Between a Croc and a Shart Place

We wrap the bodies into carpets and move them into the basement so we don’t look too suspicious. Can’t have these bodies starting to smell in the street and attract people with questions. Looks like we’re getting new carpets delivered! Eira starts to investigate the bodies, and Pyotr, Kallista and I are free to follow some other leads.

Pyotr came back with some news. According to Rusham, the “safe house” we investigated for him early on is a hub for getting access to an underground fighting club or some kind of arena. Interesting. Under other circumstances I’d be tempted, but there are more important things right now. About Renaer: it looks like he had been hanging out at the Drippy Dagger, another aptly named pub in this big city. When investigating the room he had rented there, Pyotr found signs of the Xanathar thieves guild being out to get him. There was a black, marked stone placed on the pillow. In a letter delivered to his room, Kalain of the Nine Waters is offering him help or some kind of asylum. She’s supposedly a well known painter in the city who works for noble and rich people, maybe sometimes for charity, too, but seems to have fallen out of favor somehow. We should find her in the Sea Ward.

Well surprise, Kalain was very much on guard, but we managed to calm her down a bit, and get a conversation going. And so she talked about Renaer contacting her about a week ago. Said he felt he was chased by someone. Diving into their relationship, and Renaer’s father, Lord Neverember, she gets angrier and angrier. It seems the Lord has made it his mission to keep her out of good grace. She’s not in high standing anymore since her breaking up with the Lord. I try to calm her down a bit and offer our help, and she hands over some leftover paperwork she still has from the Lord when they were together. It’s still only a rumor that he has been embezzling lots of the city’s money, and we promise to make sure that everyone knows about this, and search for more evidence. Hopefully we can help her clear her name. The paperwork she gave us might help us find the treasure. She seems a bit unstable, and there’s some weird magic going on with the painting she’s working on. It’s a beautiful painting of something called a Displacer Beast, but it almost looks like the beast she has painted might as well come alive if she’s getting any more agitated. I thank her for sharing her art with us, and we leave in a hurry.

From the papers we gather there’s a dragon involved in some Melairkyn ceremonial vault, and the vault can be opened by striking a scale of a dragon with a mithril hammer in the place where the sun’s light should fall. The papers are at least four years old, and there he writes he has the three eyes secured. But we assume he probably doesn’t have them anymore as he had to leave the city. Maybe those folks who tried to steal the stone from us have them now and want to put them together. Some other options we have: we could also investigate the cultist home we skipped last time, or get back to the Xanathar hideout, or even call in the Cassalanters and see if they need anything or have a clue. But I think we should get into the sewers to find these folks who are after Kallista’s stone. Let’s start at the entrance where that one guy with the smashed face disappeared into.

After some discussion we descend into the sewers, and. it. stinks. Ugh. I need to be careful not to get anything into my fur. Whenever we come to a crossing we go straight ahead. That’s where the tracks (or lack of tracks) lead us. Pyotr has a pet rat called Rick he sends on a little exploration, and he actually comes back. What a cool trick! When we finally end up in a bigger room, the water seems to be rising quite a bit, and the drains seem clogged. I poke around with my ax and hit something soft, so even though I really hate it, I reach down and yank it free. Surprise, it’s a body. This corpse is missing a leg, and has been dead for a while. Well, this junction is still not draining well, so I pull again, and it’s another corpse. Is this my job now? Before I can think more about it, something hits my axe in the water, and as I reach down again, it bites my arm. This time it’s a fucking crocodile, can you believe it. I try to pull it out of the water and get it off of my arm, but it’s a strong beast, and I’m bleeding heavily. Together we get rid of this one and the other one emerging from the water. More and more of the water drains and gradually exposes lots of bodies which were hidden beneath the surface before. What is this place? And why are some of the bodies starting to twitch and move? We have to get out of here quickly. There is no time to waste.