Session 1, Finding Floon
The campaign starts in the Yawning Portal, the most famous tavern in the city. It has a large pit into Undermountain, the largest known dungeon in the world, which happens to be right under the city.
A fight in the Yawning Portal
The adventurers were told by Meloon Wardragon, a famous adventurer, that one of his friends has a job for them. They are waiting in the tavern for that friend to approach them.
The players know about the recent escalation of a conflict between two organisations, the “Zhentarim” and “Xanathar’s Guild”. The Zhentarim are on a coin flip between being considered a criminal organisation or a legitimate mercenary company. Xanathar’s Guild basically is Waterdeep’s unofficial Thieves’ Guid, and is an operation run from the sewers. Xanathar is a mysterious crime lord who keeps his identity hidden. No one knows who Xanathar is! NO ONE!
This escalation is portrayed in a direct conflict in the Yawning Portal. One of the NPCs the characters know is Yagra Stonefist, a female half-orc Zhentarim thug. She is attacked by some Xanathar thugs who are claiming the Zhentarim are responsible for the arrests of one of their cousins. Yagra and the thugs started a bar-fight.
The character decided to intervene and help Yagra against the Xanatharians. During this fight it was clear that the leader, a bald dwarf with eye tattoos named Krentz, was a little crazy. He was so focused on punching Yagra that he didn’t realise they were losing the fight badly.
In the middle of the bar fight something else happened. A troll with 16 stirges came out of the pit in the tavern. Most of the stirges were satiated with the blood of the troll. The barkeeper of the tavern and legendary fighter, Durnan, quickly jumps from behind the bar with his greatsword and start chopping the troll. He requests help from the party, he needs them to use fire or acid to finish off the troll.
Cithras kills the troll with a searing smite and the Xanatharians run away with Krentz’ unconscious body. Yagra looks disappointed that they ruined a nice and good bar fight.
Volo’s Quest
Volotharmp Geddarm appears and is very impressed with their performance in the inn. “Volo” to his friends is a writer and explorer and created “Volo’s guide to Monsters”. He tells the party he was the contact Meloon Wardragon talked about.
He starts telling them about his friend Floon Blagmaar, who went missing. Volo explains that Floon’s wife came to him not half an hour ago, saying Floon never came home last night. He was extra surprised, saying he did not even know Floon had a wife. With the recent escalation between the Zhents and the Xanathar’s Guild he is very worried that he might have been caught in the conflict.
Volo gives some information to start the search. Floon is a handsome man in his early thirties, with red gold hair, fashionable clothes and he has a silver six inch wide bas relief of a unicorn around his neck. Volo describes him as a very good, “kuch”, companion. They went drinking together at a bawdy tavern called the Skewered Dragon in the Dock Ward last night.
Volo gives each character 10 gold up front and promises 100 gold if they bring back Floon. This is a ridiculous amount of money for a job like this. The characters succeed on an insight check and notice that Volo is not really good with money and is already wondering whether he can actually pay them.
To the Skewered Dragon!
Outside of the Skewered Dragon they get a lift from Volo’s personal chauffeur, Ranjeet. They squeeze themselves into the small dray and are off.
As they move deeper into the Dock Ward, they notice it gets more unscrupulous by the minute. Candles are stolen from street lights, the streets are dirty, there are not many guards and the only citizens they see are drunk.
When they almost reach the Skewered Dragon, the road is blocked by the city watch who have surrounded a crime scene: the Zhentarim and the Xanathars Guild have attacked each other on the street. Many corpses are lying on the street and three Zhentarim are being arrested when the party arrives.
Ranjeet and his carriage does not fit past the force, but the Inn is on just the other side of the crime scene. The party gets out and approach the officers on site and ask some questions but are not allowed near the scene and the officers are tight-lipped, even after some attempted persuasion checks.
The party proceeds to the inn and it’s quite run down. The windows are smashed in and there is a big hole in the roof with an anchor in it. The current customers all look like regulars who come here to drink their sorrows away.
They immediately approach the barkeep, Magda, with questions about whether she saw something. After some bribing and persuasion she tells them what she knows. She remembers Volo and a good looking man (most definitely Floon) drinking and Volo leaving. Another man, with a similar appearance as Floon, arrived later and drank with Floon a bit. They left quite drunk at around midnight and were followed by a group of Zhents. She even recognised the second man, his name is Renaer Neverember, the son of the previous Open Lord of Waterdeep, Dagult Neverember!
Now the party knows that Floon and Renaer were kidnapped by Zhents, but where did they go? They look around the inn and a sulky dwarf is sitting drinking and he has a Zhent tattoo on his hand. They try to question him but a dwarf is a dwarf and no sweet talking will cause him to divulge any information. They switch over to intimidation but this doesn’t work out. All other patrons in the bar have the dwarf’s back and take on threatening stances. The party gets the hint and leaves the bar.
Outside they split up a bit. Ludoviche dives into an alley and disguises himself as a criminal and a Zhent. He goes back into the Inn and tells him the dwarf that Yagra Stonefist sent him and she wants to know what happened last night. Unfortunately, the dwarf considers Yagra a traitor of some kind and the dwarf shouts out: WHAT, Yagra has joined the Doom Raiders, why are you taking orders from her? Ludoviche is surprised by this and tries to lie himself out of the situation. He does not succeed and has to leave the inn again. Outside, he dives into an alley and stakes out the building while going back to his normal clothing.
The rest of the party go to an interesting looking shop nearby, which is still open for some reason. It is the “Old Xoblob Top Shop”. Basically, it has all the trinkets in the world but everything is a shade of lavender or purple. The owner is a deep gnome who smokes something purple and the whole shop is filled with purple smoke to their waists. They question him a bit and even buy some trinkets. Venthras goads the shopkeep into a gamble: give us some info if we win a dice roll else we pay you some gold. The shopkeep loves a nice gamble , and Venthras rolls some dice. He succeeds on a sleight of hand check to make the dice roll like he wants and wins the roll.
The shopkeep tells them he saw two rich looking men (Floon and Renear) being attacked right in front of his shop last night. They were dragged in a certain direction. The party investigates outside and find the bas relief necklace of Floon and some blue pearls. Floon has left a trail of pearls after being kidnapped.
At the same time, the dwarf in the Inn leaves and sees the party. He attempts to lose them with some sneaky alley tactics. Venthras chases him and stays hidden and tracks him to a warehouse. He reports back to the party. He leads them there and they see that the pearls would have also led them there.
Entering the warehouse
Venthras saw the dwarf knocking at a door and remembered the secret knock. They go to the same door and do the knock. They are invited in by a deep voice. Inside is a large warehouse with many crates and something large covered by some cloth.
Venthras casts dancing lights to create some light. Immediately they are attacked by four kenku with bows. One of the kenku lifts the cloth from the big object with a winch and reveals a large skull of a dead dragon covered with magical runes which emits an aura of fear.
The characters fight the kenku, most of them need to overcome the fear effect before being able to fight effectively but in the end all of them succeed. The last surviving kenku quickly surrenders.
The party starts investigating the warehouse. Venthras takes interest in a lab near the dragon skull which looks like a chemical experiment. He succeeds on an arcana check and learns that the experiment distills the fear effect of the dragon skull into potions. He also learns this is a skull of a dracolich, a dragon who has turned itself into a lich as well.
Immediately they hear a voice from a backroom calling for help. Renear Neverember is tied in a back closet. He tells them that the Zhents ambushed him and Floon in the street and took them here. The Zhents questioned Renear about the 500,000 gold his father, Dagult, embezzled and hid somewhere. The characters realise this is probably what all the recent gossip was about: “Neverember’s Enigma”. The Zhents snatched Renear’s locket he got from his dad as a gift and broke it open, taking what was inside. Renear never even knew the locket had a hidden compartment nor what could have been hidden inside.
Renear then explains what happened to Floon. He was put into the closet and the Zhents took out Floon to find out if he knew something. Then he heard the attack of the Xanathar’s Guild and deduced they probably took Floon somewhere.
The others question the Kenku who can only answer by mimicking other people voices. His answers are vague but he tells them this often in a thin, nasally voice: “Go into the sewers and follow the yellow signs”.
Finally, Merlijn goes looking for secret doors and finds one. In a hidden room he finds two crates, one filled with valuable paintings of the cities of Luskan, Waterdeep, Neverwinter and Silverymoon. In the other he finds 16 pieces of silver trade bars worth 50 gp each.
The watch arrives
The watch arrives when they are looting the secret room and shout to anyone inside the warehouse to come out. They sneak some bars into their backpacks but cannot bring the paintings. They hide the entrance to the secret room and go outside.
The captain is someone called Hyustus Staget, one of the “good cops” in the Dock Ward. He acts quite hostile until Renear reveals who he is, after which Hyustus becomes a bit more courteously. He also complains about someone called “Urstul Floxin”, one of the Zhentarim “big fish” he wants to catch and also the same person he thinks is responsible for most of the escalation in violence.
He lets the characters off the hook but reminds them that not all other captains will be this nice. He arrests the Kenku and lets his men investigate the warehouse.
Next session
That is basically where the session ended. Renear and the characters have found a nearby sewer entrance and are going in next to hopefully rescue Floon from the Xanathar kidnappers.
