After the adventurers go their separate ways to learn what they can from their contacts, they meet up once again in preparation for their jaunt down into the sewers. At only around 4pm in the summertime, it's not yet dark outside, though it is the heat of the day. While the sewers will not be a great place to visit, at least they will be cool compared to the 85*F heat of the sunlit cobblestone streets of Waterdeep. The manhole around which they currently stand is fairly innocuous, a disk of dark steel bearing the emblem of the Cellarers' and Plumbers' Guild: two masonry trowels crossing over a vertical pointed-tip shovel.<br/><br/>Lifting the manhole is fairly easy, as there are holes in it strategically placed to make it easy to lift without a special tool. (Apparently the Cellarers' and Plumbers' Guild didn't want their workers to have to carry<em>more</em>tools with them to perform a repair job. The downside is that anyone can get into the sewers with no special equipment.) When the manhole is lifted, the most easily noticeable smells are mold and mildew, not feces, since the sewers also serve as the storm drain system of Waterdeep, and poo is actually put into the sewer in smaller quantities than rain water, laundry water, or in some areas, waste water from tanneries. The dark, damp atmosphere, however, does make for the perfect breeding ground for molds and mildews.<br/><br/>The ladder is slippery, but the pitch-lined boots keep that from being a problem, and in just a few minutes, the group is standing at the bottom of the ladder, about twenty-five feet below the streets of Waterdeep.<br/><br/>{Since you guys are all level 8, and it would just be tedious to get a Climb check from everyone for a slippery ladder, or to deal with a handful of falling damage if you failed it, we'll just say that you all made it down the ladder.}<br/><br/>As lights are lit, the shape and design of the sewers become apparent. This particular pipe is a more or less rectangular tube, fifteen feet wide with eight foot high ceilings. It's got a five foot wide walkway on either side with a five foot square 'ditch' in the middle, a lowered area running the length of the tube where a stream of waste water is currently running. They are designed so that a team of sewer workers could walk single-file down each of the sides without getting soaked and filthy during normal sewer operation, and that in an especially heavy storm when the sewers are flooded with rain water, the upper portion of the sewers would provide space for the extra water to flow through. As it is, there is room for two single-file lines of adventurers to walk with a five foot gap in between the two lines.