Session 2 - 2026-09-17

The Road to Waterdeep, morning

• Nova sees Sahra as a skeleton but notes that she still seems to be breathing
• Nova decides not to wake the others and returns to sleep
• In the morning Sahra seems unaware that she looked different in the night
• Nova, Sahra and Giles continue to Waterdeep
• Giles swears Waterdeep wasn't here before when he came from this direction
• Nova, Sahra and Giles meet a man named Darmond who has lost his wagon full of goods to goblin thieves
• They take him to a tavern in the Dock Ward and calm him down before he reports to his boss Amara

Waterdeep Dock Ward, later that night

• Tikva returns to the Nest Mercenary Guild, a tiny draughty barracks in an old naval office in the Dock Ward
• Mother is in her study and receives Tikva's report on the warehouse grimly
• Mother serves tea and tells Tikva the Nest's origin story
• Long ago, Mother was a street urchin living under a bridge with her friend
• When they were caught, she was treated poorly by the guards while her pretty half-elf friend was treated well
• Since then she vowed to look after people who the guards treat poorly, that is the true purpose of the Nest
• Mother is getting old and would like to retire but needs somebody to take over
• Mother would like Tikva to get some experience and cultivate some leadership skills so she can take over
• Mother gives Tikva a job to investigate suspected sabotage, she will need a crew for it, not Huey, Dewey and Louie
• Mother explains the warehouse goods belong to a merchant, Amara Dunder who sells parchment, books, quills, and ink
• Amara suspects her competitor Rosalind Thorne of sabotage and would like to prove it
• Outside, Click is surveying the streets and sees a person in robes trying to sneak around
• Following, he realises this person is tailing a woman who is walking briskly to the Nest
• The woman is Amara Dunder, on her way to the Nest to report her driver arrived without his wagon, robbed by a goblin gang
• Click sees the robed figure rummage in their pockets and then scale the Nest to the loose second story window with uncanny agility
• Click follows but accidentally makes a sound, alerting the robed figure to his presence
• The robed figure swears, bursts back out of the window, a woman with fair skin in a rushed blur, and leaps to the road, injuring herself and limping away
• Tikva dashes from the Nest, pursues and grapples the robed woman but she breaks free and escapes
• Tikva returns and climbs to the second story where she uncovers Click hiding
• Click claims he is innocent but Mother orders his pockets emptied and finds a number of purses
• Mother takes Click's stolen goods and threatens to give him to the guards if he doesn't join Tikva's crew and help her

Waterdeep Dock Ward, midday

• Giles cheers up Darmond with a magic trick, handing him two business cards and then turning one of them into the 6 of Clubs
• Confused, Darmond turns to Nova who gives him a different card with an inspiration message on it

  THE ROAD GETS STRANGER WITH COMPANY

  You do not have to know yet why your paths crossed.

• Darmond doesn't understand but finds tiny notes with inspirational messages delightful and endearing
• Sahra asks the bartender if they've seen anybody who can do this, and draws illusory shadows on the bar, the bartender says no
• Nova plays Darmond a tune to calm him down
• Giles recalls that Jo uses pigeons to send letters and organise her business and goes outside to find some pooping on a windowsill and comes back inside
• Darmond swears the goblins who stole his wagon are south of Waterdeep but Nova's vision saw goblins amongst sword-like mountains which are north
• Darmond says if Giles is looking for Jolene, she's quite famous, her face is stencilled on a lot of Jo's Mowing gardening wagons and carts around the city and gives directions to her office near the graveyard
• Nova, Sahra and Giles go to Jo's Mowing

Jo's Mowing, afternoon

• Jo's Mowing is under the great stairs that lead up to the City of the Dead, the city's graveyard district
• The welcome mat says Beware of the Kitten and the sign on the door says Dive Right In, the Water's Fine
• Down a staircase, underground, the interior walls are decorated with shells, there are shelves of craft supplies, many half painted canvases on easels (all of Jolene), and the ceiling is a swirl of primary colours
• Jolene sits at her desk, a gnomish woman with green hair piled on her head and clipped with a large hair clip that looks like a snail is crawling on her head
• Jo welcomes Giles and says she hasn't seen him in five years (though he only spent one Spring there) and asks how Lord Percy is
• Jo says she got one letter from Giles six months ago that said everything was "tickety boo" (that he did not send) and one letter from Lord Percy yesterday that says he is in need of a new gardener, that once a new gardener was selected, he would send a coach to pick them up
• Nova and Jo ask if Giles could have been in some enchanted sleep like a fairy tale
• Jo says she met Lord Percy while she was travelling (all her paintings depict her in different parts of the Sword Coast) and he offered her wine but she declined because it was too much for her
• Jo shows Giles how she matches up jobs with her workers in a totally fair way to avoid squabbling, a machine that jumbles up and spits out balls with the names of the jobs written on them
• Giles writes a note to send back to Lord Percy along with Jo's reply
• Nova asks Jo about the Sword Mountains and goblins and Jo says she'd rent them a Jo's Mowing cart for half price to help take them up there, but she's heard of goblins south of the city too and suggests they find them first in case they're the same, as bands of goblin bandits are not common
• Jo gives Nova a big praying mantis hair clip
• Giles and Sahra leave to find somewhere to sleep for the night while Nova stays behind to talk to Jo
• Nova asks Jo why Sahra looked like a skeleton at night and Jo relates all the undead creatures she can think of: zombies, ghouls, ghosts, ghasts, vampires and liches, but none of them tend to walk around in the daylight like Sahra
• Jo, worried, gives Nova a spare knitting needle, extra large, for self defence and demonstrates a knee stab
• Jo asks Nova how she even saw Sahra at night, was the moon bright, and Nova mentions the lantern
• Jo inspects the lantern and says it is very finely crafted and definitely magical
• They light it, nobody looks skeletal, but as Jo turns her own lights down, Nova notices the names on the bingo balls change
• Jo suggests they take the lantern to one of the wizard colleges in the city to have it identified properly
• Outside, Giles and Sahra encounter a graveyard keeper, an old man who can't stop staring at Sahra
• Giles asks him why and he says he gets a feeling when he's burying a body and he gets the same feeling looking at Sahra
• Giles and Sahra sleep the night in the graveyard, Sahra directly upon a grave