Arriving home early in the morning, after dining all night aboard Captain Zardoz Zord’s ship, you walk toward your home and Whooosh! BOOM!! – you are flattened by a roaring fiery explosion. Your alley is on fire and several people who were out to do early morning shopping are screaming and scattering. It’s mayhem.
Residents of Trollskull Alley are shaken. Neighbors run out of their houses to help those in need. Greb recognizes the detonation as a fireball spell. The neighborhood is thrown into chaos. You know that soon members of the City Guard, the City Watch, and the Watchful Order of Magists and Protectors will be rushing to the scene, the group uses this time to quickly assess the damage and investigate further.
Your neighbor Vincent Trench runs over to make sure you are OK. He offers to help investigate, but runs to get Falla to help the wounded first.
What Was Discovered?
In the wake of the explosion, people emerge from their houses and shops to survey the devastation. The fireball didn’t set any buildings ablaze, but it left 8 people dead:
- One elderly female human who was out for a walk (no one recognizes her)
- Two cloaked male humans clad in leather armor with sheathed longswords (you assess these are Zhentarim sellswords – as identified by flying snake tattoos on their arms)
- Two female humans and one male half-elf dressed in plain clothes (probably servants of wealthy North Ward families, killed while running daily errands)
- One male gnome wearing a burned cloak and clutching a dagger – seems to be at the epicenter of the blast. The dead gnome has dry waste on his boots and cloak, suggesting he has spent time in the sewers recently. He also has a pouch containing five 100 gp gemstones, and a partially charred note that reads… in a villa or an inn named Trollskull in the North Ward. Find them and give them…
- Two female halflings who were playing a flute and a fiddle, and two male halflings who were dancing
Eyewitnesses
Many other people witnessed the fireball without being caught in the blast. Three of them have important information to share.
Fala Lefaliir – Fala, the owner of Corellon’s Crown relates the following information:
“I was watering plants in the greenhouse on the second floor of my shop when the blast blew out some of the windows. Lucky I wasn’t injured! Through the smoke, I saw a cloaked man take something from the body of a dead gnome, then start limping away. He was badly burned and casting glances over his shoulder, like he was afraid someone might be following him. He was headed toward the Bent Nail.”
Jezrynne Hornraven
A Waterdavian born of wealth and privilege, Jezrynne was leaving the Tiger’s Eye, having just hired Vincent Trench to spy on her philandering husband, when she witnessed the following:
“I tell you, it was not a man. More like a small mechanical shaped toddler with blue eyes. It was on the rooftop. It hurled something into the crowd below that caused the explosion. I saw those halflings burned alive! I saw them!”
Greb is quick to acknowledge that the small mechanical “toddler” sounds like one of the smaller nimblewrights that the temple of Gond has constructed. You will want to follow up with Valetta and see if she might know of a connection.
Martem Trec
This 12-year-old boy watched as his halfling friends perished in the flames. He didn’t see much beyond that, but he found something important after the blast went off:
“Right after the explosion, I ducked behind a rain barrel. Then I heard a ‘plop’ and found this in the barrel.”
Martem produces a what Pimpernickle identifies as a necklace of fireballs with two beads remaining and a broken clasp. You assess that, as it fled across a rooftop, the nimblewright must’ve dropped or lost grip on the necklace, which slid off the edge of the roof, and plopped into the rain barrel next to Martem.
One of the party members (Cato? or Pimpernnickle?) has kept the necklace.
The Authorities Arrive
The Ascots have only a few minutes to examine the crime scene before the City Guard arrives and cordons off Trollskull Alley, posting six guards at each entrance. The guards don’t allow anyone in or out without permission from a superior officer. Lingering smoke from the fireball also attracts a Griffon Cavalry rider. As its griffon mount circles the neighborhood, the rider watches the streets and alleys for suspicious figures.
Twenty minutes after the explosion, a City Watch sergeant named Saeth Cromley escorts a member of the Watchful Order of Magists and Protectors named Barnibus Blastwind to the crime scene. Barnibus quietly takes charge of the investigation at that point, while Sergeant Cromley directs a force of twenty constables to knock on doors and question locals.
Barnibus decides to question the tavern’s owners and occupants (YES! Trollskull Tavern is open for business!), with Sergeant Cromley by his side as a witness and bodyguard. Specifically, Barnibus wants to find out the gnome’s identity and whether he was known to anyone. The characters, having never met the gnome, have little information to offer and tell them as much.
One of the tavern patrons, however, did mention that they saw the gnome was running from armed pursuers, of which there were three. Two died in the blast, one kept running. That man that kept running had a cloak. This seems to be the same cloaked man that Fala saw.
The Group Investigates Further
Once the officers leave Trollskull, the group heads out and decides to follow the tracks of the cloaked man Fala described seeing. The tracks led out to a section of houses in the North Ward. Questioning people in the neighborhood, you are able to deduce the cloaked man seemed to have been following a metalic-looking small sized humanoid. Both fled for cover in the Cassalanter estate.
Visiting Valetta
From here you visit the temple of Gond and question Valetta about any nimblewrights that may have gone missing, or nimblewright techs that may be missing one of their creations. Valetta, hearing of the fireball and deaths in Trollskull alley seems visibly shaken as she relates that indeed, the temple is missing a nimblewright named Nim. He was gifted to the temple the previous year by Captain Zardoz Zord, who procured a set of these nimblewrights from artisans in the Luskan isles. Nim was smaller that the other three and would not be as suitable for servant work as the three that Zord kept for his ships, so he gifted small Nim to Valetta and the temple. Nim has been missing for a few weeks. Valetta herself had only recently found out he was missing. To help in finding the bot, she gifted the group a Nimblewright Detecter which detects nimblewright creations within 500 feet. She asks that you find him and bring him back if he is not involved in the fireball incident. She asks that you turn him over to authorities if you do find that he is involved in the attack.
From here you can:
- Continue to investigate on your own (Where is Nim and why is he blasting people with fireballs? Who was the cloaked man, why is he in the Cassalanter estate? Why is the nimblewright there? Who was the gnome and what was he doing coming to Trollskull Tavern? Why were the Zhents and the nimblewright chasing him?)
- Should you share your info with the authorities, or investigate on your own?
- Maybe you should do nothing, go have a pint at the tavern and call it a day
The Law in Waterdeep
The group is fully aware that those who withhold evidence, such as the necklace, the note, the eyewitness testimonies, from the City Watch are potentially guilty of a crime in Waterdeep. Hampering justice by concealing evidence can result in a fine of up to 200 gp and hard labor for up to a tenday.
Waterdeep Dragon Heist 