Living in Waterdeep - Part 2

As the five adventurers joined the crowd rallying around the Goldenspire palace, Milo’s attention was immediately drawn to the strange mask which covered the lower half of Pelias’ face as he spoke. While Flo pointed out that it may have been the source of the magic which allowed his voice to echo throughout the surrounding streets, or that he may simply be wearing it for ceremonial reasons, Milo was put off by its unusual appearance. It was polished silver, with intricate carvings like weaving branches of leaves moving across it, brushed in toward a small dark slit no bigger than a coin, over his mouth. Not one of them had ever seen an ornament like it before.

His speech did not bear any new information, yet it was powerful, desperately passionate and stirring. While Milo needed little convincing to side against the Drow, even the rest of the party found themselves moved by his words - though not to the extent of the crowds around them. People of all races were queuing to sign themselves up to the cause, being given tags to indicate their allegiance, as well as the promise of weapons, armour and training within the coming days. Standing to the side of the lines, Dex spotted two Drow men, wearing long cloaks and dark hoods to hide as much of their features as they could. As he pointed them out to the others, Milo made eye contact with the taller of the two. He was a thin man, with sharp features, whose skin looked tight on his gaunt cheeks. When their eyes met, he flashed a grin, exposing sharp, pointed teeth. Milo swore under his breath, but decided that if Pelias was vouching for them, then he would withhold his contempt.

The crowd were still pouring towards the stand moments later, after the speeches had died down. Pelias was mingling with the crowd personally now, occasionally making sweeping gestures towards the colossus that stood nearby. Staring up at the monstrous warforged, a shape caught Tamas’ eye. The silhouette of a small figure was clearly visible in the upstairs window of a nearby building. The figure was shrouded completely in darkness, though the Deva thought he saw, just briefly, a glimmer or shine in one of its eyes. At that precise moment, he felt a tug deep within him - right down in his soul. The silhouette vanished as the person in the building fled, and Tamas knew, instinctively that he must follow.

As he began tearing himself through the crowd, a horn was heard booming out over the city streets, and a cry was heard from the smaller of the Drow figures.
“There! The fugitive! Guards!”
Immediately presuming he had been recognized, Dex fled in the same direction of Tamas, with the others following after despite not knowing what had stirred up the sense of urgency. As they reached the door of the building in which the figure was seen, Tamas quickly explained that he had seen someone suspicious and was attempting to give chase. At that moment, a group of five warforged soldiers caught up to them and, when they merely asked Dex to move out of the way rather than attempting to arrest him, he immediately switched on his Halfling charms.
“Certainly officers. We would never impede an investigation for such heinous criminal acts as…?”
“Theft of items belonging to the royal family,” one of them stated gruffly, as they disappeared into the building.

Flo and Milo were just breaking out of the crowd with Kyrune, who offered the grinning Dex a knowing look. Tamas turned to them.
“I don’t know why, but I just know that we have to catch up to that criminal. There’s something important about him.”
Seeing Flo and Milo’s cynical expressions, he added
“Look, Deva just know things sometimes, alright? It comes with the territory.”
Dex looked at Kyrune.
“Royal treasure and possible reward for capturing a fugitive? All sounds important to me.” With that, Kyrune grabbed the Halfling by the waist and threw him into the air, where he pulled himself in through the open upstairs window. Turning to the others the Shadar-Kai stated simply “take either side of the house – leave no direction for him to escape,” before running in the door.
Milo shrugged, and took off down an alley to the right of the building, followed by Tamas, while Flo ran off to the left hand side.

Indoors, the warforged turned as they heard Kyrune coming up the stairwell after them. Immediately a cloaked used this distraction to leap past them, out another window at the rear of the house, followed swiftly by Dex. As one of the constructs shouted “After them!” Kyrune brandished a sphere of flame magic, shouting “Not if I get them first!”

The chase was on. Seeing a dark figure, followed by Dex, followed by an eruption of fire all bursting forth from an upstairs window, the others gave chase from the streets. Hearing a heavy sound, Flo turned her head to see Kyrune running behind her, while crying out insulting calls and general obscenities to the guards that were stumbling in pursuit themselves. As two of them hit street level and chased he and Flo, she began knocking over nearby bins, loose bits and pieces of wood, anything she passed to slow her pursuers down. Kyrune followed her lead and did likewise, as well as casting minor fire spells on any of the more flammable materials to further slow the guards.

In the street running parallel at the other side, Milo spotted some stacked crates just ahead of him. Running full pelt, he lept as high as he could, catching the top crate and using it as a springboard up onto the rooftops that Dex and the cloaked figure were now dashing across. Meanwhile, Tamas spotted a single one of the constructs gaining distance behind him. With the final two warforged giving chase across the rooftops, he concocted a plan to take out two birds with one stone – just as one of them was leaping from one roof to another, he cast out a strand of divine magic to pull at its iron-body. Rather than landing firmly on the next building, its velocity dramatically decreased in the air, causing it to collide with the edge of the roof, and fall sideways towards the street. Tamas successfully took off ahead of the warforged figures as the one in pursuit of him collapsed over its fallen comrade and the two became entangled.

Up on the buildings, the cloaked figure was still firmly ahead of Dex and Milo, who were being pursued by the final remaining warforged. Despite hurling several shuriken back at him, Dex was unable to lose the tail, while Milo was incapable of firing his bow backwards and maintaining his forward momentum simultaneously. However, the end of the rooftops loomed ahead, as the party were rapidly approaching the river separating the Pisc Isle from the Tartarus. The figure sprung from the final rooftop into the open air. Dex and Milo followed suit, merely as a matter of instinct, and finally, the construct made the leap of faith. Flo, Kyrune and Tamas all reached the river in time to see the four figures plunge into its waters. Seconds later, the cloaked figure pulled itself laboriously out on the other side, and, clearly weighed down by its drenched clothing, dragged itself with an injured briskness into a ruined building on the bank. Dex and Milo pulled themselves also, coughing and spluttering.
The warforged, likely due to its stone and metal construction, did not resurface.

Tamas was the first to enter the decrepit building. The ceiling was caved in at various points, and much of the inside rooms – particularly beneath the gaps – was charred and stank of a bile, smoldering smell. In a small side room, he found a trap door opened, and he followed down into a basement. It was completely filled with books and scrolls, piled onto shelves and stuffed into drawers which were packed beyond the point of closing. At the back, huddled under the shadow of a looming bookcase and wrapped in a soaked cloak sat a boy, small and thin, and probably only in his mid-teens.

“I won’t hurt you. I just want to ask you a few questions,” Tamas stated, as calmly as possible. “I’m not one of those warforged. I’m not some guard. I’m a Deva. You can trust me.”

The boy huddled himself up further, but seemed to realize he was surrounded. Lifting his head, Tamas saw he was human, was badly injured, and had a particularly striking wound around his left eye, although the eye itself was covered over with a bloodstained bandage. “Ro’liath,” the child said nervously. “I’m Prince Ro’liath. Please… help me.”

The party followed Tamas down to the room, but gave the Deva and the Prince space – the boy reacting poorly any time one of the others got too close to him. He explained to Tamas that he had been injured by the last Dragon attack, and was trapped under wreckage for several days. When he did finally escape and seek help, and saw Pelias’s Warforged for the first time, they proclaimed him a fraud and ran at him aggressively. Instinctually he fled, and had since been afraid to show his face. He learned from eavesdropping at various places that Pelias declared the Prince dead, that there was a criminal bearing his likeness who was to be captured at all costs, and that some treasure of the royal family had been stolen by this imposter, and its recovery was considered even more important than capturing the fugitive alive.

Before any of the party could respond to this point – Dex in particular itching to know what the treasure may be – something was heard booming out over the building. The voice of Pelias rang in the air after it, proclaiming
“We have found you. Come out now, hand over the treasure, and you may be spared from senselessness of an execution. There is no need for bloodshed or death here.”
As the Prince curled up in fear, Milo moved upstairs to take a look outside.
“Guys, we’ve got a bigger concern here,” came his voice, somewhat frantically.
“Pelias is… he’s mounted on top of the dragon.”