The Session Sagas

The living, breathing history of The Six-Fingered Hand, as sung by The Skald.

Session Saga — 6th Mirtul, 1496 DR

As sung by The Skald, Keeper of the Living Flame

I. The Saga of the Undershrine

Hear me, you who sit by dying fires. I will tell you of the night the Six-Fingered Hand walked beneath Waterdeep, where the city's memory rots into shadow.

It always begins with an arrow. In the reeking dark of the sewers, the kobold guides planted their feet and refused to take another step. Ahead, the shadows writhed—a sickening mass of disembodied limbs, crawling and grasping without purpose. The party did not flinch. Bain stepped into the darkness, drew his bow, and let fly a single shaft of radiant fire. The blinding light consumed the swarm, burning flesh to ash and leaving nothing but a jagged hole in the earth, dropping into an ancient abyss.

They descended into the dark. Rem defied the pull of the earth, floating downward with Skacel in his grasp. Bain, for reasons known only to himself, executed an immaculate cartwheel upon landing, kicking up the sand of the crypt in a display of utterly unrequested acrobatic perfection. Ergic commanded his silken rope to knot itself, and the rest followed.

At the bottom, shattered boards bore a prophecy written in blood: Beyond the Pillar Forest, the Mad Mage waits, casting spells behind magic gates.

They filed the warning away and pressed deeper. They entered a sprawling cathedral of damnation. Stone pillars rose to the ceiling, the walls meticulously carved with the foulest hierarchy of the Abyss—Balors, Mariliths, and Glabrezu, staring down with dead eyes. On the southern wall, an arrow pointed toward a stairwell beneath the blunt warning: CERTAIN DEATH THIS WAY →. Yet, the true threat was unseen. Bain, Ergic, and Rem felt a cold intelligence brush against their minds, sifting through their thoughts with the clinical patience of a scholar. The unseen eye lingered, then faded, but the feeling of being watched never left them.

Curiosity drew Skacel into a flooded side-chamber illuminated by the unnatural purple glow of a hollow statue. As he waded in, the dark water erupted. A Grey Ooze launched itself at the Cleric, wrapping him in searing acid. The metal of his armor hissed, irreparably eaten away. Death was seconds away when Rem acted—not with a spell, but with the snap of a whip. He yelled for Skacel to grab the leather, activated his levitation boots, and violently hauled the Gnome upward. The ooze slipped back beneath the murky water, waiting in invisible silence.

Northward, they found a grim chamber of black-painted pillars mortared from human bone. Two tentacled, floating horrors—Grells—slept in the alcoves. The Hand coordinated an ambush of terrible beauty. Bain and Rem struck from the shadows, waking the beasts with a rain of steel and fire. But the dark extracts a price. One Grell turned on Rem, its tentacles and tearing beak delivering a near-fatal blow that brought the Ranger to his knees. The ensuing melee was desperate and bloody. Ezekiel’s mace crushed bone, and Bain's scimitar of speed finally severed the first beast's life. Nix ended the second with a blast of eldritch force so absolute that it detonated the creature, showering Rem's face with viscera he would not notice until hours later.

Further in, they found the ghosts of Waterdeep. Six statues of noblemen stood in quiet vigil, their names desecrated in chalk and replaced with mocking Goblin script. Amidst hobgoblin bones, they discovered a broken white staff radiating faint, lingering magic, which Ezekiel secured in his Portable Hole. Nearby, a crude alarm made of stacked ceramic plates betrayed the presence of cautious, living inhabitants.

Then came the breathing. Slow. Rhythmic. From behind a heavy door.

Inside, two rusty lanterns illuminated eight bedrolls. Four bandits slept. One watcher sat awake.

There was no grand strategy. Ezekiel, his strength amplified by the enchanted giant's belt he wore, simply kicked the door off its hinges and charged. It was a terrifying judgment of righteous fury. He shattered the first bandit he reached with a divine smite, his momentum carrying him forward to crush the skull of another sleeping bandit before the man could even open his eyes. Skacel tickled another awake.

The watcher, reacted to a screamed profane command from the wakened bandit. Bain answered by running along the wall—a feat of breathtaking agility—to deliver a crippling flurry of strikes. But the watcher did not fall, its flesh knitting in a way no human's should. It was a Doppelganger.

Then Nix spoke. She announced her intent to do something incredibly stupid. Rem enthusiastically agreed. She unleashed a torrent of dark magic, detonating a sphere of crushing, necrotic tentacles within the crowded room. Ezekiel and Skacel weathered the blast. The final bandit was pulverized against the stone. The Doppelganger was hurled into the corner, bloodied, battered, but still drawing breath in the flickering light.

And there, the story holds its breath.

II. The Map of Whispers

Unresolved Hooks:

• The Doppelganger is cornered but alive in the Bandit Chamber. The battle is paused in the darkness.
• One bandit was kept alive for interrogation. The party must extract the truth of their presence beneath the city.
• The southern corridor of the Pillar Forest, marked CERTAIN DEATH THIS WAY →, remains unexplored.
• In the Northern corridor, a faintly glowing longsword was found stabbed into a wooden armor stand beneath ceiling vents that echo with distant voices. It was examined but left behind.

Intrigue & Rumours:

• The Undershrine is not a forgotten tomb; it is an active, paranoid hideout. The secret doors, the plate alarm, and the Doppelganger on watch indicate an organized operation.
• The psychic presence in the Pillar Forest actively read the minds of Bain, Ergic, and Rem. An unseen intelligence is monitoring the party.
• The bloody graffiti names the "Mad Mage". Does he truly wait behind magic gates, or is this the fearful scribbling of a doomed trespasser?
• The Grey Ooze still lurks in the flooded chamber, its acidic hunger unsated.

III. Echoes of Valor

Bain — The Wall-Runner: From the casual execution of a perfect cartwheel, to the single arrow that obliterated the undead swarm, to a breathtaking wall-run that ended in a flurry of scimitar strikes against the Doppelganger. Bain moved through the darkness not as an intruder, but as its master.

Ezekiel — The Righteous Breach: The Paladin did not wait for a plan. Empowered by giant's strength, he kicked down the door and delivered a devastating charge that ended two lives in the span of a heartbeat. It was a raw, terrifying display of divine violence.

Rem — The Lifeline: When the acidic ooze began digesting Skacel and his armor, Rem bypassed magic entirely. With a whip, levitation boots, and sheer physical ingenuity, he hauled his companion from the jaws of a horrific death.

IV. The Horizon's Shadow

In a chamber smelling of blood and necrotic ash, a creature of stolen faces bleeds against the stone, while somewhere in the sprawling dark, an unseen mind continues to watch.

Session Saga: The Tendrils Beneath

27th Tarsakh, 1496 DR — Waterdeep, Castle Ward & The Deep Below

As told by The Skald, who was there — or close enough to it that the difference need not concern you.

I. The Saga

Hear me, and remember.

The Six-Fingered Hand stood in the grey morning light of Warrior's Way, and the dead thing before them rose.

It had been a Frost Giant. It had the height of a Frost Giant, the ruin of a Frost Giant, the wounds of a Frost Giant. But the emptiness behind its eyes was something else entirely. Something had threaded itself through the cracks of its broken body — dark coils of necrotic energy, writhing from every wound like smoke from a forge, a puppeteer working meat that should have been still. The Stone Giant lay truly dead in the rubble nearby. This one would not be granted the same mercy.

The party held their ground on a street emptied by fear. The citizens of Waterdeep had fled the moment the giants fell; the City Watch, conspicuously, had not come at all.

It was Rem who struck first — two arrows loosed with precision, guided by a steady hand and a sure eye. Both shafts buried themselves in the giant's mass. Both were swallowed by the tendrils, consumed by darkness, as if the wounds themselves fed the thing controlling it. The giant was unmoved.

Then Skacel spoke, and the light listened.

The deep gnome cleric drove the radiance of his faith into the reanimated colossus — and the tendrils recoiled. They hissed. They retreated from the holy energy like shadows from a flame, the dark communion in the giant's flesh disrupted, momentarily broken. Skacel's voice cut across the din of battle like a rallying horn: "Radiant! Hit it with the radiant!" The Paladin Ezekiel answered. His javelin of lightning sang through the air, reclaimed with a warrior's economy the moment the giant staggered. Ergič, ever inventive, poured the last of his holy water over his crossbow in one fluid motion — blessing the bolt before it even left the string — and sent it after the others.

When the last tendril went slack, when the enormous ruin of the animated giant finally, properly, died in the broken stone of Warrior's Way — the street was silent. Not peaceful. Silent in the way that means something is wrong, and everyone who might say so has had the wisdom to leave.

The party looted the fallen with the efficiency of professionals. Ezekiel stripped a magnificent Frost Giant's Pelt from the ice-rimed corpse — a trophy of considerable worth and considerable weight. Skacel unearthed a Tower Shield +1 from beneath the stone giant's bulk, pressed it once against his chest, remembered he already bore a shield of superior make, and handed it to Ergič without ceremony. Ergič, meanwhile, attempted to harvest something of value from the ape conjured earlier by his Bag of Tricks — and returned with monkey feces, which he chose to view optimistically as a future bartering asset.

Not one member of the City Watch had arrived. No explanation was offered. None was expected.

They rested. The Yawning Portal took them in, gave them rooms, gave them sleep. When morning came, they walked the Castle Ward's magical emporium district with purpose.

Rem's acquisitions told the story of a mind that had seen the sewers coming and prepared accordingly: a Ring of Water Walking for the flooded tunnels below; a Ring of X-Ray Vision for the dark; and a full quiver of new arrows — sixty elemental shafts of flame, frost, and thunder, and twenty explosive rounds loaded with the kind of intent that ends conversations. Ergič took up the Tower Shield, less for the protection it offered and more, one suspects, because it gave him something to hide behind while composing his next verse.

Then they went down.

The hatch was unremarkable. A circle of iron in a Waterdeep street, surrounded by the city's noise and its smell and its life — and then below it, another world. The Waterdeep sewer network stretched out vast and dripping and dark, maintained by small, scaled, contract labourers who had been living with a problem the surface had chosen not to see.

The Kobold Card Den was a side-chamber off a maintenance tunnel — a table, a fire, six Kobold workers spending their off-hours flinging copper coins with tremendous seriousness. Bain saw the coin slot in the wall, produced a gold piece — an act of extravagance so extreme to Kobold sensibilities that it nearly constituted a diplomatic incident — and sat down to play. He won fifty copper from them through sleight of hand so practiced it bordered on instinct. The Kobolds were delighted. The rest of the Hand were less certain what to make of a man who had just robbed the most impoverished gambling den in the city and looked pleased about it.

But Ergič and Ezekiel, who shared the Draconic tongue with their small new friends, learned what mattered: the tunnels further in were not safe. The Kobolds had been sending reports upward for some time. The undead things had been manifesting — growing in number, spreading outward — and no one from the surface had come. For ten gold pieces between six of them — a fortune in copper-world economics — they would lead the party as far as they dared.

They did not dare very far.

Around a single corner, the Kobolds stopped.

Ahead, in the low light of the tunnel, a mass of severed limbs moved. Hands without arms. Arms without shoulders. Legs that crawled. A Swarm of Zombie Limbs — all of them pulsing with the same dark energy that had threaded through the giant's body on Warrior's Way, the same corruption that had been dripping upward through the city's foundations for weeks. The Kobolds stared. One of them said something in Draconic that translated, roughly, to "This is what we have been telling you about."

Skacel looked at the swarm. The swarm crawled.

"Well," said the cleric, rolling his shoulders, "we're here now, baby."

The Fates smiled. The torches guttered. The session ended there.

II. The Map of Whispers

Unresolved Hooks

• The Swarm of Zombie Limbs — The necrotic entity animating severed limbs in the sewer tunnels appears connected to the same force that reanimated the Frost Giant above. The source has not been found. It is multiplying.
• The Absent City Watch — A pitched battle against two giants in the middle of a populated Castle Ward street drew no guard response. This is not an oversight. Someone is either looking away or holding the Watch back.
• Durnan's Rebellion — The Yawning Portal's proprietor wants the corrupt Council of Waterdeep brought down. He is using the party as his instrument. His full plan remains unspoken.
• Operation Nightshade — The Zhentarim auction approaches. Multiple factions are racing for it. The party's advantage is information; their disadvantage is that Xanathar now knows they have it.
• The Soul Crystals — A collection of great power, partially surrendered to Durnan under duress. The terms of that deal have not been examined closely enough.

Intrigue & Rumours

• Xanathar is watching. The Eye's interest in the party is confirmed and active. Every move above ground is potentially observed.
• The Kobold network knows these tunnels better than anyone on the surface. They have been ignored by the civic structures of Waterdeep. They are, therefore, available — for the right price, in the right currency.
• The necrotic corruption is ascending. What began in the sewers has already reached the city streets in the form of a reanimated giant. Whatever is beneath Waterdeep is growing bolder.

III. Echoes of Valor

Skacel — The Light That Broke the Dark
In the moment that mattered most, when arrows disappeared into necrotic tendrils and the reanimated giant appeared to defy every strike, it was Skacel whose faith found the weakness. Radiant energy caused the darkness to recoil. His rallying cry turned the tide of the battle on Warrior's Way — and his instinct, not any weapon, was the decisive act of the engagement. The gods of the deep gnome were watching. So was everyone else.

Rem — The Patient Arsenal
Where others improvise, Rem prepares. The morning's shopping in the Castle Ward magical district was not indulgence — it was doctrine. Elemental arrows for every threat. Explosive rounds for what the elements cannot handle. Water-walking rings for the flooded unknowns ahead. X-ray vision for the tunnels' dark. When the Swarm awaited them around the corner, Rem was perhaps the only one of the Six-Fingered Hand who had come specifically equipped for it.

Bain — Copper, Not Glory
The Rogue descended into the bowels of Waterdeep, sat down at a table with six Kobold labourers who between them carried approximately the GDP of a small mudpatch, and relieved them of fifty copper pieces through sleight of hand so smooth it barely registered as dishonest. His companions were many things in that moment. Impressed was not chief among them. The legend of Bain endures. Today it endures slightly richer.

IV. The Horizon's Shadow

Something in the deep beneath Waterdeep is not merely rotting — it is reaching, and the Swarm of Zombie Limbs that blocked the tunnel ahead is not an ending, but a threshold, and what lies beyond it has not yet decided whether the Six-Fingered Hand are worth its attention.

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