Temple of Good Cheer
Located within the three-story row house just off the corner of Fishwife Alley and Slop Street, the Temple of Good Cheer is little more than a few common rooms on the second floor. Accessible from the streets (an external stairwell leads here from the south face off Weeping Maiden's Run), the Temple is also the home of Arkiem and Rachel Arren, respective priests of Milil and Lliira. It is usually first noticed by the fact that this part of the building is occupied and kept clean, as opposed to the vacant, decrepit lower and topmost floors; Arkiem and Rachel are saving money to purchase the building from its owner to fix up the entire building and establish a more proper temple, not just a temporary plaque of their holy symbols in a window. The entire western third of the building is one long room used for dance classes. The southeast room at the top of the stairs (inside and out) is the makeshift temple, large silver holy symbols mounted high on a wall swathed in red velvet. On the east side of the building is a small room for Arkiem's classes and instruments, with the remainder of the rooms being interconnected as a living suite for the married couple.
They rent the entire center floor, using various rooms for mutual worship and dance and music instruction. Both of them take donations to teach the local young (and old) adults their skills, and many have benefited from these lessons; in fact, while Rachel is embarrassingly modest about her skills, her rare knowledge of Rashemite, Tethyran, and ancient elven court dances have sparked a resurgence in them at balls of nobles and commoners alike. Rachel's dance classes range from court dancing and proper dances for balls with nobility to ancient folk dances and celebratory peasant dances from all over the Realms. She takes care to show her students how Lliira's patronage of joy and happiness is reflected in dance; to the chagrin of some male students, however, she does not teach or reveal the fabled, hedonistic dances to Lliira unless among fellow devout worshipers at closed ceremonies. Arkiem is able to teach about three students at a time in stringed instruments of any type (as an elf, he has had over two hundred years of study . . . ) and is quite adept with flutes. He has on hand two additional lutes, one small lyre, and a set of pan pipes for students to use but not remove from the building. The songs he teaches are, for the most part, common ballads, though he has taught a few elven ballads (though they lose much of their beauty if translated from Elvish).
The Arrens only moved into the Adventurer's Quarter six months ago from outside the city, and are still relatively new to Waterdeep. They know quite a few people within this ward and have slowly begun to learn Waterdeep's intrigues and mysteries outside of their little neighborhood. Much of this comes from Arkiem's nightly performances at The Safehaven and Rachel's tutoring of young noblewomen.
