Tales From the Longshoreman's Daughter
The Journal of Trismegistus, 17 Kythorn 1372
Much has gone before. There are many places to start and not all is clear where they will finish. I will tell you this tale. I wish it were a story of heroic deeds and people wishing to do good for the world of Toril, but alas, the heroes are more common in the way they have chosen to lead their lives. Many of the group I assembled that winter in the Gray Manor outside Waterdeep have disappeared from my sight and knowledge. What I tell you here is only what I know through powerful magic and exhaustive investigation.
The year was 1371, and things did not truly begin with me, the sage known as Trismegistus of Waterdeep. Indeed they began with a quest for the coldest dish: Simple revenge.
The following events transpired in Hammer, just after new years day. A woman, Aliana Turlharrow by name, brought these events to my attention. Some weeks before, during a great blizzard strange events had occurred in her inn, known as the Inn of the Longshoreman’s Daughter.
A respectable and small inn it can only accommodate six guests. It is a place well known for its clam chowder and being near the docks of the city it is decorated with the typical trappings of an old inn. Behind the bar hangs an ageing harpoon. No doubt a relic of Aliana’s family from the days when they were whalers and hunters of the sea. Candles and lanterns are the only light source in the Inn as there are no windows at all in the building. The lanterns hang from the ceiling while the candles can be found at the bar and at each of the six tables. This makes the inn cozy in the winter and a bit stifling in the summer. However, the service at the inn makes up for any condition of the air. If one were to sample the air from the taproom, they would definitely find it a not unpleasant mixture of spilt alcohol, greasy meat, pipe weed, lamp oil, and burning candle wax. Not to mention the excellent clam chowder.
Aliana’s father, Silas Turlharrow was one of many children born to a whaler, Krosen Turlharrow. One of weak stature in his youth, he took a job harvesting clams along the cliff lined shores of the sword coast. A late bloomer he grew into a mighty man that towered over his fellows. Most are aware that even the shores of the sword coast are no safe place. And after several adventures and some wealth “The Longshoreman” as he was known retired into the merchant class by buying a small run down old inn near the docks. But I digress.
Mounted and chained to the ceiling as a chandelier hangs the prize of Silas the late Longshoreman: two clamshell halves that encroach on the rafters the pearlesent insides facing down on the patrons as if they were about to be swallowed by the clam. On a claming dig one of Silas’ friends inadvertently got too close to a giant clam, and was being crushed by the beast. Accounts say Silas single handedly split the mouth of the clam open with his bare hands, freeing his friend and allowing the other men to kill it.
Candles and lanterns are the only light source in the Inn as there are no windows at all in the building. The lanterns hang from the ceiling while the candles can be found at the bar and at each of the six tables. This makes the inn cozy in the winter and a bit stifling in the summer. However, the service at the inn makes up for any condition of the air. If one were to sample the air from the taproom, they would definitely find it a not unpleasant mixture of spilt alcohol, greasy meat, pipe weed, lamp oil, and burning candle wax. Not to mention the excellent clam chowder.
On the 3rd night of Hammer of that year six strangers had sought refuge at the inn. One was an elf, conducting business. The other five were travelers wintering in the City of Splendors. One was similar to a centaur in form, but altogether strange. Marduk was his name, and a lack of appreciation for magic was apparent. Several times he had stated to the innkeeper and her staff that this whole city stank of magic, and according to the good innkeeper he complain often that this entire world reeked of the abuse of magic. From his description, I could only suspect that he was an exile from some other plane, far from my ken to understand. I suspect that he was exiled for this hate of magic but I cannot be sure given how events apparently unfolded. Another was a man of arms, Soren, kind in his ways, but the innkeeper was sure to point out that there was something strange about him. He had an aura of some sort that seemed odd. The other, Kalra’ath was a fellow from far off Unther, a wizard of some sort by her description. She described him as keen eyed with pointy teeth. I can only suppose him to be of fiend blood. The third, Soloman Tangiers, appeared to be a well-kept holy man, but the six arms and blades of his symbol showed it to be no kind god. Earlier that morning, an old haggard man bearing a bundle had entered the inn, sat at a far table in the corner and ordered a bowl of soup. He then fell asleep. The last patron of the inn was an elf from Silverymoon and in fact is the instegator of the events of things yet to come.
The name of the elf was given as only Aravilar. A common name and one I suspect was an alias. The day of the strange events, he was interviewing two men apparently in his employ and was having an argument with them over the payment of services rendered. They claimed that he owed them for their trouble in recovering some guide to the location of some ancient treasure of Netheril, and his reply was that he did not agree to pay for the directions to ancient magic but requested that magic be brought to him. Apparently these were not the only people working for him. Aliana informed me that later that evening he told one of the other patrons that the Aravilar had told that his family wanted some revenge on the Morume dragon brood but lost the specifics of the story. The two men left leaving a rune covered bone on the table with the elf.
At this point things began to happen. Shortly after the men left a halfling moving very quickly entered the Inn ran across the room and took the sword that the elf was keeping beside his table. The innkeeper had noticed the fine hilt of the weapon, as had most everyone else in the inn. The thief ran upstairs, the elf, and Soren running up after him. At this point the wizard disappeared and took the bone. The two others, Marduk and Soloman were busy talking to one another in some debate over the use of magic.
Soren related the following to Aliana later in the night. He had gone up with the elf and began searching the hallway fro any sign of escape. All the doors were locked. However at the end of the hall was a large grandfather clock. It was about two feet wide and seven feet tall with the top foot and a half reserved for the mechanisms of the clock. The door on the clock was wide open and the hands set to 2:59. Soon everyone was investigating the clock. It did indeed register as magical.
One should be careful when buying real estate. When you buy real estate you also buy the secrets of that real estate, if you are aware of them or not. Apparently when the Longshoreman had purchased the inn from the previous owner, the owner had left what appeared to be a broken grandfather clock at the end of the hall on the second floor. It was missing its pendulum and for years was thought to be an ordinary piece of time keeping furniture. This was clearly not so.
After intense investigation by the wizard he learned that it was a gate. At this point they were at a loss as to what the key used to activate it was. Several times they turned the hands on the dial. This did no good. They were stumped for a while. So they returned downstairs. Apparently that is when they discovered that the haggard old man in the corner was dead. Prying the book from his hands they opened it up. In the oilcloth bundle they found a key, a stone with a rune carved on it, and a large book. Opening the book they found it to be some sort of log, in dwarvish. None of them could read dwarvish, and none of them had the magic to read it, or so it seemed. The log was left open on the table along with the rune and the key. In the man’s hand was a note. According to Aliana it read “In the Ships Lockbox!” The body of the man was placed outside in the blizzard and the watch was summoned. However, they would not arrive until morning. When I asked where the book, the key and the stone had gone, she replied that the watch took them when they took the body. I can only suppose that these items are somewhere in the safe keeping of the Lords of Waterdeep.
Eventually it was discovered that the key to the gate was to provide something that looked like a pendulum. This proved to be anything metal with more weight on one end than on the other. Apparently this included weaponry. Aliana mentioned that there was a run on the kitchen for spoons. The group was never seen in Waterdeep again.
With this information, I began my investigation. Still being the dead of winter, I started with the clock. Most people did not need clocks. They were curiosities. In fact this was not really a clock at all. Something like the “clock” inside the Inn of the Longshoreman’s Daughter was something else entirely. I figure that close inspection would reveal that there were no working parts inside the clock at all. Indeed it was simply a portable gate.
Setting the clock to 2:59 I opened the door and having compensated the innkeeper for the spoon, put the spoon through the clock to appear in a snow covered forest. Luckily it had not snowed much here and what had once been a path starting from where I was, broken through the snow was still visible. The spoons were gone as the gate uses them to open. Following this path that I could only assume the one known as Marduk made. I soon came to the body of the halfling. A quick divination told me that the halfling was killed by wraiths and that he did have the sword. Our four travelers picked up the sword and they continued to the east taking on a group of wraiths. Afterwards they began to meet with bad ends. Another spell gets me to the place they began to die quickly. I found their remains. Apparently they had fallen prey to some undead intellect devourers. One of them, Soren, fell prey to their ability to dominate the will. Long enough to attack Solomon, the Cleric of Garagos. Solomon injured Soren and soren did likewise to Solomon, but Solomon did not count on Soren’s mind powers and suffered the consequences as the devourers appeared from invisibility and took down Solomon. All this time Marduk had been saying he smelt magic on the air, but it was apparently too late. The three remaining made quick work of the devourers and then buried their friend in nearby ruins. It was these ruins that was the death of them because within was an ectoplasmic ooze. This creature made short work of Soren. I now understood where they had gone. This was the Vordorn Forest. A place even the powerful such as I seldom go. At this point I recovered the rune-covered bone and moved on to the last two who outran the ooze. But they were also running from something else. It must have been a nightmare, heading out into the cold snowing darkness. Even if they did have ample magic to protect them from the cold it would still have been uncomfortable. The two remaining continued to head east. And there terror caught up with them. Legend speaks of the spirit of a great eye tyrant haunting these woods. The Bariar gave the spirit a fight, and the wizard was just about useless in its eyes. There is no trace of their bodies, or their gear. There was no trace of the sword. Even at my age and my power I would not risk a fight with such a creature. Nothing else can be done here.
I perceive the bone as a curiosity and I have taken it back to the Grey Manor and have put it with my things. I have returned to the Inn of the Longshoreman’s Daughter and informed Aliana that the clock is dangerous and should not be touched or tampered with. However it does make a nice decoration. I have warded the door against casual use, but not before some casual experimentation. I now know how the gate works.
How does this episode impact my interests you may ask? It is not apparent on an initial observation. But further divination indicates that the one who stole the sword was part of a larger group (how could he not be?) And this group would eventually come knocking at my door…
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The events of this account are the results of a holiday one shot run in the week after Christmas 2002. They were designed as a prelude to the ongoing campaign that will be detailed in this thread. My story hour will not be told as a narrative but rather in the form of "primary source documents." This keeps me from having to remember the absolute specifics of each session and will allow me to catch up on a campaign that has been running for almost a year.
