Trollskull Alley

Trollskull Alley is a well known street in the North Ward of Waterdeep that contains several shops, a tavern, and numerous residences for the wards moderately wealthy. In addition to Trollskull Manor and the residences, the alley is home to the following shops:

The Bent Nail - carpenter and woodcarver
Steam and Steel - blacksmith and armorers
Corellon’s Crown - apothecary and herbalist
Tiger’s Eye - private detective agency
Book Wyrm’s Treasure - bookstore
Appleton's Fine Comestibles - Grocer
Havershamble's Jewelry and Fine Mechanicals - Jeweler and Tinkerer
Trollskull Tailor - Fine Clothier
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At one end of the alley there is also a grate that provides ready access to the city sewer and catacomb network.

Purpose / Function

History

Origin of the Trollskull Alley Name

Source - Greenwood the Sage

Most Waterdhavians “today” (that is, the early 1490s DR) will know only that the North Ward alley has “always” been called that, and may guess it’s named for Trollskull Manor, when the truth is the other way around. Even the palace clerks can’t help, because it’s called that on their oldest surviving deeds and city plans, meaning it was already called Trollskull Alley. I can do better, IF we can trust Elminster, my primary source for almost all we know of the Realms in the first place (he’s been known to bend the truth and indulge in spin a time or two, out of whimsy and in service to Mystra, but is “generally” a reliable narrator). So, according to Elminster, the true derivation of the name is as follows: in 1298 DR, during the bloody collapse of the Shadow Thieves guild, some of its desperate members sought to cover their escapes from the city (that is, giving themselves time to grab all the riches they could to take with them by working with evil wizards of their acquaintance to teleport and release various monsters to maraud in the city, to keep the Watch and the Lords’ agents who were hunting them busy. One mage translocated a foraging band of trolls from the Evermoors to North Ward, and they stalked this alley, then known as Lormaundeir’s Skulk thanks to an unsavory local smuggler, Lormaundeir, who lived on it in the 1270s and owned many properties along it that he…rented out; the tenants were initially unaware that he used secret passages built into the walls of these rented rooms to eavesdrop on them, and learn much, but learned the truth when he died in a secret passage, was found by his reek, and local tales of his haunting the passages developed. The trolls slew some citizens along the alley ere they perished in flaming spheres hurled at them by the wizard Tazhara Lurael, of Turmish (formerly one of Elminster’s apprentices). She was racing about the city dealing with many released-by-Shadow-Thieves monsters, and lacked the time to “clean up” properly, so some local youths ended up playing with scorched troll bones, bowling with the skulls for some years ere they all disintegrated under the rigors of such handling. By then, the rest of the city had dubbed the way “Trollskull Alley,” the name stuck, and many of the locals didn’t mind—because it transformed their reputations, from folk living with the ghost of a creepy smuggler to folk who’d survived battling fearsome monsters. So there you have it. locals have reported seeing the phantom apparitions of skulking Lormaundeir AND a trio of trolls proceeding silently down the alley. Not to mention the inquisitive ghost of a tressym, though no one knows where it came from.)