After staring dumbfounded for a moment at the new arrivals, Tyrus scrambles to find more alcohol and something resembling clean glasses for the visiting pair.

"I be, I be being sorry about the mess, your ladyships," he stammers. "But we be having an eventful day and not be expecting patrons of such eminence as yeselves."

Briga's jaw drops, immediately recognizing the leader of Force Gray, as she used to be quite a self-described fan girl for the organization, and she also recognizes the Open Lord.  "Oh, we're fired, aren't we?  Like totally fired from hero-ing. Yeah, drinks for everyone."  She pours herself a glass, and then instead pours a second and third, and offers them to Tyrus, Sara and Mairi, Tyrus having seen to their 'guests' with their remaining clean glasses most likely, and takes the remainder of bottle for herself, drinking directly from it.    "Yeah, that was us.  We fought the Nimblewright, and lost.  I fled, Sara almost died. Not our proudest moment, but that's the trend recently."  

"Afraid so."  Saralyssa says, speaking directly to the Blackstaff, as they would probably know each other, with Saralyssa's wizardly studies and her being a sage in the city.

"And the Xanathar Guild and Zhentarim have started coming out of the sewers and causing trouble.  All because of a stupid stone!" the Blackstaff says.  "Tell me, what do the group of you know of the Stone of Golorr?" she asks.

"First I have heard of it."  Saralyssa says with a shrug.

Mairi.exe reboots at the mention of the stone, allowing the investigator in her to put on more a poker face. For now, however, she remained quiet, attentive, and overall not attract any further attention to herself or lack personal understanding.

Briga glances awkwardly to Tyrus. “I, uh, I’ve heard of it. It’s supposed to be the gadget that leads to a bunch of money the corrupt former open lord embezzled from the city, right?” 

After seeing Briga's glance, Tyrus frowns and then shakes his head casually before saying, "Not be ringing any bells with me, I'm afraid. But then I be new to Waterdeep."

[OOC: Upon thinking about this for a while, I would like Tyrus to do an Insight check on the Blackstaff checking for possible Deception: 12 ]

[OCC: Nope. Nothing funny going on here with regard to our visitors...

I'm not going to take back what Tyrus said, but he's now keeping an eye on Mairi and Saralyssa and waiting for the Blackstaff to comment on what Briga admitted.]

[OOC: Yeah, if I'm not mistaking for Briga and Tyrus this would not be the first mention of the stone...]

IC: "That's correct, money that rightfully belongs to the city is being fought over by multiple parties, we don't even know everybody looking for it - just that a construct was seen with it 2 days ago, we have a feeling your rogue Nimblewright is involved," the Blackstaff said.  "As to who it is currently working for, the Zhentarim say it works for the Xanathar Guild, the Xanathar Guild say it works for the sea maiden's fayre group from Luskan and is one of their servants, they say all of their Nimblewright servants are accounted for and are pointing fingers at noble houses," the Open Lord adds.  "In other words, it seems a lot of people are looking for this stone, and I can almost garauntee none of them have the interest of the city in their minds.  After all, that money was embezzled from the city, so should be given back to the city," the Blackstaff interjects.  

"Will you stop interrupting me, Vajra?" the Open Lord says, giving a glimpse of the relationship the two have.  "And for some reason, that Nimblewright caused the fireball outside your tavern," the Open Lord concluded.  

"Unfortunately, whether you want to be or not, because of that - it makes you involved somehow," the Blackstaff says apoligetically.  "My intel does say that someone was trying to deliver the stone here, but not for what purpose," she says.  

Mairi keeps up her poker face as much as possible. But, the more she learned, the harder it became not to do more than bite the inner part of her lips. The freelancer eventually says, "That explains the explosion before, though not why they would deliver the stone here of all places." She then glances to Tyrus and Briga with renewed interest out of the corner of her eyes. "Regardless, the deliverer were intercepted, and the stone presumably is now in the hands of whatever or whoever the rogue Nimblewright works for... at least it was, I presume." She then looks to Briga. "Did you ever find out who owned that estate?"

Briga describes the location of the estate, and their earlier attempts to get the guards to aid them in investigating it, thoroughly.  "They said the manor was the Gralhunds' estate, I think that was it.  They claimed the Zhentarim had them hostage for like a tenday or something.  So if they were telling the truth, then that definitely implicates the Zhents on this.   But we've ran into the same thing, the Zhentarim and the Xanathar gang clashing over this stone, and innocent people getting caught in the middle.  It seems like they're all pointing the finger at the others.  I don't know which one has the stone right now, or if it's a third party.  On why they'd choose us, well, up until things started literally and figuratively blowing up in our faces, we were kind of on track as up and coming heroes here.  I've joined the Order of the Gauntlet recently, got knighted and all.  We were able to rescue a friend of the famous author Volo from being kidnapped by the Xanather guild, I think they were after a relative of Neverember's and grabbed the friend by mistake.  Neverember, that's your embezzling guy, right?"  

Tyrus stays mum, still wondering why the Blackstaff asked Briga and himself if they knew about the stone when it had been her who had told the two of them about it in the first place (here). His current thoughts are that the Blackstaff is trying to hide their previous meeting from Mairi and Saralyssa for some reason. 

[OOC: The Insight check I made above, which I assume Tyrus failed, means he doesn't suspect that these two people are villains masquerading as the Blackstaff and the Open Lord trying to find out information about the stone from Briga and Tyrus—which is what I as a player was wondering—but with that failure he is now just confused.]

Quote from phillberrie >>

Tyrus stays mum, still wondering why the Blackstaff asked Briga and himself if they knew about the stone when it had been her who had told the two of them about it in the first place (here). His current thoughts are that the Blackstaff is trying to hide their previous meeting from Mairi and Saralyssa for some reason. 

[OOC: The Insight check I made above, which I assume Tyrus failed, means he doesn't suspect that these two people are villains masquerading as the Blackstaff and the Open Lord trying to find out information about the stone from Briga and Tyrus—which is what I as a player was wondering—but with that failure he is now just confused.]

 OOC: It's been a while - I had forgotten we already met The Blackstaff and they were the one who originally provided the information.  I'll just say Briga is confused, too, and not ret-con any of it.  

"Guessing you aren't here just to dump a lot of interesting information in on us..."  Saralyssa says with a glance between the powerful women.  "What are you wanting from us?"

"Yes, why do you be coming to us?" asks Tyrus, indicating the ruined taproom with a sweep of his hand. "We can't even be keep thieving halfling rats out of our own house. And, we be having lost contact with two of our group, who I be fearing may already be casualties of this war of which you be speaking."

[OOC: Yeah - that was a failed check, but the question about if they heard about the stone was directed more towards Sara and Mairi, who haven't met them or know much about them].

"Well, even I have fallen on my face before," the Blackstaff says, "the adventuring business is a risky one, and you'll find you spend more time closer to death than you would like, unlike our Open Lord here, I don't have as... close a relationship with Mystra..." she says before getting interuptted by the Open Lord "Don't rub in that fact, Vajra.  I am the Open Lord of Waterdeep, my link to Mystra is only somewhat important," Laeral explains.  "But, now to why we are here.  We want you to recover the money for us, or at least find the location of the vault.  We will offer what assitance we can once the location is known, but right now we have no idea where to send people to.  Once we have that, then we can help a lot more easily," she explains.

"So, we have invited someone who has known more than he has ever let on about the stone, he should be here any moment," Laeral says.  That's when, at least to Briga and Tyrus, a familiar figure walks into the ADT.  Renaer Neverember, son of the previous Open Lord, Dagult Neverember, comes into the tavern and nods towards the Open Lord and the Blackstaff, then Tyrus and Briga.  "Good to see you again, so, you wanted to see me, Blackstaff? Is Laeral needing some..." once again, the Open Lord raises a hand "I actually was the one that wanted to have you hear, Renaer - to tell them what you told us about Dalakhar," 

"Oh... him... you know I don't want anything to do with my father," Renaer sighs "I guess as long as I'm being hounded by his spies I won't ever get away from him fully.  Well, one of them was recently in the city - Dalakhar, he'd been watching me for months. Then, about two tendays ago, the spy was suddenly nowhere to be seen. My father isn't a trusting person, but he did trust that gnome," he explains.

"Well, I spoke to a few of Dalakhar's friends. Apparently, he was sent by my father on a special mission to retrieve the Stone of Golorr and was afraid that the Zhents and the Xanathar Guild were close to catching him. When he heard that I got kidnapped, he wanted to hear more about the two of you, and your old two friends after you rescued me. From that, I think his intent was to give you the Stone to look after stone while things cooled down, or even pay you to deliver it to Dagult Neverember.  Unfortuately, ever since the explosion, all of Dagult's spies and Dalakhar's friends have gone into hiding outside of Waterdeep, and I have no idea where," Renear explains.

"But, the stone is special.  I do know about the Stone - at least what it does.  I don't know everything about it - but my father told me that the stone only let you remember it's knowledge while you were in possession of it - in other words, without the Stone, my father doesn't know where he hid the gold, if he did.  He only told me about the Stone of Golorr, but he didn't tell me he used it to hide half a million gold," Renaer tells you.  "That's pretty much all I know about it," he concludes. 

Briga crosses her arms and nods.  "Real good points.  We're kind of in over our heads it seems with some of this business.  If we're going to be of any help, we'll need information, I guess, but also, well, more.  We'll need to be able to actually deal with these issues. Wererats and clockwork swashbucklers - we're not equipped for this stuff.  We have like two silvered weapons between us, and that's assuming Mairi is crazy enough to get involved.  The kind of stuff we're going up against, without proper armor and arms - preferably the magic kind - and decent intel, hate to say it but we could be more of a liability than an asset if we're not equipped and prepared for this stuff."  

OOC: I posted the above before I saw the post above it, but it works well enough still in this context.

Briga adds, "That does explain a bit, maybe, what was going on with the gnome and the explosion outside.  So, if I'm keeping up with all of this, maybe the gnome was trying to deliver the stone, someone blew him and a whole street full of people up with a fireball from that necklace to stop it from getting here, and maybe that nimblewright ran off with the stone?  I mean, that's pretty close to what we were thinking, but it does fill in a lot of the blanks."