A Noble Visit
The invitation arrives on a folded square of heavy cream paper, delivered by a liveried runner who bows and vanishes before you've had time to tip him. House Silmerhelve will receive you. Tea, in the garden. Come when you're ready.
You've been waiting two days. You're ready.
Emmith stopped at a market stall on the way over and found something that almost counts as a nice shirt. He's wearing Monty across his shoulders regardless — the great python doesn't know anything about noble visits, and that seems fine. Falkor walks with you in humanoid form: tall, dark, easy in a crowd. Moist draws stares. He always draws stares. He keeps walking.
The Silmerhelve villa is in the noble district near the castle ward — high stone walls, guards at the gate who are expecting you by name. They open the gate without commentary. Inside: carefully kept grounds, a summer garden with a gazebo, the smell of cut grass and something blooming. A woman in her late twenties meets you at the door and leads you out. Her name is Dala Silmerhelve, and she has her father's posture.
Her father is already waiting in the garden.
Olref Silmerhelve is in his mid-sixties. In his prime he was clearly a formidable man — the bearing is still there, the careful attention, the eyes that take stock of a room. He invites you to sit. Tea arrives. Small cookies. He asks after Moist's family, his origins, with the kind of genuine curiosity that doesn't feel like interrogation.
And then you tell him why you've come.
The 77 refugees from Brookside. The empty valley. Westbridge — a town that hasn't existed in fifty years, its farmland sitting fallow because no one stayed to work it. The Helvenblade House, the nearest standing structure in that region, as a base of operations.
Olref goes quiet.
He was born in Westbridge. He was a teenager when the town was destroyed. His family had the Helvenblade House — he calls it a manor, a minor noble seat — and when the war came, he came south, joined the city watch, joined the military, rose. Built something new. The old house has sat empty ever since.
"Wow," he says. "That is very fortuitous our meeting. I would absolutely like to be part of that."
He grants you full use of the house and the surrounding lands. His coffers are available — what you need for the rebuild, within reason, he will provide. He cannot go himself; the years have caught up to him. But his name still carries weight in the Dessarin Valley, and you're welcome to it.
You talk logistics. Supply routes are a problem — the roads south are contested, gnoll lines blocking caravan passage from Goldenfields. Olref thinks aloud in the way of a man who once commanded soldiers: come at it from the north, he says. Through Yartar. There may be a cleaner path.
He is frank about what Waterdeep will and won't do. The lords won't march north. The city's military is for the city. You acknowledge this. You weren't counting on it.
Olref had heard rumors — he asks, carefully, whether one of you is actually a platinum dragon. KeYs confirms it. At Olref's welcome, Falkor takes his natural form.
Olref is quiet for a moment. Then: "Wow. So it is true."
He tells you about the house. When he was a child, Helvenblade House had a caretaker — a bronze dragon, a childhood friend of his. When the war came, the dragon was called away to fight. Olref never heard from him again. He doesn't know what happened. The house eventually became a hunting lodge, then nothing, then just a memory.
Falkor says that finding the lost good dragons — the ones scattered or silenced since the war — is part of his purpose here. He will want to know what became of this bronze.
Before you leave, Olref gives you two more things to think about.
The first: House Belabrenta, which administers the griffin cavalry, has lost a prized griffin. Many in the city believe House Valmora is responsible. The rivalry is destabilizing things. Olref thinks you might be positioned to look into it — outsiders, no skin in the city's political games. He keeps his tone light. "If you'll be in town for a little while, might as well have a look."
Emmith agrees immediately.
The second: there is a small cult operating somewhere on the coast — he's heard them proclaiming the return of Bahamut. He doesn't know their size or their intent. But once word gets out that an actual platinum dragon is walking the streets of Waterdeep, their attention will turn to you. He thought you should know.
The meeting ends warmly. Olref says he cannot wait to see Westbridge rebuilt. You promise to send word.
You walk back through the city with a noble house behind you, a manor in the valley, a missing griffin, and something on the coast you don't yet understand.
Next session: the griffin investigation begins — and the drider warehouse isn't going to clear itself.