“I’m not upping your pay just because you leveled up.” Caravan Master Mook glowered at the three adventurers. “We had—”
“A deal,” Harriet supplied, “and you’re breaking it.”
“I’m not—”
“Oh, are you going back to whatever that port was?” Cassandra smiled at him. “Sure, we’ll escort you back there without asking for more gold.”
Mook waited a beat, then looked at the third member of the party in undisguised impatience. “Well? What’s your thing? Go ahead.”
Jason shrugged, smiling and turning a page in the book cradled in his massive hand. “I’m just happy to be here,” he said happily. “Got my wife with me, got my daughter, got a few new novels to read. When I need to punch things, they’ll let me know.”
“Dad is also here, helping,” Harriet memed.
Mook’s eyes narrowed as he discarded his performative glower. “You’re the one who got the foreman’s Strahd books.”
“Agate.” The others looked quizzically at him, and he looked baffled for a moment. “What? That was his name. Agate. Am I missing something?”
“A Tale of the Vampire Count Strahd von Zarovich,” Cassandra read from the spine in a tone of utter bafflement. “Spice, a Knife, and von Zarovich’s Unlife—the Beholder’s Wife Returns as the Seas Rise and Feywild Calls Its Queen Home.”
“I think I’m missing a few things from when the lady first showed up,” Jason admitted with a furrowed brow. “But the writer is pretty good at giving recaps, and I appreciate that, ‘cause I can’t always remember what happened just a few chapters back, you know?”
There was a moment of pooling silence as his family tried not to snicker. Eventually, Mook broke it with a sigh.
“Three gold per day,” he said firmly. “Harriet gets two more if she works an engineer’s shift, if we need her, which I am absolutely certain we will today. Two gold bonus each for any day we see combat.”
Rolling Insight (Charisma) | 1d20+7
Critical Result!
“Deal,” Cassandra said instantly. “Thanks for being more than reasonable.”
“Mom?”
“It’s a good deal,” she explained. “We don’t need to keep arguing after we’ve gotten offered a good deal.”
“So what’s the plan?” Harriet transferred her momentary ire to Mook. “Nobody’s given us a map. I want an atlas! I had a globe at home, whenever I missed something in Worldle I always looked at the area so I could do better next time.”
“Baldur’s Gate to Waterdeep,” Mook said with a shrug. “One day to get everything ready. Five days on the road, the fourth day passes through the Wastes, so it makes sense we’ll get ambushed there. That gets these crates delivered, and the ore that Trio fellow wants sold.”
“Wait, he doesn’t ship the ore to the port?” Harriet frowned in consternation. “I thought bulk shipping over water was super more efficient than bulk shipping over land, so why does it make sense for him to send it more distance to somewhere that’s, like, not a port?”
“Oh, look at Miss Caravan Mistress over here!” Mook scowled with a far more genuine expression than he had before, and both Cassandra and Harriet flashed back to the times he’d furiously lectured them on his expectations of their behavior or how they were falling short of them. “Let me fucking hear it, then! I’ve been doing this shit longer than all three of you have been alive, but obviously the business I do ain’t efficient, it don’t make sense!”
“Chill, chill,” Harriet protested futilely, holding her hands up.
“Not a port, not a fucking port, it’s fucking Waterdeep, and the girl asks me why we’re shipping somewhere that’s not a port! Sure, let me just give you the whole Gods-damned economics lesson and all the geopolitics and geography you don’t need to know to do your job!”
“Language,” Jason said mildly, leaning against a wall and turning the page of his book with meticulous care.
“I’ll take it,” Cassandra said brightly.
“What?”
“The lessons. I’ll take them!” She beamed at Mook, applying every point of her Charisma. “I’m an anthropologist. Economics, geopolitics, and geography? Yes, please.”
Rolling Persuasion (Charisma) | 1d20+7
“There’s Mom with her grabby-hands brain.”
“Hush, kiddo. Your mother’s working, don’t get in the way.”
Mook didn’t bother acknowledging them. “You work at the Institute under Weiz Mhann,” he said consideringly, staring intensely at Doctor Claire. “That’s why you’re even here. What are you to him? Not family, not a mistress, I’m not that big of an idiot.”
“I’m his pupil,” Cassandra said with a million-watt smile. “He’s my mentor, until I learn everything he can teach me and he retires.”
The silence stretched for a long moment, until it was broken by a loud crunch. Mook grunted as the mood broke, then shrugged. “Fine, whatever, I’ll teach you a thing or two. What the shit are they doing?”
“Eamim—” Harriet flinched as three people glared at her. She hurriedly finished chewing and swallowed, taking a swig of water to wash it down. “Eating popcorn,” she explained as if that was a full and complete answer.
“Moradin’s tits, you three are weird,” Mook muttered. “Whatever. Surge is probably done and Dessa at work, so let’s just go and I’ll explain the basics that anyone should already know, especially some idiot academic under Mhann.”
Jason’s seemingly-sculpted brows furrowed beautifully as he tapped his wife on the shoulder. “Do we know Dessa?”
“My friend, duh!” Harriet poked the side of her father’s knee, snickering. “She’s my best friend in the whole world, except for my family. Yay! I get to work with Dessa some more!”
“I bet she’s looking forward to that,” Jason beamed.
“I bet she is,” Mook growled, and then started walking.
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⁂ ⁂ ⁂
“So, Baldur’s Gate. No, I’ll start with Waterdeep, that one’s easier to explain to someone who’s as ignorant as you all.”
“As you say,” Cassandra murmured, breathing deep as they strode down the hallways of the mine towards some unmentioned destination.
“It’s water deep, that’s the name. Deep as any water goes. Place is run by Shaa Behirbane—”
Behir
Huge monstrosity, neutral evil
Armor Class: 17 (natural armor)
Hit Points: 168 (16d12 + 64)
Speed: 50 ft., climb 40 ft.
Stats: 23 | 16 | 18 | 7 | 14 | 12
Skills: Perception +6, Stealth +7
Damage: Immunities lightning
Senses: darkvision 90 ft., passive Perception 16
Languages: Draconic
Challenge: 11 (7,200 XP)
Actions
Multiattack: The behir makes two attacks: one with its bite and one to constrict.
Bite: Melee Weapon Attack: +10 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 22 (3d10 + 6) piercing damage.
Constrict: Melee Weapon Attack: +10 to hit, reach 5 ft., one Large or smaller creature. Hit: 17 (2d10 + 6) bludgeoning damage plus 17 (2d10 + 6) slashing damage. The target is grappled (escape DC 16) if the behir isn't already constricting a creature, and the target is restrained until this grapple ends.
Lightning Breath (Recharge 5–6): The behir exhales a line of lightning that is 20 feet long and 5 feet wide. Each creature in that line must make a DC 16 Dexterity saving throw, taking 66 (12d10) lightning damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one.
Swallow: The behir makes one bite attack against a Medium or smaller target it is grappling. If the attack hits, the target is also swallowed, and the grapple ends. While swallowed, the target is blinded and restrained, it has total cover against attacks and other effects outside the behir, and it takes 21 (6d6) acid damage at the start of each of the behir's turns. A behir can have only one creature swallowed at a time. If the behir takes 30 damage or more on a single turn from the swallowed creature, the behir must succeed on a DC 14 Constitution saving throw at the end of that turn or regurgitate the creature, which falls prone in a space within 10 feet of the behir. If the behir dies, a swallowed creature is no longer restrained by it and can escape from the corpse by using 15 feet of movement, exiting prone.
“—and don’t get on her bad side. Actually, don’t get on any of her sides, you don’t want her attention, I don’t want her attention. They trade up through the sea into the deepwater, where they trade with everyone who can reach ‘em—fiends like Fraz’Urb-luu—”
Fiends are creatures of wickedness that are native to the Lower Planes. A few are the servants of deities, but many more labor under the leadership of archdevils and demon princes. Evil priests and mages sometimes summon fiends to the material world to do their bidding. If an evil celestial is a rarity, a good fiend is almost inconceivable. Fiends include demons, devils, hell hounds, rakshasas, and yugoloths.
Fiends powerful enough to forge a pact include demon lords such as Demogorgon, Orcus, Fraz'Urb-luu, and Baphomet; archdevils such as Asmodeus, Dispater, Mephistopheles, and Belial; pit fiends and balors that are especially mighty; and ultroloths and other lords of the yugoloths.
“—Gods like Hermes and their blessed, celestials, nagafolk, everyone. Everywhere a day’s trip out from Waterdeep is safe grounds, nobody starts fights, and if any of you do, I don’t care why, I’m handing you over to the Guard. Understand? Someone steals something, looks like they’re gonna start something, you get me or Surge, we deal with it. Someone knifes you, you stand there and smile and let him knife you again, cause he won’t live long enough to.”
“Got it.”
“Got it like you got it last time, Claire?”
Cassandra’s mouth opened to protest. Jason’s hand landed lightly on her shoulder, rubbing a tense muscle, and she breathed out a sigh and shook her head. “I hear you, Caravan Master. And I’ll heed you. What happened then won’t happen again.”
Mook gave her one more glower, then subsided. “Right. Where was I?”
“Baldur’s Gate!”
He turned his head to look at Harriet, who was riding on her father’s shoulders as that half-orc effortlessly matched Mook’s pace. “So I was,” he muttered, returning his eyes to the front as he directed them down the left tunnel in a Y-intersection. “Baldur’s Gate. Gate to all realms, they call it. From there, you can go anywhere.”
“Even—”
“Anywhere in the Material Plane,” he corrected himself, “or the Transitive Planes.”
The Material Plane
The Material Plane is the nexus where the philosophical and elemental forces that define the other planes collide in the jumbled existence of mortal life and mundane matter. All magical worlds exist within the Material Plane, making it the starting point for most campaigns and adventures. The rest of the multiverse is defined in relation to the Material Plane. The worlds of the Material Plane are infinitely diverse, for they reflect the creative imagination of the Demiurge who created them, as well as the heroes who adventure there. They include magic-wasted desert planets and island-dotted water worlds, worlds where magic combines with advanced technology and others trapped in an endless Stone Age, worlds where the gods walk and places they have abandoned.
Transitive Planes
The Ethereal Plane and the Astral Plane are called the Transitive Planes. They are mostly featureless realms that serve primarily as ways to travel from one plane to another. Spells such as etherealness and astral projection allow characters to enter these planes and traverse them to reach the planes beyond.
The Ethereal Plane is a misty, fog-bound dimension that is sometimes described as a great ocean. Its shores, called the Border Ethereal, overlap the Material Plane and the Inner Planes, so that every location on those planes has a corresponding location on the Ethereal Plane. Certain creatures can see into the Border Ethereal, and the see invisibility and true seeing spell grant that ability. Some magical effects also extend from the Material Plane into the Border Ethereal, particularly effects that use force energy such as forcecage and wall of force. The depths of the plane, the Deep Ethereal, are a region of swirling mists and colorful fogs.
The Astral Plane is the realm of thought and dream, where visitors travel as disembodied souls to reach the planes of the divine and demonic. It is a great, silvery sea, the same above and below, with swirling wisps of white and gray streaking among motes of light resembling distant stars. Erratic whirlpools of color flicker in midair like spinning coins. Occasional bits of solid matter can be found here, but most of the Astral Plane is an endless, open domain.
“Well, isn’t that interesting,” Cassandra murmured. The other three people walking down the corridor turned their heads to look at her, and she waved a hand. “Nothing relevant yet, carry on.”
“The Gate’s a relic,” Mook explained. “It drops you one week’s travel from anywhere you want, nobody knows how it works. There’s records of three seventh level spells that can do something like what the Gate does, and if you put all three of ‘em together you’d have Baldur’s Gate. Takes a fifth-level spell scroll to activate it, unless you know the Caravaners’ Guild’s secret.”
“Which is?”
Mook looked over at Cassandra, and then stopped in his tracks to double over laughing. Everyone else stood around awkwardly as he chortled his way to being back in control of himself, and then he shook his head and started walking again.
“Well,” the Sorceress said, “can’t fault me for—Jesus shitfuck.”
“Language, dear,” Jason said distantly.
“Holy assballs,” Harriet whispered reverentially. “Now that is impressive.”
They had finally arrived, after their hours of walking, at Baldur’s Gate.