A Black Sheep Among the Guards

Andre throws the man they’ve found back into the box and nails it shut. He then tells the party to go to sleep and let him worry about the package. Early morning, someone knocks at the door of the Penthouse. The party notices that evryone is missing and no one else is in the Penthouse but them. An Oeble guard in the Underways division uniform stands before them. He introduces himself as Moash and tells them that he is under the command of Mirabel doing some investigating. After he is let in by the party, he drops his act, seemingly, and starts telling them how he despises Mirabel and the entire guard organization in Oeble. He wants to harm them, Mirabel especially. John asks him about his rifle, when Silis interrupts their conversation by getting back home. He is perplexed by the guard standing in his hideout. Silis tells the party to get rid of him by accepting the guard’s invitation to breakfast.

Moash suggests the tavern/brawl arena Black Sheep, since he overheard them being late on their taxes. On their way there, they notice the building of the Forgotten City Museum, covered in amber stained-glass. Moash tells them a bit about the museum, but his knowledge only reaches as far as the common knowledge of someone who has been only three months in Oeble. Arriving at the Black Sheep tavern, they are greeted by the owner, Herald, who treats them to subpar dishes he prepares for them. Moash proposes to the party during breakfast that he knows about Mirabel’s secret vault, where she keeps her confiscated goods. He explains that the entrance is supposed to be behind the museum underneath a manhole cover. The party agrees to help him, but is interrupted in their planning by Jovica, a weird drunk who starts getting in their faces, telling them about “something coming from the fountain”. After breakfast, Moash talks to Herald, who tells them that he cannot pay the taxes, but gives Moash a tip on a brawl fight that night, telling him to bet on the half-goliath. Jovica is standing near the window that looks out to the main street and starts yelling “it’s here, it’s here” just before the party hears an explosion of buildings collapsing outside. They see people being hurled through the air and a cloud of dust filling the streets. They run outside and only see the outlines of a giant beast to the east of the tavern. They decide to run towards the museum to find shelter. Running past commoners fleeing for their lives from the monster, the party notices that the museum's defense system activates and starts covering the fragile-looking glass walls with adamantine plates. Weneon shoves a steel pipe into the mechanism and tries to prevent one of the panels closing. However, the glass starts breaking at the spot he shoved the pipe in. Kilijan manages to act fast and fixes the glass with his mending spell before the glass breaks entirely. As they arrive at the location the entrance to Mirabel’s vault is supposed to be, they have trouble finding the mentioned manhole cover. After a few minutes of investigating, Moash manages to find the entrance: a giant marble stone plate acting as a cover to the sewers. John, Lorkhan, Moash, and Kilijan try to lift it, but to no avail. While Mycha unsuccessfully tries to improvise a lever to lift the cover, Weneon convinces the commoners who are running away from the monster to help them lift the cover. Exhausted to their bones, the party succeeds in lifting the cover with the help of the commoners. Lorkhan decides to teleport back to the Penthouse, while the rest of the party decides to proceed further down. As they descend down the giant hole, they witness people falling and jumping down the hole in order to save themselves from the monster above. They party sees giant claws stepping over the hole. The shrieking of the people above fades further and further away. Waiting in the hole with the commoners, one of them named Barren approaches the Moash and asks him what they’ve done this time. Moash is confused and answers in a generic way, telling Barren that everything is under control. John stands next to the commoners, trying to give them hope by pointing his gun towards the hole to the surface some 200 meters above their heads. Weneon and Moash investigate the location by going down a corridor with nature skyline reliefs covering the opposing walls. A loud explosion is then heared, before the screaming from above comes to an abrupt end. Kilijan and Mycha contact Lorkhan with the rings. He drinks coffee with Silis in the Penthouse and rests. When Silis, however, learns about the monster unleashed in the Underways, he immediatelly contacts Marla and learns that a terrasque was the monster devastating the city block. Silis explains to the party that experiments have been conducted in the past that are designed to keep any progress in the Underways at bay. Dragons, wyverns, and other beasts have, occasionally, been released upon the people of the Underways. Everyone knows that it is the ruling elite from Oeble who does this, but there is no way of proving it. He then tells them that the terrasque was blown to pieces, since every time they summon the monsters, they attach explosives onto them, so they can control the amount of havoc they cause. The Party informs Silis about their heist plans, and Silis tells them to be carefully of Moash’s intentions. The commoners start making their way back up the ladders to the surface, while the rest of the party joins Weneon and Moash, who have reached the entrance to a room at the end of the corridor.

Stepping into the pitch-black room, the party hears strange noises and sounds, as if something is crawling among the pillars in the chambers in front of them. They soon realize that the room is a larger part of a dungeon filled with oozes, who seemingly keep guard of the treasures inside. After encountering and dealing with some of them, they discover the dungeon to be filled to the brim with traps. During battle, Moash falls unconscious after his foot is crushed in an elaborate bear trap, but he manages to recover and evade a lingering wound. Weneon finds a treasure chest in a room to the south and carefully opens it, finding a plethora of magic potions, while John comes across a mimic in a northern room, who knocks him unconscious when he tries to open it. The mimic rages and starts jumping toward Moash, when suddenly a coughy deep voice trembles through the dungeon. The mimic stops in its tracks as the voice repeats to the party that riches await them if they succeed in freeing him of his chains. The archway that leads to the dungeon suddenly closes off and the party’s magic items loose all their magical properties. The voice is heard once again: “Do this, and you will leave this dungeon as rich men, carrying the treasures of Neverwinter.”