The Grand Game

The Hype Squad

An adventuring party pulled into the Game by happenstance—specifically, a kidnapped friend, a missing artifact, and a burned-down city block. They now stand at the center of a conspiracy that spans factions and planes. Despite being wanted for the deaths of dozens of city guards, they maintain curious allies: Harpers, Bregan D'aerthe, even certain Black Network cells. Some call them heroes. Others call them dangerous.

The Cassalanters

Aristocrats with infernal secrets and financial claws buried in every corner of the city. Their influence appears to have shaped Waterdeep's declaration of martial law, following the Hype Squad’s disastrous clash with the guard. Though they rarely move openly, their reach is long, and their gold longer.

The Harpers & The Zhentarim

Long-standing enemies forced into fragile cooperation following the devastation of the War of Dragons. A clandestine treaty—The Concord of Three Blades—now binds them against common threats. Not all agents are pleased with this arrangement, but for now, they share intelligence and targets. Whether they will share survival remains to be seen.

Bregan D'aerthe

A drow mercenary band led by the flamboyant and brilliant Jarlaxle Baerne, who backs the Hype Squad after they traded him a recovered Manshoon spellbook. In return, he aids their endeavors and uses their growing fame to push for Luskan’s entry into The Lords' Alliance—a move that would legitimize his city, his rule, and his ambitions.

The Xanathar Guild

Once passive observers, this underworld syndicate unwittingly held the Stone of Golorrand two of its three eyes, unaware of their true importance. When the Manshoon’s Zhentarim stole one of the eyes, it set off a chain of events that drew the Hype Squad into the Game. The Guild retained the final eye until the Hype Squad led a daring strike deep into the Xanathar’s lair and reclaimed it. Though battered, the Guild still lurks beneath the city, licking its wounds and watching the board shift.

The Lords of Waterdeep

Their silence is as strategic as it is unnerving. Some say Laeral Silverhand plays a deeper game than anyone realizes. Others believe the Lords are fractured, compromised, or simply overwhelmed. The only certainty is that Waterdeep’s highest powers are no longer neutral.

The Game is not played for coin alone. The victor—or survivors—will reshape the very structure of power in Faerûn. The threads of the Game bind many interests:

• Ancient Magic & Hidden Vault
  
• Rewriting Alliances (Lord’s Alliance, Black Network, etc.)
  
• Succession among Waterdeep’s noble houses
  
• Infernal contracts, divine favor, and deadlier secrets
• 500,000 gold pieces

No one plays the Game without risk. Many never realize they’re playing until they’ve already lost.

“A memory-thief shaped like a pebble. Harmless to hold. Catastrophic to know.”
— Leosin Erlanthar, Spirit Wyrmspeaker

The Stone of Golorr is a sentient, alien artifact once possessed by the aboleth Golorr and later twisted into a vault key by infernal and arcane meddling. The object resembles a smooth, dark-green stone with faintly glowing lines running across its surface. However, when fully awakened with its three Eyes, it pulses with living hunger — for secrets, for schemes, for sacrifice.

In the Grand Game, the Stone was the prize that triggered a multi-factional war in the streets of Waterdeep. It held knowledge of the Vault of Dragons, the legendary cache of gold embezzled by Lord Dagult Neverember. The Stone’s memories were fragmented, and only with its three Eyes — detachable crystal nodes — could its full power be accessed.

Its capabilities are best summarized as follows:

• Erases knowledge of people, places, and things from existence (including from records and magical memory).
• Stores information stolen this way, retrievable only by its bearer.
• Serves as a planar key to locks — most infamously, the Vault.

In the early phase of the Game, the Xanathar unwittingly held the Stone and two Eyes. One of these was stolen by Manshoon’s Zhentarim, drawing attention to the artifact and beginning the slow ignition of chaos that would follow while the Cassalanters would obtain the third in secret, hidden away in Lord Neverember's late wife's tomb.

“There are places in Waterdeep that sit in plain view, quietly rotting reality from the inside out.”
— The Librarian

The Kolat Towers, nestled unassumingly in the Southern Ward of Waterdeep, had long been presumed abandoned. Its twin towers were relics of a forgotten magical dynasty, sealed off by wards so ancient that even the Blackstaff paid them no heed. Few knew the truth: the towers were a veil — a façade masking the entrance to a demiplane fortress constructed and occupied by Manshoon.

This hidden sanctum served as the nerve center for Manshoon’s True Zhentarim, a splinter cell of fanatics, clone-loyalists, and arcane zealots bent on restoring the Zhentarim’s original dominance under his absolute rule. Within the demiplane, time ran differently, and the arcane density made teleportation unreliable — a trap disguised as a sanctuary.

The Hype Squad, aided by a strike team of Harpers led personally by Leosin Erlanthar, launched a multi-pronged incursion into the towers after uncovering one of Manshoon’s Eyes of Golorr hidden within. Their objective: to recover the Eye, unravel the demiplanar anchor, and weaken Manshoon’s ability to manipulate the Grand Game from his hidden seat.

The raid was ultimately successful. The Eye of Golorr was secured, Manshoon’s operations were critically hampered, and the Harper-Zhentarim accord — The Concord of Three Blades — gained legitimacy in the wake of the victory. The destruction of the Kolat demiplane marked a pivotal moment in the Grand Game, eliminating one of its most insidious players from the board… at least temporarily.

“The tome radiated ambition. Every page dripped ink and ego.”
— Doyen Sump, Alchemist of the Hype Squad

Recovered from the wreckage of a failed Manshoon clone, this spellbook became one of the most sought-after relics during the Grand Game. Dense with arcane formulas, planar glyphs, and theoretical revisions of known spells, the tome is invaluable to any mage — and dangerous in the wrong hands.

More importantly, it represented leverage. The Hype Squad traded the book to Jarlaxle Baenre and Bregan D’aerthe, who in return provided support that decisively tilted the power balance in the conflict. It is widely believed that Jarlaxle intends to use this boon to gain Luskan a seat in the Lord’s Alliance, claiming the heroes’ endorsement as political capital.

The final Eye of Golorr lay beneath the sewers, buried in the bowels of the Xanathar Guild’s hideout. In a move equal parts desperate and daring, the Hype Squad launched a direct assault on the beholder crime lord’s lair. Utilizing intel from Renaer Neverember and support from Bregan D’aerthe, the strike force infiltrated, destabilized, and tore through multiple layers of magical defenses.

The encounter is remembered not only for its daring but for its brutality. While the Xanathar itself escaped (albeit wounded and furious), the Guild was decimated. The Eye was recovered, and the final pieces of the Stone’s memory were restored — opening the way to the Vault.

The detonation that changed everything.

Midway through the Grand Game, tensions between the Zhentarim and City Watch boiled over. A platoon of guards, attempting to intercept the Hype Squad outside Trollskull Alley, were obliterated when the party’s monk, Jacob, unleashed a Necklace of Fireballs with reckless fury. Witnesses claim the act was either defensive or impulsive, but the result was indisputable: over two dozen dead, many of them city guards.

This single act galvanized public outrage, forced the Lord’s Alliance to intervene directly, and gave anti-adventurer factions — particularly the Cassalanters — the excuse they needed to escalate matters.

The fallout from the Fireball Incident was swift. At the urging of House Cassalanter, with subtle backing from noble interests who stood to gain from the chaos, the Masked Lords declared temporary martial law. The City Watch was replaced by the Gray Hands and hired mercenaries. Civilian magic use was restricted. Adventuring groups were heavily monitored, and a warrant was issued for every known member of the Hype Squad.

Despite this, the adventurers remained active. Their allies in the Harpers and Zhentarim attempted to reach them to no avail, as the Hype Squad has struck a temporary alliance with the Manshoon Zhentarim, the Unknown, Seffia Cassalanter, and Bregan D'aerthe who acted as their main patrons in attempting to besiege the Cassalanter Estates.

"History remembers the victors, but I prefer to remember those who almost doomed us by accident—and then, by miracle or madness, made it right.”
—The Librarian

Five years after the War of Dragons ended, Waterdeep sought peace through ritual—an invented holiday, the Feast of Remembrance, celebrating survival. Yet beneath the marble tables and illusion-lit halls of House Cassalanter, that peace rotted. The Cassalanters, high nobles of the city and secret adherents of Asmodeus, planned to exchange their hoarded gold and their souls for the salvation of their twin children, bound by a contract inked in infernal flame.

The Hype Squad—heroes, thieves, and everything in between—had come to suspect this ritual as the final gambit of the Grand Game. Each faction, from the Harpers to the Zhentarim, had their eyes on the Cassalanter vaults, but none realized the true prize was not gold—it was redemption, or damnation.

Two hours before the feast began, three members of the Hype Squad—Doyen Sump, Jacob, and Xanna Twinfield—infiltrated the Cassalanter kitchens under the guise of hired chefs. Their task: purge the wine with antivenom, ensuring the nobles of Waterdeep would not be poisoned as offerings to Hell. In the cellars below, they overheard the screams of a prisoner—Severin Silrajin, the fallen Prophet of Tiamat—bound within a warded circle and tortured for knowledge he refused to share.

Above, Calista Maidel, Ambrose Rosznar, and Hex mingled among the nobles, masked by illusion and poise. Manshoon shadowed them in invisibility, and even the Xanathar, jealous of being outplayed, stalked the gala polymorphed as a man. The air itself was thick with unspoken wars.

The masquerade cracked when the disguised trio slipped upstairs, stealing Ammalia Cassalanter’s journal—a confession, a prayer, and a death warrant all in one. When they regrouped below, Severin offered them a bargain: freedom for an impossible favor. The Squad refused him and descended deeper, toward the temple of Asmodeus buried beneath the estate.

In that obsidian sanctum, Victoro Cassalanter led his cult in the final summoning—a ritual meant to deliver the stolen gold to Hell in exchange for his children’s souls.
But fate, as it often does in Waterdeep, tripped over chaos.

Doyen’s experiments with the Dragonstaff of Ahghairon, recovered from the Vault of Golorr, sent ripples across the Weave that alerted Fenrir Dulok, the Gold Wyrmspeaker of Bahamut. The celestial herald began his flight toward the city even as the ritual teetered.

When the summoning reached its peak, the Hype Squad intervened.
Through quick wit and divine timing, Doyen’s familiar was hurled—quite literally—down Victoro’s throat. The result was cataclysmic: the spell collapsed, the infernal gate inverted, and Victoro was dragged screaming into the Hells by the very power he sought to master.

The temple shook. Blood turned to salt. And for one fleeting moment, Waterdeep’s hellbound nobles were silent.

Above, pandemonium. The Lord’s Alliance, freed from the Cassalanters’ blackmail, stormed the villa in force. Ammalia Cassalanter, in a desperate act of maternal defiance, shielded her children from the chaos—only to be struck down by Ambrose Rosznar amidst the crossfire. Whether it was justice or mercy depends entirely on who tells the tale.

In the chaos, Severin Silrajin broke free. Wrathful and ruined, he summoned his draconic mount and unleashed fire upon the city, cutting a path through the Alliance’s soldiers and the Hype Squad alike. Even Leosin Erlanthar, Enna Baenre, and Hex could not fell him before he escaped into the clouds—his prophecy rekindled, his survival an omen.

In the aftermath, the Squad faced an impossible choice. The Cassalanter children’s souls still hung in infernal balance. Jackob and Ambrose debated offering their own bargains to Asmodeus—until Fenrir Dulok arrived, blazing with Bahamut’s grace, and severed the infernal claim. He declared the twins recommitted to the Platinum Dragon’s care.

Osvaldo Cassalanter, the eldest and long-lost son, was not so fortunate. Slain in the chaos by the Lord’s Alliance and Hex, his body lay cold until Xanna Twinfield, momentarily possessed by her angelic patron Metric, performed the impossible. Through divine will—or perhaps divine defiance—she resurrected Osvaldo as the boy he once was, untainted and human once more.

The Feast of Remembrance ended in ruin. The Cassalanter name was struck from the rolls of nobility; their estate was sealed by the Watchful Order, its vaults sanctified and abandoned. Manshoon and the Xanathar fled, both bloodied but unbroken. The Hype Squad emerged as outlaws in the eyes of the city—but as heroes in the whispered reckonings of the streets.

And somewhere beyond the clouds, Severin Silrajin laughed—a sound like burning parchment and prophecy rekindled.

“Some say the Grand Game ended that night. They are wrong.
Games of gods and gold never end—only the players change.”
—The Librarian