The team set about continuing to operate the tavern for the Sornyn festival, and went big on promotion, hoping to take advantage of all the free advertising and festivities going on. If things went well, then the team would surely be raking it in big by the end of the tenday. Unfortunately, things started going sour already... as did the food, as something went spoiled in the broth, it seems. Customers started getting sick from the food! As the team wasn't confident in their medical acumen to treat the illness, they instead employed a more costly but effective measure by buying some remedies from the nearby Corellon's Crown, Fala's shop, to deliver some cures to the sick customers and avoid negative repercussions. Could this too, have been the work of a saboteur? The team would find out soon; they went checking around the area for clues on whodunnit, and Sigurd's incredible deductive reasoning lead to the conclusion that it was an inside job, meaning someone in the tavern had to have at least helped with the rat hole plot. Indeed, investigating the nearby abandoned warehouse found that someone had been using it recently for just that purpose and had snuck in via a hole in the floor that lead from the sewers. However, it didn't seem to have any gang insignia indicating a perpetrator, but Yuan did notice that the foot prints seem oddly beast shaped - like a giant rat. The trail ended at the sewer manhole cover in the street, suggesting that they had snuck in through there as the footprint would be impossible to track on street level. Ray also figured out that they might be dealing with werefolk of a kind - people stricken with a lycanthropic curse. Also, Ray uncovered something interesting, that Avi, the co-owner of Steam and Steel, had seen a suspicious halfling-sized figure carrying a covered box of some kind down the street late at night while he was cleaning the store. He didn't think of it much at the time, but realizes that with what he's been told, it could have been one of the saboteurs at work... Convinced that it was an inside job, the team gathered the staff and held a meeting to uncover the truth. They were able to rule out half the employees - Marcellus and Chef had no motive, and Mulaag was too stupid for something this convoluted. A few others didn't seem suspicious either, and thus Ray was able to root out Xalvador, Derrick and Olma as potential suspects. However, Lorelei, Danika and Kelso seemed uneasy and Ray caught onto this, and managed to convinced them to join him and his team in the basement to discuss. When he called them out for lying to him, they realized they had been cornered. Kelso and Danika drew weapons on Ray to silence him, but the team was fortunately fast enough to realize that they were being attacked! Ray managed to escape through a clever use of his Fog Cloud spell and alerted the others to go find the City Watch immediately, as Xalvador did just that and Marcellus and Mulaag went to help fend off the attackers. Yuan stepped in and channeled his wild rage, and luck seemed to be in his favor, causing attacks made against him to be met with surprising retaliatory magical force, as the halflings soon found out the hard way. During the struggle, the team also found out that weapon attacks seemed useless, almost unnaturally so. They would soon find out this is because of the lycanthropic curse, which made their skin resistant to all but silvered or magical weapons. While the team didn't have the former, they certainly had the latter in Sigurd, who used his maul to great effect when he was able to react, and in a tag team with the resident spooky ghost Lif Green, was able to take out one of the attackers, Danika, with ease. Kelso, being grabbed by Mulaag and having poison breathed on him by Yuan thanks to Marcellus' spell, knew he was outgunned and gave up the fight after a convincing argument by Ray, and pleaded for mercy, quickly spilling the beans on everything. He revealed that he was a member of the Shard Shunners, a gang of halfling wererats, and they had been hired by Emmek Frewn (of course) to sabotage the tavern. The other woman, Lorelei (who had been cowering in a corner), had nothing to do with their shenanigans. Kelso tried to win his freedom by any means, stating that if they let them go, the Shard Shunners won't ever come after them for turning them in, and they can even have the gold that Emmek was going to pay them if they want. However, the party's sense of justice stopped them from taking this deal, and instead they would turn the Shard Shunners, Danika and Kelso, into the City Watch to be arrested for assault of a citizen. They also let the Watch know who was behind the misdeed. Looks like it's time to hire some new workers... Will Emmek Frewn pay for his attempted sabotage, or find a way to weasel out of it? What might the Shard Shunners do in retaliation for their own being handed to the Watch? What manner of shenanomancy next awaits the Song and Spirit tavern? Find out next time, on Waterdeep: Dragon Heist!!