WEIRDNESSES OF WATERDEEP (Patreon)

Like any large and long-abiding city, Waterdeep has acquired some oddities, and here are a handful:

1.  The Speaking Sorceress is a brazen head (of a bronze-like alloy, exact mixture unknown; it has an unusual green sheen over its orange-copper main hue): a casting of a human female head, that can speak. For years, it was “hidden in plain sight” in a hat box on an upper shelf of a cloak and boot closet in the Lord’s apartments in Piergeiron’s Palace.

The soul trapped within it is a sorceress, Thantanthra Shool, of Athkatla when she was alive, an adventurer who lost her body in a magical explosion in Myth Drannor, circa 1296 DR. Her adventuring comrade Daeth Droun, a wizard (whom Thantanthra suspected was a Netherese arcanist who’d taken identity after identity down the centuries, to join adventuring band after adventuring band, so as to find old Nettherese spells and magic items he could use) did something hasty with the mythal of Myth Drannor to preserve her sentience as she was blown apart. Then he forcibly put ‘her’ into the brazen head, which was someone’s unfinished, abandoned sculpt from the time when the City of Song was flourishing and open to all.

This kept her alive, in a fashion. Sheer strength of will has kept her (mostly) sane in the two centuries since the explosion, but she’s bitter, and so incredibly cynical and sarcastic. Qualities that led Open Lord Piergeiron to leave her shut in her box.

Open Lord Neverember, however, got her out, and tried to get her to divulge magical secrets, but she could tell him nothing of Waterdeep in any era, nothing about anywhere since 1296 DR, and all too little about Athkatla in the 1280s DR, so he abandoned his efforts in disgust, and in the end handed her to an undercover ally among the Masked Lords in payment of a debt, passing her off as “mighty magic indeed that would save his life in an emergency.”

So Thantanthra is ‘out in public circulation’ somewhere in Waterdeep, being consulted by whoever has her now—and she’s bored, frustrated, aches to have a body again, and will manipulate the living into all sorts of adventures and mischief and indiscretions for her personal entertainment, and to get her closer to gaining a living (preferably female human) body to call her own. She’ll be eager to tell any falsehoods about treasure and secret cabals and cults that anyone wants to hear, if she thinks it’ll stir up ‘fun’ and get her closer to gaining a body.

2.  Hidden somewhere in the Warrens is a magic item that looks like an old everbright-treated (that is, enchanted to not rust) steel sword hilt that has lost its blade (so, grip surrounded by curved, swept-back quillons, but fairly plain; more like a cutlass than a basket-hilt rapier). There’s a thumb-sized depression in the grip right where someone grasping the hilt as if they were brandishing an intact sword can readily thrust their thumb forward, into—and when they do, they turn the item ‘on’ (the moment a digit of a living mammal isn’t in the depression, the item is ‘off’ again).

This item was made by someone (now deceased, and identity forgotten) in the Watchful Order, long ago, and it has two powers.

The non-magical power is that members of the Watchful Order will think anyone holding it is an Order member (unless or until the holder’s behavior or speech makes them think otherwise).

The magical power is that it can make every one of the Walking Statues, at the same time (or just one statue IF the holder touches that statue with the item; otherwise, it affects them all, simultaneously, when ‘on’ and within four miles of the city) slowly turn around to face in the opposite direction. And that’s all it does. It confers no additional control at all over the statues, though Khelben believed, and Elminster believes, it could easily be enchanted, by someone who knows how and is mighty enough in the Art, to enact greater control over the Walking Statues.

However, someone stole the item from a Watchful Order magist who’d taken it home to experiment with it, sometime after the Spellplague, and hid it in the Warrens. Somewhere. It’s small enough to be readily hidden in thousands upon thousands of places, and its current whereabouts are unknown. So far.

3.  At least two current members of “oldcoin” noble families of Waterdeep were long ago slain and impersonated by doppelgangers. The current Blackstaff, Vajra Safahr, learned this from a dying doppelganger whom she believes, because the doppelganger was slain for revealing it to her, and its body spirited away so she can’t use magic on it to learn anything more. By the way the converse unfolded, Vajra believes at least one of the false nobles is elderly and female (their human guise), but beyond that impression, she has no idea who the impostors are. Or anything they may be planning.

4.  There has long been a rumor that some eccentric among the nobles of Waterdeep assembled a collection of small, young beholders that are kept in magical stasis (and, of course, hidden). The collector died of old age/natural causes years ago, the tales run, but a younger relative is keeping the collection hidden and crafting schemes about how best to use them for gaining power in Waterdeep—perhaps even rising to rule it—without falling under the control of the beholders, or just being slain outright by them for having dared to keep them captive and contemplated ‘using’ them for anything.

Where the tales sharply disagree is the identity of the beholder-keeper, and where and how the beholders are kept captive and hidden. Elminster believes there’s truth behind these tales.

5.  An old account in the written reports of the City Watch mentioned a flagstone in Fetlock Court that could be lifted to reveal a human-arm-diameter shaft with a thin black cord made of enchanted spidersilk (that resists decay and abrasion, and so should last intact for centuries) anchored to its wall just beneath the flagstone cap. Riding on this cord, by rings at both ends, is a weaving-shuttle-shaped message container that can with spells be sent up or down the shaft to deliver any message (and small items, like coins or keys or finger-rings) the container holds. The flagstone connects with a chamber somewhere on the Dungeon Level of Undermountain, but just which chamber, and who constructed this message link, is long forgotten.

Open Lord Laeral, and the Blackstaff, are both far more interested in who’s been using it recently. One spring night in 1492 DR, a Watch patrol saw a cloaked, cowled figure flee from Fetlock Court as they approached (and apparently vanish into thin air, perhaps with the aid of magic), leaving the flagstone not quite seated back in place, and the message container’s sliding side-door open, with the container empty. The link has been watched closely ever since. Thrice individuals have approached “the” flagstone but not disturbed it when they thought they were being watched; these individuals seemed human, but eluded pursuing Watch officers desiring to detain and question them.

6.  Rumors are beginning to spread throughout Waterdeep about something the Masked Lords, the Watch, the Blackstaff, and the Watchful Order have long known to be true: the current Xanathar has created at least two, and possibly as many as six, “false Xanathars” in subterranean hideouts bristling with traps and captive monsters, for adventurers and Waterdhavian criminals desiring to rid themselves of the beholder crime lord to waste their time, spells, and lives on. Most of the fake Xanathars are undead beholders or magically-animated beholder corpses fitted with wands, but it’s become something of a hobby of the real Xanathar to work on improving these stand-in-beholder foes to become increasingly realistic and formidable. One even had caged gnome illusionists inside its body, hurling missile ‘bombs’ at intruders into its hideout.

Beware shady adventurers contacted in the Yawning Portal and other taverns and clubs in the Deep; many of them are agents/spies or at least informants for the Xanathar, and will lure adventurers to one of the false Xanathar lairs.