Skip to content

Laeral Silverhand

Laeral Silverhand

Alliance

OPEN LORD: The Open Lord of Waterdeep isn’t exactly a “minor” faction, but Laeral Silverhand is considerably behind the curve in the current Grand Game. She knows that Lord Neverember embezzled 500,000 dragons from the city, but as Dragon Heist begins she is under the belief that he already has the money in Neverwinter. She has agents working to recover it there, but little hope of succeeding (as she believes it has likely already been laundered into Neverember’s expansive plans for rebuilding and expanding Neverwinter). She has heard rumors of Neverember’s Enigma, but has yet to connect that with the missing dragons, and is also unaware of the Stone of Golorr (although she knows that a powerful artifact was stolen from the palace during the confused time period when Neverember was being ousted from power).

The most likely avenue for that to change — and potentially change rapidly — is through information blabbed to the City Watch. This could happen as early as Scenario 1 (depending on exactly what Renaer and/or the PCs report to the watch), but it’s quite possible for the Open Lord to never fully twig to what’s happening.

OPEN LORD RESPONSE TEAM

Laeral Silverhand has the entire apparatus of Waterdeep’s government at her command. If she wants something from the PCs, that command will trickle down through the bureaucracy and be executed by a local team of city watchmen:

  • 1 veteran (MM p. 350)Laeral Silverhand - Waterdeep: Dragon Heist
  • 4 guards
  • Possibly accompanied by an apprentice wizard (DH p. 194)

DESIGN NOTE

The initial team sent by the Open Lord is designed to be a Medium encounter for the PCs. Which means that the PCs can totally take them in a fair fight (or have very good odds of running away successfully). This intentionally gives the PCs the option of doing so. (Once they do, of course, they’re probably living on borrowed time because the Open Lord has much deeper — and much more powerful — resources to call upon.)

This also means that the City Watch can easily be pitted against response teams from the other factions without trivially overwhelming them.