

One moment, Hammond Kraddoc had been making his cold little smile—his court summons delivered, his point made—and the next, the air itself had detonated. Eleven people were dead in the street. Trollskull Manor’s windows had blown inward.

Null had taken the worst of it—dropped by the blast, unconscious before he hit the ground. Silvyr, still on their feet, reached him first and cast Spare the Dying before the question could become something graver. Null would live, but he would not be getting up today. The remaining five would have to manage without him.

Fire in the Morning

The fireball had appeared from nowhere. No visible caster. No warning. Just a concussive orange bloom of heat and pressure in the middle of the alley, and then eleven people who had been alive were not.

Eostre pulled herself to her feet and surveyed the damage with the practised eye of someone who has seen violence and refuses to look away from it. The bodies were charred. An elderly woman who had simply been out for a walk. Three people in plain servants’ clothes—two women and a half-elf, running errands for households in the North Ward by the look of them. Two men in dark cloaks and leather armour, longswords at their hips, who had not looked like the sort who went for morning strolls. A gnome in a burned cloak, fallen closest to the tavern entrance, a dagger still clenched in his fist.

And four halflings. Two of them had been playing music in the alley moments before—a flute and a fiddle, a small performance for no one in particular. The other two had been dancing to it.

Cog confirmed the obvious: this was a fireball spell, precisely cast, approximately five metres of blast radius centred on the alley. Whoever threw it had line of sight from a rooftop or elevated position, and they knew exactly what they were doing.

Blue moved through the bodies with quiet efficiency—checking for signs of life, he would say if asked. One of the armoured men had a tattoo on his right forearm: a black-winged snake. Anyone with street knowledge of Waterdeep recognised it immediately. Zhentarim. The Black Network. The gnome, meanwhile, had been carrying gemstones. Five of them, each worth a hundred gold pieces. Blue noted this carefully. Then he noted it again, more physically, into a pocket.

Five hundred gold pieces. Precisely the amount of Eostre’s court fine. The universe has a sense of humour that way.

Silvyr had been the only one quick enough to stay on their feet when the blast came. They stood in the settling ash and looked at the wreckage of what had been, moments ago, a perfectly ordinary morning.

Lyraleth helped where she could, checking survivors, trying to make sense of the chaos.

Hammond Kraddoc, for his part, had been knocked unconscious by the blast and was swiftly bundled away by City Watch guards. The party, given the choice between sincere concern and the acknowledgement that this was perhaps karmic in some fashion, managed to express both simultaneously.

Griffin Cavalry and a Persuasion Check

The City Watch arrived in force. Twenty veteran constables. Six guards at each alley entrance. And overhead, the shadow of griffin cavalry wheeling on patrol—a reminder that Waterdeep’s response to catastrophe is thorough, if not always welcome.

Detective Sergeant Saeth Cromley led the investigation. He was accompanied by Barnabas Blastwind of the Watchful Order of Magisters and Protectors—a mage whose job was to understand what had happened magically and to ensure it did not happen again.

The interview was civil. Cromley explained what the Watch had already pieced together: the gnome had been running, pursued by at least three Zhentarim operatives. Two of those operatives were among the dead. A third had escaped. Neither the gnome nor his pursuers had been expecting the fireball. Someone had thrown it at all of them.

Eostre, ever practical about sunk costs, attempted to negotiate. She had information. She could offer intelligence. Perhaps, in exchange, the court summons regarding a certain incident involving guild property and some apples might quietly be misplaced?

Her argument was persuasive. It was not persuasive enough. Cromley explained, with the weary patience of a man who has had this conversation before, that court dates were set by magistrates. He was a detective sergeant. These were different departments. The summons stood, and the court date remained three days away.

Cromley did offer a consultation fee if their information led to a suspect’s capture. He also strongly advised the party against conducting any arrests themselves. He used the word “strongly” with enough emphasis that it was clear he meant “please do not do this, I am begging you as a professional.”

The party listened attentively and did not make any promises.

Three Errands

The Watch released them eventually. The party gathered in the manor, took stock, and split into three groups—because the fastest way to answer three questions is to ask them simultaneously.

Blue and the Skewered Dragon

Blue headed for the Dock Ward and the Skewered Dragon tavern, where a half-orc named Dave could usually be found spending someone else’s money. Dave was indeed there, in good spirits, his coin purse jingling with what sounded like recent good fortune. He was also, by his own accounting, twenty-three years old and the father of eighteen children, which says something about priorities.

More usefully, Dave knew things. The streets had been humming with a name: the Stone of Golorr. A legendary artifact, whispered about in faction circles and underground networks alike. The Stone, so the story went, was the key to accessing a vault left by former Open Lord Dagult Neverember—a vault said to contain five hundred thousand gold dragons.

The Zhentarim had been after it. So had the Xanathar Guild. If someone had deployed a fireball to scatter both factions simultaneously, Dave reckoned, that someone had a very strong interest in the Stone and very little patience for competition.

Blue paid five gold pieces for Dave’s discretion and discretion’s continued good health, and headed back.

Cog and the Purple Shop

Cog knew exactly where to go: the Old Xoblob Shop, an establishment he had visited in the earliest days of the party’s time in Waterdeep. He had been the one to find it back then, drawn by the knowledge that a gnome ran the place — and it was there he had acquired his purple pipe and hat, both of which had since become signature items. Everything in the shop was purple. The lavender smoke, the dyed goods, the plush beholder in the window. The proprietor, Xoblob, was a hairless gnome in plum robes who had painted nine additional eyes on his cheeks in purple face paint, because apparently two eyes seemed insufficient.

Cog arrived smoking purple bubbles from the hat and pipe, and thus fit in better than one might expect.

Xoblob was helpful. The dead gnome from the alley matched the description of a figure in gnome social circles: Dalakhar, a wealthy gnome who moved in noble company. A friend, as it happened, of Lord Renaer Neverember—the man the party had rescued from a Zhentarim cell in the very early days of their acquaintance. Both Dalakhar and Renaer, Xoblob noted, were members of the Harpers: the network of agents dedicated to fighting tyranny and protecting the vulnerable, occasionally while getting themselves killed in alleys.

“Gnomes in high circles often receive fireballs,” Xoblob observed, which could have been a joke, or could have been a sincere commentary on the occupational hazards of nobility. With Xoblob, it was difficult to tell.

Eostre, Silvyr, and the Temple in the Field

Eostre and Silvyr had a different errand: they needed a cleric who could cast Speak With Dead. The dead, in this case, had information the living urgently required.

The Temple of Sylvanas lay well beyond the North Gate—past the Field Ward entirely, a couple of kilometres outside the city proper, in a grove that felt genuinely removed from Waterdeep’s noise. An open-air sanctuary set amid wild gardens and ancient oaks, staffed by humans, elves, and dwarves who maintained the grounds with druidic magic. No tithes required. The temple sustained itself from the land, which is either very principled or very convenient depending on one’s perspective on organised religion.

The High Priestess, Elyndra, greeted Silvyr warmly—they were known here. She provided what the party needed: a cleric for hire named Orin Mosswhisperer.

Orin was a half-elf of advanced years and unhurried disposition. He moved slowly. He spoke slowly. He considered things with the deliberate patience of someone who had learned that the world generally waited if you made it. His fee was twenty-five gold pieces per casting of Speak With Dead, which the party agreed to.

The return journey was, briefly, a race. Silvyr transformed into a warhorse. Eostre climbed on. Orin became a giant eagle and took to the air. Both parties departed the grove at roughly the same moment.

It became clear almost immediately that a warhorse carrying a fully-armoured paladin was not going to outpace a giant eagle. Silvyr communicated this in whatever way a warhorse communicates such things. Eostre dismounted at speed and continued on foot — propelled, in the manner of a chicken that believes very strongly in itself, by wings that cannot quite achieve flight but can certainly achieve enthusiasm. Somehow, through a combination of determination and improbable dice, she arrived at the manor ahead of both.

Silvyr and Orin declined to discuss the result in detail.

Brandy and Intelligence

The evening was given over to sharing what each group had learned. Laid together, the pieces formed something coherent: a legendary artifact hidden in the city, multiple factions competing for it, a dead Harper who had apparently been carrying it toward the party’s front door, and an unknown third party who had thrown a fireball to stop him.

Orin listened to all of this with serene calm. Then he surveyed the tavern’s wares. The barrel of off-ale in the corner met his gaze with whatever spiritual energy a failing barrel of wine can muster. Orin placed his hands on it, spoke a quiet incantation, and transformed the entire contents into fine brandy. Not top-shelf. But good. A hundred servings of genuinely decent brandy — not offered as a gift so much as produced because he wanted a drink and the wine was unacceptable.

The party had no objections. The evening was celebrated appropriately. Orin celebrated with them, and then considerably beyond them, in a manner that suggested the Temple of Sylvanas maintained a practical relationship with its clergy’s consumption habits. Lif had prepared sausages and hash browns by the time everyone surfaced. Orin worked his way through the greasy breakfast with the focused gratitude of a man treating a hangover the only way that actually works.

The Morgue, and What It Held

The North Ward Watch Station was familiar ground—the party had met Jonn here before. He was outside when they arrived, their City Watch contact who had survived Grezelda’s orphanage as a child and carried that history quietly into adulthood.

Jonn looked at Orin, confirmed his credentials, and let them all in. Some doors open for official reasons. Some open for unofficial ones. Jonn was good at both.

The morgue held three bodies: Dalakhar the gnome, and two Zhentarim operatives in their charred leather. Orin prepared himself with the unhurried thoroughness of a craftsman who takes his work seriously regardless of the audience.

Then he cast his first spell, and the gnome’s eyes opened.

What the Dead Know

Dalakhar spoke in the flat, factual cadence of the recently deceased—no personality, no embellishment, only answers. Orin had five questions to work with. The party chose carefully.

He had been heading for the party’s tavern, Dalakhar confirmed. He had heard of them—the adventurers who had rescued Renaer Neverember from the Zhentarim—and he had intended to deliver something to them. The Stone of Golorr. An oval stone, green, with three eyes embedded in its surface.

The five gemstones in Blue’s pocket were not the Stone. This was confirmed without ceremony or comment.

The last question was the important one: who might have killed him?

“Before I died, I looked behind me and saw a puppet shaped like a man on the rooftop. He threw something.”

The party turned this over in silence. A puppet. Shaped like a man. On a rooftop, casting fireball spells.

The second body was the tattooed Zhentarim—later identified as Wern Amalkravy. He had been chasing Dalakhar on orders from a superior: Urstul Floxen, a senior Zhentarim operative. The Stone had originally belonged to the Xanathar Guild. Dalakhar had taken it from them. The Zhentarim had wanted it as well, and Floxen had been the one who escaped the fireball.

Did the Xanathar use puppet men? Wern didn’t know. The dead are honest about the limits of their knowledge.

The third corpse—unnamed, eyes burned entirely away—filled in the final piece. If they had recovered the Stone, where would they have taken it?

“We would bring the Stone back to Gralhund Villa.”

Gralhund Villa. North Ward. Approximately three streets from where they were currently standing, which is either convenient or alarming depending on one’s temperament. The gates were warded with arcane lock spells. No known secret entrances. Urstul Floxen was a large, heavyset man in his forties, fully mortal, susceptible to ordinary weapons—the corpse was reassuringly practical on this point.

Orin completed his third casting and stepped back. The eyes closed. The dead returned to silence. Outside, Waterdeep continued its business, indifferent to what had just been learned in a cold room in the North Ward.

What They Now Know

The party reconvened in the corridor with a great deal of information and still no Stone.

Dalakhar had been bringing it to them. Something—a puppet shaped like a man, origin unknown, faction unknown—had thrown a fireball that killed eleven people to prevent that delivery. The Stone was not on Dalakhar’s body when the Watch secured the scene. Either it had been taken by the puppet-man, or it had found its way somewhere else in the chaos.

The Zhentarim would have brought it to Gralhund Villa. Urstul Floxen had escaped. Whether Floxen had the Stone, or whether the puppet-man did, remained an open question.

What was clear: Gralhund Villa was three streets away. The court date was three days away. And somewhere in the city, a figure that moved like a man but was not quite one had demonstrated both extraordinary power and extraordinary indifference to civilian life.

“Puppet shaped like a man,” Eostre said, and the phrase hung in the air like smoke from the morning’s fireball, unsettling in ways that were difficult to name.

Who controls the puppet-man, and what does it want with the Stone of Golorr? Does Gralhund Villa hold answers — or only more questions? And with a court date looming and Urstul Floxen somewhere in the city, how long before the party runs out of time on all fronts at once?

Party Roster