Old Xoblob Shop

The Old Xoblob Shop is a tall, ugly old stone and timber building. Windows are few and dust is plentiful. The street-level floor of the interior is the shop, one huge

room with exposed ceiling beams supported by an irregular forest of pillars. One of the pillars, I’'m told, is hollow. The jolly proprietor, Dandalus, sometimes uses it to hide shoppers on the run from the city watch or foes, keeping a display rack holding two glowing human skeletons in there the rest of the time.

A stair hidden behind the serving counter leads down to a high-ceilinged basement, containing a bucket flush jakes, which is connected to the sewers via foot-treadle trapdoor, a kitchen, and a row of huge wine casks. Dandalus does make his own wine, but one of the casks is hollow. Its front swings open to reveal a hidden room where folk on the run can hide for a fee. A kitchen cupboard has a sliding back opening into the cask, allowing a small person room to squirm out of it or food and drink to be passed in.

Dandulus sells his wine for 2 tp/glass or 1 sp/bottle. He makes a sparkling green - among the best wines I’'ve ever tasted. It’'s worth 10 times what he asks for it.

A broad stair leads up from the shop to a landing, where a narrow stair leads on up to the top floor. Dandalus and his wife live on the top floor in a suite of rooms connected to a roof garden. The landing also opens into a large storage loft that fills the second floor. It is windowless, has a 60-foot-high ceiling, and is usually nearly empty— - a good thing, too, because a teleport from a certain spot on the second level of the dungeon of Undermountain brings adventurers (and sometimes monsters!) here. The chamber is lit by a driftlight (glowing globe), and contains an alarm-gong that rings whenever any weight is added to the room’s floor.

Dandalus usually calls out cheerfully "“Come down smiling! No weapons out, please!”" He also, just in case, reaches under the counter for his wand of paralyzation. He has standing arrangements with Khelben Arunsun and with the manager of the Three Pearls Nightclub, Xandos Waeverym, for the disposal of paralyzed monsters. Adventurers are usually relieved of their weapons, and obvious spellcasters are hand-hobbled and hooded before the paralysis wears off. If the shop is closed, Dandalus or his wife will be upstairs, the wand with them, and will act the same. I’'m told Dandalus has a backup wand that deals damage of some sort.

The top floor apartments are private, but I'’ve learned herbs are grown on the roof, that there is a little bower there for relaxing and romance on soft-starred summer nights, and that the third floor contains at least two guest bedrooms.

The Old Xoblob Shop is perhaps the best source of curios, trophies, and out-of-the-ordinary adventurers’' gear in six worlds according to Khelben, and the wine there is also first-rate. Dandalus cheerfully buys all sorts of bric-a-brac, paying a sixth of its worth. He is especially fond of things he can resell as spell components— - or as genuine, noguarantees magic items.

The shop is not a good place for thieves or the belligerent. The stuffed beholder is hollow, and conceals a hired wizard who can fire a wand of paralyzation out of its mouth to take customers by surprise. (Yes, this is a second wand of the same type. For all I know, Dandalus has a box of them under the bed upstairs!) Dandalus himself is a walking arsenal of magic, his wife has surprises of her own, and the shop bristles with concealed boobytraps to deter miscreants, including some Dandalus can trigger from afar. The shop also sports some not-so-hidden protections, such as an iron golem, Guraim the Gentle Persuader; who stands in a corner of the shop, spending most of his time as a rack for colored, scented candles.

cleaning and cooking, but is just as charming and learned a shopkeeper as her man, if quieter. Unlike Dandalus, she doesn’'t dispense bad jokes and puns by the dozen. She'’s a priestess of some sort, but I never learned what power she serves. She’'s not forthcoming about it.

The wizard hired by the Ruells is an ugly one-legged, misshapen, and therefore very shy, little man who is fiercely loyal and protective of his employers. His name is Hlondaglus Shrim, and he spends all the time the shop is open, from an hour after dawn to two hours after dusk, up in the beholder, eating sandwiches and whittling. He’'s the source of occasional showers of shavings that drift down to settle on shoppers and shop alike.

The wares in this shop have their own lore, hundreds of little tales of dark magic, betrayal, and wild adventures. The shop itself is well-known to neighbors for the deeds of Dandalus, such as the time he wrestled a mimic to death in the street outside and the time a lich came through the gate. Spells in plenty burst out the windows of the shop before the undead creature was destroyed (by Arathka, the whispers say).

Dandalus refuses to go adventuring, but has been known to come to the rescue of friends and long-time customers trapped in Undermountain. He once waded into a brawl started by half-orcs in a nearby tavern, the Sleeping Wench, and laid out every combatant involved. When an arriving watch patrol mistook him for the source of the trouble, he laid them all out cold too. (Once the matter was settled, he treated the patrol to some of his wine.)

This is definitely a shop to collect such tales. Dandalus can tell you the lore or supposed lore of most of what he sells, and can recall the deeds of adventurers in and around Waterdeep for the last 30 years or so. He likes to talk. Those looking for treasure leads should pay him a visit and buy wine to talk over.