Today our group was given instructions to head to Waterdeep, being given express permission for the Syndicate to pay for our teleportation there since we didn't have proper public access yet. After confirming transportation back home, we headed out into the market and made a plan or where to go.

We went to a tevern on the fancier side, the Singing Sword and after everyone ordered a significant amount of food, we spoke with a woman named Lady Gralhund, a noble of Loudwater. Bri scared her off, little tact in asking those questions. But after everyone engorged themselves, we headed out to a place Solia and Arlis knew of called the Yawning Portal.

There we met a goblin, whom Solia immediately insulted, that let us know of a teleportation circle in a crypt at the Road's End. After significant questioning, we headed to the city graveyard, where we met some guards before us but we managed to convince the guard that we were there to grieve a dead friend.

Then we headed down. Entering the crypt and walking down as we go. Arlis ended up stepping on a pressure plate of some kind and braziers lit up ahead of us on platforms and a strange ghast-like creature appeared, calling us to our deaths. Hordes of creatures appeared and they had the the most haunting screech that caused Arlis to be paralyzed in fear.

We managed to defeat the creatures and wandered down, where it went lower and lower. Getting the teleportation circle may be much harder than originally thought. We entered a room that had coffins surrounding all along the edges and the coffins just held heads inside them. A sun dial was in the middle of the room and when Arlis and Bri turned it there was a sound down the hall.

Traveling down that way, we saw a mummified corpse that was moving around, a mummy. It could speak with us and Solia was able to convince it to return to sleep in its coffin. The corpse seemed to be from an ancient tomb and was moved here instead of being from here. There was a coffin that had its name on it, Ahkatument.

Further through the tomb, there was a dilapidated teleportation circle on the ground and it was unusable but we found a bunch of items inside.

Creatures to Learn: Ghast Gravecraller, Graveyard Revenant, Mummy, Mummy Lord, Flame Skull

Party: Arlis, Bri, Sal, Solia, Yashir
Location: Waterdeep

Thrax tasked us to go to Waterdeep to search for a good place to set up a teleportation circle thingy. Not gonna lie, I wasn't sure what the fuck to do and left it up to the others that understood how it worked. More than anything, I was fuckin' excited to go to Waterdeep. The city is FUCKIN' HUGE. We decided to start at the Singing Sword, which was a lot fancier of a tavern than I expected. Sol and Yashir graciously paid for a shit ton of food and drink and we met some weird noble woman. She seemed interested in us enough.

Solia knew of a place called the Yawning Portal and we went there afterwards. From what Solia told me about it, it didn't disappoint! We tried to stick to business though, and ended up meeting a goblin that was.. talkin' about book clubs? Sol was real aggressive with 'em but she seemed to enjoy the conversation, so I dunno. Apparently he gave some information that would help us maybe find a place... but... it was in a crypt in the City of the Dead district. Yeah that was fuckin' suspicious....

We went anyways. The goblin told us there was some spooky shit down there that needed to be taken care of, so we tried to prepare as best as we could And that shit was real fucking scary... We.. we managed to fight 'em all off and then headed further down. We turned a sun dial thing, and then went and found a mummy lord. He's chill though. We call 'em Manny. There was an old teleportation circle down there, but from what we could tell it couldn't be used again... looks like this lead to a dead end... no pun intended. We're gonna have to come back and do some more searching.

27 Flamerule 1502 D.R.

Thrax has called upon us to establish relations with the city of Waterdeep, and to acquire the long-term use of a teleportation circle for the Syndicate at a reduced cost. I have ever avoided the city myself, but Solia was excited for it -- strange for her, as she typically dislikes large crowds -- so I did not especially mind in this instance. Still, I found myself deeply uncomfortable in these environs. It reminds me, as sprawling cities always do, of Calimport, and my memories of that place are not fond.

Upon arriving within the city, courtesy of a very expensive teleportation circle, we were given a long list of laws and the consequences for breaking them, and given also a little bit of intelligence as to some places to seek out the circle we needed. We struck off to what we deemed the likeliest options, but along the way, we toured the city a little bit.

At the Singing Sword -- a very fine tavern where I allowed Solia to talk me into buying a frankly unnecessary amount of food -- we met a noblewoman who could, perhaps, have sponsored our search, had not Bri made an enemy of her. Solia, with Arlis egging her on, then directed us to the Yawning Portal, another tavern-type establishment apparently built upon a vast subterranean dungeon. We elected not to try our luck in that dungeon just yet, but we asked the proprietor about teleportation circles. He knew nothing about such things, but by "fortunate happenstance," we were overheard by a very shady goblin who just happened to have the solution to all of our problems.

Despite Solia's initial... misgivings... we negotiated with the creature, and he eventually directed us to the City of the Dead. There we fought our way through hordes of the undead in a grueling battle that nearly ended badly, before Bri and Salviron Liesel managed to tip the scales in our favor by tipping our adversaries over the edge of a chasm.

At last, after convincing a mummy lord to just... chill... we discovered a broken teleportation circle, completely useless for our purposes. The trip and the time we spent on it were a waste, save for the items and coins we claimed for ourselves. We must simply hope the Waterdhavian law-men are not inclined to view this as tomb robbery, as that is among the list of no-no's.

But we have a lead or two for future endeavors. A waste the trip may have been, but it is not a failure until we stop trying.

-- Yashir adh Rumahr