17. The Victims Have Been Bled

The bats have left the bell tower, the victims have been bled

Encounters

Summary

The scene at the doorway was tense. Two guards holding the limp leashes of the snarling wolves faced off against the party. Grick strode forward to question their presence in the crypt, but the guards were not easily put off. So far they were communicating instead of fighting, though. Footsteps took this as an opportunity to show signs of non-aggression to the wolves, letting them know the party meant no violence towards them, helping to keep them calm. Hamidal tried another tack, suggesting to one of the guard’s that they were replacements and the guards could now go home. He seemed convinced by this, but his fellow didn’t like the sound of that and rapped on the door to alert whomever was within. After another tense moment of waiting, the door opened to reveal…

A tall, olive skinned man with hypnotic red eyes wearing fine clothes under his breastplate and holding a double edged blade. He seemed annoyed at the disturbance and was not happy to see the party standing on his doorstep. He demanded they show him the map he knew had brought them there. After examining it he took a deep smell of it, declaring it to be just like the other maps, smelling of ‘poverty and brine’.

Grick decided to use his divine senses to get the measure of the man standing before him. The sheer magnitude of the response his senses picked up knocked him momentarily senseless. Never before had he encountered an undead that gave off such a powerful sense of evil. While his first instinct was to destroy it, he also seemed quite the formidable foe. Grick became wary - fighting his own conflicting feelings between his oath and his desire to survive the encounter. Veldrin was not so circumspect, however, and threw a dagger towards him, dashing forward to attack. After the dagger bounced off his breastplate, the man unflinching, he turned to Veldrin and commanded him to sit in the corner while they conversed.

The evil presence introduced himself simply as ‘Artor’. After considering the party for a moment, he invited them into the adjoining room. Candlabras shed bright light from the corners of the room and a fancy brass and crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling. The furnishings, what little there were, were all of a rather refined character, to Hamidal’s trained eye. None of this covered up the fact that the place still smelled of dusty, old death. He seemed to barely tolerate their presence in his home, but told them that they were not the first adventurers to have such a map - and his patience was at an end for this sort of interruption.

He told the party he would allow them to leave the with their lives, but tasked them with finding who was behind the distribution of the maps, one of which had led them to his lair. Grick couldn’t help blurting out that they’d been working with Lord Cassalanter at the time and were only looking for a treasure and not his home. Artor absorbed all of this information and simply told them to be on their way, to investigate the source and to leave him be before he changed his mind. While Veldrin quietly egged the party on, and they spent a moment considering attempting to destroy the fiend before them, they decided a quiet retreat was in order as they’d all already had a long day and were not at their peak.

Making their way back out of the tomb, the party discussed what had just occurred - they were all certain that they’d just met a vampire living in a crypt under Waterdeep and were quite shaken by it. On their way out the collected their wererat friend Suri and delivered her to a local temple where Grick paid for the service to have her curse lifted. She was brought to tears by their kindness and promised to do whatever was in her meager ability to repay them. After leaving her with the clerics, the party returned home to rest and ruminate.

The following day they determined that their two main choices were either to investigate the butcher shop that the errant nimblewright had stopped at a few days before, or to speak with Lord Cassalanter about their investigation into the map. The party had been contracted to follow the map and find if there was treasure at its end. Veldrin agreed that they’d held up their side of that contract, and so they decided it was time to talk to Lord Cassalanter again and to settle up with him and inform him of their discoveries.

They found Victoro Casslanter in his dining room about to take a meal when they entered. He invited them to dine with him and had his chefs and servants bring them food and wine. Hamidal started prying into the Lord’s surface thoughts as they asked him about the map and told him of their discoveries. He seemed somewhat excited by the idea of a vampire prowling the streets of Waterdeep, but outwardly expressed surprise and concern at the idea of his identity being exposed in such a way. He told them of a cobbler in the dock wards who sold the odd magical trinket or curiosity that he considered to be trustworthy. It was from this gentleman that he’d purchased the map. hoping that it lead to the treasure that’d been rumored as of late.

Lord Cassalanter humbly apologizes to the party for involving them in something that went deeper than he’d first suspected. While he understood they were not attracted to the idea of doing a vampire’s bidding, he also agreed with the vampire that finding out who was behind the maps was an important next step. He settled their original contract and asked them to agree to a new one - find out who or what was behind the maps and their purpose in distributing them. If someone knew what lay at the map’s end, it could be they were purposefully being led into a trap, but the Lord was not sure whether that trap was intentionally laid for him or if they were just caught up in someone else’s ploy.

Armed with information about the map dealer, the party headed down to the Dock Ward to find the cobbler, Ian Forksful. They found his little shop pushed up into a corner in the space between some other buildings - a small covered stand with various shoes, tools, and scraps of leather and cloth. Ian was friendly at first, but grew sheepish when confronted with the treasure map. He confessed that he’d sold the maps after finding a bag full of them, but said he had no connection to them and meant no harm - he was just looking to make a quick buck off of the well made forgeries.

Before the party could question him further, arrows came whizzing through his stall and took him down. An assassin followed shortly behind and confronted the party as he tried to finish Ian off. Grick was able to swiftly stabilize Ian and keep him from dying while the rest of the party took the would-be assassin down. Wounded, but no longer dying, Ian gave a grateful nod to Grick as he propped himself up on a chair, much more eager now to tell the party what he knew…