01/22/2026: The Half-Vampire Attorney

Later, when they compare recollections about the gathering on that first day—before the funeral but after the meeting with the half-vampire attorney—each of the new comrades discovers how much they have in common.

Each of the eight happens to be in the city of Waterdeep, the largest along the Sword Coast, whether for a visit or because they now have built lives there. The invitations they each receive are delivered by unlikely letter carriers—a lamp lighter, a street urchin, a maid servant, an old man, a blacksmith, a green grocer, a raven.

Each invitation, when opened, reveals the same elegant script on heavy vellum:

You are cordially summoned to the funeral of Dalton Wyrm, to be held at the City of the Dead at dusk, two days hence. Prior to this solemn occasion, your presence is required at the office of Malister Blackmoon, Esquire, Attorney at Law, located in the Castle Ward in the shadow of the Hawk Man statue, off The Street of Bells. The reading of Mr. Wyrm’s will shall commence today, one hour before sunset. Your attendance is not merely requested—it is essential.

Odd… usually burials come before inheritance discussions, think eight readers of the same message. Eight sets of hands hold eight identical invitations. Eight minds recall a man named Dalton Wyrm—some with fondness, others with more complicated emotions. But each remembers someone who touched their life in ways both small and profound. The name stirs memories: a cousin’s laughter, a friend’s counsel, a business partner’s handshake, the weight of debt, the heat of enmity, the freedom of childhood, the patience of a teacher, the trust implicit in a borrowed item of power.

And now he is dead.

⚔

The appointed hour arrives. Eight figures each make their way toward the Castle Ward, to The Street of Bells. Each is lost in their own thoughts.

The office of Malister Blackmoon sits in the shadow of the Hawk Man statue, housed within a narrow building of dark stone and shuttered windows. The door bears a brass placard, polished to a mirror shine: Blackmoon & Associates - Barristers, Solicitors, Estate Management.

The door swings open before the first arrival can knock. The interior of the office smells of beeswax polish, old leather, and parchment. Thick carpets muffle footsteps. Oil paintings in gilded frames depict landscapes and stern-faced people in barrister’s wigs from long ago.

Malister Blackmoon stands before them, his very appearance commanding their attention. He is very tall, very pale, and skeletally thin. This impeccably dressed lawyer ushers the group into an elegantly paneled room. The eight arrange themselves around a long mahogany table.

They settle, these eight strangers-who-are-not-quite-strangers. Leather creaks. Cloth rustles. Someone clears their throat. The tension in the room feels almost physical.

Blackmoon moves to a sideboard where a tray holds eight black envelopes, each sealed with a gob of wax. Each individual’s name is inscribed in the familiar scrawl of Dalton Wyrm in silvery ink.

Blackmoon lifts them with reverent care and begins to distribute them, reading each name aloud as he places the envelope before its recipient.

As he passes the final envelope, Jeremiah Wyrm—recognizable by the family resemblance in his sharp features and golden eyes—looks up at the attorney. His voice carries innocent directness tinged with nerves.

“Excuse me… are you a dhampir? A half-vampire?”

The question hangs in the air. Others at the table become still, watching. How awkward. The asker seems youthful, but is of late middle years. As with most of elvish heritage, age is difficult to guess.

Blackmoon looks down at Jeremiah, and a smile—perhaps meant to be reassuring—crosses his pale, dhampir features. When he speaks, his voice carries a note of dry amusement.

“Have no fear, Mr. Jeremiah. I never snack while I am doing business.”

The smile widens just enough to reveal his teeth—perfectly white, perfectly aligned, and perfectly sharp. The canines extend just a fraction too long, coming to delicate points that catch the candlelight.

The grin disappears as quickly as it came. Jeremiah looks no less alarmed.

Blackmoon then takes his position at the head of the table, hands folded before him. Before him rests a scroll rolled tightly closed and held by a black seal and black crepe ribbon, the stamp one of the Waterdeep Judiciary. Very official.

“Each of you,” Blackmoon begins, his voice falling into the practiced cadence of formal oration, “has a connection to the deceased, one Dalton Wyrm.”

As the attorney breaks the seal and unrolls the Last Will and Testament of his client. As Blackmoon begins to read, heads turn, eyes meet and quickly look away. With each designation, revelations of relationships—some expected, others surprising—are revealed to the eight.

"I, Dalton Wyrm, sound of mind and body, greet each of you!"

“Cousin.” Blackmoon’s eyes find Jeremiah again, who uncomfortably hitches his slipping robes back onto one shoulder. He is a novice, only just completed his vows to become a monk, and still getting used to the garb.

“Dear friend.” A glance toward Sean, the red-eyed tiefling scrubbing at his eyes, unafraid to show his feelings despite his reputation as a ferocious barbarian warrior just ending his strenuous martial training.

“Business associate.” The attorney stares at the figure of Jeff, another tiefling, but one with pure white eyes. Jeff is disconcertingly tall and slender, and the rogue has folded himself uncomfortably in the leather-backed chair. Jeff shifts, now even more uncomfortable, under the gaze of Blackmoon. He thinks to himself, “It’s as though this attorney knows that my dealings with Dalton weren’t exactly law-abiding.” The rogue cuts his eyes away, saying nothing.

The attorney continues, “Debtor.” The paladin, Jayce, flushes crimson with the shame of owing such a large sum of money to Dalton Wyrm. He wonders what will become of his vast debt to a man now dead.

“Blood enemy.” Blackmoon’s dark eyes meet the seething, reptilian ones of the glaring blue dragonborn cleric down the table. One of the acolyte’s clawed hands grasps the holy symbol of Maat dangling from its leather loop around his thick, scaled neck.

“Childhood companion,” continues the dhampir. The red-rimmed eyes of Viktor are deep-set in a pale face rising above the gold and violet augmentations affixed to the surface of his skin. His hand scrabbles across the table to find solace in the well-manicured hand of Jayce, who gives back a comforting squeeze. Then their eyes meet. Quickly, hands jerk apart as if withdrawing from a searing flame. The pair stolidly do not look at one another again. For now.

Not noticing this interaction—or possibly choosing to ignore it—the dhampir continues. “One who loaned him a valuable magic item.” Wilrick leans forward at the end of the table. The journeyman fighter tosses his head to throw back a hank of ebony hair from his pale face. He is anxious to hear when his valuable property will be returned to him.

“His last student.” A small cry of grief can be heard from the remote end of the table. If Viktor’s skin is covered in decorative metallic plates, this individual, called Jinx, has a heavy covering of actual metal. Much of the skin of the slumping warforged is overlaid with a tough alloy. Oily tears slide down their masklike face. They grieve the master they loved and revered.

Balancing spectacles upon his thin nose, Malister Blackmoon intones, “Prior to his unfortunate demise, Mr. Wyrm arranged for each of you to inherit ten thousand gold pieces with his passing, under the following conditions.”

The sum draws sharp intakes of breath. Ten thousand gold—enough to live comfortably for years, enough to buy a midsized ship or a small house, enough to fund grand adventures or secure quiet retirement.

“Mr. Wyrm chose each of you for some skill or talent you possess to become part of a united team tasked with completing an exceptionally important mission. Your letters from Mr. Wyrm—” He gestures to the black envelopes before them. “—explain this in greater detail.”

“To collect, you must also attend the burial of Mr. Wyrm in the City of the Dead, located on the eastern side of our great metropolis. This will take place tomorrow at sunset. Sharp.”

Tomorrow. So soon. The reality of Dalton Wyrm’s death crystallizes. He is truly gone, and they will lay him in the earth and finish—together—whatever task Dalton wished of them before their inheritance can be claimed.

Jinx insists on knowing where the body now rests. They wish to see for themselves that their former master is indeed gone. The dhampir sighs and tells them where to find the body within its coffin, closed but not yet nailed shut.

“Finally,” Blackmoon continues, “I have been instructed by the deceased to pass thirty gold pieces to each of you immediately upon your signing a contract agreeing to join this group to complete the assigned task.”

He indicates the long parchment, quills, and ink to his left. He then produces eight small purses from within his coat—an impossible number to have fit in that flat space—and places one before each person. “You may accept these if you elect to sign on to Mr. Wyrm’s requested mission. Feel free to use this additional gift to purchase suitable funeral attire… or perhaps some bit of adventuring gear that will sustain you on your mission.”

The word 'mission' hangs heavy with implication.

“I will give you a few moments of privacy to discuss amongst yourselves what you plan to do.”

With that, Malister Blackmoon rises and moves across the floor. His footsteps are utterly silent on the thick carpet. The door closes behind him with a soft click that sounds unnaturally loud in the large room packed with people.

For a long moment, no one speaks. They sit, eight souls bound by shared loss and unknown purpose, staring at black envelopes and leather purses.

Then come the sounds of eight envelopes being torn open, eight letters unfolded, eight readers each reacting to the eight personalized messages from beyond death, handwritten by Dalton Wyrm.

Sean, the young barbarian, holds the parchment with calloused and trembling fingers. His eyes spill with fresh tears as he scans the familiar handwriting—Dalton’s scrawl, still carrying his personality in the loops and flourishes. Sean’s face crumples.

“I can’t believe he’s gone…” His voice breaks, raw with grief.

Across the table, Jinx the warforged sits motionless except for the minute movements of their eyes as they read their own letter. Their metal body, crafted with precision and care, seems incongruous with the very human gesture of lifting one hand to their face. A few drops of oil—dark and viscous—streak down the burnished metal of their cheek, the warforged equivalent of tears. They flick them away. “He was…” The warforged’s voice emerges with a slight mechanical resonance. “He was patient with me. He believed in me and trusted me…”

“Look at this,” Jayce says suddenly. He’s dressed too well for someone with his reputation for reckless spending and accumulated debt. His hands shake as he holds up his letter. “He’s forgiven my entire debt… all of it… if I agree to join this group.”

The sum he owed is unspoken but understood to be substantial. More money than he could hope to earn in years, let alone repay.

Viktor leans forward. Another human amid many exotic races, his expression combines hope as well as worry.

“Will you be joining us?” he asks Jayce directly. It seems more a wish than a question.

Jayce’s laugh holds no humor, only a kind of desperate relief mixed with grief. “Of course. Of course I will. After forgiving my debt… how could I not?”

Around the table, others finish reading their letters. The rustle of parchment. The soft sounds of breathing. Someone’s breath catches. Another person’s jaw tightens. Some sniffling.

Each letter, while personalized, carries common threads. Dalton Wyrm spent his final days gripped by frustration and growing fear. He had been investigating strange disappearances in Waterdeep’s Dock Ward—people vanishing without trace, without pattern, without explanation.

His investigation led him to discover something beneath the City of the Dead itself. Catacombs, ancient and extensive, that most of Waterdeep’s citizens don’t know exist. He hadn’t yet explored them, but he’d found the entrance, mapped the first passages.

And he’d formed a theory. A terrible one.

To each of the letter recipients, Wyrm tells of discovering the existence of a rogue cleric working in secret somewhere in Waterdeep. He suspected a plot to open a gate between this plane of existence and the Abyssal Plane. A demon invasion of the entire Sword Coast would surely follow. Devastation on a scale unseen since the ancient wars.

Dalton had sought help. But the Lords of Waterdeep—those aloof rulers who govern the city at a remove—dismissed him as an alarmist fool, a conspiracy theorist seeing patterns in chaos.

His own people—fellow members of the Waterdeep Adventurers’ Guild, the Golden Eyes, laughed. They called him paranoid, a fantasist, an aging adventurer clinging to relevance through invented threats.

No one believed him.

No one would help him.

“He was alone,” someone murmurs, the words heavy with guilt and sorrow.

The letters end with requests, not demands. Each person, chosen for specific skills Dalton identified, is asked to complete what he could not: To investigate what he discovered and to stop what he feared was coming.

It’s a plea from beyond death, written in a familiar hand, asking for help that came too late for the asker.

⚔

The door opens without warning or knock. Malister Blackmoon reenters the room, his presence immediately commanding attention once more. His black eyes move from face to face, reading expressions with the skill of centuries.

“Sadly,” he says, his voice carrying genuine regret, “Mr. Wyrm was murdered before he was able to complete his investigation.”

The word sends a shock through the room. Not died, not passed away, not succumbed. Murdered. Killed by a fellow being, then, not accident or illness.

Blackmoon moves to stand at the head of the table again. “What say you all?”

No one speaks immediately. The weight of the decision presses down. Ten thousand gold pieces each—a fortune. But the price is involvement in something dangerous enough to have killed Dalton Wyrm, a seasoned adventurer, a careful investigator, a man who knew how to handle himself.

Jinx moves first. They stand, pushing back their chair to sign the contract with a slashing motion. The scratch of quill on parchment fills the silence. Their signature, slightly shaky but determined, appears in the first of eight spaces on the contract.

Next stands Sean. “He was my dear friend. I owe it to him to find who killed him.”

 His signature—bold and decisive despite his trembling hands—joins Jinx’s.

One by one, they rise. Jayce, freed from crushing debt. Jeremiah, honoring family bonds. Viktor, driven by the memory of a childhood chum. Others, each with their own reasons, each bound by connection to a dead man who called to them from beyond death.

The purses of thirty gold pieces disappear into pockets and pouches. The signing takes perhaps ten minutes, but it feels both longer.

When the last signature appears on the contract, Blackmoon carefully rolls the parchment and seals it with his own sigil.

“Excellent,” he says, and there might be approval in his tone, or perhaps merely satisfaction at a legal matter properly concluded. “The funeral will be held tomorrow at the City of the Dead, northernmost gate near the Deepwinter Mausoleum, as the sun sets. I trust you will all be punctual.”

“What happens after?” Viktor asks. “After the funeral, I mean.”

Blackmoon’s smile is thin. “That, I believe, will be made clear at the appropriate time. Mr. Wyrm was nothing if not thorough in his planning. He has left you guidance, resources, and most importantly—” His pale eyes sweep across them all. “—each other.”

“Now, unless there are other questions, I believe you each have preparations to make. Funeral attire to acquire, or perhaps gear to purchase. Bring what you purchase to the funeral so that I might see you have put it to good use. Tomorrow will be a long day, and what follows…” He pauses. “What follows will be longer still.”

They file out into the street. The sun has set while they were inside, and now the city’s evening has fully descended. Distant bells chime the hour, oil lamps flicker, causing their long shadows to dance.

Eight people stand on the street, no longer quite strangers. They are, by contract and choice, a company now. United by a dead man’s final request. Tomorrow they will bury Dalton Wyrm.

And then the real work begins.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​