ARC 3: Waterdeep

## General Summary

\**The following summary is as described by Coriander Lovelle, a loremonger and witness to the events in question. Due to the sensitivity of the information in this debriefing, viewing/editing of the document by Watchguard staff is restricted.*

[BEGIN]

### Arrival

In 497 H.F., in the late fall, Angelica Fairchild’s Strike Team received a new assignment from their director. To be briefed on the details of this task, the team met with Reverend John Farmer: the head of Research Station 1712. Some extended period previously, Rev. Farmer had requested support dealing with a dire matter in Waterdeep.

According to reports, four wizards were found dead in Waterdeep’s Dock Wards – likely killed in some ritual which occurred approximately three months prior. In the same warehouse where these wizards perished, Watchguard also recovered a sample of soil and flora native to the Radiance. Finally, Rev. Farmer noted an uptick in deific activity around Waterdeep following these incidents. To Farmer, all these incidents were linked: he suspected an angel had escaped the Radiance, and had been summoned to the Prime Material. And by breaking the Everheights Compact in so doing, this angel’s arrival in Waterdeep endangered the city: in due order, the godly Lords of Virtue would dismantle the city to send this lost angel back to its home plane. Watchguard was sending the Strike Team to Waterdeep instead, to locate this angel and return it to the Radiance before the gods destroyed the city.

With their assignment given, the Strike Team made their way to the Watchguard Waterdeep Branch. They spoke with the staff there to get a clearer indication of any strange behaviors in the city. With the myriad gangs in power, and the old Blackstaff dead, the fate of Waterdeep was as dire as it had ever been. But one major player in the city’s dealings stood out: the Children’s Church of Mother Mather, a new religious following which sought to drive corruption and gang activity from the city. The Strike Team found this church intriguing enough to investigate, and so they made their way to one of this organization’s satellite temples in the Docks’ Ward; there they could ask the Waterdavian locals about both the church’s dealings and the strange deaths which occurred three months prior.

The Strike Team found cursory information on the Children’s Church of Mother Mather: they learned it became legally recognized for its activities nine months prior, though the organization had been active before this; they learned that it was based primarily within Waterdeep’s South Ward, and that its head (Mother Mather) would be hosting a sermon there in two days. With little else to go on and no leads on the strange occurrences from three months ago, the party opted to venture to the city’s South Ward. Shortly after they arrived, however, the Humbled Sahuagin reappeared in the city after centuries of absence – inactive, but present once more in the South Ward.

### The Humbled Sahuagin

It didn’t take long for Waterdeep’s cavalry guard to arrive on-site and set up a perimeter around the Humbled Sahuagin. The current Blackstaff, Vjara Saphir, had been dispatched with her entourage to investigate the return of this guardian statue. The Strike Team, however, fled the site before these city guard could arrive; they spent the rest of the day at the Lovelle home. There, the party learned that Argyle had taken up a position as a teacher at the local community center, under funding from the Children’s Church of Mother Mather; they also learned that the Lovelles’ telltale conspiracy theories had taken a greater focus on Watchguard’s recent activities, as of late. To preserve their secrecy, the party presented themselves to the Lovelles as teachers and staff of L’Minster Community College, here in Waterdeep to attend a teachers’ summit.

The next day, the party opted to continue their investigations on the Humbled Sahuagin’s reappearance. They were given permission by Talanthia Three-Coins to speak with Waterdeep officials and represent Watchguard’s interests during their investigation, so they opted to speak directly with the Blackstaff. To hide their identities, Coriander and Slinthe had VVherner disguise them before the party made their way to the Humbled Sahuagin’s site. From Vjara and her associated staff there, the Strike Team learned that though the Blackstaff would normally command some degree of control over these statues, Vjara had no hand in this one’s return. And at the conclusion of this meeting, VVherner, acting as a representative for Watchguard, provided a brief interview with news services on the appearance of the Humbled Sahuagin. Coriander set up a surveillance spell (**Arcane Eye**) near the Humbled Sahuagin to keep tabs on any new discoveries the Blackstaff might uncover. Through this surveillance, Coriander spied on a tense standoff between a Masked Lord of Waterdeep and Vjara Saphir: at the Masked Lord’s implicit threats to her safety, Vjara channeled the spirit of her precursor Blackstaff, Alexander Carim, who used a show of force to scare this “Baradad Zzzzaxatroph” off.

### Undermountain I

Soon after this surveillance, the Strike Team elected to look for their target elsewhere in Waterdeep. Their first point of interest was the Yawning Portal, and after purchasing the appropriate equipment to explore the Undermountain the team made their way to this establishment. There, they met with common patrons of the Yawning Portal (namely: Randi and her son, Volkvar; the Doom Raiders) to learn the layout of the Undermountain and its multitude civilizations. The Strike Team made their way into the Undermountain – but not before Slinthe noted another group of patrons at the Yawning Portal.

Zio Frang and his fellow Dearth agents were present, and it seemed that they had noticed Slinthe and the Strike Team.

The Strike Team traversed the Undermountain’s uppermost layer (Quinao) to find an entrance to the layers below. When they found a promising-looking sinkhole, the party faced off against the undead Roache pack which “guarded” it; in the team’s victory, Slinthe collected the skull of this undead beast for later study. Curious at what else lay within this underground complex, the team pressed further down into the Undermountain, to the Aexusian Empire.

There, they came to blows with a number of hostile parties: namely, a trio of lamia sisters, and a young blue dragon. But in time, the Strike Team successfully made their way to the third layer of the Undermountain. In the living bowels of Oureazzogary, the Strike Team found little in the way of hostiles or their angel target. And so after this locale was noted, the party began its ascent back up through the various layers to the Yawning Portal.

On their way back, the party fell into a dire encounter with a small orc clan in the Aexusian Empire; the Strike Team was ultimately victorious, but at this point they had been worn thin through the multitude encounters they had faced in the Undermountain. So when the party, in their haste to escape the underground, were caught and trapped by Zio Frang’s cadre, the ensuing encounter was swift and well out of the Strike Team’s favor. Coriander and VVherner were quickly disposed of. And Slinthe found himself at the mercy of his former comrades.

Slinthe would likely have perished there if not for the timely, dual arrivals of a horde of ghosts and the angel the Strike Team sought. The undead swarm made short work of Zio and his cadre, and shortly after the angel (who had until recently been fleeing the spirits) made short work of the undead swarm in an effort to save the Strike Team’s lives. Before the Strike Team could make substantial contact with their target, the angel fled further into the Undermountain. And as the party was still heavily weakened, they could not pursue their target.

Still, the Strike Team had their first tangible lead. This progress was soured, however, when they found that a Dearth agent had survived the ghostly horde: “Zio”, in truth an ooblex spy who served the gang’s more subtle interests, and who had in doing so caught sight of a powerful asset in the angel. In this ooblex’s flight from the Undermountain, where they noted that the Dearth had been hunting for this angel for some time now, the Strike Team had found another intriguing lead: the Dearth had prior, extensive knowledge on their shared target.

What the party needed most at that time was a chance to regroup. They returned to the Lovelle home (where they bore witness to one of Padma's and Argyle's street performances), and then rested for the night.

### Seraphim

The next morning, Coriander would speak with Padma on the nature of life in Waterdeep. And at the conclusion of this, he would also learn that his mother and father had learned of VVherner's allegiances to Watchguard: during her performance in sleight-of-hand the previous night, Padma had swiped VVherner's information and learned his true identity. With this shared knowledge hanging in the air, the Lovelle family then invited the Strike Team to a sermon at Mother Mather's church; the party obliged. There, they encountered Mather for the first time - delivering a sermon (called "Under the Wrath of Angry Gods") on the deteriorating state of the city and the impending wrath of the gods.

Disturbed at the experience and curious at how the gods' affairs had been fed to their followers, the party departed this sermon with a wealth of questions. They and the Lovelles made to return to the family home, but en route they found themselves caught in the crossfire of a vicious gang war: a cadre of Radiatone agents had intruded into Emerald Enclave territory, and the two parties fell to blows. Though unusual, this experience could have proved forgettable were it not for the arrival of a seraph. This seraph noted the Strike Team's presence and fell into pursuit to question them - seemingly aware of the party's interactions with the escaped angel. Caught in a three-way encounter between the two gangs and the seraph, the Strike Team and the Lovelles barely escaped unharmed - but escape they did. They were shaken greatly from the encounter though, and so they returned to the Lovelle home with all haste to recuperate.

The Strike Team departed the Lovelle home shortly after to acquire a takeout meal for the family, and while out they overheard two Dearth agents speaking about an upcoming meeting with the rest of their gang that night. The location of this meeting, however, remained a mystery. But Slinthe, as a former Dearth Agent, had an idea of where the party could learn this location. Club Sypher: a venue in Waterdeep where the city's gangs met on neutral ground and in assured security.

In short order, the Strike Team made their way to this club.

### “Rainy Day” Clause

To better prepare for their excursion, the Strike Team took a detour to Orvin’s General Store: a centerpiece of Coriander’s childhood, staffed by the maverick pirate, Orvin. There, the party purchased a wealth of tools to aid their mission and Coriander would reconnect with Orvin and with his childhood friend, Reeds.

Shortly afterwards the party would find themselves at Club Sypher. A large crowd had gathered at the venue, as tonight would be the night that the local starlet Starshimmer would perform a show-stopping concert. While Coriander and Slinthe bought their way into the establishment conventionally, VVherner snuck into the club. From there, the party split apart in their search for any Dearth agents in the area. Chief of the party’s discoveries, Slinthe overheard the Masked Lord, Baradad Zzzzaxatroph, commission a Zhentarim liaison into an assassination contract: for the price of a small nation-state’s GDP, the current Blackstaff of Waterdeep (Vjara Saphir) would be murdered by the end of the night.

But with little headway made in the party’s hunt for any Dearth agents, the Strike Team instead gathered in the club’s slam poetry room; Coriander made use of the **Locate Person** spell here (under cover of an impromptu poem) to identify any nearby Dearth. The party moved to pursue the lead Coriander found with his spell. But they were stopped in their pursuit when they observed a cascading series of odd happenings in Club Sypher’s main concert stadium:

1.      The temperature of the stadium began to rise, from the night’s cool autumn ambience, to a sweltering heatwave.

2.      Waves of powerful conjuration magic rippled across the stadium, seemingly emanating from the raucous enjoyment of its patrons – and growing stronger with each passing song the performers completed.

3.      The exterior world, visible via the stadium’s open roof, had disappeared. And replacing it were instead snapshots of the infernal plane, Baator. An obsidian tower, flaming skies, and grim spirits flitted across the sky.

According to Coriander, the stadium (and perhaps the entire club) were being pulled into Baator through powerful conjuration magic – likely with the concert-goers unwittingly acting as the executors of this ritual. And so Slinthe reached out to Watchguard via his Broadband to receive advice on how to resolve this dire situation. From Security Head Urwin Mondegreen, Slinthe learned that this venue’s star performer tonight, this Starshimmer that nearly all of the club’s patrons had come to see, was actually a fiend in disguise. Specifically, an arcanoloth. And according to Urwin, many of this starlet’s showings resulted in a mass-disappearance; if the party wanted to survive, they would need to find a way to disrupt Starshimmer’s concert.

The Strike Team split up. Coriander and VVherner remained in the stadium and started a fire in the venue to interrupt the show; Slinthe snuck into the owner’s lounge of Club Sypher to find this business’s ledgers (and what infernal contracts Starshimmer was using to pull the venue into Baator). But though the concert was disrupted, Starshimmer was undeterred. Instead, she invoked the **Wish** spell to sus out and separate Slinthe from the Strike Team, and interrogate him on why he stopped the concert (and how he knew to do so in the first place). When Slinthe refused to cooperate, Starshimmer attempted to kill him – to near success. Nonetheless, Starshimmer enacted her contract’s “Rainy Day” Clause and left him for dead.

For the rest of Club Sypher, the Starshimmer concert concluded – and with it, Starshimmer’s infernal contract fell into action. The entirety of the venue, and each patron who had paid to attend, had forfeited their place in the Prime Material Plane. Everything was jettisoned to random layers of Baator. Only a handful of individuals escaped. Slinthe, however, was not one of the few to do so. He was cast into the Cania Layer of Baator.

### Zhentarim

The Strike Team departed the empty lot of what remained of Club Sypher. With little knowledge on where their teammate now resided in Baator, and with the looming assassination of the Blackstaff in order, the now-diminished party sought out aid from Watchguard’s Waterdeep branch. They were directed to this branch’s head: a Dr.Daniel Hicks. Before the branch head could offer their resources, Slinthe was returned from Baator – summoning directly to the Strike Team’s location. Still, the matter of the Zhentarim’s hit on Waterdeep’s Blackstaff remained. Dr.Hicks provided an “in” for the Strike Team to intercept this assassination attempt: a contact at Castle Waterdeep would grant the party access to investigate and dispatch the assassins. The Strike Team departed for Castle Waterdeep with little more delay.

The party arrived at Castle Waterdeep in short order. Upon their arrival, they collectively spotted another car in the castle’s parking lot – only recently turned off, as determined through the party’s investigation. It seemed the assassination attempt had already begun. The party pressed further into the castle-proper, where they found an empty lobby, body bags of castle security hidden away in the lobby lavatory, and a bypassed security system. Clearly, the assassins were making strong time. The Strike Team pursued.

The team found their way to Castle Waterdeep’s Gift Shop. They passed through this shopping center with their collective guards lowered – allowing the hidden Zhentarim assassin within to get the drop on the party. The assassin’s first move was to trigger the gift shop’s alarm system intentfully; implicating Watchguard for the Zhentarim’s imminent crime was a perfect out. A fight ensued, with the party on the backfoot, and with the Zhentarim sticking to the shadows to wear the Strike Team down. Ultimately, however, the party was able to turn the tables and slay this assassin; their battlefield control and martial prowess was just enough to outmaneuver this Zhentarim. Slinthe acted quickly and interrogated this assassin’s soul using his mastery of the **Soul Cage** spell: from this interrogation, the Strike Team learned that there were four remaining assassins in Castle Waterdeep, and that the others were currently in the castle’s east wing.

The party departed this gift shop immediately, cutting across the castle’s open courtyard (and in so doing, drawing the castle security’s attention to a group of three “invaders”) to reach the castle’s east wing. They made their way through this facility, non-lethally incapacitating guards along the way, until they arrived at the Blackstaff’s dormitory. There was no current sign of the Blackstaff there, nor any sign that they had been in the dormitory for some time – but it seemed that the Strike Team was not the only party to think to look here: two other Zhentarim assassins lay in wait here, hoping to catch a returning Blackstaff unawares, but having no compunctions against dealing with this Strike Team in the meantime.

Another encounter broke out, with Coriander separating the two Zhentarim assassins using his **Cloud of Daggers** technique, with Slinthe harrying the separated assassins from a distance, and with VVherner matching each opponent in turn, in close quarters. With all their battlefield control and teamwork, however, the Strike Team was ill-prepared for a long-term slog against these Zhentarim. Their flagging stamina was a rallying cry for the Zhentarim assassins, who gained enough of a second wind to grievously injure each Strike Team agent before perishing. But perish, the assassin duo did.

All that remained now was the final pair of assassins. But the Strike Team found itself “running on fumes”, so to speak – and if the castle security’s radio chatter was any indication, this final duo had just begun their move on the Blackstaff and the Mayor Fatrabbit she was guarding. The party rushed to Mayor Fatrabbit’s office where they found themselves in the middle of a bloodbath: scores of castle security had been slain, littering the hallway floor just outside of this office. The office remained barricaded from entry by the Blackstaff’s magical wards. But no Zhentarim assassins remained in the area, seemingly.

Which meant that for the now-arriving castle security, the only intruders were the Watchguard Strike Team here.

But Slinthe had questions remaining for the Zhentarim soul he had interrogated before – and this question (directed at the existence and presence of Zhentarim assassins in the area) would prove to be the Strike Team’s lifeline. The party managed to de-escalate this growing conflict with the castle’s security officers (led by a Captain Altus), but the matter of these missing Zhentarim assassins remained. And before tensions could shift any further, Coriander noted a peculiarity: one of the “deceased” security officers’ bodies had begun to shift.

The Zhentarim had hidden amongst the bodies of these security officers, dressed as the staff they had murdered in the castle lobby. And now that they had been spotted, it was time for the assassins to strike. They made short work of the security staff around the Strike Team and a final conflict broke out. But with the aid of Captain Altus, the Strike Team slew one of the assassins and captured the other. Before they could question this Zhentarim, however, the assassin died to suicide rather than face interrogation.

Still, all assassins had been slain. The threat to the Blackstaff and Mayor Fatrabbit had been undone, and the coast was clear. The Strike Team moved to speak with the mayor and Blackstaff. And after a debriefing, a tenuous partnership was struck between the team and Waterdeep’s higher-ups: information would be shared when possible between these two parties, starting with Mayor Fatrabbit’s distrust of the Children’s Church of Mother Mather.

For some time now, the church had made itself an instigator of violence against the gangs and distrust against the Waterdeep government, never implicating enough for Mayor Fatrabbit to take action against them but always found where the dissent occurred.

In turn, the Strike Team shared with Mayor Fatrabbit the basics of their mission. Fatrabbit was already aware of the gods’ growing tension with Waterdeep, but was unaware that it was over an escaped angel. She also didn’t realize that the Dearth were so interested in this angel. Whatever the gangs wanted with this angel, it couldn’t be good. The sooner this angel was found and returned to the Radiance, the better.

And so the Strike Team was rewarded with Mayor Fatrabbit’s blessing to speak with the city’s religious orders on the mayor’s behalf. The hope was that this cooperation would broker a solution much faster than each party’s independent investigations might. The Strike Team rested at Castle Waterdeep for the night, calculating their next moves carefully.

### Holy Tour

The next day, the party departed Castle Waterdeep for the Sea Ward where many of the city’s religious centers were based. Their first stop was the “Temple of the Laughing Waves”: a water park which doubled as a chapel to Corellon. While at this temple, the Strike Team spoke with the holy leader, M.C. De Bolbec, who helped them commune with Corellon.

Corellon provided integral information to the investigation:

1.      Tymora was the first deity in the High Heavens to note the angel’s presence in Waterdeep. She made it a point to notify the Lords of Virtue, but ever since this revelation Tymora has been particularly difficult for the other deities to contact.

2.      When the discussion turned to Corellon’s knowledge of Mother Mather, there was little to go on. It seemed that Mather had lost all faith in the gods; this made her, functionally, invisible to the higher powers. For the Strike Team, this was particularly curious, as Mather acted as a religious figure in the city dedicated wholly to the gods (and their wrath).

3.      Should the angel not be found and returned, and should the Lords of Virtue ultimately vote to destroy Waterdeep, a number of these higher powers pledged to wage war on each other. It was a deterrent measure (sworn by Corellon, Moradin, and Pelor; against Avandra, Erathis, and Ioun) to prevent their peers from destroying the city. As this threat hung in the air, the Lord of Justice Bahamut deliberated on his vote.

Troubled by this news, the Strike Team decided to investigate the temples of Bahamut and Tymora next. They went for the former first, rather than the latter, and met at the museum-chapel Waterstone Monastery with Zuchi Rasenth. From Rasenth, the party learned that for many of the other Lords of Virtue, Bahamut’s vote for Waterdeep’s fate was unclear. This was untrue, however. In truth, Bahamut had voted to stay their hand in favor of preserving the city. As this was an act counter to Bahamut’s nature (that of Justice, invoked here with the breaking of the Everheights Compact), Bahamut was caught in an internal struggle: give in to their nature and vote to destroy Waterdeep, or resist their nature to buy time.

Bahamut chose to buy time for mortalkind to solve this problem on its own. It would be agony, which the Waterstone Monastery’s followers could only hope to lessen. But Zuchi Rasenth estimated that even with this aid Bahamut had little more than a week before their own just nature overtook themselves, and the city was destroyed. The Strike Team was urged to resolve this investigation before then. Taking this information with them, the Strike Team would depart the monastery.

The next locale to investigate was the Tower of Luck – home of worship to Tymora, and infamous casino in the city. It was said that communion with Tymora could only occur in moments of extreme fortune, and that no other means of communication had been held by the temple’s head with his god for some time now. Further, this establishment seemed to have been infiltrated by followers of Beshaba, who worked to great effect to mislead the Strike Team’s investigation. Making little headway here, the Strike Team sought another lead. Time was running short, so the party opted to retrace an old lead: the Undermountain, where they had first found the angel. For the party, finding their original target took priority over finding whoever brought it to Waterdeep.

### The End

It was late evening, and most of the city had settled in for the night. The Strike Team purchased a set of supplies from Waterdeep’s (seedier) vendors. Then, they set out for the Yawning Portal (and its hidden Undermountain below). But along the way, the Strike Team was intercepted by some of the establishment’s premier patrons: the Doom Raiders, an adventuring guild which could be hired for protection during excursions into the Undermountain. It seemed that following the Strike Team’s encounter with Dearth agents in the Undermountain’s Aexusian Empire, the gang had “set up shop” in the Yawning Portal, so to speak; they drove business and citizens away, and those who were stubborn enough to go into the Undermountain anyway would only rarely return intact/alive.

Worse still, the Dearth knew that Slinthe was in Waterdeep. For this “treachery”, they had sent one of their enforcers into the depths of the Yawning Portal – to locate both the missing angel and Slinthe. This enforcer was Ranolil, a nagpa and dire threat to Slinthe and the rest of Waterdeep: she would stop at nothing to achieve her goals, and if she could inflict any more collateral suffering along the way, all the better for her. The Strike Team thought better of facing her head-on, though their discussion with the Doom Raiders pushed the party to remove these gang members from the Yawning Portal one way or another.

The Doom Raiders offered aid. They knew of two especially hidden paths to the Undermountain: one, which rested in the North Ward and could function as an exit; another, which lay at a “Hinzelmenn’s” grave, and which could function as an entrance. With the Doom Raider’s counsel, the Strike Team set out for the City of the Dead to find this grave-path. To protect each member from surveillance (and to make them more forgettable through magic), Slinthe offered to write his teammates’ names into his cursed spellbook. Coriander accepted the offer, though VVherner did not.

When they arrived at the City of the Dead, the Strike Team snuck their way past Radiatone Family patrols, and evaded will ‘o whisps, until at last they came upon a strange grave. The tomb led downward into the cemetery’s catacombs, where (through the **Locate Object** spell) the team knew Hinzelmenn’s grave rested somewhere below. They continued down this winding path, finding it ultimately to be an entrance to the Radiatone Family’s headquarters. And so sneaking through this base and using interrogation on unwitting Radiatone members, the Strike Team continued their journey unfettered.

Until they came upon a cadre of “Rot Hands”: specially gifted Radiatone who acted as chief enforcers for the gang.

The brief scuffle that ensued ended in a stalemate. And with both sides forced to question each other’s motives, and the Rot Hands learning that the Strike Team sought the grave of Hinzelmenn, these Radiatone knew how best to lend aid: they took the party to the Radiatone’s “Father” – in truth, a manifestation of Death. “Father Death” offered the Strike Team the chance to join his “family”; the entity believed that this offer could be a boon to the party’s efforts to save Waterdeep.

VVherner and Slinthe would accept “Father Death’s” offer, becoming Radiatone Children. Coriander would not.

Given a new lease on life, and a new sense of direction, the reborn Strike Team continued their search for Hinzelmenn’s grave – aided by their connection to “Father Death”.

### Undermountain II

Hinzelmenn’s grave was empty, instead opening into a tunnel to the Undermountain’s Quinao. The Strike Team settled into an abandoned house in this uppermost layer, weary from the day’s effforts. During the night, Slinthe revealed the details of how he returned to the Prime Material from Cania. While in this infernal realm, he was approached by Starshimmer. She sought information on Watchguard (and, specifically, the Strike Team) and how much they knew about Starshimmer; Slinthe revealed Coriander’s identity to Starshimmer, but hid VVherner’s by giving Dufresne’s instead. Starshimmer also wanted something of value to trade for Slinthe’s soul and his return to the Prime Material; Slinthe offered Waterdeep’s angel to Starshimmer and Baator’s legions, a deal Starshimmer simply couldn’t resist. Troubled by these dealings Slinthe had made, even if they were now nullified with Slinthe’s rebirth through “Father Death”, relations in the Strike Team immediately soured. Still, there was a mission to complete.

The next day, they would be awoken by a heavy Dearth presence in the area: it seemed that the gang had caught wind of the Strike Team’s presence in Quinao.

The Strike Team opted to avoid the gang and flee further down into the Undermountain, cutting their way through Dearth legions and escaping undetected (where possible). In their flight, the Strike Team found a bout of “good luck” that allowed them to overpower a particularly large Dearth force; after fleeing through a phase spider nest and taking a brief respite, Coriander was contacted by who he suspected might be Tymora, Goddess of Luck. The deity assured Coriander of their continuing confidence in the choice to notify the gods of the angel, then gave Coriander a strange, two-tailed coin as a gift before departing.

The party continued through the Undermountain to the Aexusian Empire. Though the Dearth presence had waned greatly, the Strike Team found signs that something far more sinister had taken claim of this layer: creatures of all kinds could be found, fatally mangled but cursed to live with their agony. To Slinthe, this could only be the work of the nagpa, Ranolil. The party continued their trek through Aexusia, keeping an eye out for this looming threat (though being scried on by some unseen force all the while). VVherner opted to trek ahead of the team to surveil their surroundings better.

He was the first to see Ranolil, leading a horde of her disfigured victims around as she hunted these otherwise-abandoned surroundings.

The Strike Team set up an ambush to deal with Ranolil – an ambush which the nagpa saw through immediately. A dire encounter erupted, with the Strike Team being separated by this wizard while she systematically hunted down Slinthe. Though Coriander supplied no information on his teammate, VVherner was compelled to under duress: Ranolil cast VVherner into the Underdark via the **Maze** spell, where after a time he revealed the location/reborn identity of Slinthe.

Satisfied, Ranolil began her torture of Slinthe in earnest. The Strike Team (sans Slinthe) reunited once more to lead a final rescue attempt for Slinthe’s life. And though they would escape with him at the cost of Coriander’s left eye, Slinthe would expire to his wounds shortly after.

The Strike Team reported the loss of their teammate immediately. And when they settled into another abandoned building in Aexusia to recover from Ranolil’s onslaught, Watchguard worked to send a replacement agent remotely to the team. This new teammate was a Waterdeep agent: Sygtri Velenhorn, second-in-command of security. And with his arrival came news of what was occurring in the world above the Undermountain. Another statue had arrived that morning in the Castle Ward, in the form of the Dreaming Lady.

Troubled by this news, the Strike Team redoubled their efforts and descended into Oureazzogary. There, they came upon a manifestation of GOG: an ancient god of survival, who seemed to have appeared in response to the great threat this angel’s presence had caused for all living things. GOG delivered this warning to VVherner via communion before merging with VVherner’s body/mind. The party was concerned by this revelation, and continued deeper into Oreazzogary to find the angel. They delved through the living civilization’s innards, facing foe after unconventional foe before they came to rest in what they could only assume were Oureazzogary’s lungs.

Where they saw the angel, resting and hiding here.

A battle ensued, with the Strike Team fighting to bring down the angel and the angel attempting to scare off the team. But with the angel holding VVherner and Sygtri’s lives over Coriander’s head, the Strike Team backed down so that a discussion could be had. The two parties shared their identities (the angel was, apparently, named “Tycho Perdita”), what Tycho remembered of being summoned to the Prime Material Plane (not much, though it involved a strange ritual and a group of arcanists who were all killed shortly after the ritual by drow), and why the Strike Team had been so adamantly pursuing Tycho.

Coriander attempted to send Tycho directly to the Radiance, but was barred by a vast array of arcane wards which locked Tycho to the Prime Material; there were too many wards to dispel and they were each too powerful anyway. Coriander suspected that whoever summoned Tycho would need to have supreme magical knowledge and some potentially hostile relation with drow, and so his primary suspect was Ranolil.

And knowing that the Tycho’s summoner would likely be aware that the angel had almost been transported back to the Radiance, the Strike Team urged Tycho to follow them to Waterdeep-Proper to seek aid from the Blackstaff with returning the angel to his home plane. The party fought their way back out of Oureazzogary and escaped through the Aexusian Empire and Quinao, making their way back to the surface.

### Dearth

Upon their return to Waterdeep, the Strike Team was informed immediately of the arrival of yet another statue in the city: this time, it was the Honorable Knight, wandering the South Ward and urging the citizenry to prepare for war. They rushed immediately to the site of this statue’s appearance, where they found a growing crowd of citizens being herded away from the statue by Watchguard staff. But as the crowd began to grow more and more agitated at the lack of information they were being given about the city’s safety, Sygtri took command of the present Watchguard staff and issued a warning that the citizens may be riling themselves into a “mob”. Tensions erupted nigh-immediately into a more open conflict between the Watchguard staff and the crowd of citizens, urged on both sides by Watchguard’s growing defensiveness and the agitations of a Children’s Church cadre in the civilian crowd.

Coriander attempted to de-escalate this conflict before it came to blows. He identified himself to the crowd as a Watchguard employee – but also as a concerned citizen of Waterdeep. He identified his running theory of the city’s troubles: that the gangs (and particularly the Dearth) and their actions were largely to blame, and that these actions had grown to such a severity that even the gods and city’s statues had begun to take notice. And he re-emphasized the importance of trust amongst the townfolk: Watchguard and Castle Waterdeep both had the citizen’s safety in mind, but it was important too for the citizenry to look after each other and avoid the gangs together. This seemed to win over the townsfolk’s trust somewhat, and the incident found itself resolved to a simmer in short order.

Still, the Strike Team had a job to do. It was paramount that they prepare to meet with the Blackstaff for her counsel regarding Tycho. But they had another, concurrent concern as well. Slinthe’s body would need to be returned to Watchguard so that he could potentially be resurrected. Coriander opted to take up this task; he needed to ensure the Lovelles’ safety as well (he suspected Ranolil’s growing grudge against him would extend to his family), and his time at Watchguard would be a useful opportunity to give the team a better fighting chance with their mission. And though he found the Lovelle home concerningly empty, Coriander pressed another lead before departing Waterdeep. His suspicions at the Children’s Church of Mother Mather had only been growing for some time now, and so he met with Reeds once more to ask his childhood friend to surveil the church’s meeting, which would be occurring that night.

The Strike Team’s affairs were in order. Coriander departed for Watchguard’s Marta Headquarters, where he and Dr. Rev.John Farmer performed a **Raise Dead** spell to restore Slinthe to life. The spell went somewhat awry, with other beings from the outer planes attempting to force their way into the Prime Material alongside Slinthe. Luckily, however, these beings were barred from entry. Slinthe was restored. And while Coriander settled in to create a simulacrum, the Strike Team in Waterdeep made arrangements to rest for the night. Coriander completed his simulacrum, sending it directly to the Strike Team to aid them while he too took his rest. The next day, Coriander would begin his work on creating his own demesne, as he believed the power it provided could be a boon to the team’s efforts.

Elsewhere, Coriander’s simulacrum would return to the Strike Team, where they and the angel had taken up residence in an apartment complex. The simulacrum identified himself as “Scott”, a cousin of Coriander. Before the Strike Team could settle in for the night, however, they were alerted by Slinthe’s return to them as well. It seemed that following his death Slinthe had undergone a revelation and change of heart, and he sought now to help right any harm his actions may have caused the team.

The Strike Team’s reunion had not gone unnoticed, however. A Dearth presence had spotted Slinthe’s return to Waterdeep, and so they pursued his trail to the apartment the group was currently resting within. By holding the entire apartment complex hostage (and with threats to expand to all the rest of the South Ward), the Dearth forced the Strike Team to accompany them. Apparently, the gang’s leader was interested in meeting with the party.

The Strike Team met with Caldean Coldfire and the rest of the Dearth’s leadership in a gang hideout. There, they negotiated. Caldean was once a denizen of the Underdark, but he fled the subterranean realm after his dissatisfaction with Lolth’s oppression; his arrival in the world above was soured twicefold, by him slipping inadvertently into the Feywild for some time, and by the revelation on his return that the world had been made ignorant of realms like the Feywild. Watchguard had engineered this worldwide ignorance, and so was another oppressor to Caldean, and in the end he sought to subvert Watchguard’s efforts by waging open war on the Feywild. To do so, he wanted dripfed information on Watchguard from the Strike Team. It was, after all, the same arrangement he had originally had with Slinthe.

He also wanted to use the angel that he knew the Strike Team had found. Caldean believed that Tycho could be used as an arcane battery to power a portal to the Feywild, and he was adamant on getting that portal. The party saw little opportunity to get out of this negotiation without giving Caldean what he wanted, and so they agreed under certain key conditions:

1.      Removal of the Dearth presence from the Yawning Portal

2.      No malicious action of any Dearth agents against the Lovelle Family

3.      A vast wealth of funds (500,000 gold pieces)

4.      Insurance that Caldean would work to preserve Tycho’s life during this ritual he desired, and that once the ritual was complete Caldean would devote his gang’s efforts to returning Tycho to the Radiance

Sygtri arranged this contract between the Strike Team and the Dearth. And once the pact was prepared, the Strike Team opted to speak privately with Tycho and convince him of this plan. Tycho was troubled deeply by being left with this gang, but he trusted the Strike Team enough to agree to Sygtri’s contract. He did, however, reveal a worrying truth.

It was the Dearth, and specifically Caldean, who had arranged Tycho’s summoning to the Prime Material Plane in the first place. It was all part of Caldean’s plan to wage war on the Feywild. The Dearth, however, had also made a partnership with some powerful (and separate) entity to invoke this original summoning ritual, and Caldean was not willing to share this entity’s identity with the Strike Team.

The Strike Team was stuck, but with few options they signed Sygtri’s contract and departed with Tycho – to meet with the Dearth for this new ritual that evening.

### The Final Day

The party was dropped off at the Tower of Luck, where they spent the rest of the night. They spoke at length with Tycho, where they learned of his life before/during the Radiance, where Tycho expressed a growing fondness for the Strike Team (even accepting a ribbon from VVherner, which he would henceforth keep close to himself) excluding Coriander, and where they learned that whoever invoked Tycho’s summoning ritual used a strange belt which might be an Orrery piece. The Strike Team awoke the next day, and split up to prepare before their meeting with the Blackstaff. They purchased their wares from Naazhir’s Magical Mechanisms and overheard the local hubbub: the Sword Maiden had appeared in Waterdeep’s North Ward, fashioning weapons from nearby buildings; GOG’s presence was beginning to manifest much more strongly in the city with each passing moment; seraphim had begun to appear in the city, lashing out in retribution/judgement at every “sinful” citizen they found.

Scott, meanwhile, had an epiphany. In order for the Dearth’s unknown collaborator to invoke the original ritual to summon Tycho, they would need access to supremely ancient knowledge (older than Watchguard’s attempts to snuff out planar knowledge), they would need a nigh-mythical control over magic, and they would need to be an independent party from the Dearth. To him, this could be only one reasonable subject: the previous Blackstaff, Alexander Carim, who Scott believed had faked his death around the same time that the ritual to summon Tycho occurred. Emboldened to question the Blackstaff, the Strike Team departed for Castle Waterdeep.

Along the way, they stopped by Orvin’s General so that Scott could question Reeds on the information his friend had gathered on the Children’s Church. The party found the shop near-empty, however, and Reeds was nowhere in sight. Orvin, it seemed, was relocating from Waterdeep in light of the city’s recent developments. And so after a brief haggle, Scott purchased Orvin’s General from his old mentor, resolving to remain in Waterdeep once the team’s task was complete.

When the Strike Team arrived at Castle Waterdeep, and were granted audience with the Blackstaff by Captain Altus, the team began its interview on its current working theory. Vjara denied any involvement with the angelic ritual, and confirmed that Alexander Carim had truly died two months prior – but when pressed for any other reliable leads, Vjara was taken over by Carim’s consciousness. He shared with the Strike Team the story of his folly.

Upon a Blackstaff's death, their soul is sealed in totality within their eponymous staff - until the day Waterdeep falls. In fear of the consequences of his oath (and in his desire to spend an afterlife with his wife and son), Alexander Carim sought to shirk this fate.

In January, 497 H.F., he met with a woman who claimed ownership of a strange artifact. The woman called herself "Maria Cotton", and the artifact in question was the Belt: a component of the Orrery of the Wanderer which, when separated from its parent object, enabled wielders to open "windows" to other planes. With this item in tow, Maria Cotton offered Alexander the chance to explore other planes freely, to speak with anyone from anywhere - and in exchange, all Maria required was the knowledge on how to summon beings from other planes.

Alexander knew the value of the knowledge Maria sought. He also suspected that no-one in the modern era had the resources or power to put that knowledge to practice effectively; to Alexander, there was no way Maria could make use of the information he provided her anyway. He accepted her offer, and in exchange for providing her the ritual to summon extraplanar beings, Alexander was given the opportunity to speak with the Learned Tilerelit: an ancient arcanist who had mastered the domination of souls and planes, with whose knowledge Alexander hoped to escape the bounds of his oath to the Blackstaff Line.

Unbeknownst to Alexander Carim, Maria Cotton had not only the power to enact this ritual (via her Belt), but now also the knowledge to do so (via Carim's attempt at a tilted trade). Maria had deceived Alexander, but it only would be after the aged Blackstaff's death that Maria would put her plans into action; Alexander would never live to stop her himself.

After his death, and upon learning of the full extent of Maria Cotton's deeds from the Strike Team, Alexander Carim fell into a deep despair. He felt immense regret at letting his fear jeopardize the city, and he decided it was a path that should have never been taken in the first place. To make amends, he placed his faith in Vjara and the Strike Team to protect Waterdeep where he had failed.

The party now knew for certain that Maria Mather was the root of Waterdeep’s troubles. They also knew that she was the Dearth’s collaborator. But, most troubling of all, they knew that due to the contracts they had signed they would be unable to stop the Dearth’s ritual tonight – under penalty of death or greater harm to Waterdeep. The Strike Team elected to allow the ritual to unfold, then immediately kill Maria Mather and send Tycho back to the Radiance.

As the Strike Team departed Castle Waterdeep, they saw that another statue had manifested: the Griffon this time, circling high over the castle. Sygtri suggested a city-wide evacuation, and so was called away by Watchguard to assist with this. Meanwhile, VVherner was pulled into communion with “Father Death”, where he learned that souls slain by seraphim were often destroyed entirely; the mass influx of deaths in the city, and the destruction of these victims’ souls after death, was cause for alarm to “Father Death”. The Strike Team was urged to prevent further wrath from the gods.

The Strike Team chose to meet with the Dearth near one of Mather’s churches. When they arrived at the temple, and Scott noted both Reeds and the Lovelle family in attendance, Scott opted to remain here to protect his friends and family. At the same time, Coriander returned from Watchguard Headquarters after completing his demesne. He and Scott exchanged information (of note, that it hadn’t been Tymora to notify the gods nor had it been her who spoke with Coriander – but that it was instead her sister, Beshaba), and Coriander reunited with the Strike Team to complete their mission while his simulacrum remained behind.

Scott would have a difficult conversation with the Lovelles where he would reveal Coriander’s affiliation with Watchguard and his own nature as a simulacrum. And under threat of further emotional turmoil, he was pushed to lead the Lovelle family to Coriander’s location so that they could speak with their son.

Meanwhile, the Strike Team was taken to a warehouse in the northern South Ward, where the Dearth and Maria Mather were stationed to invoke their ritual. Tycho was taken from the group, and the process began. Maria Mather opened a portal to the Feywild using Tycho as an arcane battery, and the Dearth’s contract with the Strike Team was fulfilled. Before the Strike Team could move in on Mather, however, she invoked the wrath of the Lords of Virtue against Waterdeep: by summoning an angel to the Prime Material, and by using them to punch through to other planes, the city had proven itself guilty of breaking the Everheights Compact.

Bahamut ceded his position among the Lords of Virtue to GOG, and the heavenly host released their seraphim into the city to mete out justice. In the chaos (during which Caldean Coldfire, Abaddon, and a host of Dearth gangsters were all slain), Slinthe fled into the Feywild portal, leading Ranolil and a company of Dearth agents into the other plane before the angels could pursue.

### A World Without Gods

The Strike Team had failed. Waterdeep was in chaos, and the Lords of Virtue had loosed their severe justice on the city. Only drastic measures could save normalcy now.

Angelica Fairchild summoned Kroa’Goa to the Orrery of the Wanderer with her. She would be sending him (and a small collection of minor Orrery pieces) to Waterdeep; he was to attach these pieces to himself and the Strike Team to keep them stable while Fairchild ripped the High Heavens out of the Orrery – launching herself and the team into a world without gods. The Strike Team would then need to hunt down Maria Mather in this new universe, kill her and take her Orrery piece, return Tycho to the Radiance, and then present Mather’s deceased soul to the Lords of Virtue as proof that justice had been dealt.

Kroa’Goa teleported to the Strike Team using Coriander’s broadband, and equipped each member (and Tycho) of the team with their own Orrery Pieces. With this task complete, Angelica put her plan into action. The Strike Team found itself in a strange, forested world where the gods had never existed. The realm was rife with extraplanar incursions and a wealth of supernatural beings, but magic and mortal life remained in the gods’ absence. And as the team acclimated to their surroundings Coriander attempted to magically **Scry** on Maria Mather. With no luck, the Strike Team elected to travel across the entire valley of what was once Waterdeep, in hunt of their quarry. They found no luck the first day, instead coming across a powerful fire-elemental force burning its way through the woods; that night, as the Strike Team settled in to rest, they were attacked by a small modron unit and then a cadre of strange and misshapen "Umbral" Vampires.

Recovering in the aftermath of these encounters, the Strike Team was separated by the intrusion of an aboleth – one which sought to interrogate Coriander and Kroa’Goa. From the pair, this aboleth (an alternate incarnation of the Six Hundredth and Twice-Fortieth, one who had never fallen out of power due to the gods’ arrivals) learned that the Strike Team sought a powerful artifact and that they came from another version of this universe.

The Six Hundredth and Twice-Fortieth greatly desired this artifact, and it attempted to enthrall the Strike Team to get it. Though it was ultimately unsuccessful, the aboleth still implanted Kroa’Goa with its cells as a bargaining chip: unless Kroa’Goa wanted to remain infected with the aboleth’s curse, he would bring this artifact to the Six Hundredth and Twice-Fortieth. The pair were returned to the Strike Team to reconvene and plan accordingly.

That night, Kroa’Goa overheard Maria Mather run by the Strike Team’s camp. But as he was unfamiliar with her Kroa’Goa discarded this information.

The next day, the Strike Team began with a supply hunt: Kroa’Goa and Coriander took to the woods to find food and look for Mather’s tracks, and VVherner and Tycho looked out for each other and bonded over their pasts. During the hunt, Coriander was forced into an unexpected mental connection with Fairchild – where Baphomet expressed their nigh-total dismissal of the Strike Team for its failures. Coriander and Kroa’Goa reached out to Fairchild via broadband, where the Strike Team learned that they may form psionic connections with others attuned to Orrery pieces (hence what Kroa’Goa and Coriander had experienced). So long as Mather did not learn of this psionic link, the Strike Team maintained an advantage.

Kroa’Goa then arranged for VVherner and Tycho to reunite with him and Coriander. But along the way, Tycho spotted a large military force of “black riders” closing in on Coriander and Kroa’Goa’s positions. The party barely escaped this ambush in time, but it had become clear that they were quickly becoming a commodity in this godless universe.

The party fled to the southwestern coast, where they found a strange fungal ship in the waters; upon investigating the area and meeting with local creatures, the party surmised this was a Vernal Fey Incursion into the Prime Material Plane and Coriander urged the party to avoid this area if at all possible. The Strike Team settled in for the evening, and VVherner’s psionic connection with Mather allowed him to listen in on her lamentations at her current circumstances.

The next day, the Strike Team journeyed further into the mainland where they came upon an alien ship in a clearing, manned by a group of strange creatures. VVherner expressed a degree of familiarity with these creatures, and urged the Strike Team into a combative encounter with them. The party proved victorious, though not without their own share of close calls: Coriander and Kroa’Goa had nearly perished to these creatures.

Following this encounter, a conflict erupted between Coriander and Tycho: to Kroa’Goa, it appeared the two had developed bad blood of some sort, to such a degree that now Coriander refused healing treatment from Tycho. So Kroa’Goa mediated discussion between the two and learned that Tycho had been misled to believe Coriander was more sinister and monstrous than he truly was, hence his outward hostility to Coriander. But once this discrepancy came to light, the two began to reconcile. Tycho shared his story with the party, with his life and death as a tailor, his struggles with his people's senses of valor, and with his (self-declared) unexpected rebirth in the Radiance and his hunt for Nokdel, his son.

### Mather

Coriander then scried once more on Mather that evening, successfully locking onto her location as somewhere around an umbral keep in the valley (seemingly the source of the black riders the party had come upon earlier); Mather, however, likewise scried on Coriander due to their shared psionic connection, becoming immediately aware of their psychic link. And VVherner communed with the avatar of death in this universe, who commanded VVherner to seek her out at the umbral keep. The party set off into the woods immediately to pursue Mather’s trail. They took their rest only once night had fully fallen.

That night, the Strike Team hid itself away from a scouting modron party and a group of black riders, but in the early morning was forced to flee out of the path of a passing fire giant. Still, the party was awake now and they needed to find the Umbral Keep. In short order, the Strike Team reached and spied the fortress from a distance. Coriander **Teleported** the party to one of the keep’s towers and attempted to create an impromptu entrance in its ceiling. But as the Umbral Keep was home to an army of vampires, the opening Coriander had made into the building in broad daylight proved disastrous: the entire keep was alerted to the Strike Team’s presence, and the party was forced to flee from the castle and regroup.

They hid themselves away for the night, buried deep underground. But it seemed their hideout had been spotted in the night. The next morning, a small order of black riders (which the party could now identify as the vampire species they had previously encountered) stood assembled around the entrance to the party’s subterranean tunnel. Rather than waste resources on a fight with these vampires, though, Coriander teleported the party discretely to one of the Umbral Keep’s other towers.

What followed was a careful infiltration into the castle, as the party believed Mather resided within. They notified Fairchild of their suspicions, and readied to return to the Prime Material with Mather’s body. But when they reached the fortress’ innermost chamber, where Death (and Mather, they assumed) resided, they found an incapacitated, tortured Death and no sign of Mather in the area. Instead, Mather spied in on the Strike Team using the power of her Belt. From the Strike Team, she learned that her artifact and theirs were parts of a larger machine, that this machine was held at Watchguard and that it controlled the universe, and that Watchguard’s leader (who Mather correctly deduced to be Fairchild) was present in this godless realm.

Mather attempted to force Fairchild’s hand into releasing her back into the original universe, and thereby letting her exact her “justice” on Waterdeep. She threatened the Strike Team by setting two rival armies upon the Umbral Keep and releasing Death from their imprisonment – with the condition that Death kill the Strike Team. A harrowing encounter broke out, with the Strike Team fighting to survive Death and escape, and Death fighting for their own freedom. But ultimately the party was able to escape the Umbral Keep via Coriander’s use of the **Teleportation Circle** spell.

The Strike Team had survived. They fled deep into the surrounding woods and set up camp to rest for the night. And though undisturbed party through the night, the party found their dreams invaded by Mather’s own. They experienced her history.

Years ago, Maria Mather led a comfortable life in Waterdeep with her family – her husband and two children. One day, when the family was out on a picnic in one of the local parks, the Mathers were caught in the crossfire of a Dearth deal gone bad. Only Maria survived, and as she caught sight of a departing Caldean at the scene of the crime she swore vengeance.

When she came upon the Belt, Maria used it to peer into the afterlife; she wanted to see her family once more. But though she found them, it was immaterial: Maria was unable to reach them. She resolved herself to achieving justice for her lost family, self-assured that once her work was complete no-one else would have to experience the heartache she had.

It wasn’t long before she met with Caldean Coldfire, committed to exacting her brand of justice on him, the gods, and Waterdeep at large. She was ready to deceive Caldean, mislead her family’s killer into the years-deep trap she had planned. Though *she* wouldn’t kill him, Mather had resolved to have divine justice meted out against him.

The Strike Team awoke the next day with a new perspective on their quarry. They made preparations to teleport to her location the next time she magically scried on them, but Mather had accounted for this: she misled them into teleporting to a false location, and then arranged a warzone between herself and the Strike Team’s new location atop Mount Waterdeep. She pitted the local fey and vampires against each other, with the promise of power and territory to whoever slew the Strike Team and returned their possessions to Mather. Then, Mather made arrangements to hang at the edge of Waterdeep’s valley – ready to flee the region if this final Hail Mary failed.

Rather than fight their way through the entirety of the warzone, the Strike Team elected to rest for an extended period first. Coriander would use his magic to teleport as close to Mather as possible once he’d recovered from the day’s events.

In the late evening, Coriander had recovered fully. He and the party scried on Mather and found her caught in a vampire horde, fighting for her life. It seemed the war had fully erupted. But Coriander had a visual on the party’s quarry, and so he teleported the Strike Team as close to Mather’s location as possible – right in the middle of a vampiric swarm. The Strike Team wiped out the swarm in due order, but the war was underway all around them now.

The team fought, snuck, and flew their way through the various battlegrounds in their pursuit of Mather. At one point they commandeered a bulezao-led chariot from a fey warrior, to better catch up to their quarry. But the chariot’s beasts were wild and dangerous, and not just anyone could safely control them; further, only one person could use this chariot at a time. So the Strike Team elected VVherner to take the chariot and make haste for Mather.

It didn’t take long for VVherner to find Mather. By the time he did, she had come to regret coming upon the Belt: the power she claimed with it was unnatural, and she felt it (and all its like) should instead be destroyed. Still, she needed the Belt for her calling, and she was not going to give it up without a fight.

Mather had one final trump card: she had gained the ability with the Belt to open “planar windows” inside of objects – and she used this to great effect against VVherner by nearly bisecting him. If he hadn’t been faster, he would have lost more than just the arm and leg that he actually did. But VVherner was stalwart and quick, and so despite his injuries he quickly slew Mather.

The rest of the Strike Team caught up to VVherner shortly after. And once they recovered Mather’s Belt and her remains, they notified Fairchild of their success and were teleported to their boss after Fairchild super-charged Coriander's arcane well with her abyssal influence.

This new mission had proved a success.

### Return

The rest of Fairchild’s plan fell into play as soon as the High Heavens were restored to the Orrery; Fairchild dislocated Mechanus from the machine when the party was returned to the proper Prime Material, so that they could resolve the Waterdeep Crises immediately.

Coriander attuned to the Belt so that he could remove the planar bindings on Tycho. And to ease the angel’s hunt for his son, Coriander used the Belt to open a “window” to Nokdel. He teleported Tycho to the Radiance, to his son, so that the two could be together. Then, the Belt and the Strike Team’s Orrery pieces were restored back into the machine.

VVherner summoned forth the soul of Maria Mather. Before he sent her spirit to Death, VVherner would ask Mather if her congregation truly mattered to her and what she believed their purpose was: to Mather, her congregation was a sacred sacrifice (as was the city of Waterdeep), assured a position in the High Heavens for their martyrdom; with the failure of her plan, the Children’s Church would need to find its own way going forward.

The task was complete. With justice delivered and the angel’s soul returned to the Radiance, the Lords of Virtue retracted their heavenly host from Waterdeep. And thanks to Corellon’s gratitude, the Lords of Virtue summoned the Strike Team in communion to congratulate their efforts. Because of their success, the heavenly conflict between the gods had ended; all efforts had been dedicated instead to the rejuvenation of Waterdeep. GOG’s temporary position in the Lords of Virtue had been revoked and returned in-full to Bahamut. And after VVherner’s revelation that it had not been Tymora to notify the gods of the angel’s arrival, but instead Beshaba, retribution against this unlucky goddess was so-ordered.

Each Strike Team agent was given the opportunity to speak candidly with these deities, whether for advice or approval or knowledge. After this communion, the Strike Team relayed their experience with Fairchild, who saw an opportunity for Watchguard to spin the gods’ role/culpability in the Waterdeep Crises.

The Strike Team was dismissed to attend to their own affairs for a time.

VVherner remained at Watchguard to perform restorative surgery on his severed limbs. Kroa’Goa departed Watchguard to seek out and consult with his mother, and to perhaps locate his father’s whereabouts. Coriander returned to Waterdeep to relocate his loved ones; though Reeds had perished in the chaos of the crisis, the Lovelle Family and Scott had survived. Scott, however, required immediate restorative attention – and so after consulting with his family, the Lovelles chose to accompany Coriander to Watchguard to repair Scott, with the understanding that they would be unable to return from Watchguard afterward.