On the walk back from the Zhent warehouse to the Yawning Portal, the party passes a couple of regular folk, Festus and his friend Commoner Joe. CJ might know something about a certain someone abducted from a certain warehouse and taken to a certain sewer entrance marked by a certain symbolic spoked circle, if Janky can show a gold dragon and four of his friends. Janky abides.
CJ leads the party through Xanathar territory to an alley with a sewer cover chalked with the Xanathar trademark. CJ is paid. Although time may be of the essence to rescue Floon, the party is in no condition to foray into a Xanathar stronghold.
Janky returned to the Yawning Portal with Reade, Luth, Smoll, and Togy. As tired as he should be, Janky is filled with an unusual energy, and the desire to perform on stage. After a quick word with Dunran for permission, Janky mounts the stage and begins tuning his lute. After all strings ring clear and true, he launches into his newest song, a catchy tune about a nameless flamboyant redhead, always stumbling in and out of trouble.
The song is really catching fire. The crowd is warming to it, clapping in time, and Janky is infused with warmth all through his body. Just then, out in the crowd, one of the more inebriated patrons causes a scene, throwing their drink to the ground and standing to loom menacingly over another person, shaking their fists. Janky, annoyed that this tool is harshing his vibe (as Smoll might say), changes his tune to a more discordant one, and yells out “Hey troll snot, sit back down and be quiet, or I’ll come squash you like the bug you are!”. Right at that moment, a little bit of the warmth he was feeling slips away, and the drunk would-be brawler stumbles, looking a little dazed. After a few moments, he sits back down, a bewildered look on his face. Janky, who had half expected to be in the middle of a fight right about then, gets back to his rousing redhead rondo. However, he can’t seem to shake the fact that, for better or worse, something new and exciting was awakening inside him…
Refreshed from a night at the Yawning Portal, complements of Durnan, the party returns to the sewer entrance ready to track down abducted Floon. Along the way, Luth confesses he is a warlock, allegiant to a mysterious, possibly sinister, benefactor. At least it is an improvement over being a lawyer.
The sewer cover looks different in the morning light: more conspicuous. Transactional Janky offers a street urchin a silver piece to create a diversion for any potential witnesses, and the party drops into the sewer. Smoll picks up a pattern of chalk marks that direct the party along the various forks and intersections presumably toward someone holding a stick of chalk and, hopefully, Floon.
After an hour battling only the formidable smell, the party arrives at a small, dim chamber beneath, so Togy reckons, the Spouting Fish tavern. Luth’s voice echoes back from the darkness. Despite Luth flashing his Xanathar tattoo disguise, a floating guard grapefruit [gazer] shoots some ineffective light beams before being plastered at range. Luth kicks the dead aberration into the stream of sewage.
The chalk marks bring the party to another chamber where arrow slits cover their approach. Luth emphatically presents his tattoo and proceeds through an adjacent stone door chalked with the Xanathar logo. The party wends behind a sleeping goblin guard who defends himself with his shortbow much too late. Smoll hides the goblin’s body in a room of rusty weapons and debris.
Deeper into the lair, the party interrupts Krentz, the brawler nearly killed by Yagra night before last, and a duergar as they attempt to barricade a doorway off a little sleeping area. Despite the duergar’s ability to become invisible and large, the pair are quickly defeated.
A whimpering man and a flaming hand are down an unbarricaded passage.
- The Xanathar are poorly organized.