Waterdeep never truly sleeps, but it has its quieter hours, and the Yawning Portal in those hours is as good a place as any to take stock of where you are and how you got there. The tavern is famous — built inside the base of an old wizard's tower, its defining feature a forty-foot well in the middle of the taproom that drops straight down into the dungeons below the city. Adventurers have lowered themselves into it for generations. Most of them come back up.
On this particular evening, three people were there for three very different reasons.
Caelith Morn, half-elf paladin of Torm, had come with his traveling companion Lylnyler Fienderck — a warlock whose Fiend patron and unsettling manner had not exactly made him easy to know. The two of them had history, the complicated kind: Caelith had not been happy the first time they met, to find himself in the company of a man who had bargained with something dark for his power. Then Lylnyler had saved his life in a situation that left no room for theological reservations, and that had settled certain things between them. They were not friends exactly, but Caelith trusted him, and trust for a paladin of duty, meant something.
Corrin Greenbottle, halfling rogue, was there for the crowd. The Yawning Portal drew wealthy adventurers, nervous merchants, curious nobles, and distracted tourists — all of them so busy watching the well that they rarely noticed a small, quick-fingered halfling moving through them. It was, as Corrin had privately assessed, an excellent working environment.
None of them knew each other yet. That was about to change.
The Yawning Portal was loud the way taverns always are when something is about to go wrong — the crowd thickening at one side of the room, chairs scraping back, voices dropping into that particular hush that means everyone is watching but no one wants to be seen watching.
A half-orc woman was on her feet at the centre of it, fists raised, facing down five humans in leather armor. She was big, solid, and clearly not new to being outnumbered. The man opposite her was broad-shouldered with a tattoo of an eye inked on his neck, and he was jabbing a finger at her chest like he expected that to be enough.
"Last chance Stonefist! The boss wants his due."
Behind the bar, a scarred man with a greatsword on his hip watched with flat, patient eyes — the look of someone who had seen a hundred brawls in this room and would step in when and only when he decided to.
Caelith Morn and Lylnyler Fienderck had come in together. They had found a spot near the bar, the way you do when a city is new enough that every tavern is still a place you're sizing up. When the crowd parted, they moved closer — not pushing through, just drifting, the way men do when they've made a decision they haven't admitted to yet.
Caelith had his hand near his sword. Lylnyler watched the men in leather. He recognised the eye tattoo — something criminal, something connected, something that lived in the darker parts of Waterdeep that polite people didn't name out loud. He couldn't place more than that. The name would come later.
Corrin Greenbottle had come in separately. He was at the Yawning Portal for the usual reason: a crowd is a crowd, and a distracted crowd is an opportunity. He had his eye on a commoner near the front, a man leaning forward with his purse loose on his belt, too focused on the argument to feel what Corrin's fingers were doing. Three silver pieces. Slim work for a Tuesday, but clean.
Then the commoner moved, and Corrin got a better look at the five men and their tattoos. He'd seen that symbol before. He knew what it meant.
He pocketed the silver and started working out whether to get involved.
The man with the eye tattoo — Krentz — was already badly hurt. Someone had gotten to him before this started, and it showed. When Lylnyler's hand came up, it was barely a movement, a flicker of fingers that ended with a crack of displaced air and a lance of invisible force that took Krentz square in the chest.
"—"
He didn't finish the sentence. He dropped and did not get up.
The Yawning Portal — Xanathar Guild brawl
What happened next was fast and ugly. The four remaining bandits scrambled for their crossbows. One bolt found Lylnyler and hit hard — he caught himself against a table, knuckles white, and something flickered across his face that wasn't pain exactly, more like the internal accounting of a man calculating how much of what he had left. Not much. Something cold and borrowed soaked part of the impact — a gift his patron had given him the night before for a reason Lylnyler didn't think too carefully about.
Yagra Stonefist moved like she had been waiting for someone else to throw the first punch. The bandits she hadn't killed were already trying to decide which exit was closest. Corrin had seen enough. He read the room in a breath, picked a side, and stepped in.
When it was over, two of the bandits were dead on the floor. Two had run. Corrin went after them — he was faster than he looked, and he had a shortbow and eyes that could find a moving target in poor light. But they had a head start and they'd split up, and the bolt he loosed went wide, and they were gone into the Waterdeep dark before he could close the distance.
He walked back inside. The barkeep had not moved from behind the bar. The crowd was rearranging itself carefully around the bodies.
Caelith crossed to the half-orc woman while the crowd was still murmuring. She had taken her drink back from the table where it had somehow survived the fight — still upright, not even spilled — and she was drinking from it like nothing had happened.
"How are you? Are you wounded?"
She gave him a look that said she had been asked this question before and had never once needed the answer to be yes.
"I've had worse. But I won't pretend you three didn't help."
She glanced at the bodies on the floor, then back at Caelith.
"Yagra Stonefist. And before you ask — Xanathar Guild. That's who those were. You made enemies tonight just by being in this room, so I hope you knew what you were getting into."
"I didn't. But they were threatening you. I wouldn't let that go."
Yagra held his gaze for a moment — a slow, measuring look, the kind that is really asking something else — and then gave a small nod. Not the performance of gratitude. The real thing.
"Torm's man, are you?"
She glanced at the holy symbol at his neck.
"Good. Waterdeep could use more of that."
Caelith pressed two fingers to Lylnyler's shoulder and let the warmth of his calling flow through — measured and deliberate, the pool he kept for moments like this one. Then Yagra's arm, a little more. He straightened and felt the bottom of that pool and said nothing about it.
From the corner of the room, a man detached himself from the wall where he had been pressed since the fighting started. Velvet coat, ink-stained fingers, a wide-brimmed hat sitting slightly askew. He was looking at them with bright, eager eyes, the expression of someone who has just watched something happen and is very excited to tell someone else about it.
He was heading directly for them.
Volothamp Geddarm — Volo, he insisted, gesturing away his own surname — was, he explained, in something of a desperate situation.
"Remarkable! Truly remarkable. I don't suppose you three are — available? For work, I mean. Paid work."
The Commission — Volo makes his offer
He paused for dramatic effect and produced the name of a building like a card from a sleeve.
"A manor. I own a manor in the North Ward — Trollskull Manor. Deed and all. Yours, if you find my friend Floon Blagmaar, who has gone missing these past two nights and whom I fear is in very grave danger."
Caelith wanted to know how it had happened. Corrin wanted to know the number.
The story came out in pieces. Floon Blagmaar — a sociable man, a good friend, the kind of person who ended up in rooms he didn't belong in because he was friendly and charming and went wherever conversation took him. He'd been drinking with Renaer Neverember, the son of Waterdeep's former Open Lord. Renaer was the sort of person the Zhentarim wanted — they believed Dagult Neverember had embezzled a fortune from the city during his tenure, hundreds of thousands of gold dragons, and they were convinced his son knew where it was hidden.
Renaer didn't know. That detail, Volo acknowledged, had probably not persuaded anyone.
"Floon bears a passing resemblance to Renaer. Same build. Similar coloring."
He tugged at his collar.
"It is possible someone grabbed the wrong man."
"So let me get this straight — you don't care about what happened to Renaer?"
"I — that is — Renaer is perfectly capable of looking after himself. He has resources. Connections. Floon is just a simple man who was in the wrong place at the wrong time."
Yagra Stonefist, still nearby, snorted quietly into her drink without looking up.
"For what it's worth — Renaer's not a bad sort. If someone grabbed him thinking he knows where his father's gold is hidden, he's having a very bad couple of nights."
Lylnyler's question, when it came, was practical in the way that made Volo look at him with slightly more wariness than before.
"Alive?"
"Yes. Alive. Preferably unharmed. He is my friend, not a bounty."
A pause.
"...Is that going to be a problem?"
It wasn't. The last known location was a tavern called the Skewered Dragon, in the Dock Ward. Volo produced a card and slid it across the table with the particular urgency of a man who had been frightened for two days and had finally found someone to be frightened on his behalf.
"Every hour counts. Please — be quick about it."
"We'll do our best."
Before they left, Corrin checked the bodies.
He was thorough about it — not hurried, not obvious, the practised movements of someone who had done this before without the benefit of having just helped put the men down legitimately. He found Krentz's coin purse, which held eight copper pieces. He found matching eye tattoos on all five of the men — not personal choices, brands. And he found a note, folded and blood-stained, tucked inside Krentz's coat.
The handwriting was neat. Deliberate. It read: *Dispose of the half-orc. She knows too much about the Candle Lane operation.*
No signature.
Corrin pocketed the note and went to find Yagra.
He didn't show it to her first. He asked whether she knew about the Candle Lane operation, and she looked at him the way people look at a halfling who has just asked a very specific question about something they weren't supposed to know.
"Who's asking?"
Corrin showed her the note.
Yagra read it. Her expression didn't shift much — the face of someone who had already been having a bad night and was not surprised to learn it was worse than she thought. She folded the note carefully and tucked it into her vest with the smooth economy of someone who understood that paper like this had value.
"I'll be keeping that."
She looked at Corrin directly.
"Candle Lane is a Zhentarim safehouse. The Xanathar Guild has been moving against them for weeks — turf war. I got caught in the middle of something I shouldn't know about."
A pause.
"You're smarter than you look, little one. And you just did me a second favour tonight."
She finished her drink and stood.
"Stay out of Candle Lane. Whatever you're looking for in the Dock Ward — it won't be there."
She headed for the door, paused without turning.
"If you need me — ask for Yagra at the Muleskull Tavern. Dock Ward."
And she was gone.
They bought studded leather for Lylnyler and Corrin at Aurora's Realms Shop — Corrin doing the talking, the weapons from the dead bandits going out as old soldier stock, the shopkeeper asking no hard questions about any of it. Caelith went to the Temple of Torm and came back with two healing potions, one for himself and one for Lylnyler, which he had paid for partly with money Lylnyler had loaned him for exactly that purpose. Neither of them made anything of the arithmetic.
The Dock Ward smelled like salt water and fish and the particular undertone of money changing hands in ways that didn't get written down.
The Skewered Dragon was wedged between a chandler and a rope merchant, its sign showing a dragon impaled on a spear. Inside it was dim and smoky and half-full of dockworkers nursing drinks, the barkeep watching the door with the expression of a woman who had seen everything and formed no opinions about any of it.
Caelith bought three beers. Lylnyler found them a corner table with sightlines to the door and the bar, the kind of seat you choose when you want to see the room and not have the room watching your back. Corrin drifted.
Lylnyler was the one who spotted them: two men in a corner, well-dressed under plain cloaks, good boots visible underneath, nursing drinks they weren't actually drinking. They'd been there a while. They were talking very quietly with their heads close together, and neither of them looked like dockworkers.
Corrin drifted their way and found a spot behind a support beam that gave him an angle on the conversation. He looked like a halfling who had found a quiet place to drink. He was not drinking.
He caught pieces of it, which was all he needed.
*"...they grabbed both of them. Renaer and the other one."*
*"Zhentarim safehouse on Candle Lane. That's where they'll be taking them."*
*"The boss won't be happy — they wanted Renaer, not some nobody."*
*"Doesn't matter now. Both of them are in the net."*
The men finished their drinks and stood, pulling their cloaks closer. Corrin moved.
He crossed to Caelith and Lylnyler in the same motion as the two men heading for the door, relaying what he'd heard in a fast murmur while all three of them were on their feet, and all three of them slipped out behind the cloaked men into the Dock Ward dark before the door had finished swinging shut.
The streets were narrow and poorly lit and the two men never looked back. They should have.
Candle Lane — the Zhentarim safehouse
The alley was narrow and dark and smelled of old stone and something that had been wet for a long time without drying. The two cloaked men stopped at a nondescript door and one of them knocked twice, paused, knocked once more. The door opened briefly and they slipped inside.
The party stood in the shadows at the mouth of the alley and looked at the door.
Caelith walked up to it and knocked twice. Paused. Knocked once.
A slot in the door slid open. A pair of eyes looked down at a man in chain mail holding himself like a soldier.
"You're not Venal. Who are you?"
"I was sent here by Venal — open up."
He said it with the flat, final authority of a man who had been giving orders long enough that he no longer thought about how they sounded. The slot slid shut. A long pause. The sound of a bolt being drawn.
The door opened.
The guard who had opened it looked past Caelith into the dark alley, searching for Venal, not finding him, starting to formulate a question — and Caelith's pommel came up and caught him across the jaw, once hard and once harder, and the guard went down without managing to shout.
Corrin and Lylnyler were already inside.
Caelith dragged the man behind the door and went through his pockets with a professional efficiency he did not particularly examine. A keyring. A short sword. Fifteen gold pieces. A black serpent tattoo on his inner wrist — not the Xanathar Guild eye. Zhentarim. The other side of the war.
Ahead of them: a narrow corridor and a door at the far end with light showing underneath, and the sound of voices.
Corrin pressed himself against the door and went very still, the way he could. Three voices inside. Someone saying Renaer didn't know anything. Someone saying it didn't matter. Someone asking about the other one, the nobody. And underneath all of it, soft and trying to be quieter than it was, something that might have been a person trying not to cry.
He opened the door so slowly the hinges made no sound at all.
Three Zhentarim guards. Two at a card table, one against the far wall. Two figures bound in the corner — one heavyset with curly hair, one younger and better dressed. The younger one caught the movement at the door and went very still, eyes wide, smart enough not to react.
All three party members moved at once, and none of the guards had a chance to.
Caelith's pommel took the first card-player across the side of the head. Corrin's blade found the second and dropped him face-first into the table in a scatter of cards. Lylnyler's open hand pushed and the wall guard was lifted off his feet by something invisible and slammed into the stone behind him and didn't get up.
Ten seconds. No alarm. Three unconscious men.
"You must be Floon and Renaer. We've been sent by Volo to find you."
The younger man — Renaer Neverember, as it turned out — looked at them with the composed expression of someone who had spent two days in a room with people who wanted him for what his father had done and was now looking at people who had come because of something else entirely.
"Please. Untie us."
Floon Blagmaar's gag came off and he said, somewhat incoherently, that he didn't know anything about any gold and he didn't understand why they'd taken him and he'd tried to tell them that, he really had.
"We need to move. There may be more of them."
He glanced at a staircase in the back corner.
"We don't know what's down there."
Corrin searched the room while Caelith untied the prisoners. A folded letter on the table, half under the scattered cards, sealed with a wax stamp that showed a black winged snake. He read it and said nothing for a moment.
It read: *Dispose of Neverember once you have what you need. The other one is worthless — do what you like with him.*
Lylnyler moved to the staircase and stood very still. From below: silence. No voices. No movement. But the smell drifting up was unmistakable. Blood. Fresh.
The walk back through Waterdeep was quieter than the walk out. Floon was shaky on his feet but moving under his own power. Renaer was composed in the way of someone who has decided that composure is a choice and has made it. They moved through the streets without speaking much, and the city moved around them, and eventually the Yawning Portal came back into view.
Volo spotted Floon from across the room.
"Floon! By the gods — you're alive!"
He grabbed Floon by the shoulders, checked him over with the hands of someone who had been genuinely afraid of what they might find, and then turned to the party with gratitude that was, for once, not performed.
"You found him. You actually found him."
Trollskull Manor — the deed transferred
He produced a folded deed from inside his coat and slid it across the table.
"Trollskull Manor. North Ward, Trollskull Alley. It's yours. Every stone of it."
He paused, and then added, with the air of a man hoping this detail would land gently:
"It needs some work."
Ten gold each, collected now, as an advance on the full amount. The deed sat on the table between them.
Renaer Neverember had not joined the celebration. He was sitting slightly apart with his hands folded, and when Corrin asked what was wrong, he gave an answer that was longer than wrong usually gets.
"I'm thinking about what comes next. The Zhentarim will know their safehouse was hit. They'll come looking for me again. And now they know I was rescued by someone."
He looked at each of the three in turn.
"While I was held there I heard things. They kept talking about a stone — the Stone of Golorr, they called it. Whoever holds it knows where my father's vault is. And they weren't the only ones after it. The Xanathar Guild hit that place before you arrived — killed most of the men there. That blood downstairs — that's them. The Guild has a hideout in the sewers beneath the city. I heard them mention it."
He paused.
"I know Waterdeep. I know its people, its factions, its politics. I have coin and connections. If you're willing to keep pulling on this thread — I want to be part of it."
He glanced at the deed on the table.
"And I'd suggest finding somewhere safe to operate from. Somewhere that isn't a tavern."