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Waterdeep City of Splendors
Waterdeep, the City of Splendors, is shaped by many powers, some rule and defended in the light, others scheme and prey upon it from the shadows.
The Rulers & Protectors
Waterdeep endures because powerful forces defend it. The city is ruled and guarded by hidden lords, master wizards, and secret societies. The City of Splendors is ruled by roughly twenty Masked Lords, whose identities are hidden behind enchanted masks. Only the Open Lord rules publicly, a role held today by the archmage Laeral Silverhand, one of the Seven Sisters and a Chosen of Mystra.
Some hidden lords are known to all. Mirt the Moneylender is a fat, roguish old adventurer turned wealthy financier. Durnan, a retired adventurer, runs the Yawning Portal inn, whose great central well descends into the depths of Undermountain. Beyond its walls, Waterdeep leads the Lords’ Alliance, a coalition of cities and towns, among them Neverwinter, Silverymoon, and Baldur’s Gate, that band together for mutual defense against the many threats that stalk the North.
The Blackstaff is Waterdeep’s archmage and one of its guardians, wielding a staff of immense power. The title passes from master to chosen heir. Today it is held by the young Vajra Safahr, who guards the city’s magical secrets. When ordinary law falls short, the Lord’s call on the Gray Hands, sanctioned adventurers empowered to act in the city’s name. Their elite corps, Force Grey, is handpicked by the Blackstaff to face threats the Watch and Guard cannot.
The Harpers are a scattered, semi-secret network of spies and do-gooders who work to preserve balance, thwart tyranny, and keep any one power from growing too strong. In Waterdeep, their agents move quietly among nobles, guilds, and streets alike.
The Red Sashes are a secret vigilante brotherhood that operates only within Waterdeep. Their members are unknown even to one another, save to their leader, called only the One. They bind captured criminals in Red Sashes for the Watch. Most believe the Red Sashes oppose the Lords. In truth, their leader is Durnan of the Yawning Portal, himself a Lord of Waterdeep, who uses them to do quiet good the paladins among the Lords could never sanction.
The Criminal Powers
Waterdeep’s rulers work to keep the city’s criminal powers in check. Its underworld consists of beholder’s guild, exiled thieves, drow mercenaries, and secret cartels. The Xanathar’s guild is Waterdeep’s dominant criminal organization, running smuggling, extortion, slavery, and spying. Its leader is a beholder, and the guild’s best kept secret is that Xanathar is a title, not a single creature. Beholder after beholder has held the name for over a century.
The Xanathar rules through rival lieutenants who compete constantly. They sometimes impersonate the Xanathar to hide the true nature of the Xanathar. The Shadow Thieves are one of Faerûn’s largest thieves’ guilds. They began in Waterdeep, but grew so powerful that Lord Lhestyn infiltrated and shattered them, driving the survivors south to Amn over a century ago. From Amn, the guild rebuilt into a vast criminal network, and its agents have worked to reclaim Waterdeep ever since.
They contend constantly with the Xanathar’s guild for control of the city’s thieves and smugglers. Bregan D’aerthe is a company of drow mercenaries and spies from the Underdark, led by the cunning drow Jarlaxle Baenre, who is also the secret lord of the pirate city of Luskan. They now operate quietly in Waterdeep.
Jarlaxle hides in Waterdeep disguised as the human captain Zardoz Zord, running a carnival from a ship in the harbor. He employs unwitting human agents, and has even planted a spy at the right hand of the Xanathar. The Zhentarim, also called the Black Network, is a mercenary and spy organization bent on power across the North. In Waterdeep, its darkest branch is led by a clone of Manshoon, one of the network’s immortal founders.
Manshoon’s clone schemes from Kolat Towers to rule the city as Open Lord. His failed alliance with the Xanathar has erupted into open war between the two powers in the streets. Not all the Black Network in Waterdeep serves Manshoon. The Doom Raiders, a band of adventurers led by Davil Starsong, run the city’s other Zhentarim branch, seeking legitimate trade and standing openly against Manshoon’s schemes. The Kraken Society appears to be a network of merchants and informants across the North. Its true leader is Slarkrethel, an ancient and immortal kraken who serves the goddess Umberlee and schemes from a sunken ruin in the northern seas.
In Waterdeep, the society works through brokers in the Dock Ward who trade in secrets, and it is linked to the abduction of citizens sold into slavery in distant Calimshan. Its true master remains hidden beneath the waves.
The Horrors Beneath
The deadliest forces in Waterdeep lie beneath it. In the dungeons, sewers and lightless underdark below the streets dwell mad wizards, slavers, mind flayers and monsters that regard the city above as prey and hunting ground. Beneath Mount Waterdeep sprawls Undermountain, the largest and deadliest dungeon in all the realms. Its 23 known levels descend ever downward toward the Underdark, and it is entered through a great well in the Yawning Portal inn. The dungeon is the domain of Halaster Blackcloak the Mad Mage. More than a thousand years ago, this arch wizard came to Mount Waterdeep and began to delve, and centuries of digging ever deeper slowly drove his brilliant mind into madness.
Halaster remains one of the mightiest wizards alive, and he fills his endless labyrinth with deadly traps, imprisoned monsters and unstable magic, watching intruders for his own amusement. Of those who descend into Undermountain, few ever climb back out. Far below the city on the underground River Sargauth lies Skullport, a lawless port of smugglers, pirates and slavers. Its blocks are held by gangs such as the Mandible and the Iron Ring, whose slavers trade in living flesh. Captives are auctioned openly in Skullport to drow, illithids and worse. Overhead float 13 disembodied skulls, Netherese mages transformed when the port’s magic failed long ago, who watch its streets and enforce a fragile, brutal order.
Skullport was founded in 1148 DR by the necromancer Shradin Mulophor, later called the Lord of Bones. The Lords of Waterdeep have long known of this festering port below and choose to contain it rather than destroy it. Deeper still in the Underdark beneath Waterdeep lies Ch’Chitl, a hidden city of mind flayers. Its illithids have long plotted to enslave the surface city, and it was they who created the doppelganger cabal known as the Unseen.
Nearby in the depths lurk drow enclave such as T’Quession, whose raiders and spies slip up into Skullport and the city above. From the lightless deep, both mind flayer and dark elf regard Waterdeep as a prize to be taken. In 1369 DR, the wereshark Iakhovas led an army of sea monsters up from the deep to storm Waterdeep’s harbor. The city won the Deepwater War, but at terrible cost, and some invaders slipped away into the sewers below. Among them were the Savants of the Dark Tide, a trio of aboleths who used the chaos to infiltrate the city. Commanding scum and charmed thralls, they lair in the flooded sewers, hunting an ancient sleeping aboleth, the Sargauth Swimmer.
Aboleths inherit the memories of all their ancestors, so the Sargauth Swimmer, ancient beyond reckoning, holds eons of knowledge. The Savants believe waking it could tip the three-way Underdark war they fled against the drow and deep gnomes. The Plague Rats are an organized guild of wererats, thieves, and assassins active across the North. In Waterdeep, they operate from the Dock Ward and the sewers, spreading disease and stealing under cover of darkness.
In the city, their base is Deloun Alley, a crate choked back route crawling with rats of both kinds. Beyond the walls they hold the Rat’s Maw, a warren burrowed into the reeking refuse mounds of the Rat Hills, Waterdeep’s garbage dump. The City of the Dead is a walled cemetery park, patrolled by the Watch, where none may live or remain after dark. The reason is grim. Its crypts open onto deeper places, and its dead do not reliably stay buried. Undead stir among the tombs each night, and the gates are locked at dusk to keep them contained.
One tomb even hides the entrance to the Dungeon of the Crypt, the underground domain of the vampire Artor Morlin.
The Cults & Fiends
Waterdeep permits many faiths, and among them hide worshipers of darker powers. Cults of devils and evil gods meet in secret beneath respectable homes and temples. The Knights of the Shield pose as a fellowship of merchants, but are a cartel of spies and information brokers based in the south, their reach extending north to Waterdeep, stamping their own coins with a shield and eye. In Waterdeep, they keep a low profile. A decade ago, their attempt to overthrow the Lords failed disastrously, and the order was largely driven from the City of Splendors, its remaining agents forced to work quietly and from the shadows.
Yet the Knights remain dangerous, for their hidden leadership serves a secret master. The archdevil turned god Gargauth the Outcast, whose true hand guides the order from the shadows behind its brokers and coin. A cult of Asmodeus worship thrives secretly among Waterdeep’s nobility, led by Lord Victoro Cassalanter. He and his wife, Ammalia, traded the souls of their twin children to the archdevil years ago in exchange for power and fortune. A temple of Asmodeus lies hidden beneath their villa, and other noble houses have joined the cult.
To reclaim their children’s souls before the debt falls do, the Cassalanters will scheme, murder, and pursue any fortune within reach. The Cult of the Dragon, the followers of the Scaly Way, believe that undead dragons will one day rule the world. Founded by the fallen archmage Sammaster, they create dracoliches and have long sought to plant a cell within Waterdeep. Their agents recruit followers, gather treasure to transform dragons into dracoliches, and worship these undead wyrms. In Waterdeep, their efforts have been repeatedly thwarted by the hidden steel dragon Jalanvaloss, who hunts the cult from within the city.
The Monsters in Mortal Guise
Some of Waterdeep’s dark forces wear no obvious monstrous shape. They pass as merchants, nobles, and neighbors, but are disguised dragons, shapeshifters, and vampires that hunt and scheme from within the ordinary life of the city. Long ago, the founder-wizard Ahghairon wove the Dragon- ward, a vast magic that bars dragons from entering Waterdeep. Yet several dragons already dwell inside the city in disguise, foremost the steel dragon Jalanvaloss, the Wyrm of Many Spells.
Jalanvaloss is far from alone. Roughly a dozen or more dragons are said to hide in Waterdeep in human form. Steel dragons, song dragons such as Taraunram- orlamurla, and others of stranger kinds, some concealed even from one another. The Dragonward, anchored by the dragon staff of Ahghairon, decides which dragons the city’s magic allows within its skies. Whoever holds that staff effectively rules which dragons may come and go from Waterdeep, making it a prize others covet.
That staff is currently held by Aurinax, an adult gold dragon who guards a hidden vault of stolen gold beneath the city, often disguised as a dwarf. Patient, wise, and merciful, he wields the staff’s power on Waterdeep’s behalf. Some dragons have bred with Waterdeep’s nobility. The Confluence is a secret company of steel dragons and half-dragon nobles who hide draconic blood behind human names and who count the shapeshifting Unseen among their bitterest enemies.
Not all such dragons are subtle. Beyond the walls, the green dragon Claugiyliamatar, or Old Gnawbone, runs a network of spies within Waterdeep. She dreams of one day seizing the City of Splendors to rule as its dragon queen.
The Unseen are a cabal of doppelgangers who murder prominent Waterdhavians and take their places, infiltrating the guilds, the nobility, and even the Xanathar’s Guild. No member holds one identity for longer than a tenday. The Unseen began as a druuth. A doppelganger cell created by the mind flayers of the Underdark city Ch’Chitl, planted to prepare Waterdeep’s population for eventual enslavement as illithid thralls. When Ch’Chitl’s elder brain died, the half illithid doppelganger Hlaavin seized control. He now runs the Unseen from a Dock Ward festhall, covertly infiltrating Waterdeep’s upper echelon by assassinating and replacing powerful figures with doppelgangers.
Artor Morlin, called the Baron of Blood, is an ancient and cultured vampire who has held a secret lair in Waterdeep’s North Ward for roughly seven centuries, quietly amassing stolen art and treasure while moving through society. His power reaches underground. Beneath the City of the Dead, entered through a crypt among the tombs, lies the Dungeon of the Crypt, where vampires, werewolves, and even an undead beholder contend for the favor of Morlin, their master. Beneath Waterdeep’s respectable nobility run cults, poisonings, and dark secrets.
House Phylund carries lycanthropy so severe that the lords have barred its werewolf-blooded heirs from inheriting their family’s fortune and name. Other houses hide worse. The Gralhunds, for instance, secretly belong to the Cassalanters’ cult of Asmodeus and has tieflings in the house who are of the blood of Gargauth. From the Masked Lords to the beholder and the sewers, these are the powers and factions that shape Waterdeep. Some guard the City of Splendors, others hunger to rule or ruin it, and their struggle is the city’s true story.
