Neverwinter Nights 2: Mysteries of Westgate Spotlight #1

The first Neverwinter Nights 2: Mysteries of Westgate spotlight has appeared over on the official forums, highlighting The Legend of the Quelzarn. The feature gives us a profile, a screenshot, and two answered questions.

The mages of Faerûn say the race of gigantic eel-like serpents known as the quelzarn are of magical origin, perhaps the result of long-ago experimentation by the mages of Unther; certainly, the beasts were hunted there. Between 30 and 40 feet long, the quelzarn are rapacious, agile, and skilled hunters known to be willing to eat anything, even carrion if desperate. Highly resistant to the foul waters of busy harbors and vast swamps alike, they are adept at using the cover given by intense pollution to mask their approach until the moment of strike.

Westgate’s extensive network of sewers and catacombs are whispered to house numerous hidden temples and shrines, a coven of liches, and even a bloodthirsty court of vampires said to be descended from the original Night King, but these are, so far as is known, only rumors. What most definitely is not rumor is the infestation of the city’s partly-flooded sewers by the quelzarn. More terrifyingly, these often make their way into the harbor, where they pluck unlucky sailors from the decks of ships.

Yet in Westgate, when sailors talk in hushed tones of “the quelzarn,” they don’t mean the generic variety. No, they mean the Great Serpent of the Harbor. The few who have caught glimpses, and yet lived, speak of a beast of truly massive proportions – 60 feet at least – swimming at a rapid rate just below the surface of the harbor waters. There are tales, most often followed by whispered prayers to the Queen of the Deeps, of entire ships being dragged beneath the waves underneath massive coils of scale, fang, and muscle. Woe be to any who have the misfortune of confronting Westgate’s so-called “Seafood Sampler.”