Dungeons & Dragons

The party descends 120 feet from the trap door into a wide tunnel that ends at an adamantine panel. Smoll, Vincent, and Reade produce the three keys, touch them against the panel, and the pocket doors slide open to reveal a dwarven hall with symmetrical alcoves of iron doors that do not open in the traditional manner. Overhead, up 60 feet, are three crumbling stone bridges spanning east and west across three center pillars.

The party approaches the middle pair of iron doors on the west side of the hall and taps with the keys. The keys swing the door open, probably because it was not secure in the first place. Beyond, stairs take the party up to the second level.

Along the north-south hall of the second level, three pillars fashioned like warhammers follow a mosaic depicting Moradin crafting dwarves from black material. Togy checks out an area where the mosaic has crumbled off a crack in the wall. The crack turns out to be the residence of a black pudding. The black pudding degrades a lot of armor, weapons, and good health before Reade defeats it with his ruined quarterstaff.

Vincent and Togy repair the items that can be repaired while the party studies the three crumbling bridges that span to the east to three adamantine doors. Fleet-footed Reade sprints across the north bridge as it crumbles and tumbles down into the hall below, almost with Reade. Holding his gift-from-a-queen key to the door on the far side accomplishes nothing. Togy confers with Stone of Golor, suffering from acute boredom and stifling humidity, to learn that the keys have nothing to do with these three doors as far as he cares, and he does not care. It would take a dwarf to go any further in his apathetic opinion.

Smoll works with Vincent and a rope to cross the crumbling southern bridge. Vincent disguises himself as the dwarf in the painting key and the door pops right open.

Reade stays back to drag the corpsed drow bodies inside and tidy up the scene. Janky leads the party into the windmill after Vaspar, up a staircase that traces the west wall up the main, round windmill structure to the second level. Vaspar tries to convince landlord Kalain to meet with the party. She’s a bit teched, painting a displacer beast in her studio converted from the millstone room. She’s dressed in what long ago must have been a fine gown, now worn and moldy from constant wear and persistent craziness. She repeatedly expresses a fear that the party are assassins, forgeting any trust Janky manages to develop. She deeply hates someone, probably Lord Neverember who jilted her, but she won’t utter the name out of disgust and no one else wants to guess that name out of caution.

The party gets permission to look around for potential art purchases in exchange for the looted drow coin as collateral.

One of the second level rooms, Kalain’s bedroom, is secured with a conspicuously new lock. Vincent leans into Kalain’s madness by disguising himself as Kalain and then asking herself where she left the key. The gambit fails and Kalain pulls the displacer beast off its canvas and into reality. She flees to her locked room invisibly leaving the party to battle her art.

Janky ballbearings the displacer which gives Smoll enough advantage to beat it back into nonexistence. Smoll breaches Kalain’s safe room. After Kalain’ thunderwave passes, Janky suggests she sits down and calms down. Togy makes a magic search of Kalain’s room but finds nothing beyond the drow coin she is holding. The search happens to detect a second drow coin in Vincent’s possession from the payout by Zardoz Zord for the polar bear capture. Vincent offers the second coin to Kalain as well, and the matched coins snap together.

Togy consults the Stone of Golor. SoG suggests looking for a basement trap door to access the vault. And as for Kalain, SoG recalls that she was a clingy chick that Lord Neverember had to pry off with the gifted windmill. Before that happened, the windmill was inhabited by Aurinax, a seasoned wizard.

The party earnestly searches the first floor for trap doors and soon locates a stone trap door in a small, locked closet beneath the staircase up to Kalain’s studio.

• Kalain seems to be a jilted lover of Lord Neverember, sent away to live in self-imposed seclusion painting beasts that she can summon. She is cray.
• Vaspar seems to be a faithful caretaker for Kalain and not a seasoned wizard.
• The windmill operates as a flophouse for destitute locals, none who seem to realize the enormous fortune secreted beneath them.
• If Kalain is unaware of the dragon hoard then it must be Aurinax who was the steward of the wealth. What happened to Aurinax?

Vincent, re-disguised as the classy and wealthy Lord Vallantahar, returns to Steam & Steel to collect the silvered Warhammer commissioned for key one of the dragon vault. Nothing bad happens.

The party, full of health, spellcasting potential, and wealthy ambition, suppresses all curiosities and social inclinations to head right for the converted windmill in south ward.

The somewhat neglected two story windmill is covered in graffiti and surrounded by other buildings occupied by numerous unknown witnesses. Smoll listens at outside doors and inspects the structure’s walls. Janky and Reade peek into unlocked exterior doors. Togy befriends blind old man Vasper, priest of Ilmater, collecting trash from the yard, and tours the apartment rented to him by the windmill’s landlord, coincidentally Lord Neverember’s jilted significant other who lives in seclusion making impressionistic paintings of foul beasts. Magic detecting Vincent emphatically warns everyone that there are concentrations of hidden magic lurking all around the perimeter.

A drow supervisor appears to the north and proposes, nay demands, some level of profit sharing lest the adventurers meet the same fate as Luth. A couple of his goons nab Janky and pile drive his handsome face into the mud. Reade monk glides the length of the yard, hands the drow supervisor his quarterstaff, and speed bags the drow’s solar plexus. Hand axes and arrows advantageously stack up in the paralyzed supervisor. A henchman, unable to learn vicariously, rushes to his boss’s rescue. Reade doses him with the same stunning treatment before raining a fatal flurry of blows on the supervisor. Smoll pastes a couple of drow in a single combo surge of action. Vince boomerangs his shadow blade through the few remaining drow. The lone survivor runs away now that there are no witnesses to his cowardice.

The supervisor’s personal possessions comprise a vial of poison, studded leather armor, a bougie black cloak, and a single coin of foreign denomination and great potential held in his hand.

With the polar bear captured and the spy ravens dissipated, the party is ready to pick up the intrinsically valuable commissioned painting from artist Barttle. The painting’s subject lady dwarf Vincent and Reade wait inside an hour or so until finally taking possession of “A Dwarfen Miners”.

Meanwhile, two drow accost isolated alley-watching Smoll, beat her unconscious, and drag her bound person to a seedy dockside area known as Mistshore. The party tracks her assailants first to a very small single bedroom and then on down a pier where the drow pair obviously await some form of transport to arrive by sea with their Smoll-shaped parcel between them on the dock.

The party closes in around the drow, quietly and then noisily. An earnest fight ensues as Smoll breaks free of her bindings. The struggle is interrupted by an eruption of steam from a surfacing mechanical dragon turtle which the drow board sans prisoner. The scalded party is scolded for the ruckus by a woman representing Grendace Harbor Hunters. With the first key warhammer only a day away and so much to live for, the party withdraws from any further confrontations with drow or conversations with women.

Camp is made in a dismal rubbish heap away from prying eyes and creature comforts.

With “gift” key three in the bag, Windriver Co knocks off for the day and crashes at Vincent’s. Upon waking the next morning, Smoll discovers the persistent stench of rotting meat emanating from Togy.

The party makes a few follow-up inquiries of the Stone of Golor and learns things.

• Stone of Golor’s disposition is stoic.
• The most recent attunement with Stone of Golor was Lord Neverember.
• The three keys need only be casually presented at the vault beneath the converted windmill in the sea ward; no weird meta puzzle situation anticipated.
• There are no defenses, traps, or integrated dangers associated with the vault, as far as Stone of Golor knows anyway.
• Stone of Golor’s ambition is to gather knowledge and meet many people with knowledge to gather. Togy, coincidentally, feels an unrelated tightness in his chest.

The party hits the mean streets with the intent of pre-exploring the windmill scene while killing time until Barttle might be finished with the dwarven miner painting, a.k.a. key two, later this afternoon. Reade walks casually toward the sea ward. He soon notices three shadowing urchins whom Janky recognizes from the earlier apple cart heist outside Fenerus’s ransacked house where the party encountered Laeral Silverhand’s imposter. Reade surreptitiously observes the urchins surreptitiously observing Reade’s movement.

The party strategically redeploys with invisible Togy leading Reade and invisible Smoll trailing Reade toward the art district and away from the windmill vault. Vincent and local fisherman-disguised Janky bring up the safety rear. Reade stops beside a random building just outside the art district and conspicuously produces a “top secret treasure map” from one of his 100 purple pockets. He nods in dramatic satisfaction at the building. A lurker appears out of nowhere with a bump-and-lift of Reade’s map, Harper pen, and 5 gp. The party is on him like stink on rice and pursues him into an alley where he attempts to flee.

Vincent reaches out with a hypnotic pattern that halts the pickpocket. A pair of concealed urchins counterattack the party. Togy holds one urchin’s person and Reade incapacitates the other by quarterstaff. Togy makes a zone of truth, Smoll makes an intimidating block, and Vincent makes it look like Reade has just disemboweled an urchin. Janky interrogates the unnerved pickpocket.

• The pickpocket’s given name is Staann.
• The attacking urchins are Nat and Jenks. Third urchin Squiddly remains concealed somewhere.
• Staann works for Rongquan, theater owner and friend of fake Laeral.
• The urchins work for Rongquan as well.
• The murder of ravens gathering to observe on the rooftops work for someone other than Rongquan.

Vincent allows Staann to abscond with Reade’s fake map. Janky tries to boost Nat’s accountability by pretend-conking her unconscious. Jenk’s unconsciousness remains authentic.

The Windriver Basterds continue toward the art district as observed by the ravens. They stop for tea within view of Barttle’s shop. The sounds of an approaching Sea Maidens Faire parade are interrupted by a distant, but approaching, ruckus. The ruckus, an escaped yet expensive polar bear pursued by several panicked animal handlers, charges right past the tea shop. Reade stuns the bear long enough for Togy and Smoll to improvise a temporary tether that allows re-capture of the bear.

Sea Maidens Faire captain Zardoz Zord himself rides up on a fancy horse and spot-rewards the party with a handsome purse of [250] gold plus a reprised dinner invitation. Investigator Vincent investigates the bear’s timely and distracting escape and finds that at least one tether has been cut, perhaps deliberately.

Windriver Company sets about acquiring the three keys to the vault of the dragon hoard as outlined by the Stone of Golor. The silvered warhammer tops the agenda since it may be a special order. Vincent casts invisibility on Togy, last seen by the dark elves carrying the attuned SoG, and Smoll, who stands out in any crowd. Vincent himself takes on the disguise of gentlemanly high wealth. Janky joins his act as Vincent’s high society bride. Reade slips into a disguise of a beggar wearing a bag hood. Concealed from suspicion they head over to Steam & Steel.

The smithing genasi duo work up an estimate for an in-stock warhammer to be silvered. That’s a 12 gp warhammer, plus owner-furnished pound of silver, plus 70 gp labor, plus 20 gp expediting fee, plus 20 gp tip, payed up front as an indication of Vincent’s intent and wealth. The silvered warhammer will be deliverable in a couple of days.

The next stop is the Bookworm’s Treasure bookstore to catch a lead on the local art scene via-a-vis any paintings of dwarven miners. Dragonborn Rishaw, tipped off by an illusion detecting bell, skeptically regards disguised Vincent and Janky. He directs them to the art district.

The party next hires a wagon to take them to the starving artist district. They quickly locate a portraiture shop, Barttle proprietor. Vincent, now disguised as a male dwarven miner, no, a female dwarven miner, gets an estimate to commission a portrait which will obviously take weeks of sittings. Janky and Togy share a glance. Togy proposes starting with one of his finished dwarven portraits and “completing” it with a few edits to add a pickaxe and some rocks. The resemblance between the painting and Vincent is suddenly uncanny. For the low, low price of 36 gp plus tip, the intrinsically valuable painting entitled “A Dwarfen Miners” will be ready in about a day.

For the trickiest key, Reade goes right to the source at the great hall of Waterdeep to collect the regular monthly ritual contribution of alms for the poor from open lord Laeral Silverhand. None of the guards stationed along the long line of people waiting for government intervention quite remember this monthly ritual but seem perfectly convinced the error is their own and usher bluffing Reade on through to Laeral Silverhand’s office.

Reade anticipates an awkward meeting since Laeral tasked Reade and company with locating the Stone of Golor just a few days ago. Laeral does not recognize Reade at all. Reade candidly admits that they met with an imposter who retrospectively should have been regarded with far more suspicion. Laeral tries to drill down on the details of that meeting, but Reade deflects. Laeral gifts Read’s order a platinum piece for the poor. Reade calmly excuses himself.

Reade rejoins the party at a nearby cop bar and catches them up on the wonderfully good fortune he had.

Smoll and Janky cheese it east followed closely by one determined drow. Janky disguises himself as a dwarf so convincingly that even Smoll cannot find him. Unable to outpace the drow pursuer, she turns to fight. Janky uses all his persuasive suggestion to convince the drow to give up the fight, but Smoll has no quit in her until Janky theatrically “stabs” her to “death” deftly between her arm and torso. Their drow calls it a day and catches a ride out on his buddy’s starlancer.

Meanwhile, Reade and Stone of Golor carrying Togy take an evasively winding path north, barely eluding their own drow pursuer. Togy escapes a dead-end alley and meets up with Reade who has located a covered hiding place until the patrolling starlancer gives up on them.

Reade and Togy hire a covered cart and pick up ambulating Smoll and Janky just outside Lif’t, now fully involved in flame. Bystanding neighbor and ruined Lif’t investor Vincent Trench subtly indicates for the party to join him at his Tiger Eye agency a couple doors down. They pull the cart up to the unobserved back door and powwow with Vincent inside.

The party minus Luth catches Vincent up on their pursuit of, and narrow acquisition of, the Stone of Golor. He identifies the drow squad as Bregan D’aerthe, a powerful mercantile association. Vincent sees the stone as a reasonable means of recouping his burned investment and welcomes the party to his abode under two conditions:
1) No one goes into his bedroom without a positive answer to knocking, and
2) No one interrupts his client meetings without an urgent reason and a positive answer to knocking.

The party reforms with fiduciary wizard Vincent Tranch and by popular vote adopts the memorial handle Windriver Company.

The party grabs a long rest while disguised Vincent learns that Lif’t was firebombed with alchemist fire, undoubtedly perpetrated by Bregan D’aerthe. If rival bar Frewn’s Brews catches some blame then that is no skin off anyone’s peeling nose. The status of disembodied spirit Lif remains unknown for now.

Togy announces at breakfast that he has attuned the Stone of Golor, acquiring a resistance to cold and augmented movement [+10’]. The party agrees to let Togy expend a charge to find out about this dragon hoard everyone is so interested in. They learn:

• The vault is located underneath a converted windmill in the sea ward.
• The vault is unlocked by three keys.
• Key one is a common silvered warhammer acquired by any means.
• Key two is a painting of a dwarf miner with intrinsic value.
• Key three is a gift from a queen.

The party walks to the old tower in the dock ward at dusk, eager to get grabby hands on the Stone of Golor. The tower is dilapidated, crumbling, and treated with the warding genuflections of passers-by. The party enters through the front door and discovers an anti-magic field across the lower level. A couple of valuable longswords lay conspicuously on the floor. The main room of the tower has a staircase down and a staircase up. Consistent with Fenerus’s mind picture, the party heads up to the second floor interrupting a trio of drow as they loot something out of a cauldron. The drow open fire from poison pistols to cover their withdrawal from the tower through the narrow windows of the second floor and flee east across the rooftops.

Luth takes off down the street while the rest of the party pursue across the rooftops trading attacks when the opportunities present. Swift Reade steps the wind and lands flurries of blows on the presumed carrier of the stone. The threatened drow drops a magical darkness and laterals the stone to his pal. Smoll critically plants a pair of hand axes into the fleeing pal, but the drow are tough and powerful. One of the drow drops into the street and fatally blasts Luth in his handsome face. When a healing word fails to make any improvement, the party realizes Luth is lost.

Togy finally lands a hold person on the stone carrier while Reade grapples his wingman. Togy liberates the Stone of Golor, or something a lot like it, from the paralyzed carrier. Reade attempts to recover Luth’s mortal coil, but the hot drow look to take hostages. The party scrambles off, weaving through rooftops and streets, a few feet ahead of the drow pursuers.

The party goes to visit arrested Fenerus Stormcastle to discern whether he had the actual, factual Stone of Golor or a decoy. They persuade the guard that a visitation request was timely filed and that Fenerus needs legal representation urgently.

Hours later, Magister Barch grants disarmed Luth and Janky access to Fenerus in the basement pokey. Savvy Fenerus sees through the ploy to trick him into revealing the location of the Stone of Golor, recognizes his own painted rock decoy, and demands immunity and release before he will disclose the location of the real stone. Pending charges against the known Blood Hawk Posse henchman include highway banditry and assault.

The party next sets out to locate Open Lord Laeral Silverhand at the Seven Masks Theatre to surrender the phony stone and to bring her Fenerus’s offer. They arrive during midday rehearsal of a play, Sapphiria’s Booty, directed by theater owner Rongquan. The box office is no help directing them to Laeral Silverhand and refers them to Rongquan.

Rongquan does not mind the interruption. He knows Laeral Silverhand through Lords’ Alliance and is authorized to collect the Stone of Golor from the party. He detects the fake in less time, and for 120 less gold, than the identify spell. They kick around the idea of negotiating the pardon of Fenerus to learn the location of the true stone. Rongquan points out the limitations of the executive branch when it comes to criminal justice, but he offers a forged letter from Laeral Silverhand, embossed from the Lords’ Alliance, if that would be any help.

The party returns to the justice center with the letter and renders it to the guard for the magister’s consideration. The magister convenes a meeting in the courtroom. Janky presents a forthright outline of the deal: Fenerus’s freedom for the key to the pilfered city’s wealth by way of the Stone of Golor. Irked by any compromise of justice, the magister requires some accounting for the net public good. Janky critically persuades her that the official recovery of the hoard of dragons might squash the rampant competitive bloodshed amongst the various criminal factions.

The magister summons Fenerus to the meeting for a quick deposition. Fenerus affirms that he does know the location of the Stone of Golor, pictures it in his mind right this moment, and will reveal that location in exchange for his freedom. Magister Barch unexpectedly orders Fenerus back to his cell before any such verbal revelation happens. She then explains to the party that Fenerus hid the Stone of Golor on the top floor of an old tower in the dock ward.

Janky picks open a treasure chest in the defeated gibbering mouther’s lair and liberates a scroll of darkvision and a compelling beholder pendant with little jeweled eyes. Smoll, lover of trophies, keeps the pendant but resists wearing it.

Absolutely convinced that there are no secret doors anywhere in the lair, Togy crosses the sewer back to the dwarf room and interrupts three duergar working on a mechanical beholder. After a brief disagreement on who owes whom the passphrase of “half ogre bath time”, Janky takes a shot at the boss duergar, Kordstraudt. Despite a sincere effort, the ensuing battle goes poorly for the party. Togy blinds a troublesome pet gazer and Janky calms emotions of two duergar and charms the third.

Calmed Kordstraudt indicates he alone liberated the oblong, gray, triple black striped Stone of Golor from Fenerus’s house, and he alone will render it to Xanathar for full credit. Unless, of course, Kordstraudt can attune the stone himself. Luth hatches a plan to blind everyone in the room and snatch away the stone. Janky hatches a plan to flatter Kordstraudt’s taste in item pouches to talk him out of possession. Togy hatches a plan to abscond with the stone while “helping” Kordstraudt attune to it. Smoll hatches a plan to try and barter for the stone and pulls out the beholder pendant. The pendant has the unexpected effect of immediate and absolute deference from the duergar who regard Smoll as a surprise justicar. Kordstraudt surrenders the Stone of Golor and regrets any recent violence. Smoll promises due recognition for Kordstraudt’s leal service.

The party, promoted by Smoll’s pendant, departs by way of the street for a change and makes straight for Ye Olde Majick Shoppe where Janky purchases a scroll of identify. Back at Lif’t, Janky reads the scroll and they learn that the Stone of Golor is a fake.

• Chain of custody of the Stone of Golor:
  Dalakhar, faithful friend of Degalt Neverember, attempts to deliver the stone to the party at Lif’t for safekeeping.
  Urstul Floxin is dispatched by the Zhentarim to capture the stone before delivery, but he gets caught up in the fireball by Lady Gralhund’s nimblewright.
  Lady Gralhund betrays her Zhent associates by kidnapping Urstul and sending the stone out with her nimblewright. Or did she?
  The nimblewright delivers the stone to Fenerus Stormcastle. Or does it?
  Fenerus is arrested and the stone is found and taken by Kordstraudt to the Xanathar underground. Or is it?
  The party liberates the stone from Kordstraudt and discovers a fake. Is Kordstraudt wily enough to swap a decoy?
• Assuming Dalakhar possessed the true Stone of Golor, the real stone may have been swapped by Urstul / Zhents, or by Lady Gralhund, or by Fenerus.