The Life and Crimes of Pulvi Lutum

(From the Notes of Barnibus Blastwind, Criminal Investigator for the Watchful Order of Magists and Protectors)

The morning after the Feast of the Moon (Nightal 1), Clerebold Biznorel found the body of his master, Lammakh Heirlarpost, in a cupboard in their shared residence after searching for the man for over an hour to serve him his breakfast.

Experienced healers estimate that Mr. Heirlarpost had been dead for three days at the time of his discovery. Unfortunately, he had also been seen by not only his staff, but by many other acquaintances during this period. Most notable is the speech he presented at the Cassalanter Estate during their gala celebrating the Feast of the Moon the night before. It is currently uncertain whether or not he was alive during any of these events, or if some sort of inter-planar effect may have altered the flow of time in this circumstance.

Unfortunately, by the time this discrepancy was noticed the body had already had Gentle Repose cast upon it, outshining any other spells that may have been cast upon it. Our attempts to interrogate Mr. Heirlarpost were not particularly productive, demonstrating only three things: he had indeed been dead during those three days, he had been thoroughly interrogated, and that the man responsible for his death was an Earth Genasi by the name of Pulvi Lutum.

We attempted several methods of divination to locate this Pulvi Lutum, none of them successful, eventually leading to the conclusion that he had acquired an Amulet of Proof Against Location and Detection. The case has been passed to the talents of bounty hunters.

Welcome to Waterdeep

The trouble with every story is figuring out how to begin, from there it becomes a simple matter of continuing.

Waterdeep: Dragon Heist begins with all of the characters gathering together in The Yawning Portal Tavern. I was uncomfortable with just dropping the characters in the bar by themselves, and so I announced that all the characters had been staying on a boat for the past few weeks, preparing to leave the city for the wonders of Calimshan. Which served another purpose, the refund of their tickets would provide a bit more money for the extravagant city life in Waterdeep.

And my players were going to get that refund, (and then never write it down) the first big storm of the winter hit before their ship had a chance to leave port. Despite what certain Dwarves would say, the crew decided it was far to dangerous to set out, and the city closed the harbor for the winter.

So, on their second to last night of shipboard accommodations, this group of travelers set out to get a good drink and a nice meal at Waterdeep's greatest adventurer bar and commiserate over their current situation. Homelessish, and far from where they want to be.

The Adventure Begins

In 2014 I played my first game of Dungeons and Dragons, it was run by a new friend of mine who wanted to experiment with the new and exotic 5th edition.

A few months later, our party's bard murdered everyone with the help of a lich, and I briefly attempted to avenge my character's death as her occasionally sentient pet hyena. That did not go well.

Since then I've been involved in a couple of one shots, or games that wanted to be full campaigns but failed, generally when all the player characters killed each other.

In October of 2018 I decided to try running a game myself. Never having read the Dungeon Master's Guide, not owning any books. It was a -great- plan. Made even better by my decision to try running the most recent version of the Tomb of Horrors. A module, which while short and very well contained, is almost entirely made up of traps and puzzles, and requires that the adventurers be a fairly high level. All things that I now know make running a game harder.

I'll come back to the Tomb of Horrors later, because it went well enough that I started prepping to run Waterdeep: Dragon Heist for a slightly larger group of friends over roll20. For the moment, this blog is going to be focused on that game and my ideas for what comes next.