Adventurers Clubs

The City of Splendors has, over the years, been home to dozens of short-lived adventurers' clubs. Mostly they burn down or go bankrupt, some of them after being damaged often and thoroughly in armed and bloody brawls. This has led to a local reputation for danger, which usually means "I don't want one located anywhere near where I live, thank you VERY much."
However, many of these clubs, and most of this fell reputation, comes from the sort of adventurers' club, now outlawed by the Lords of Waterdeep, that's really just a tavern run on the cheap and offering cheap wine and ale, because it subsists on joining fees and dues paid by members (and everyone drinking in the place is either a member or a guest—"guests" being a lone individual brought in by a member, once only, because if they return for a second time, they must join or be ejected). These sort of rowdy establishments are all gone now; the best remembered ones are the oldest and longest-lived, The Proud Sword (westfront The High Road, Castle Ward), and the notorious Red Blades High (westfront Slut Street, Dock Ward).
The adventurers' clubs that survive are akin to real-world London gentlemens' clubs of the Victorian and Edwardian eras; that is, large buildings that provide meals, laundry and tailor (garment and boot repair) facilities, lounge areas, meeting rooms, and the equivalent of private hotel rooms for their members.
The better clubs also provide libraries of maps, journals of adventures, and general reference works (such as taxes, fees, licenses, and laws regarding adventurers in various Faerunian locales). The very best employ errand-runners and trade agents, who can go and fetch or buy replacement weapons, clothing, and needed gear from various Waterdhavian establishments, on behalf of members.
In short, the Waterdhavian adventurers' clubs of today function as a shared home for adventurers visiting the city—a first-class hotel in which they are part owners, and so are treated with real respect by the staff, not given supercilious or bad service.
The foremost clubs at present are:

Rahorinjak's House

Staffed by retired adventurers who have grown old, wise, and full of stories (not to mention magically prepared to cope with almost anything a member or guest can throw at them, including deadly monsters getting out of cages to rampage), Rahoringjak's is the oldest and shabbiest, but most relaxed and comfortable, of all Waterdhavian adventurers' clubs. It has some six hundred members, a magnificent trophy room adorned with all sorts of alarming and disgusting preserved monster heads on the walls, a secret back way in and out (that emerges, by means of rather damp tunnels, several streets away in the back service stair of a tavern that has no business affiliation with the club), twenty sleepover rooms that members can rent for a copper/night, and a secret armory in the cellar that members can raid for replacement weapons for free. Rahoringjak himself died some years ago, and is said to have been stuffed and locked into a closet somewhere on the premises. The kitchens run to hearty stews and roasts, not fancy cuisine, and the stuffed, magically-floating human-head-sized beholder just inside the entry doors is rumored (correctly) to be more than just an adornment (it contains some miniature wands that can be made to discharge their magical effects by someone who knows how, from quite a distance).
Rahoringjak's is located in Dock Ward. It's housed in a rambling old gray stone building of several balconies and turrets, that's actually three old buildings knocked together (which is why most of its roof is purple-to-maroon tiles, but one wing has a dark green tiled roof). These connected buildings stand in a cluster in the interior of a city block bounded on the north by Shesstra's Street, on the west by Snail Street, on the east by Book Street, and (a long way to the south) on the south by the Street of Curtains. The club is "a stone's throw" south of Shesstra's, through the alley gap.

The House of Honor

The newest and grandest of adventurers' clubs, this establishment was founded by Sargrath's Folly, an adventuring band of elves and half-elves led by the elf swordsman and rogue Tansaryn Sargrath, after a disastrous battle with a dragon left most of them maimed beyond adventuring—and quite lacking in any thirst to resume adventuring careers once they got healed. The eleven members of the Folly still own and run the club, employing two dozen former servants of various Waterdhavian noble houses.
Their skills mean that the large, spacious, well-lit club (its entrance hall and ballroom—more familiar to members for its daytime use as a venue for casual dining or chatter, the many round tables being numerous enough that small groups can assemble far enough from others to keep low-voiced converse private—being clad in shining white marble) can feature the style, hauteur, and graces of a grand noble house, from the elaborately-presented dishes served forth on platters to the etiquette of preparing a room [small hearth-fire lit save on the hottest summer days, bed turned back and scented, drinks left decanted and ready, and so on].
The House is expensive to belong to (original members pay 2,000 gp at the beginning of every year, and newer ones pay up to 4,000, as the joining fee has risen steadily, in 200 gp increments, since the club's opening), but provides by far the most luxurious venue for adventurers to mingle and inhabit. Every member gets lockable storage; a walk-in closet in every room, and a larger locked room in the cellars. The wine cellar at the House rivals that of the finest dining establishments in Waterdeep, and there are weapons-practice chambers, a room of small heated pools (we real-world moderns might call them "sunken hot tubs"), and a full stables with covered storage for a dozen coaches and wagons (in this case, "full" means harness and tack secure storage and repair, and a stable staff expected and able not only to feed, water, and curry horses, mules, and oxen, but to "doctor" most equine and bovine ailments).
Like many a noble mansion, the House features grand, lofty-ceilinged "grand rooms" on the ground floor, two sweeping staircases that have railings adorned with life-sized bronzes of adventurers in heroic poses that lead to upper floors with wide, high passages, the first floor up housing a library, an armory (weapons repair as well as secure storage), and a dozen meeting rooms, and the three floors above that being devoted to suites of rooms where members can stay (at a cost of one copper piece per head per night, or 2 cp to "secure the room" as one's own for a day and night through). Many "members of Honor" who winter over in Waterdeep make the House their home for the cold months, using the time
and proximity to other adventurers to plan forays, forge alliances, and prepare all that's needed in the way of gear. Wintering over in Waterdeep, with the shifting fashions among the real nobility (fewer of them relocating to warmer climes for the winter) and the prevalence among wealthy non-nobles to never adopt the habit of wintering in warmer places, means residents of the House have ready winter access to possible sponsors; many of them make good use of this.
It amuses the seldom-seen Tansaryn to employ a ridiculously fluting and whimsical elf, a seven-foot-tall and rail-thin sun elf named Relevandrel Vornreth (and better known as "Relevandrel the Ridiculous" around Waterdeep) as "chamberlain" of the club. This always dark-and-impeccably-clad personage can be as haughtily sneering as the most overblown noble, but is playacting, and usually can't resist making a jest or mincingly and eye-rollingly acting out mimicry of either an individual or a type of person. His stage sighs and grand verbiage amuse many, and most members of Honor love him and regard him as a staunch ally (Need to get a bleeding body out of your rooms unseen at highsun? Relevandrel's your man. Have to procure JUST the right wine to fill goblets, right now in the dead of night? Relevandrel's your man. Can't remember the name of the highcoin-lass you so enjoyed last time, but need her right here and right now? Relevandrel's your . . .). Many adventurers can do their own devastating impersonations of Relevandrel, but usually choose to do them outside Waterdeep.
The House is located in Sea Ward, occupying the center of the block bounded on the north by Rough Road (always "Raruph" to Sea Warders, by the way, because the older name for the street is Raruph's Ride), on the west by Feather Street and The Sutherlane, on the east by Mendever Street, and on the south by Zarimitar Street (mislabeled "Zarimtar" on some maps and street signs). Its size and grandeur make it look like what it formerly was: the grand mansion of a noble family (the Neshers built it to be their new home, but sold it without ever moving in when family fortunes took a sharp dip, and the older family members voiced their preference for their older digs over the "large, soulless, overbright" new ones).

Stag Swords House 

This now-well-regarded adventurers' club began as the place for the outcasts and misfits who couldn't afford the fees for Rahoringjak's or the other (now-defunct) Waterdhavian adventurers' clubs of the time, or who were expelled from those clubs for their behavior, or who were "shunned" (blackballed, or not allowed to join) because they were disliked by key established members of those clubs. Yet over the years, the hard-working staff of the Stag Swords have made this club beloved by its members. The staff see themselves as the personal servants of members, so everything from delivering messages and items in-town to washing the feet and dressing the bunions of an exhausted member who trudges in gets done without hesitastion, without charge, and without criticism of the member. The Stag Sworders regularly fetch drunken members from other establishments across the city, and even see to it that non¬member strangers and adventurers who belong to other clubs get delivered to the right place when brought to their doors. If something is broken and needs repairs or replacements, clothes or boots need washing (even really tough washing jobs, like getting rid of skunk- or trogolodyte-stink, or city sewage), it gets seen too, right away (often while a member sleeps). Wounded and filthy members have been privately undressed, washed, and put to bed by staffers, sick members have been tended, and so on. Stag Sworders think nothing of kneeling to lace up or unlace the boots of a member who is merely fat or weary; as one guest once put it, "They're BETTER than the best servants nobles can hire in this city!"
All of this makes up for the nondescript looks and spartan furnishings of the club (it's located amid warehouses and stables on westfront Carter's Way in South Ward, south of the Way's moot with Coachlamp Lane (BTW: some civic officials and maps mention a "Southern Ward," but no inhabitant of that area EVER calls it anything but "South Ward"), has walls painted in mismatched hues and is furnished with similarly mismatching used furniture from hundreds of sources.
The staffers today are led by the three founders (the large, strong, and jovial Ildevvur Murmrask; the small, petite, and tart-tongued Sharlassa Tilturr, whose eyes and memory miss NOTHING; and the one-eyed, taciturn Garleth Khalastym, who is a master horse-doctor and a rough-and-ready sewer-up of wounded humans, too), and number twenty-nine, young cooks and maids included (that is, children of the older staffers).
The name of this club comes from the stag-headed party masks, picked up for free from a long-ago hunting-themed noble revel, worn by the staff in early years to confer some degree of anonymity in their dealings with the authorities and with rival clubs. These masks cover the nose, upper half of the face, and the rest of the head like a war-helm, and sport two small, upswept antlers. They still exist, are displayed behind the bar, and get worn from time to time—these days, usually by club members wanting to do something shady, risky, or outright illicit.
The Stag Swords membership is now slightly more than four-and-a-half-hundred (and is growing). It is only that low because this club has always been the city home of a lot of very active adventurers, so its roster of members has suffered heavy losses over the years thanks to the perils of adventuring.
The House remains a cheap and cheerful place, with its own adjacent stables and warehouse (where members can store things that aren't flammable or alive, without question or comment). Thanks to its location, it does hire discreet armed guards (often wounded, recuperating member-adventurers) to watch over the stables, warehouse, and its own entrances and passages.

The Lightning Targe

The Lightning Targe: This newest and smallest adventurers' club consists of two adjacent houses (joined only by a covered bridge built between two facing third-storey windows) on eastfront Blackmul Street in Castle Ward. A former haunt of smugglers, the interior of both houses is a warren of dimly-lit steps, tiny rooms built over other rooms, closets that have sliding panels for their back walls that let into short secret passages, and so on. There are dumbwaiters of all sizes, including large enough for five friendly or non-shy people to cram together in the "traveling box," and the houses bristle with gables, balconies, swing-down fire escape ladders, ladders affixed to the upper exterior walls that allow for easy travel between windows and roofs and upper balconies to lower-down windows and balconies, and multiple chimneys that have projecting iron spars to serve as hand- and foot-holds. The club also has a "pet gargoyle" who's actually a mimic who captures intruders but doesn't harm them, blowing a foghorn that it long ago took into its guts to warn staffers once it's attached itself to an intruder and held them in place. (Most of the time this mimic, who's referred to as "Lararve" [Lar-AR-vuhh] by members, looks like an immobile stone griffon-like sculpture, attached to the front top of one of the gables.) If lots of intruders swarm, Lararve blows its horn without first trying a capture; it defines "intruders" as anyone trying to climb into the houses rather than using a door, but not if they exit from a window or balcony of the houses first, only if they come from the ground or atop a passing coach or wagon.
The Targe has about eighty members, and many of them are half-breeds or out-and-out monsters; half- orcs and drow are prominent among the membership, and orcs, hobgoblins, kenku, bugbears, and loxo are frequently seen inside the club. As a result, the club has two firm rules: all members get treated equally, and don't "rat out" fellow members to the authorities (if the Watch asks, "Did you see an orc come in here?" the usual response is something akin to a laconic, "Don't think so; what color was it?"). Non-members aren't permitted beyond the front entry rooms of either club house except when they're guests assisting, and vouched for by, a member (i.e. persons helping a wounded member reach the club, and then reach a particular room inside the club).
The Targe has over twenty "swift disguises" handy in a walk-in longcloset beside the bar that faces the entry door in one of the club houses, for the use of members; these consist of clothes, head-swathing bandages, false casts that can be slid on to cover limbs, crutches, and various full-head masks, including some that, with the attached wigs, look like very realistic human faces.
The Targe is run by seven large, strong, striking rather than beautiful Northern women, of Uthgardt barbarian heritage but fiercely determined to never return to their home regions or culture; they are led by the two oldest and largest, who go by the names Kelelty ("Kel-EL-tea") and Morragh ("MORE-rag"), though these are both assumed names. They dole out rooms to members as needed; there's no limits to stays, but most members stay for short periods, are active in the city mainly by night, and are as secretive as possible.
Waterdhavian rumor, among those few citizens who've heard of this club at all, hints that mixed-species "monster" orgies are frequent and rampant at the Targe. This is far from true, though mixed races of different genders often crowd into the same room to conduct private negotiations or to sleep, or both. The name "Lightning Targe" came from a shield Kelelty once sheltered behind, that got split by a wizard's lightning bolt in an alley brawl hard by where the club is now located, but that kept her alive and deflected the bolts into allies of the wizard, who then fled. She took this lucky deliverance as a sign of the favor of the gods, and chose this location for the club (though it took some years to "persuade" the smugglers to part with the buildings; as Elminster put it, "it was the rather bloody sort of persuasion").
The Targe is said to be haunted by a poltergeist, and it certainly has a staff member able to invisibly move things around, though this may be telekinesis and personal invisibility; Elminster hasn't yet investigated. This haunting seems to awaken to counter hostile intruders or drunken or belligerent members causing trouble in the club, and otherwise to remain unseen. The Targe is known to have a decidedly mildewy tunnel connection to city sewers, affording a "back way out" (and, of course, in, too).

The High House of Heroes

The High House of Heroes: This grandiosely named adventurers' club usually gets politely nicknamed "Heroes High" in everyday converse, and is less politely referred to as "Low Heroes" or just "the Low." This club is located in a rundown but formerly grand mansion in North Ward, on eastfront Nindabar Street four doors north of Suldown Street (formerly known as "Suldoun," and older citizens and one or two older signs preserve the older name; BTW, street signs in Waterdeep are posted on the sides of corner buildings [[or their walls, if they stand inside walled compounds, as many nobles' villas do]] above the level of street-level awnings or window and door rain-dormer roofs). It has a staff of just over thirty, and a membership of almost six hundred, and is the closest thing to a "soulless hotel" among Waterdhavian adventurers' clubs, with a professionally polite and distant staff, bare-bones amenities, and an accent on privacy (as in, "I don't want to know why you're dragging that dead body up to your room, or carrying that severed head; none of my business, and if I don't know I can't tell, so eyes right and remember nothing and the shift will unfold just fine and I'll get my pay").
With that said, every room has an ensuite bathing tub and jakes, a small cooking-hearth with chimney (the shared flues of these chimneys soar up through the club to emerge from the roof and soar above it like a cluster of slender stone towers, giving the mansion the appearance of a gigantic stone high-spired crown), a sturdy table, good beds and linens, and three stout bolts that can be slid across the inside of the door (all door hinges can be removed from the outside, so the bolts are a delaying tactic, not true security).
The club is run by a council (we real-world moderns might use the term "board of directors," because that's exactly how it functions, with voting, rules of order at meetings, and so on) that's largely composed of retired- or semi-retired adventurers who've invested in the club. The High House is run by the charismatic, diplomatic Waterdhavian wine merchant and landlord Morivel "Hartmantle" Hartimantur, a middle-aged and somewhat portly man who possesses rugged good looks, white daggerboard sideburns, and a dizzyingly long list of lovers (from tough Dock Ward tavernmaids to bored noble ladies of Sea Ward, and everything in between). He smoothes over the worst disputes and "troubles" among the High House clients, often by fetching forth good wine and cheese from his private cellars (and sometimes by persuading one of his lady friends to "comfort" someone), and generally keeps things moving along in his charmingly sleazy way.
As a longtime member told Elminster: "No one exactly loves the Low, but many adventurers find it useful."