♪ ♫ Fireballs are falling on my head ♬ ♫

The bar is open for business!   We had a great opening, all maintenance costs covered!   We profited 140 gold pieces! we use the profits to continue paying down the debt for the renovations. We now owe 610.   Kvoth is standing on a table playing music. We are talking with the guild master who acts as our general contractor for the renovations.   Since all the renovations we can now get solid pricing on upgrades. Kvoth is trying to convince the guild master to install an endless beer tap but his mage and alchemist are not ready to install that upgrade. As the guild master is listing upgrade options, Lyra is thinking about whether or not we can afford any of these things given we already owe for renovations. The others seem enthralled by all the available options and are enthusiastically discussing possible upgrades.   Finally, we thank the guild master for his time, but decline any further upgrades at the moment.   After speaking to the guild master, we meet Gaven, a human paladin interested in joining our next adventure, he is a noble from a wealthy family, although he does not carry much money on him.   The group decides to go roaming in the alley looking for quests and to browse the shops.   We walk into Appleton's Fine Comestibles, we introduce oursevels to Artil Appleton, the owner of the grocery store.   Artis mentions his wife was murdered in the south ward, a dangerous part of town. Kvoth asks about an arrangement to sell his food in our tavern.   Artis is confused but persuaded by Kvoth to open up a food stand inside our tavern Artis agrees to a 40% profit share of the food sold in the tavern Artis is very confused...but thinks it's a good deal!   Johanna feels bad for the stupid man and decides to buy a bushel of dates for 3 copper.   The group waves good bye and heads over to the competing bar on the street, Frewn's Brews.   The bar looks very run down, it is peak bar time but the establishment seems rather empty.   The bar owner, Frewn, is at the bar.   Kvoth asks for a beer, he reaches for a very fancy tap, the tap sputters a very shitty beer into a glass, it is mostly foam, with a little mold on it.   Frewn asks for 10 silver pieces for the beer but Kvoth is very disappointed and begins to argue with Frewn.   as the argument heats up, Frewn orders a small boy who works at the bar to call the city watch! The boy runs outside and begins calling for help.   All of a sudden, A huge explosion happens right on top of the city watch and boy!   Chula dicerns that that wasn't just an explosion...it was an actual fireball spell! Gaven uses his divine sense to feel out if there is any evil nearby...but he doesn't detect any real evil.   The rest of the group runs outside, it is absolute chaos, there's smoke and charred bodies everywhere!   There's a perimeter of insured people and further out, a multitude of shocked civilians. People begin to come out of the shops to investigate.   City Watch is trying to assemble to do some crowd control.   Vult sees 11 bodies on the ground, he notices a few odd bodies... 2 potentially human in leather armor with swords an elderly female human two female humans and a male half elf dressed in plain clothes, much of it burned a gnome clutching a dagger a couple of halflings, 2 female 2 male, probably street performers.   It looks like the explosion was probably right in between the street performers, the city watch, and the boy.   Gaven runs around the area using divine sense, he detects a mild simmering of hell pretty close by near the Steam and Steel... Lyra runs out of the bar and begins looking at the roof tops, she is approached by an elderly lady who claims she saw a man of wood or steel running across the roof tops away from the explosion. Johanna decides to walk down the alley, following Gaven. Kvoth begins circling the alley looking for suspicious people.   Bones goes up to a woman who clearly is born of some wealth and priviledge, and asks if they saw anything. She says she saw a puppet on the rooftops with no strings sling something in to the crowd, she begins to break down after looking at the bodies. She has never seen anything like it before.   Lyra and Bones share stories, the eyewitnesses seem to agree that there was something in the rooftops.   Vult is searching the bodies, he notices that two of the victims have black wing snake tattoos. He finds a pouch by the gnome, and tries to pocket it, but 6 city watch and the magistrate notice him and tell him to move behind the line. He moves behind the line with the pouch and finds 5 gem stones.   As Vult moves away, a griffin cavalry rider decends upon the scene, landing right outside the blast radius.   There's a tiny man with spectacles crawling off of the griffin, a city watch employee hands him a small book and they begin to examine the bodies.   Johanna and Gaven walk into the Steam and Steel, Gaven's evil sense is going off centered around the forge.   Gaven is approached and welcomed by the married couple who own the forge, a fire and water Genasi.   Gaven briskly walks past them and approaches the forge. He sees something dancing in the fire, a small demon that the couple explains keeps the forge hot.   Johanna asks the couple if they know of a wood/steel creature running around. They say it sounds like the creation of a tinkerer, they reside in the Temple of Gond. Johanna thanks the couple for their time and walks back out of the forge with Gaven.     Bones begins speaking to the urchin boy, he is griefing because his halfling friends are dead... The boy was hiding inside a barrel after the explosion and shows Bones two beads on a string, it looks like a small piece of a pearl necklace, he found it in the barrel. Bones offer him a gold piece for the beads and the boy agrees.   Kvoth watches the alley, there are many people and city watch enclosing the area and going in different directions. Kvoth looks around, but doesn't noticing anything suspicious. He speaks to the city watch blocking the alley, but they don't divulge any information, the guard's name is Redford. The two strike a friendship and Redford would like to have a drink later.   Vult sees Johanna and Gaven coming out of the forge and relays the information of the black wing tattoo and the gnome that smelled like sewer, holding a dagger. Johanna asks about the tattoo, she remembers the tattoo from the Zhentarim gang.   Bones interrogates a girl who says saw a cloaked man grab something from the dead gnome on the street sneaking away into The Bent Nail.   Bones doesn't want to get the perpetrator get away, so he rushes to The Bent Nail.   Bones greets the the owner of the shop and begins to interrogate, he tells Bones the perpetrator ran through the shop from the back door and out the front.   The group meets up right outside The Bent Nail and begin to trade notes on what they saw.   As Bones tells of the beads and string he got from the boy on the street, a man asks to see.   He introduces himself as Vincent Trench, he is a private investigator, and our neighbor.   He identifies the mechanical man we saw as a nimblewright, and thinks that the items Bones found may be relevant to the explosion.   He says city watch wants to interrogate us, he suggests we get back to trollskull manor and give out minimal information.   We return to trollskull manor and see the small man that rode off the griffin accompanied by a city watch waiting for us. Vincent ushers us to the table.   The short man begins to ask questions about our neighbors. We decide not to divulge too much information and the small man and his croney decide to get up and leave.   Vincent wants to take the beads Bones found to decipher what they are, he takes Kvoth, Bones, Lyra, Gaven and Vult with him to a magic shop nearby.   Vincent asks for 10 Gold and gives the Mage 5, pocketing the rest, The mage heads to the back for 20 minutes to investigate the beads.   The mage identifies the beads as the remains of a necklace of fireballs, each of these beads holds a fireball spell that would explode when broken. Bones pockets the beads for later use.   Vincent decides to do some investigating but requires the necklace, Bones offers to cut the necklace in half but Vincent is reluctant. Lyra and Vult decide to go with Vincent to keep the necklace whole, the rest of the group go back to the bar and investigate the explosion on their own.   We find that the quality of the necklace is significantly higher than anything we've seen, we also learn that the necklace has a special enchantment: when whole it is enclosed in magical protection to prevent accidental discharge, the explosion was definitely not accidental.   An apparent old friend of the group (whom Lyra does not recognize) is at the bar upon our return, he claims that he sent a messenger with a special key for us that unlocks the vault to a dragon inside waterdeep. The Zhentarim and another rival gang knew of the key.   The messenger perished in the explosion.