#kotap5

Returning to the Helmstar Warehouse, our intrepid adventurers once again prepare to ambush the louts inside. Again Klarh scales the adjacent building and makes a horrible racket, clearly much more adept at climbing trees than drain pipes. Fortunately, nobody seems to be inside either warehouse and the door latch is still broken from your forceful entry yesterday. Other than the door, however, there is no evidence of yesterday’s clandestine activities. The dead body has been removed from the office and the paperwork has been tidied up. There are still several stacks of crates throughout the warehouse but they are considerably smaller in size. Cracking a few open with a spare crowbar, you discover that they contain common trade goods and not the strange cannisters of ochre jelly that you saw previously. Even the sewer grate has been replaced and the rat population has diminished considerably. Seeing nowhere to go but down, Thunder and Klarh heft up the sewer grate to reveal the ladder underneath. As they do so, they hear a sound like the snapping of a guitar string. Their quick reflexes save them a crushing blow to the head as a crate plummets from up in the rafters, smashing to bits and sending shards of glass flying in all directions. Fortunately, the exploding glass container contained no jellies of any sort of color. After inspecting the ladder for any additional traps, the group descends into the briney darkness of Waterdeep’s sewers.

Immediately your senses are overwhelmed by the roaring of waves and the smell of ocean spray. This close to Deepwater Bay, the tide flows into the lower sewers and mixes with the city’s filth, lessing the smell considerably. Glancing around at the stone tunnel, you can see by the tide lines that the water comes up high enough to sweep over the ledge you are currently standing on. Though she’s no expert on the sea, Briel can still tell that the tide is on its way out, so you have no immediate concerns about being trapped by the rising water. The tunnels down here all feature a main channel of sewer water ten feet across. Major passages feature a walkway on either side while smaller ones (like the one you entered into) have a walkway on only the southern or eastern side. Briel recalls seeing tracks yesterday headed westward down the passage, though they seem to have been washed away by the tide. With Maren leading the way, you set off through the sewer in search of a wererat den.

The next few hours are a strange mixture of tedious marching and bizarre scenery. The dark and damp sewer corridors stretch on and on, sometimes for up to two hundred yards before coming to an intersection with another side passage. In between these junctures, random pipes and grates occasionally belch sewage into the slow-moving water that flows through this underground labyrinth. Rats scurry just out of sight here and there, but not in any considerable numbers like back in the warehouse. While navigating this foul-smelling maze, the group encounters several local denizens as well as those that are just passing through. One corridor full of giant crabs looks like a promising way through, but the crabs are too stupid to be adequately fooled by the illusions you create to distract them. You also come across a wooden door barred from the outside marked with a sign that reads “Do Not Open by Order of the Cellarer’s & Plumbers’ Guild.” Some creature begins to scratch expectantly at the door as you investigate, though it doesn’t respond to your greetings in any of the languages you try. While venturing through the confusing grid of passageways you come across a large collection chamber with a great fig tree growing inside of it. Though you’re tempted to take a closer look, Klarh notices a huge snake nestled among the roots when he ventures to collect a fig, so the group presses on in haste.

While these encounters seemed harmless enough, you have several other occurrences that seem less so. A passageway filled with a purple haze and giant fungi seems more trouble than it’s worth, despite its lack of obvious enemies. Following a passageway full of fish baits and other chum, you discover a pair of ghouls feasting on the castoffs of a topside fish market. Maren resists the urge to charge in and turn them, opting instead to backtrack to a safer passageway. Perhaps the most bizarre side passage contains large strands of kelp hanging from the ceiling and growing up out of the sewage, all of it adorned with skulls and other bones, some obviously humanoid. Further along in the sewers, the group manages to duck out of sight behind Cookie’s magical illusion of a wall before being discovered by a small band of merfolk heading out of the sewer. They are wounded and dragging the body of a merrow, a larger, demonic version of the fair underwater people. Maren reveals herself and heals one of the wounded merfolk, gaining a pearl for her services and a large fish “to feed the octopus up ahead.” This advice seems confusing at first, but as the group approaches a large intersection Briel spots a massive octopus the size of a grizzly bear trying to press itself up against the waterway to hide. The skewered fish buys you safe passage as you quickly swing across to an adjacent walkway, but you worry about returning this way. Just before reaching the lair of the wererats, you come across the dessicated corpse of a man near a collapsed section of the sewer. The magical cloak his body is wrapped in is a Cloak of the Manta Ray and is clasped with a Harper pin. It is difficult to tell if the man died from losing his lower legs or if they were removed later, but you don’t find any other clues around the body.