The Pink Flumph Theater
"If the Gralhunds wanted to keep the stone safe," Kuhl said, brow furrowed and green eyes narrowed. "Why would they send it here?"
In his hand Nim's detector whirred, the little red and white umbrella top a blur of alternating colors, indicating the presence of a nimblewright nearby.
Jhelnae agreed a theater was a strange place to send the Stone of Golorr for safekeeping. Which left a few more likely possibilities, ones not promising for their quest.
"Maybe we were wrong to assume the nimblewright was given the stone," she said. "It might have just fled when the fighting in the villa started and randomly ended up here."
If that were true, she could understand why the theater would catch the construct's metallic eyes. It was well into evening, the companions having spent hours walking in ever widening circles from Gralhund Villa before the detector picked up something, and the theater stood out like a blazing beacon even amongst the busy night life in the Castle Ward. Enchanted sconces on the theater's stone facade brightly lit both its signage and the plastered posters advertising the plays it currently featured - Meet the Goodberrys and Kiss of the Lamia.
"Or, it's a different nimblewright entirely," Aleina said. "One owned by the theater as a stagehand or actor."
"The name of the place is the Pink Flumph," Sky said, a sharp toothed smile growing in her expression as her golden eyes studied the sign. "This is a good omen. The nimblewright we are chasing is here and it brought the stone here as well."
"By all that dances," Jhelnae said, rolling her eyes. "Please explain why the name 'the Pink Flumph' is a good omen?"
"We met a flumph under Gracklstugh, remember?" the tabaxi said. "It helped us and when it was happy it's skin glowed pink and this is the Pink Flumph theater. So, good omen. It's like that little flumph from the Underdark is sending us positive thoughts all the way up here in Waterdeep."
Tail lashing with certainty of her statement, Sky started up the few steps to the shallow portico running the length of the building.
"Well, that makes no sense at all," Kuhl said, sighing and shaking his head. "But let's hope she is somehow inexplicably right about it."
The whirring of the nimblewright detector stopped as he depressed the lever, then he folded it up to tuck in his belt next to Dawnbringer.
Raised in the forest of Cormanthor near the Moonsea, the half-drow had never been inside a theater, but she'd read enough chapbooks describing them to know a laughing mask representing comedy and a sad mask representing tragedy were standard motifs. The doors of this theater held a slight variation of the theme - a carved flumph holding a laughing pink mask with its tentacles and another holding a sad mask painted blue.
Once inside, the companions stood on the red carpet of the empty lobby, uncertain gazes alternating between wooden mannequins dressed in colorful stage costumes on raised platforms and each other. Voices raised to project in performance came from beyond a pair of stairways, which Jhelnae assumed led to the auditorium.
"Unless you also want to buy tickets for a play that started over an hour ago," a young man called out from a booth adjacent to the nearest stairway. "Admission is closed."
He then squinted, looking at them more closely.
"Sorry," he added. "Didn't see the uniforms. Can I help you with something?"
Uniforms? Then Jhelnae remembered. Eight hours had not yet passed and she had not dismissed the seeming spell, which meant the companions still appeared to be wearing the green-and-goldenrod doublets of the Watch and she still was also further disguised as a moon-elf.
"Does this theater own a nimblewright?" Aleina asked.
"Nimblewright?" the young man asked.
Unlike Lady Gralhund, who feigned ignorance when asked about a nimblewright back in her villa, the ticket seller's confusion seemed genuine.
"Sort of like a mechanical man," Kuhl explained.
The young man's face lit up with understanding.
"The theater doesn't have one," he said. "But one has shown up from time to time delivering missives from its mistress to Arn."
Apparently it was their turn to be confused as the man in the booth spoke the name as if they should know it.
"Arn?" Kuhl questioned.
The young man snorted and gave a knowing smile at Jhelnae. The smile faltered with her lack of recognition of the name and turned to a frown as his gaze traveled to Aleina and Sky with a similar result.
"Arn Xalrondar," he said, sounding incredulous. "Our lead actor. The one everyone comes to see."
"Never heard of him," Sky said, with a shrug. "But a nimblewright comes to visit him?"
"Don't think I'm really supposed to know that," the ticket seller said, conspiratorially. "Just happened to see it once or twice slipping through a window and going to Arn's dressing room."
"If you've only seen it once or twice coming through a window and going to his dressing room," Aleina said. "How do you know it is delivering messages to him and why do you think these messages are from a mistress rather than a master?"
"I sell the tickets, don't I?" the young man said. "So I see how many women buy them versus men. Just playing the odds. And what better way for a wealthy lady to arrange secret liaisons with a handsome actor than a construct servitor?"
"Fair enough," the aasimar said with a conciliatory gesture.
But her raised eyebrowed glance in the half-drow's direction indicated she thought the young man was off in his assumptions.
"We want to talk to Arn Xalrondar," Kuhl said, adopting an official mien. "Can you take us to him."
"He won't be available until after the play," the ticket seller said. "But he usually makes a brief appearance here in the lobby to bask in the praise of those who linger after the show. So, you can wait out here or, if you want or buy tickets and quietly take some seats at the back, watch while you wait. Either way, can we not tell him you learned about the nimblewright from me? Like I said, don't think I am supposed to know about it."
"How much for tickets?" Jhelnae asked.
She didn't fancy waiting here in the lobby with nothing to do for a couple of hours.
"A shard a piece," the young man said.
"Full price?" Aleina protested. "But we've missed a third of it!"
The young man gave an apologetic shrug in response as if it were all outside his control.
"Fine," the aasimar grumbled, her tone clearly indicating the opposite.
"Just one more thing," Sky said as Kuhl counted out coins. "Earlier you said 'unless you also want to buy tickets for a play that started over an hour ago'. Meaning someone else came late like us and still bought a ticket?"
"Three someones," the ticket seller prattled absently as he pushed tickets through the metal bars of his booth. "Strange that. I mean there is 'miss the introductory monologue late' and then there is 'give up and come another night late'. An hour in is clearly the latter. But I wasn't going to tell the scary looking burned brute and his friends that, just took the coins, gave them the tickets, and told them to enjoy the show."
The companions exchanged looks at the description of a 'burned brute'. Fala Lefaliir had said the man who limped away from the fireball incident, presumably with the Stone of Golorr, had been burned by the blast.
"I'd take your seats as quietly as possible," the man in the booth said, halting them before they headed up the steps, tickets in hand. "Wishes is passionate about the performances. It's really the only thing she takes seriously. So, if she thinks your entry was noisy enough that it distracted the attention away from the play, she'll pay you back. And you don't want to deal with a barrage of her pranks, trust me."
"Wishes?" Sky mumbled to herself, glancing curiously at the ticket booth. "Pranks? What does he mean by that?"
"Just that there is some overzealous employee with an odd name," Jhelnae whispered. "Who wants us to be quiet."
"Which we will," Aleina assured.
Together, she and the half-drow each grasped an elbow and guided the tabaxi up the dimly lit steps and toward the auditorium after Kuhl.
Kiss of the Lamia was a tragic play about a banished Mulhorandi prince who encounters a lamia - a beautiful, seductive, feminine, leonine centaur - in the desert who charms him and sends him back to conquer his kingdom with the powerful magic she provides. It all ended in tragedy and, even missing the first third of it, tears brimmed in Jhelnae's eyes when the enchanted lights of the theater came up and she stood to applaud with the rest of the audience.
"He stage dies beautifully," Aleina sighed.
"Pretty sure he does everything beautifully," the half-drow said.
"Pretty sure you are right," the aasimar agreed.
Neither of them had known the name of Arn Xalrondar, the male lead who played the banished prince, before the performance, but Jhelnae guessed neither of them would forget it for some time.
"Maybe the ticket seller was right," Aleina leaned in to whisper. "Maybe the nimblewright has just been delivering missives of artistic appreciation from Lady Gralhund. Hopefully not, but I can now understand if that is the case."
"I'm sure some of the missives were appreciative," Jhelnae said, raising a suggestive eyebrow. "But appreciative for what?"
The aasimar chuckled in response. Done with their final bows, the actors headed backstage and the applause died down.
"The nimblewright is still here," Kuhl said, using Nim's detector to make sure. "Not far. Probably backstage?"
"Probably," Sky agreed.
She started to lead them down their row of seats then stopped and motioned them to do the same, crouching a little to lessen her lanky height.
"It's the burned man," she whispered. "And his companions."
An usher had met Jhelnae and the others on entry into the auditorium. Their guide, it seemed, was irked by their late arrival as he'd placed them in the worst seats in the house, tucked away in a corner in the last row away from any other patrons. Now the half-drow spied a dark haired man exiting from the rear row from across the aisle and starting to push his way against the flow of the crowd making their way out of the theater. The ticket seller's description of a 'burned brute' fit well considering the man's large size and the fire scarred swath of skin running down his cheek and neck.
A tall, thin woman in a long malachite hued robe followed him. Indigo tattoos ran along her hair line, the beginnings of skull markings mostly hidden beneath raven locks gathered under a jade barrette. Jhelnae's blood ran cold. As a former hostage to ensure her mother's good behavior in Thay, she recognized the telltale tattoos on the woman's head, though normally the bearers of such tattoos shaved their heads, leaving the markings fully visible, and all of the ones she'd ever seen in Thay had been undead, which this woman was not.
"She is a Red Wizard," the half-drow hissed. "Or a former one at least."
Behind her came an urbane, pale skinned, middle-aged man with long, brushed back, dark hair that fell in a wave past his shoulders. He wore a charcoal colored robe and, strangely, a golden metal gauntlet - one gauntlet on his left hand only only, not a pair, a gauntlet so well crafted that each finger was articulated enough it probably allowed for full hand dexterity. In fact it seemed so tightly fitted it must have been custom made to the man's hand.
"I don't think that is a gauntlet," Kuhl said, apparently having similar thoughts and voicing them aloud in a hushed tone. "I think that's a mechanical hand. Didn't the play by Lady Jeryth's wards have a masked man with a metal hand?"
"It did," Aleina whispered. "And Laeral thought it was Manshoon."
The intoned name really meant nothing to Jhelnae. Her friend had explained Manshoon was a legendary figure, so much so he, or one of his clones, was the villain in many of the chapbooks she'd read as a child. And the Open Lord and Jeryth Phaulkon seemed very concerned that Manshoon might be in Waterdeep. But could he really be a greater wielder of magic than a Red Wizard of Thay?
Based on her experience with Red Wizards, the half-drow doubted it.
Burnt brute leading as a wedge against the outflow of theater patrons, the trio made their way down the aisle toward the stage. Once Sky deemed the three had built a sufficient lead, the companions followed. Rather than force her way through the crowd, the tabaxi slipped through the gaps between leaving theater patrons, seemingly effortlessly. Jhelnae followed less gracefully, jostling plenty of shoulders and elbows and she heard a constant stream of whispered apologies from Aleina behind her as the aasimar squeezed and bumped her way past the exodus coming up the aisle.
The press of the bodies lessened as they progressed, there being fewer remaining patrons trying to get out, and soon they'd followed their quarry down to the empty space before the front row and skirted past the wall of the musician's pit. Some of the performers still packed away their instruments. Others who were leaving spared the companions and the group ahead of them a curious, wary glance, but said nothing.
Beyond the musician's pit, after the end of the stage, were two doors. One led to an outside alley, which the musicians were using to leave, but the burnt man and his companions turned left and mounted the steps to the other door, climbing to stage level, and passing through the door there. Jhelnae heard the challenge coming from the other side of the partially open door as she approached the steps behind Sky.
"Hey now!" a gruff voice called out. "You can't be back here."
"We're here to see Arn Xalrondar," the silky voice of the woman answered.
The half-drow recognized the suggestion magic laced around her inflection.
"He already has a visitor," the man said, voice now docile rather than gruff, informing rather than trying to present an obstacle to the tattooed woman's request.
"I'll bet he does," the woman cooed, enchantment still in her tone. "He won't mind three more. Lead us to him, in the way we will encounter the least people, then leave us."
After a moment's pause, Sky silently moved up the steps, peeked past the door, then motioned for the others to follow as she slipped inside.
A room painted all in black was on the other side of the door. A large table, also painted black, held fake daggers, swords and other props from the play, half of them grouped into sets and the rest just strewn about. The man the woman asked to guide them must have been in the middle of organizing and accounting for the props when he was interrupted. There was a closed door straight ahead and another to their left. As Sky was already looking and listening out the one to the left, that must have been the way those they pursued went.
"This must be where Nat, Squiddly, and Jenks borrowed their props from when they did their street performance," Aleina whispered. "When we see them again, we'll have to tell them."
Now that the aasimar mentioned it, Jhelnae did recall the street urchins saying something about doing street performances in front of the Pink Flumph - until the Watch took back all the props they 'borrowed' from the theater.
"Yeah, it will be such a bonding moment," Jhelnae whispered back with a roll of her eyes. "Guess what you thieving little brats, we snuck into the same place as you."
"Your antagonistic relationship with them doesn't fool me," Aleina said, matching her friend's eye roll. "I know you're as fond of them as I am. And they only tried to steal from you once."
"I'm a drow," the half-drow shrugged. "We have long memories when it comes to slights."
Kuhl had joined Sky at the door to the left while Jhelnae and Aleina bantered. He gave them a pointed look and lifted a finger to his lips before beckoning them to follow him after the tabaxi out onto the stage.
"By all that dances," the half-drow cursed, keeping her voice barely audible. "We were whispering."
"I know, right?" the aasimar said, shaking her head with sniff.
They pushed through some curtains and crossed across the performance area of the darkened stage, moving past stage props of ruined walls, towers, and sand dunes - the setting of the lamia's lair. A glance at the auditorium showed only a few stragglers making their way out to the lobby. Sky led them to another backstage door behind a curtain on the other side of the performance area. This one was closed, and she opened it a crack, peered through, and watched for a moment before shaking her head.
"There are people in the hall," she said. "They'll see me if I go and listen at the door the burnt man and his companions went through. It will look suspicious."
"Will they see the door open?" Jhelnae asked, already moving her hand to the moonstone that capped the rod at her belt and readying a spell.
"The door opens this way," the tabaxi said, demonstrating. "So, no, they won't see it. They're at the end of the hall."
"You've mastered the invisibility spell Aravae taught you?" Aleina whispered, voice hopeful.
"I wouldn't say mastered," the half-drow sighed. "But I've been practicing and have gotten better."
"We're right here nearby if anything goes wrong," Kuhl said.
"And don't trip over your invisible feet," Sky said. "You know how clumsy you are. Remember that tree root?"
"Awakened tree root," Jhelnae said. "That grabbed me. And thank you both for filling me with confidence."
"Nothing is going to go wrong," the aasimar whispered. "You can do this."
With that last bit of encouragement, the half-drow closed her eyes and concentrated, imagining she wove threads of refraction that would make the light bend around her."
"You're doing it!" Aleina said, voice both hushed and excited. "I can't see you."
"They went into the third door from the left," the tabaxi said, pulling open the door.
"Listen to see if they have the stone," Kuhl said. "If they have it, we can then decide whether to try and take it, or follow them and let the Open Lord know where it is."
Jhelnae nodded, then realized they couldn't see her.
"I'm going," she said.
There were two people down the hallway. The half-drow recognized them as the one actor and actress who played the king who gets deposed and the lamia respectively. Neither reacted to the half-drow as she crossed the corridor and crouched with her ear against the third door from the left, which meant her invisibility spell held. But it also meant they didn't stop their obvious flirty chatter and several moments passed before Jhelnae managed to ignore them enough to focus on what was being said inside the room.
"By all that dances," she muttered to herself. "Choose a dressing room, yours or his, and get at it already."
"These are friends, Arn," came the muffled feminine voice through the door. "Allies. Let me assure you three, Lady Gralhund acted on her own when she seized the stone and she has been reprimanded. Your interests align with my employer's. Their earnest desire is that we continue to work together."
"That highborn bitch tried to murder and steal from me," a male voice grunted. "And you've reprimanded her? I don't think so. Her head, her husband's, and her thrice damned half-orc bodyguard's head is just a start of what we'll want."
"The Grahlunds are useful," a cultured male voice said. "And will remain useful. Still, Urstul has a point. Trust must be reestablished between our two groups. Yielding the stone into our care is a start."
"But you were going to give us the stone anyway when it was found," the feminine voice protested. "That was always part of the agreement."
"Jolene is it?" the cultured voice said. "So very difficult to keep track of the names of your various personas."
Jolene? The name was familiar. Jhelnae tried to remember where she'd heard it.
"We never agreed to give you the stone," the man continued. "We agreed to give you Neverember's cache. This we will do, once we find and retrieve it."
"Time is of the essence," the woman, Jolene, said.
"Of this," the man said. "I am well aware."
"Which is why you should give us the stone so we can get about finding Neverember's embezzled hoard," another woman said.
The half-drow recognized this voice as the tattooed woman in the green robe. The Red Wizard of Thay.
"Come now," the cultured voice said. "Trust must be reestablished. You see that don't you."
"May I ask a question," Jolene asked.
"You may," the man said.
"How did you learn it was sent here?" she asked. "Its location cannot be divined."
The man gave an amused laugh.
"We are the Black Network," the man said. "We have eyes everywhere. Especially in places where our allies have not-so-hidden contacts."
"It appears I have little choice," Jolene said. "I'll give you the stone as a gesture of good faith. Trust, as meager as it apparently was, must be reestablished between us after all."
Jhelnae backed away from the door and across the hall towards where her companions waited. The stone was here, so close, but it was about to be in the possession of the master of a Red Wizard of Thay. He had clearly been the one in charge and her the servant. How were they supposed to get it from him? Someone so obviously powerful? She paused for a moment, hearing a strange sound, it sounded like a giggle coming from the room, then cries of confusion. The door burst open and something invisible flew right into her. She tripped back to land hard on her behind, losing her hold on the invisibility spell and clutching at a small, writhing form that twisted out of her grasp.
"Don't you know anything about being invisible you big idiot!" a small voice rasped. "You don't just stand in the middle of the hallway where anyone might crash into you!"
It was a little, cat-sized dragon with violet scales and wings, which while reptilian in nature, were shaped like those of a butterfly.
"Well, don't just stand there with your teeth in your mouth, constable," the little dragon said. "Take this and run. I'll try to delay them with my euphoric breath and illusions."
The little dragon gave her a sharp–toothed grin and dropped something into her palm. As the half-drow scrambled to her feet it occurred to her she had not been standing, but knocked on her butt, and where should her teeth be other than her mouth? And what had the dragon called her? Constable? The seeming spell! It was still in effect and she still appeared to be wearing the uniform of the Watch. Down the hall the previously flirting actor and actress had stopped talking and just stared, eyes wide and mouths agape.
But all those thoughts were lost as she caught sight of what the dragon had given her. It was a green oval shaped with three smooth emerald colored round gemstones surrounded by carvings that made them appear like a vertical column of lidded eyes.
She looked up to see the dragon breath a puff of blue gas into the face of the man with the burned face who coughed then inhaled deeply, taking almost all the gas into his lungs. The man blinked, then looked around dazedly, big form effectively blocking anyone else from leaving.
"I said run!" the little dragon hissed in Jhelnae's ear as it faded from sight once more. "Do you know the Harper Remallia Haventree?"
The half-drow nodded. Not only was the sun-elf's villa near the Trollskull the noble woman had also sponsored Waterdeep's new Eilistraeen temple of the Dancing Haven.
"Then take it to her! Tell her Wishes sent you. I'll try and cover your escape with illusions."
Okay, I changed a lot from the module in this one. Let me explain...
In the module, no matter who the villain, the Lady Gralhund sends the stone away during the attack. Who she sends it to depends on the villain, but it is always some low level thug, who then delivers it to someone slightly higher, who then gets chased by the party until they can deliver it to someone higher up the food chain, etc, until the party perhaps catches them. This chasing of the mcguffin actually worked well in our play through. But I had a hard time writing it.
Reason 1) Why the heck does Lady Gralhund send such an important object to a low level thug? For example, with the Cassalanters as the villains it gets sent to the crypt where one of the cultist is a florist who got knifed by the other cultists who can then tell the party, with her dying breaths (unless the party heals her), where the stone was next taken. And I was sitting there thinking: "The Cassalanters let a florist know they were devil worshipers? A florist can bring their banking empire crashing down around them? Seems pretty risky.
Reason 2) In the case of the Cassalanters and devil worshiping cultists, I would think the cultists would bargain (perhaps their souls or the souls of others) for substantial rewards. Wealth, fame, talent, etc. So I decided to make the person Gralhund sent the stone to a prominent actor who made a deal with the devil, so to speak, to give him enough talent to even make Jhelnae and Aleina swoon a bit while watching his performance. It just fit better in my head. Plus it takes advantage of the theater setting and provided me with an opportunity to use Wishes the Faerie Dragon. Oh, and I used Manshoon pretty early too obviously, but he does appear in some of the chase scenes, so I feel justified.
I will still try and use some of the other stuff from this section of the module. Rooftop chase maybe, street chase, maybe something else. I'll have to look at it and think about it.
Does it all hang together and work? I don't know. Too close to it. You tell me. Thanks for reading!