Milo’s Reconnaissance Mission

The Hand of Destiny woke up the next morning, each person introspective, thinking of yesterday’s events. The others had not known this but Milo had also begun to doubt the good intentions of the Blackstaff. Laeral was the most powerful person in the city, She would be a huge asset in any fight, especially the one that the party had warned her was coming. She should be recruiting all the best fighters not imprisoning them. 

Milo didn’t let anyone know he was leaving and set off for the Blackstaff Tower. He stuck to the shadows, taking a circuitous route to the tower to avoid anyone following him. When he got within eyesight of the building he sent his familiar made of earth to search the land for him. Changed into a small brown bird, the familiar soared towards the tower. It wove and bounced through the air currents ensuring that it looked like a real bird in flight and making sure to not approach the tower directly. 

When it arrived at the round walls of the tower it dropped the small knife of returning that Milo owned on a window sill just big enough for Milo to fit on. Milo used his connection to the blade to move to its location. As the knife could come back to him, he could follow his knife. Unfortunately, the panes of glass were opaque and impossible to see through with normal means. Then he spotted a small crack running along the wall next to the sill. He summoned his earth familiar to him and took a moment to transform it into a tiny spider the size of his pinky nail. With a mental command, he instructed the spider to travel through the crack if it could to the other side of the wall. 

The spider began its journey through the crack in the mortar of the bricks. There was a way through to the other side. Once he had sight of the room on the other side of the window, Milo, looking through the eyes of his spider, saw an open spot and Misty Stepped into the empty room. It was a simple storage closet. There were crates lined up and stacked everywhere. He opened one of the crates closest to him and found vial after vial of the liquid red stuff that had killed Aleera. He almost dropped the vial in disgust and fear before calming himself and catching the container. He set it gently back in its spot inside the crate and examined more of the stored containers. 

Every single container was full of the deadly vials. There were at least fifty crates in the storage closet. He was about to send a message to the rest of his group when he heard the sound of footsteps coming closer in the corridor outside the closet. His thoughts were scrambled for a moment before clarity came. With a shrug he pushed over one of the crates and used Misty Step to get back on the window sill outside the stone walls of the tower. Through the panes he heard exclamations as the ones who had entered the closet were met with the sight of disaster. He didn’t want to stay longer than necessary so he used Invisibility and Feather Fall to make his way down from the tower unseen. 

He started running as soon as his feet hit the ground, heading for the Spectre’s Respite and the safety of his friends. The spider clung onto his collar and skittered into a safe fold to avoid being blown off Milo’s body. He got back to a party in an uproar. The surviving Casslanter children were missing. Their doors had been locked from the inside as they had been instructed to do and there were no other visible points of entry that could have been used. Milo shared his own news with the rest of the party and they realized there had to be something going on that connected the two events. Blackstaff Tower and its members were no longer allies. 

The Hand of Destiny made their way through the streets of Waterdeep once more, towards the Blackstaff Tower and hopefully the children they had sworn to protect. As they got closer to the tower they began to feel a low rumbling beneath their feet. Something big was coming from the direction they had come. It didn’t catch up as they ran towards the tower but they could feel it steadily making its way to them. They reached the building and saw nothing out of the ordinary. The tower stood tall and untouched as rain began to fall from suddenly cloudy skies. Around the corner came a monstrosity that robbed the party of speech in their horror.