Blastbelle Needs the Stash

Kingston's Hand had barely become a joke in Dhaz's sleeve before Gravenhurst put the party back to work. Blastbelle found them outside Astrid's shop. She was Thieves Guild business in motion: familiar, impatient, and not especially interested in letting the failed farm job stay unresolved. The party admitted the mission had not gone cleanly. They had learned plenty, but they had not brought her the loot she needed. For Blastbelle, information was not enough. She needed something tangible. They moved the conversation to the Bitter Remedy, away from the open street and into the corner table where this kind of desperate job belonged. There, Blastbelle made the problem plain. The failed farm job had put her standing at risk. If she did not recover something valuable quickly, she feared demotion and being sent back to conditions she had clawed her way out of. Her answer was an old Thieves Guild stash in the sewers. It had been locked away for years near the Rat King's side of the underground network. The party already knew enough about the sewers to understand why that was not reassuring. They had been warned away from that territory before. The Rat King's name was not decorative, and Gravenhurst's undercity had a habit of making old problems feel alive again. Still, Blastbelle framed it as the best remaining path. There were two ways in from inside the city. One entrance sat near the Black Ward, which was a problem after the party's recent failures on that front. The other route ran through the Glow Pools, where they would have to move through polluted water and whatever else had settled into that part of the city. Jonah offered faith. Blastbelle, practical as ever, accepted the bargain in the only terms that mattered: if they got her enough to keep her from losing her place in the Guild, he could tell her anything he wanted about the Creator afterward. That was enough. The party chose the Glow Pools route. The decision did more than accept a side job. It pulled the group back into the Thieves Guild problem after they had already failed to satisfy one faction and irritated another. It also pointed them toward the sewer territory where old Guild property, Rat King influence, Graven Scourge activity, and whatever had been hiding beneath Gravenhurst were about to cross paths. Blastbelle needed loot fast. The party needed direction. The sewers were about to give them both.