Lich of Aramoor 1, 2/1/20

What Floats Beneath

Written by Ophidimancer

General Summary

It was late summer in Waterdeep, the sweltering heat of the season had not yet waned, but had rather settled into the bones of the city. The collective filth of the citizens had ample opportunity to ferment and rot, the sewers belching up fetid gas when the wind was wrong. Utopia, the rowdy tiefling paladin and Milo, the human clown mercenary, were loitering in Virgin Square where mercenaries and sellswords commonly gather to offer their services. The tiefling wore a tabard bearing the symbol of her patron Selune, goddess of the moon. Milo wore the sturdy leathers that any former military mercenary might, but completed his signature look with black and white grease painted in an exaggerated smile and a garishly red bulbous orb on the end of his nose. A cloaked man approached them, seemingly picking mercenaries at random and offered them the hefty sum of 500 gold each to deliver a letter to one Fiego Laurentis De Gryphon and follow his orders thereafter. The pair were slightly suspicious of such a sum simply for delivering a letter, but decided to take the job. The other mercenaries muttered darkly at the hefty take these two seemed to win from a simple job.
Upon arriving at the De Gryphon villa, they were greeted by a manservant who, judging the rough looking paladin and the strange clown man by their appearance, bade them wait outside while he retrieved the Lord Heir who was in the garden romping with his hounds, dressed in fine riding leathers and his foppish hat, complete with an enormous feather. The young noble recognized Utopia and was puzzled to make the acquaintance of Milo the clown. When he opened the letter they delivered him, he found it to be a missive from his friend, Renaer Neverember, son of the former Open Lord of Waterdeep. In it was information about a possible lead to the hidden hoard of his father's gold. It seemed a member of The Eye, a gang that had kidnapped Renaer in an attempt to find the gold, had been found dead in the Dock Ward near an entrance to the city's sewers. It was a promising lead in the quest. Milo and Utopia had been hired to accompany Fiego into the sewers. Fiego and Utopia both concurred that a venture into the sewers of Waterdeep would benefit from the guidance of their friend Drips, the eccentric sewer druid. They made their way toward the Starry Cradle Orphanage where he made his home.
Meanwhile, in the temple of Torm, the valiant triton paladin Khoros was summoned before the Order of the Gauntlet. His mail gleamed brightly as befit a holy knight of his station, his traditional trident strapped to his back and his moon touched sword on his hip. The knightly Order had gotten word of strange deaths in the sewers and wanted to send a party to investigate. Along with two other holy knights, of Tyr and Torm respectively, Khoros was given the quest.
At the Starry Cradle Orphanage, our heroes entered upon a scene of dozens of children being tended by too few caretakers. A frazzled young woman with a baby on her hip greeted Utopia, who was once a resident of the Starry Cradle Orphanage, and left to summon Kathryn, the mistress of the orphanage. Milo delighted the children with his clowning, juggling various items and balancing them on his chin. His companions swooped in to the rescue when he picked up an entire child to toss into the air, however. When Kathryn arrived, she inquired as to their purpose and was very stern when she discovered that they were taking Drips on yet another adventure. Utopia abandoned Fiego to the mistress' lecture and left to find Drips. She found the scruffy druid clinging to the ceiling of one of the dormitories, casually eating an apple. Having made generous donations to the orphanage, our heroes left with strict instructions to protect the young elf druid with their lives.
As four of our heroes entered the sewers, Khoros arrived at the entrance as well. Fiego found himself in a sewer full of corpses while Milo was greeted by the triton, with whom he had gone adventuring with in the past. Deciding that loitering on the street near a sewer entrance was not wise, our heroes gathered together underground to confer. Utopia confronted the verbose Khoros while Fiego accompanied Drips to begin the investigation of the bodies, but they decided to switch duties after a moment, Fiego being more suited to talking at length and Utopia better suited to guarding their druid guide. While Fiego and Khoros came to an accord about their purpose, Drips and Utopia started to slowly piece together what had occurred. They surmised that the dead were members of The Eye as well as some of their trafficked slaves. They also found two dead aquatic humanoids that Khoros identified as merrow, or evil merfolk. When one of these merfolk bodies started to drift away in the stream of sewage, Fiego risked dashing forward to use a grappling hook to snag it and haul it back. They found that it carried triton made weapons, but it seemed the noise he made retrieving the body attracted attention because after a few minutes of their inspection of the body pale tentacles writhed up from under the filthy water to grasp at our heroes.
Pale and slimy, they appeared to be vaguely humanoid and Khoros recognized them as Skum, formerly sapient beings that had been warped by the power of the monstrous Aboleths. Carrying tridents that also seemed to be of triton make, they hissed and advanced on our heroes. They snagged Drips, but Fiego sliced at the tentacle and kicked the creature away from the druid, and battle was joined. Drips conjured magical webbing to entangle the creatures while Utopia and Fiego joined efforts to smite one of the tentacled horrors with radiant and thunderous strikes from their blades. The creatures lashed out at our heroes with their tridents and their tentacles, releasing bursts of slime that seemed to sap at their willpower. Khoros, suffering under multiple attacks, healed himself with holy power. Milo spat a guttural curse and one of the tridents in the hands of the abominations glowed cherry red with heat, causing the Skum to screech and throw the weapon aside. The rubbery hides of the creatures seemed unnaturally resilient to their blows and after a few exchanges our heroes were struck by a pulse of evil power that sent fear racing through their minds. Seeming to take this as some sort of signal the Skum slipped away into the disgusting muck of the sewer. Concluding that the master of the wretched Skum, an eldritch horror known as an Aboleth, was approaching our heroes decided to retreat to ground level.
Once there, they cleaned themselves up and requested a private room at The Three Pearls, a local tavern and theater owned by a friend of Fiego's. Realizing that the matter was too large to handle alone and concerned for the safety of the city, our heroes sent messages to both the Open Lord as well as The Order of the Gauntlet before heading back into the sewers to salvage what they could of their investigation.
Upon re-entering the sewers, our heroes found that the natural scavengers had returned, evidence that the greater evil had likely passed, allowing them to resume their investigation. Fiego was able to detect the presence of magic on one of the corpses and Drips, who crossed the fetid flow of sewage by skittering across the ceiling like a spider to inspect the body, discovered a paper bird with no written message, but addressed to one Grinda Garlow, another lead. Also present upon the corpse was a masterwork dagger, which Drips pocketed, and a magical tattoo of an eye. To his horror Fiego's enchanted sight revealed the tattoo as a real eye that peered back at him and blinked. Fiego hurriedly told Drips to cover the eye and get away from the body.
With the bodies quickly being devoured by scavengers, our heroes realized there was no more information to be gleaned from the bodies and decided to take the tunnel southward, to determine if the harbor guards that traditionally were stationed at the seaward entrance to the sewers needed any assistance. The position was usually held by sea elves, allies of Waterdeep. Khoros, as an emissary of Persanah, deep in the ocean, also had contacts among the aquatic residents of Waterdeep.
As they left the scene, our heroes were left with more questions than they had started out with. How had an Aboleth bypassed the aquatic defenses of Waterdeep? What was its, undoubtedly nefarious, purpose in the city? What were The Eye doing in the sewers and how did they cross paths with the aberration? Did they have dealings with each other that went awry, or was their meeting simply an unlucky happenstance for the gang members? Was the Aboleth also seeking Neverember's gold?
To be continued...

Rewards Granted

+1 dagger, Paper Bird (Addressed to Grinda Garlow)

Character(s) interacted with

Fiego, Drips, Khoros, Milo, Utopia

Report Date

01 Feb 2020

Primary Location

Waterdeep the City of Splendors