Without fail, the moment the corpse hit the street Skullport's residents stripped it of valuables as quickly and efficiently as a swarm of fire ants stripped the flesh from anything unfortunate enough to cross its path. Azriim found it amusing.
He and his broodmates had been in the city long enough even to have learned the vernacular and the less-than-sensible geography. Skullport's natives-skulkers, they called themselves-conceptually divided the city into three distinct sections: the Port, which was nearest the bay; the Trade Lanes, which straddled the L- shaped center of the cavern; and the Heart, the darkest and most dangerous area of the city, which stood in the bulb-shaped terminus of the cavern. Each of those sections was further subdivided into subsections to reflect the vertical elevation: lower, middle, and upper. Over the past tenday or so, Azriim learned that the nomenclature was inexact, and that what one person might call the Upper Trade Lanes, another might call the Middle Port. No matter. The city was the same everywhere, whether walking a rickety bridge through a forest of stalactites in the Upper Heart, or elbowing through the crowd of illithids and drow in the Lower Trade Lanes. It was dark, lit only by torches, candles, lanterns, and dim glowballs. And it stank of decayed corpses, wet garbage, and rotting fish.
At every level, the narrow streets and walkways teemed with all manner of hard-eyed creatures: houseless drow mercenaries, white-eyed derro savants, inscrutable illithids, fierce orcs, chattering gnolls, and much worse. Violence was common and bloody, even in public streets, so weapons, wands, fangs, and claws were always bare.
Azriim loved the chaos.
Coffles of slaves, the true coin of Skullport's realm, were as ubiquitous on the lower levels as the drug dens, prostitutes, and muggings. They stood in huddled groups, vacant-eyed and hopeless, awaiting their fates-humans, dwarves, goblins, elves, and creatures Azriim did not recognize. Some would end up as laborers, some as test subjects for chirurgeons, some as food. And even after death, those who were not consumed would continue to work. Zombie laborers were commonplace, especially on the docks. Shambling and stinking, they loaded and unloaded cargo from the many ships that called at the piers of the Port of Skulls.
Unable to help himself, Azriim grinned his mouthful of perfect teeth (even in his current form, he refused to adopt foul teeth or show any eyes other than his natural blue and brown orbs), reveling in the degeneracy of the place. He savored its barely controlled chaos the way he might a fine meal. His only complaint was the filth and the stink. Skullport was the boil on the arse of the world, and it stank accordingly. He would never get his clothes clean. He had not yet been able even to keep them dry. A slow but steady drip of brownish, mineral-laden water fell from the ceiling above, causing the whole city to swell with moisture, and giving the stifling air a mineral tang.
With so many creatures packed into so small a space, the tension was palpable, a temperamental beast that lurked behind every transaction, every word, face, and gesture, waiting to erupt. But for the presence of the Skulls, Azriim knew, the city would long before have devolved into a bloodbath.
Thinking of the Skulls erased his smile and brought a frown to the thick-lipped, doughy face he wore. Skullport's ostensible rulers were almost comically absurd-flying, glowing skulls of all things-but they managed to keep the city under control and the flow of trade continuous. The Skulls kept the violence of the city manageable through the careful, but seemingly chaotic, application of power. Not enough to wreak mass destruction, but just enough to instill the fear of an ugly death. Their spellcraft was paltry compared to the Sojourner's, of course, but still powerful enough to keep the populace from running amok.
To Skullport's citizens, the Skulls were enigmatic, even mystical. To Azriim, they were nothing more than what they were.
When Sargauth Enclave collapsed, the mantle supporting the caverns had absorbed the consciousnesses of thirteen of the mightiest Netherese arcanists killed in the destruction. They later rose from the ruins as the Skulls, the creatures that had given the city its name. For Azriim, the Skulls held no awe. They were simply another obstacle to be overcome on his way to transformation into gray.
Since arriving via a portal in Waterdeep-innumerable portals in Faerun ended in Skullport-Azriim, Dolgan, and Serrin had remained inconspicuous in the city by changing forms and lodgings frequently.
Throughout, they had painstakingly studied the movement and behavior of the Skulls. They noted the time it took the creatures to respond to street fights in various parts of the city, and the frequency with which they were seen in certain locations. From that, they had deduced the general direction of the Skulls' hidden lair, not far up the winding western tunnels that led into the wilds of the Underdark. Azriim was confident that somewhere in a cavern off of those tunnels, hidden by time, fallen rock, and the Skull's magic, unbeknownst to all but the Skulls themselves, stood another cavern that had survived the destruction of Sargauth Enclave. The Sojourner had assured him of as much, and that made it so.
It was in that hidden cavern, that second surviving remnant of Sargauth Enclave, that the Skulls laired. And it was there that Azriim would find the focus for Skullport's mantle, there that he must plant the seed of the Weave Tap. Since their arrival in the city, Azriim had kept the seed in magical stasis, held within the small, invisible, extradimensional space created by the magical ring on his finger. He could release the seed with a shake of his hand and a mental command.
But first things first, he reminded himself. With practiced ease, he regained his smile. He suspected it looked like more of a grimace in his current form.
Azriim walked-plodded, really-the packed earth avenues of the Lower Port, threading his way through the crowds and trailing his mark: a thin, pot-bellied, tonsured human named Thyld, who walked with a limp and wore stained, threadbare brown robes. Azriim had been trailing Thyld for over a tenday, learning the human's habits, his haunts, and his tastes. Azriim felt as though he'd learned as much about the human as there was to know. Thyld was a "collector" for the Kraken Society, an organization perceived by the factions in Skullport to be a legitimate broker of information. The human had contacts among most of the important power groups in the city, in places both high and low. In addition, Thyld ran a lucrative side business, unbeknownst to his Kraken Society superiors, selling some choice bits of information to interested parties in the city. That made him ideal for Azriim's purposes, which was unfortunate for Thyld.
To further his plan, Azriim would "borrow" Thyld for a time, use his contacts, and trade on the Kraken Society's legitimacy. Then, when all of the variables were in place, he and his broodmates would locate the hidden chamber, lure the Skulls away, and plant the seed of the Weave Tap.
Ahead, the open plaza of the Slavers Market was thronged with an auction day crowd. Shouted bids rang loudly in the dank air. Dozens of torches on tall posts illuminated the plaza and sent smoke curling through the caliginous air toward the ceiling. Two chained ogres in filth, flab, and worn leather tunics stood on a raised wooden platform while a middle-aged human with an elaborate mustache, fat-puckered arms, and a bright red tunic stood before them and managed the shouted bids carrying from the crowd. Near the platform, a line of chained slaves-one of them an attractive human female-awaited their turn on the block. The irony of slavery in Skullport was that few of the slaves were actually put to work in the city. The great slave market simply provided the venue for purchasing and selling. The slaves themselves were typically shipped out into the darker corners of Faerun and the Underdark.