Brindle Stormtide

A halfling ship-seller and dock master in Waterdeep. Ol' Rourke pointed the crew at him for a ship; Kuyrl Stonepalm was on his way to work for him when they met at the city gate. Two independent leads, one Brindle — and both of them soured on meeting him.

He runs his docks from atop a box on a chair, so he can look down on everyone, and holds court in the Deep Water Inn with a paid bard and a crowd. He is instantly warm to a fellow halfling and immovable on everything else. Asked for ship schedules he took open offence — "Am I your secretary now?" — and gestured until large men drifted closer.

On Kuyrl he was candid. "I'm gonna make a lot of money off that dude, that's all I'm gonna say." He houses the goliath and his family and charges him for it against his wages, so the debt grows faster than it can be paid; Fiz's audit of the ledger put it at 80 gold owed and another 80 added every year. Asked whether Kuyrl could ever buy his way out: "I don't see that happening… I think it'll be years." Asked whether Kuyrl knows: "Maybe. I don't know what he knows."

His translator is Larry. The crew's standing plan is to extract Kuyrl and his family and pay Brindle nothing.