Thread by @TheEdVerse

PART 2
23)
The weary Lords agreed to this, and the wily Ultrumpet began his subtle reign. Under the guise of meeting with Lords to learn their will so he could humbly carry it out, he developed the habit of meeting with small…
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https://twitter.com/oakthorne/status/1201044166949556224

24)
…groups of Lords—meetings that filled most of the days of his forty-odd year reign. Ultrumpet took the Open Lord’s throne in the early summer of 1391 DR, and was assassinated in 1440 DR. The last year of his rule he spent…
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25)
…surrounded by his personally-hired bodyguards, shut up in the inner room of the Palace, as by then all of the Masked Lords had realized how subtly he’d been steering them (some of them had realized this as long as thirty…
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26)
…years earlier, but been unable to do much about it). Under Ultrumpet, the nobles and guilds lost power, all citizens saw cleaner and safer streets, everyone paid more taxes but these were raised so slowly and quietly that…
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27)
…there was little unrest—and more and more real daily power was sapped from the Masked Lords and gathered to the Open Lordship.
Ultrumpet’s slayers were hired by a cabal of nobles, but they merely succeeded where more than two…
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28)
…dozen earlier assassination attempts mounted by various covert groups of Masked Lords had failed. Fearful of an attempt to wrest power by the nobles, the Masked Lords turned to the general populace to
suggest candidates, …
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29)
…causing the expected utter chaos of hundreds of candidates being put forward. However, the Lords plucked a timorous meal-server, a shy young Waterdeep-born woman named Ilmyndra Lhethrus whose quiet but attentive service to…
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30)
…several Lords’ family members had been appreciated, from among all the tumult of promoted candidates, and installed her, hoping for self-effacing innocence and obedience (a pawn who’d get no sly ideas of her own).
They were…
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31)
…right, and although Lhethrus hated the role and sickened under the attention and demands, she served well for sixteen years, resigning in 1456 on her deathbed of ‘dragonback fever.’
Not wanting a return of the tumult or any…
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32)
…candidate of the guilds or nobles in the Open Lord’s chair, the Masked Lords quickly chose one of their own, the moneylender Fandral Daerakus. Many Lords suspected he’d be unable to resist the temptation to dip into city…
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33)
…coffers to enrich himself or expand his moneylending business using city funds, and kept close watch over him, employing hired mages and mundane spies—and they were right.
Daerakus attempted to cover up his misdeeds by…
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34)
…proposing that the city openly lend money to enrich its coffers, under the Open Lord’s direction, but that cut no harbor ice with the Masked Lords, who expelled him for life from the city, not just from the Open Lordship, …
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35)
…late in 1457 DR. (He soon fell in with several unscrupulous traders of Amn who tried to use his inside knowledge of Waterdhavian courtiers and dealings to advance their own enterprises, but they worked through the wrong…
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36)
…guilds, and didn’t get far.)
The Masked Lords swiftly replaced Daerakus with another of their own, the aging and conservative Malthavyn Thunstone, a stolid, honest, unimaginative stickler-for-details whom no one was enthused…
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37)
…about but no one was enraged by. Under his steady hand the city flourished, and he lasted until the doddering wits that afflict some in old age led him to resign in 1462 DR.
Thunstone was quickly replaced by another…
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38)
…citizen-not-of-the-Lords, Hamaera ‘Hammerbrow’ Nalaver, an independent (non-guild-member) designer of cloaks, gowns, and winterwraps of fierce temper, drive, and swift wits. Her rages were many but short-lived, and she held…
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39)
…no grudges; she might be laughing with someone at supper that she’d shrieked at and thrown things at, nigh highsun. Some loved her, and some hated her, but none were bored by her, and she lasted four years, until dying in…
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40)
…what almost everyone believes (and the Watchful Order was called in to investigate, and also believed) was a genuine accident—run over by a heavy-laden wagon in Dock Ward late in 1466 DR, after losing her footing in…
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41)
…fish-slop and sliding under its wheels.
The nobles had been biding their time under her mercurial Open Lordship, and were ready with a candidate of their own and a covert behind-the-scenes vote-buying push to back him, …
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42)
…which quickly succeeded, in large part because their candidate, Dathjet Deepwinter, was an amiable, principled, unambitious, acceptable-to-all young nobleman—who came from a small and not particularly wealthy or encumbered…
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43)
…(by obligations, debts, or alliances) noble house. Dathjet made mistakes but tried to do what was best for the entire city, and explained his reasonings in open Council, which endeared him to many even when they thought his…
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44)
…decisions were wrong.
However, he grew dissatisfied with what he saw as his increasing blunders, and resigned early in 1471 DR, surprising most of the city.
The Lords hastily voted one of their own into the Open Lord’s chair, …
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