Episode 20 - The Manor UK

# ✧ Episode 20 - The Dragon at the End of the Bargain **Date:** Tuesday, 31st March 2026 **Location:** [[Waterdeep]] — [[Pink Flumph Theater]] Exit & Beneath the City **Notes**: as written by [[Kozu Marphanis]] ## Session Summary The Mighty Hands emerged from the vault beneath the [[Pink Flumph Theater]] to find themselves ambushed by [[Narlar]], a drow lieutenant of the [[Xanathar]] guild, flanked by an intellect devourer, a glazer, three hidden assassins, and two invisible stalkers moving toward [[Iz]]. [[Fredoku]] charged headlong at the drow and was promptly dropped by a lightning bolt. Iz countered with *faerie fire*, illuminating all hidden enemies in pale green light. [[Kozu Marphanis]] put a crossbow bolts into the lead invisible stalker, breaking its concealment. [[Hlan]] arrived at the doorway threshold and — with brutal efficiency — fully healed Fredoku from zero to standing in a single gesture, before delivering the message: [[Savxra]] sends her regards, from the [[Order of the Gauntlet]].* [[Dolous]] cast *Ashardalon's Stride* and *Azakar's Scorcher* to destroy the glazer. Fredoku, restored, ran back at the large unknown creature. Martyn executed one assassin with the Red King's Blade. Narlar was the last to fall. With the fight won, the party reported to [[Barnabus]] at the City Watch, who summoned [[Lady Silvermain]] to the vault. There, the ancient guardian [[Braok Clanghammer]] revealed his true form: Aurix, an adult gold dragon. Aurix and Lady Silvermain reached an accord — the hoard accumulated by Dagult Neverember would be returned to Waterdeep's treasury, and Aurix would remain as its guardian. The party returned to [[The Manor]] in the early hours. During the night's rest, [[The Mighty Hands]] levelled up. The Mighty Hands are now **Level 5**. There is a particular kind of stillness that settles over a moment before violence. I have learned to recognise it. The air thickens. Sound retreats to a greater distance than physics strictly allows. And in that pocket of quiet — between one breath and the next, between the decision and the consequence — you understand with perfect clarity exactly who is about to die. The drow had that stillness. He wore it the way confident people wear expensive things: without effort, and with the understanding that it communicates something to everyone in the room whether they want to receive the message or not. He was not alone in wearing it. The intellect devourer floated to his left — a creature of soft, glistening pink, its body no larger than a human head, its movements precise and unhurried. Its eyes, if they were eyes, tracked each of us in turn with the patient attention of something that had been planning this moment for longer than we had been in the vault. Beside it, the glazer hovered with the low, grinding hum of a creature that does not need to move quickly because everything it touches moves exactly as slowly as it wants. The drow's name, we would learn, was [[Narlar]]. He was a lieutenant of the [[Xanathar]] guild — a fact delivered not as a threat but as context, the way one mentions the weather when beginning a conversation you already know will end badly. *It's a shame,* he had said to me in the vault. *You did not take me up on my offer.* I had declined whatever offer this was on a previous occasion, which is the kind of thing that happens when you are a half-elf rogue operating in Waterdeep and people make offers at you with some regularity. Most of them are bad. Some of them are worse. You develop instincts. My instincts, in this case, had apparently chosen correctly — because Narlar had not come to talk. He had come to collect. Around me, the Mighty Hands readied themselves. I watched hands move to hilts. Eyes moved to mine. The silent conversation that precedes every fight — *who goes first, who watches flanks, who is going to do something inadvisable and spectacular* — passed between us without a word spoken. Fredoku broke the silence by running directly at the drow. ___ ## Fredoku's Approach This was, in tactical terms, not what I would have recommended. The drow was flanked by two creatures of significant magical menace, standing in the doorway of a theater through which we needed to exit, and [[Fredoku]] opening gambit was to sprint across open ground in a straight line with the quiet determination of a man who has decided that momentum is a substitute for strategy. He is not wrong, usually. He has the build for it. Narlar watched him come with the mild interest of a cat observing a mouse that has announced its approach. And when Fredoku was close enough that the distance was no longer theoretical — close enough to reach, close enough to grapple, close enough to make good on whatever aggressive intention had motivated the sprint — the drow raised one hand and spoke a single word of Draconic. The lightning bolt hit him like a personal opinion. I have seen lightning bolts before. I have seen them deflected by wands, absorbed by rings, dispersed by well-timed walls of force. Fredoku, who wears approximately none of these things, caught the full weight of it standing. His body locked. His muscles seized. For a moment he was held in place — suspended in the light of it, outlined in the white crack of it — and then the energy released him and he dropped to the ground with the particular sound of a person who has become briefly but thoroughly acquainted with the electrical grid of a world that runs on magic. Around me, the party did not hesitate. *That is one of the things I most appreciate about the Mighty Hands.* Iz moved first — or rather, Iz's magic did. She cast *faerie fire* with the clean, decisive enunciation of someone who has decided that the concealment advantages of the opposition are no longer acceptable. The green light bloomed in the air around the three visible enemies: Narlar, the intellect devourer, and the glazer. They were outlined now in pale, flickering fire — visible to everyone, including themselves, which is not a condition that creatures accustomed to ambush tend to enjoy. Three of [[Narlar]] associates materialised in the light — hidden assassins who had been moving around behind us with the careful, practiced silence of people who do this professionally. The faerie fire caught them mid-step and left them outlined in green like figures in a painting of a very specific and violent genre. The baddies — the three assassins — moved with the efficiency of people who have been given very clear instructions and very little time to execute them. They surrounded Fredoku where he lay. I watched from across the space as they moved into position: three trained killers, converging on a prone monk who was not currently in a position to do very much of anything except be surrounded. One of them produced a blade. Then another. The third had something that glinted differently — poisoned, I suspected. Professional. Fredoku was not getting up. ___ ## The Invisible and the Behind I was turning to check the rear — a habit, not a premonition, but habits in this line of work tend to be built from previous experience — when I felt it. That particular coldness behind the sternum. That shift in the air pressure that means someone is closer to you than they have any right to be. Invisible. Two of them. Moving around the party toward Iz with the patient, gliding motion of people who have been hired to ensure that a particular wizard does not survive the evening. I did not hesitate. I turned, read the angle, estimated the distance, and fired a crossbow bolt into the space where I calculated the leading assassin to be. Crossbow bolts are not subtle. They are not subtle in sound, they are not subtle in the way they interrupt conversations, and they are not subtle in the effect they have on people who were counting on remaining invisible. The bolt hit something solid. There was a sound — a sharp, indignant exhalation — and the invisibility around one of the assassins flickered and failed. He was a half-orc, as it turned out. Broad-shouldered, scowling, and now very clearly visible in the faerie fire with a crossbow bolt in a place he would be thinking about for some time. I reloaded. I did not miss twice. But the second assassin was still invisible, and still moving toward Iz, and I was not going to be able to cover that gap alone. Then Hlan arrived. ___ ## The Arrival I do not know where Hlan came from. I do not know how long Hlan had been watching, or what signal — or absence of signal — had prompted the entrance at precisely this moment. What I know is this: one moment the doorway of the Pink Flumph Theater was occupied by enemies. The next, a figure was standing at its threshold with the particular stillness of someone who has been waiting for exactly this. Hlan is not, by default, a loud person. Hlan is quiet in the way that deeply capable people often are — which is to say, not quiet at all, but operating on a frequency that most people lack the instruments to detect until something changes and it becomes very, very obvious. What Hlan did, upon arrival, was look at Fredoku. Fredoku, who was on the ground. Fredoku, who had been hit by lightning. Fredoku, who was, at that moment, not in a position to do very much except serve as an object lesson in the dangers of sprinting at armed drow. Hlan looked at him. Hlan looked at the lightning damage. Hlan looked at the enemies surrounding him. And Hlan healed him. Completely. *Fully.* As though the fight had been paused for the specific purpose of making sure the monk had full hit points before the next act. I have known healing magic to restore people from the edge of unconsciousness. I have seen it pull people back from the threshold of death. I have never seen anyone healed from *flat on the ground surrounded by enemies* to *standing and ready* with that particular immediacy. Hlan did it without drama. Without speech. Without so much as a pause to appreciate the magnificence of it. A gesture, a glow, and Fredoku was on his feet. He stood there for a moment, blinking. Reassessing. Recalibrating. Then he ran back at the creature. This time, the baddies were not ready for him. ___ ## The Creature I had not, until this point, identified what the large creature was. It stood at the back of the group — behind Narlar, behind the assassins — a hulking, misshapen mass of something that defied easy description. It moved with a grinding, ponderous intent. Its surface seemed to shift when you weren't looking directly at it. It was the kind of creature that your mind wants to simplify into something manageable, and refuses to. Dolous, who has a better eye for the arcane than I do, had apparently identified it earlier. He cast *Ashardalon's Stride* — a spell I know primarily because I have been on the receiving end of it and can confirm that the experience of watching someone move at triple speed while leaving trails of lightning behind them is considerably more alarming from the target's perspective than from the caster's. Dolous did not target the creature with it. Dolous cast it on himself and ran directly at the glazer. The glazer, to its credit, had not been idle during all of this. It had been drifting — drifting with that slow, grinding menace that creatures of its type use to communicate *I do not need to hurry*. But Dolous was now moving at the speed of someone who had decided that slow was a choice, not a condition, and the lightning trail behind him scorched across the ground as he went. He hit the glazer with a focused beam of magical fire. *Azakar's Scorcher* — a narrow, brutal lance of flame that does not spray or scatter but travels in a straight line and delivers its full weight to whatever stands in its path. The glazer came apart. Not dramatically — not with an explosion or a scream. It simply... stopped being a glazer, in the particular way that a thing stops being a thing when it has been thoroughly set on fire from the inside. There was a smell. There was a sound. And then there was not a glazer. Dolous stood in the aftermath, scorch-marked and lit from below by the spell's residual glow. He looked at the space where the creature had been. *"That's the second one I've killed,"* he said. I noted this for the record. Dolous had now killed both glazers we had encountered. I suspected this was not a coincidence. ___ ## Fredoku vs. The Creature The large creature — I will call it the creature, because naming things implies understanding and I do not believe anyone in the party fully understood what we were looking at — had been watching the glazer's demise with what I can only describe as *interest*. Not alarm. Not retreat. Interest. It was, I thought, reassessing. Watching Dolous. Watching the lightning trail. Working out whether the creature in front of it was the kind of threat that merited full engagement or the kind that could be managed through positioning and patience. Fredoku made the decision for it. He ran at the creature the way Fredoku runs at things: with complete commitment, a complete absence of tactical consideration, and a complete faith that ki — or fate, or the universe's inexplicable tolerance for his specific brand of chaos — would see him through. He hit it at full monk velocity. Fists and feet, a blur of motion, the particular style of combat that says *I am not going to think about this, I am going to do it at you.* The creature absorbed the first flurry. Swatted at him. Connected. Fredoku staggered. But did not fall. Around us, the battle had settled into its middle phase — the part where everyone has used their best tricks and the survivors are the ones who can last longest on what remains. Iz was healing himself, topping up from whatever the fire had taken. Martyn had engaged one of the assassins and was trading blows with the kind of grim, workmanlike efficiency that characterises a fighter who has been doing this long enough to know that style matters less than timing. *"The Red King's Blade,"* Martyn called it, as it went in. The assassin did not survive the sentence. ___ ## The End of the Fight Narlar was the last to fall. He had been fighting with the controlled precision of a man who knows his own capabilities and has no intention of wasting them — not reckless, not showy, just effective. But the numbers had turned. The assassins were down. The glazer was dead. The intellect devourer had retreated, or been driven off, or simply decided that the conditions were no longer favourable for its continued involvement. Narlar fought until the fighting was no longer viable. Then he stopped. The silence that follows violence is always louder than people expect. The bodies. The smoke. The lingering ozone smell of the lightning bolt that had almost killed Fredoku twenty minutes ago. We stood in it for a moment — the Mighty Hands, bloodied, battered, still standing. Hlan moved through the aftermath with the quiet efficiency of someone who has done this before. Healing. Triage. The practical ministry of making sure that the people who are hurt become people who are not hurt, in the order of priority that gets the most people standing at the end. *"Savxra sends her regards,"* Hlan said to Fredoku, during one of the healing stops. Fredoku looked up. There is a particular expression that Fredoku gets when someone mentions a name from his past — a mixture of surprise and wariness and something that might, in better light, be warmth. He knows things about his own history that he does not share freely. Savxra is apparently one of those things. *"The Order of the Gauntlet,"* Hlan added. I filed this away. Fredoku's past, the Order of the Gauntlet, Savxra's regards. Connections forming in the dark, the way they do. The world of the Mighty Hands is not a series of isolated incidents — it is a web, and we are increasingly the thing in the centre that things connect to. Whether that is a good thing remains to be established. ___ ## The City Watch We made our way to the City Watch office. This is not, as a rule, a pleasant errand after the kind of evening we had just had — but Braok Clanghammer's request had been specific, and the logic was irrefutable. A dragon hoard beneath a theater in Waterdeep, guarded by a very old and very committed dwarf, in the care of a dead man's friend, needs to be handled by people with the authority to make decisions about what happens to it next. We are not those people. The City Watch is those people. Barnabus was at his post. He listened to what we had to say with the careful attention of a man who has heard a great many extraordinary claims in his time and has learned not to discount any of them simply because they sound unlikely. Dragon hoard beneath the Pink Flumph Theater. Dwarf guardian who wants to speak to someone with jurisdiction. Lady Silvermain, who should probably be involved. He was not dismissive. He was not credulous. He was the correct kind of bureaucratic: someone who recognises that the extraordinary requires the same paperwork as the ordinary, just with more people informed and more signatures collected. *"Lady Silvermain will need to speak with the dwarf,"* he said. *"She is the appropriate authority. I will send word."* We waited. We did not have to wait long. ___ ## Lady Silvermain She was outside the Pink Flumph Theater when we emerged. I do not know how she knew to be there — whether Barnabus had sent a runner, whether she had her own intelligence networks in motion, whether the universe simply decided that Lady Silvermain was the correct person to be present at the correct moment. She was there. She was composed. She was looking at us with the kind of assessing attention that suggests she had already been briefed on the broad strokes and was now doing the fine work of working out exactly what kind of people we were. *"I understand,"* she said, *"that there is something I need to see."* She followed us down. ___ ## The Dragon The descent was familiar by now — the passage through the theater's hidden ways, the stone stairs worn smooth by the passage of feet, the gradual change in the air as we went deeper and the smell of gold became impossible to ignore. Braok Clanghammer was waiting in the guardian's chamber, exactly where we had left him. He looked at Lady Silvermain. She looked at him. And then Braok Clanghammer was not a dwarf anymore. The transformation was not violent. It was not dramatic. It was simply *complete* — one moment a stooped, ancient figure with a painted staff, and the next a creature of enormous scale, copper-gold scales catching the light of the chamber like a living sunset. Wings folded against his sides. Eyes that had been watching for a very long time, now fully visible in a face that could carry the weight of centuries without strain. *"I am Aurix,"* he said. His voice had changed too — no longer the quiet, measured tones of the aged guardian, but something deeper, fuller, the voice of a creature who had been speaking in caves since before the city above us had a name. Lady Silvermain did not flinch. I noted this with considerable respect. I would have flinched. I am fairly confident that flinching at a gold dragon in its own vault is the wrong strategic choice, but I would have done it anyway, and I would have been embarrassed about it afterward. Aurix and Lady Silvermain spoke at some length. The particulars of the conversation were above my pay grade — politics, jurisdiction, the legal status of a dragon hoard accumulated by a man who no longer held office and whose claims to the city's treasury were, charitably, *contested*. I listened with the attention of someone who understands that the outcome will affect the Mighty Hands whether or not I fully comprehend the reasoning. The conclusion was this: the hoard would be returned to the City Watch of Waterdeep. Aurix had been guarding it in the expectation that it would eventually find its way back to the people of the city — and now, with the appropriate authority present and willing to make the relevant commitments, that expectation could be fulfilled. The gold would be redistributed. The vault would close. The guardian would remain — or not remain, depending on choices yet to be made. It was, in the end, a simple arrangement. Aurix had not been guarding the hoard for himself. He had been guarding it for the city. And now the city, represented by someone with the power to make promises on its behalf, was ready to receive it. I thought about this as we climbed back up through the passages. The gold had been there, beneath the theater, for decades. Accumulated by a man whose relationship with honesty was creative at best. Guarded by a dragon who had decided, quietly and without fanfare, that it belonged to the people of Waterdeep more than it belonged to anyone else. Waiting for the right person to come along and agree with him. I wondered how many other things in this city are waiting, in the same patient way, for someone to come along and agree with what they already know. ___ ## The Level We made it back to [[TheManor]] in the early hours. The walk was quiet — the particular quiet that follows a long day of violence and revelation, when the body has used up all its urgent energy and what remains is the slow, steady hum of the resolve to keep putting one foot in front of the other. The Manor was as we had left it. The fireball's damage had been assessed, the investigation ongoing, the leads still leading us toward something we did not yet understand. But for one night, we were done with the vault. Done with the drow. Done with dragons and their patient, glittering opinions about what belongs to whom. We slept. And during that sleep, something shifted. I woke with the particular awareness that arrives when a long rest has done more than restore hit points — when the body has done its repair work and the mind, in the process, has made room for something new. An expansion. A settling-in of new capabilities, new confidence, new ways of understanding what I am capable of. The Mighty Hands are level five. I spent some time in the morning light, sitting with this. Level five is not, in the grand arithmetic of Dungeons & Dragons, an especially high level. But it is the level at which you stop being a beginner and start being *someone*. The capabilities you have been developing begin to cohere. The instincts sharpen. The margin between you and the people who have not done what you have done begins to widen, and you can feel it — feel the difference in your own hands, in the way your spells arrive, in the way you read a room and understand where the danger is before it announces itself. We have earned this. Every fireball survived. Every trap sprung. Every fight that went wrong and then went right because we refused to stay down. We have earned it. And now we rest, and tomorrow we return to the fireball's mystery, and the Stone of Golorr, and whatever the Xanathar guild decides to do about the lieutenant we left unconscious in the theater doorway. But that is tomorrow. Tonight, the Mighty Hands are level five. I thought that was worth noting. --- ## NPCs & Locations Encountered - [[Narlar]] — drow lieutenant of the Xanathar guild; struck Fredoku with lightning bolt; defeated in combat - Hlan — arrived at the vault exit; fully healed Fredoku; delivered Savxra's regards from the Order of the Gauntlet - [[Barnabus]] — City Watch officer; received report of the dragon hoard; referred us to Lady Silvermain - [[Lady Silvermain]] — City Watch authority; descended to the vault; negotiated the hoard with Aurix - [[Aurix]] — adult gold dragon; true form of [[Braok Clanghammer]]; agreed to return the hoard to the city of Waterdeep - Intellect Devourer — retreated during the fight - Glazer (second) — destroyed by Dolous with Azakar's Scorcher - [[TheManor]] — party HQ; returned here after the fight and leveled up overnight ## Loot & Discoveries - No loot acquired this session - Dragon hoard confirmed: to be returned to Waterdeep by City Watch under Lady Silvermain's authority - Aurix revealed: [[Braok Clanghammer]] is an adult gold dragon in guardian form - Hlan's connection: knows Savxra, who sends regards from the Order of the Gauntlet (Fredoku's past) - The Mighty Hands reached **Level 5** overnight ## Active Quests - Source of the fireball at [[TheManor]] — ongoing investigation; leads to [[Temple of Gond]] - Hunt for the Stone of Golorr — [[Dagult Neverember]]'s dragon hoard — now returned to Waterdeep; Stone's location still unknown - The Xanathar guild — Narlar defeated; guild will likely respond - Aurix — what becomes of the guardian now that the hoard has been returned? - Hlan / Order of the Gauntlet / Savxra — threads from Fredoku's past becoming visible ___ ## ⚡︎ Tags #dnd #sessionnote #storyline #combat #waterdeep #kozu #xanathar #narlar #aurix #lady-silvermain #hlan #fredoku #dolous #levelup #dwarven-coin #neverember #pink-flumph #themanor