EdGreenwood

LOST LORE OF THE REALMS #22

Added 2025-10-06 20:16:17 +0000 UTC

I present my latest unearthed Realmslore, for your entertainment.

Waterdeep features prominently, this time around.

Enjoy!

TREATMENT OF HUMAN REMAINS IN WATERDEEP

If no one's trying to hide a body (or found bones), the Watch is always called. (Most Waterdhavians will be suspicious if they know someone died, but don't see/hear about the Watch being called.)

Responding Watch officers ask questions (and search the scene, if necessary) to write up a report (likely cause of death, identity of deceased, precise location found, conjectures/witnesses, and anything unusual). This is to be turned in, to the duty clerk of the Open Lord (at the Palace) without delay. It will be read by the senior clerk and the duty Watch liaison officer stationed in the Open Lord’s office immediately. Laeral, Elminster, and/or the Blackstaff and the Watchful Order will be alerted if hostile magic involvement is suspected. (If a spell is small-scale and “personal,” rather than a city-wide threat, likely Laeral’s personal amanuensis and whoever the on-duty reception officer at the Watchful Order headquarters will be the only individuals immediately alerted. One exception: if a noble family, the Xanathar’s forces, or any other organization, from a guild to the Zhentarim, is suspected to be involved, Elminster (or an acting security chief, if Elminster is away on Chosen work) will be informed in a timely manner.

Unless any of the above order the body be “retained” for their examination (in particular deep cellars of the Palace cooled by swift-running water nearby beneath the floor), it is then taken to a temple (usually, unless the deceased are clergy, paladins, or known devout worshippers of another deity, the Waterdhavian temple of Ilmater known as the Pillars of Suffering) for an autopsy (mainly seeking poison, unusual items ingested or otherwise within the body, and concealed pregnancies). However, if magic is suspected to have been involved in the death, the remains are instead conveyed in a closed casket (a repurposed caravan strongchest, not an obvious coffin) to Castle Waterdeep, for a Watchful Order-assisted Watch autopsy).

Only when the autopsy is complete are kin to the deceased (if none are known, business partners or fellow guild members) contacted for burial wishes. The choices are a temple burial (expensive, as space is limited), cremation (conducted by a city temple, but cheaper; ashes scattered by temple or returned to kin, if kin desire), “vanishing” (the body is taken by wagon to the Rat Hills for critter nibbling in cages to derive bare bones, which are then put into a bone box and given to kin for their choice of handling). Many city guilds have an interior “memorial wall” upon which the names of members in good standing are inscribed, but City of the Dead interment or other memorials are up to (and must be paid for) by kin of the deceased.

The completion of the autopsy also triggers Palace courtiers to settle or “convey” rents and debts, disperse personal effects, check on reassignments of deeds or co-ownership business shares, and so on (what we in the modern real world often call “probating a will”).

THE HARPELLS OF LONGSADDLE

This infamous Gifted family are legendary for their eccentricities and what many deem their “reckless” use of magic.

Most Harpells mean well, except when angry, but the way they live their lives (constantly experimenting with magic, and trying to use magic to do many daily tasks, often by trying to cast “on the fly” variants of existing spells) generates a lot of chaos. Malchor Harpell remains the most respected family member; he was the wise, mature-beyond-his-years leader and tactical thinker and considerate foresighted wizard of the Company of Crazed Venturers.

The Harpells are bright, restless, creative spellcrafters; they're always creating. Sometimes fixing spells that don't need to be fixed—and often doing things that make no sense in terms of cost or time involved, just because they want to have, say, a leaning turret.

THE NOBLE HOUSES OF WATERDEEP IN 1501 DR

For years (the early and mid-1300s DR) the nobility of Waterdeep were a stable number of houses. In the novel Blackstaff Tower by Steven E. Schend, we saw that several noble houses had been combined (Phull and Ulbrinter becoming “Phulbrinter,” and so on).

Now, in 1501 DR, almost all the combined noble houses have spawned “throwoff” houses bearing the names of their component families, and almost all of the “dead” (extinct) noble houses are back.

In a very few cases, relatives from distant farflung places all over Toril returned to claim them (and were able to prove those claims), but most noble houses were “restored” by the selling of noble titles (as seen in the novel City of the Dead by Rosemary Jones). Lord Neverember saw this practice as an excellent way to line his own pockets, swell city coffers, and reward supporters (at the same time increasing his influence among the Masked Lords in future, as he could put forward candidates for lordship from among “his” new nobles—that is, folk he ennobled, who came from Neverwinter or who were his business associates, or who owed him money or favors).

There are, of course, many unhappy nobles grumbling about how Waterdeep has "fallen" from what it once was, “in my greener days.” (And some of them have the coin and drive and nastiness to do something about it. Duels are still outlawed, but city reach extends only as far as the Watch patrols, and “accidents” still happen. Often.)

THE WORKING LIVES OF HIRELINGS IN THE REALMS

Shopkeepers, laborers (loaders and unloaders on the docks and at warehouses), and “guilded” apprentices receive no official “off days,” but temple and local civic festivals (which are days off for everyone) are many, and it’s understood that workers need time off, so almost all businesses are staffed in shifts to make this possible. (Some guilds formally require this.)

Most workers in cities—as opposed to farms—get a half-day off every third day. Most apprentices have this written into the terms of their apprenticeships. (This is a social norm, not a “goodie” won through hard bargaining.)

Waterdeep has a “workers’ market” in hospitality and entertainment because no one guild controls that sector. Most taverns are owned by a live-in family, who are therefore “always there” (some family members, at least). Most have paid, non-family-member employees who work a half-day shift (12 bells, or 12 hours), but those shifts are staggered around the clock for taverns that are open more than 12 hours in a day ( that is, almost all of them).

A typical employee would have “four days on and one day off,” and if in poor health or elderly and hurting, this usually changes to “four days on and two days off,” then “three days on and two days off,” and if an employee’s personal condition is worse but they are still valued (and “trusted” is big in Waterdeep), working arrangements become individual deals beyond three-and-two. All employees can dicker with employers (it’s an expected thing) to work more days “on” in a row, in order to get more days off in a row (to make a trip, visit family or nurse a family member, to attend weddings or funerals, and so on).

KILLING IN SELF DEFENSE OR MURDER WITH JUSTIFICATION IN WATERDEEP

In Waterdeep and most of the port cities along the Sword Coast (who during the 1400s DR adopted similar styles of justice to the Deep, if not the same sentences, legal definitions, and particular laws), the circumstances of a death make no difference at all to any charge (laid (aside from not laying it at all), but a great deal of difference to the sentence.

An undoubted self defense slaying (there were witnesses and the magister or “Black Robe” is satisfied as to the circumstances) usually results a tenday exile and minor fine (which is basically paying the court’s time, so levied in an amount in the 20-50 gp range), or a minor fine payment to the family or dependents of the slain.

The magister may add a decree to the sentence, such as "Avoid such-and-such a street for the next month," or “Thou shalt not drink too much” or “Have no more public disputes with so-and-so or in such-and-such a place” to minimize chances of a feud or recurrence.

(DM hint: Player Characters may be readily nudged into sideline adventures by the decrees Black Robes issue on them, in court.)

THE BLUE ALLEY IN WATERDEEP

This deadly “dungeon right out in the open, in public streets” survives because the Watchful Order convinced Open Lord Piergeiron of its usefulness, for reasons the Open Lords since then have agreed with. These are twofold:

1) it can be used to trap and eliminate, harm, or humble unwanted marauders in the city (visiting or otherwise), and:

2) [and this second reason is hardly apparent in the various published mentions of the Blue Alley] it provides “complete healing” for those who dare to try to reach them, by a mechanism deemed too useful by the Order to eliminate, and potentially too dangerous to dismantle: the Alley includes Weave “feedback” areas; small spots in the dungeon visible only as they’re functioning: they glow an eerie blue (we modern real world folk might say “electric blue”) as they completely heal, regenerate, and restore PCs who enter them or “touch” (impinge upon) any part of them.

In other words, the Blue Alley isn’t just a deadly thrill run of waltzing undead and strange conjured images, it can be a ‘bring-the-coinless back from ashes or maimed death to full life’ boon for normal folk who dare to use it for friends, kin, or loved ones.

The full Blue Alley has never been published, and sometimes underlying reasons for things, or how they fit into a society or “how things work locally” gets lost that way. To provide another example: censored out of the published Realms from the outset is a disrespectful peeing statue in Selgaunt of a long-ago would-be local dictator. Although the man’s wealthy descendants are still powerful in the city, the statue remains intact and standing because the enchantments on it purify the pumped seawater it emits, into drinkable fresh water that now gets piped throughout the city. Unlike this statue, the Blue Alley partly survives in print, but with an important reason for why its existence is still tolerated lost.

And my original Blue Alley is hard to find; its entrance is completely cloaked by the illusion of a “solid, dirty wall” of an old stone building, and a hired street person always lounges nearby, watching who approaches. Anyone can walk right into the Blue Alley if they can find it.

...and the "wouldn't fit" tags this time are:

#rents

#self defense

#Selgaunt

#selling noble titles

#sentence

#shifts (staffing)

#shopkeepers

#statue

#Sword Coast

#taverns

#temple