Old Xoblob Shop
This curiosity shop is filled with lots of battle trophies and souvenirs from Undermountain. The shop is untidy and ill-organized but worth a look, if only to see the stuffed beholder for which the shop is named (hanging by the main counter). The proprietor, Dandalus Ruell, loves to tell the tale of his victory over Old Xoblob.
"The Old Xoblob Shop is a curio shop little known outside Waterdeep, but famous in the city for its trophies of battle, adventuring bands, and exotic, faraway places. From drow sculptures to the huge, eyeless, stuffed beholder that overhangs everything, the shop is crammed with an untidy assortment of blades, treasure maps, coils of rope hundreds of feet long, statuettes of forgotten make and mysterious origin, and more. The shop is named for the beholder, killed by the proprietor in single combat long ago. Xoblob is all he could pronounce of its name.
This treasure trove is next door to the Purple Palace festhall, on the northwest corner of the meeting of Fillet Lane and Slut Street. Just two doors down from the Dock Ward outlet of Auroras Realms Shop Catalogue Counter, the Old Xoblob Shop carries all the things the catalogue chain doesn't, from lizard man tribal boundary marking poles to dwarven runestones bearing treasure messages. For adventurers and con artists, it's the place to find all those necessary props that no one else sells anywhere!" -Volo
The Old Xoblob Shop is a curio shop little known outside Water- deep, but famous in the city for its trophies of battle, adventuring bands, and exotic, faraway places. From drow sculptures to the huge, eyeless, stuffed beholder that overhangs everything, the shop is crammed with an untidy assortment of blades, treasure maps, coils of rope hundreds of feet long, statuettes of forgotten make and mysterious origin, and more. The shop is named for the beholder, killed by the proprietor in single combat long ago. Xoblob is all he could pronounce of its name.
This treasure trove is next door to the Purple Palace festhall, on the northwest corner of the meeting of Fillet Lane and Slut Street. Just two doors down from the Dock Ward outlet of Aurora's Realms Shop Catalogue Counter, the Old Xoblob Shop carries all the things the catalogue chain doesn't, from lizard man tribal boundary marking poles to dwarven runestones bearing treasure messages. For adventur¬ers and con artists, it's the place to find all those necessary propsThe Old Xoblob Shop is a tall, ugly old stone and timber build¬ing. 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 propri¬etor, 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, contain¬ing a bucket flush jakes, which is connected to the sewers via foot- treadle trapdoor, a kitchen, and a row of huge wine casks. Danda- lus 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 sp/glass or 1 gp/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 sec¬ond level of the dungeon of Undermountain brings adven¬turers (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 para- lyzation. He has standing ar¬rangements with Khelben Arunsun and with the manager of the Three Pearls Nightclub, Xandos Waeverym, for the dis¬posal 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.
This backup wand, Elminster reveals (he made it), is a special wand of magic missiles. Each triggering releases a burst of either 6 or 12 bolts (as the wielder mentally directs: half or full power). The wand is linked to three other wands hidden inside a wall of the shop and can call on their charges via a special linkage—so each missile drains a charge in the usual way, but the wand in effect has 300 extra charges to expend!
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.
phies, 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, no¬guarantees 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 booby- traps to deter miscreants, includ¬ing 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.
The Prospect
The Old Xoblob Shop is perhaps the best source of curios, tro-
The People
Dandalus "Fire-Eye" Ruell is a balding, bearded, big-bellied fellow who's always cheerful and sees life for the long running joke that it so often is. He makes no enemies. Those who attack or swindle him he merely charges double or more. He is always clad in breeches with bulging pockets, sometimes overlaid by an apron whose pockets are just as crammed. The pockets' contents always include a selection of lockpicks, skeleton keys, small tools, and garment pins for distressed ladies with torn garb.
Arathka Ruell (lovingly called Rella by Dandalus) tends to the cleaning and cooking, but is just as charming and learned a shopkeeper as her man, if qui¬eter. 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 protec¬tive 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.
Travelers' Lore
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 adven-turing, 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 com-batant involved. When an arriv¬ing 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.
For details of the arsenal of magic Dandalus carries on his person, see the “Folk of Waterdeep" appendix at the back of this book.
The “Folk of Waterdeep" section also speaks of Arathka's faith and powers. Elminster knows all.
Any attempts to charm Hlondaglus to do anything hostile or harmful to the Ruells will automati¬cally break the spell and goad Hlondaglus into a killing rage.
The Old Xoblob Shop, the gate linking it to Undermountain, and the driftlight magic item are all detailed in the Campaign Guide to Undermountain, in the Ruins of Undermountain boxed set. See page 12 for an illustration of Dandalus and page 115 for driftlight details.
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