The Black Beast of Bedlam?
Every slimeslayer with the respect of his work has heard about the beast. Why do you ask?
If its real? No of course not! It’s a children story made up to scare the kids away from the sewers. Could you imagine… No, if the Black Beast was real, I would have quit this job on the day, hidden away my gear and fled across the Shining seas on the first ship. Not that the idea of a creature in and on itself is the worst thing, but could you imagine such a place… Such a fate, curse rather, put upon a man.
Hm, the story you say? You haven´t heard?
Well… Buckle up kid, and hear the tale of The Black Beast of Bedlam…

A long, long time ago in the first day of Waterdeep, a simple priest arrived from the western lands across the trackless sea. He was a weary young man clothed in a dark red robe, speaking with a silver tongue. His religion was something of a new, and then he spoke of an omnipotent creature living in the sky, surrounded by he wildest creature known to man. Circles with countless eyes, flying with wings high up in the sky… You see, he was an outcast from his own God. Doomed to walk the earth after a betrayal, unable to end his own life. Such things can be maddening on one’s health, and just as he had gotten help, he wanted to help other with opening an institution. It was meant to help those who suffered from madness, a mental hospital if you like. He wanted to name it up after his own religion, and so the hospital was named “The priory of the new order of our lady of Bethlehem”.

As the time went by, it eventually became known as “Bethlehem hospital” often simply just referred to as “Bethlem” or more precisely among your average citizen living in Waterdeep at the time “Bedlam”.
As you could imagine, it wasn´t a place you wanted to end up. It was essentially a prison where mentally ill patients would be packed together in crowded rooms, chained to walls and subjected to archaic treatments that can only be described as torture.
The notoriety of Bedlam became so widespread that the name itself became synonymous with chaos, disorder and confusion. Which is why, even to this day when something is described as “utter bedlam” it conjures images of total Anarchy.
The young priest ran countless test on the people trying to figure out the ideal form of curing this madness. This went on to give him the reputation of someone empty, trying to fill his gaps in wisdom with the knowledge over the mind. At one point he became obsessed with runes, trying to formulate his magic through holy scripts, giving him the nickname of “The empty rune”, which he seemed to preferred after leaving his old name behind him on the ropes that should have ended his life.
Years later, the priest seemed to be close to a breakthrough leading to some unwanted attention. As people moved away from bedlam, now seemingly better, others wanted to know how it was done. This was what lead to the findings of “the rest”. In the basement, the priest had stored gibbering creatures. Red flesh with yellow eyes gooped up in a slimy contexture. It was, as he described it, the failed creatures that was overrun by madness. Unable to determine the priest fault or role in the newly born creatures, it was overlooked and the creatures was dumped away in the sewers never to be seen again. Bedlam continued its work, but now knowing what monsters that place could produce, it soon faded away as nothing more then a place of madness.
Alas, at that fateful night.
Wizards all across the land seemed to break apart the day the weave collapsed. Known as the spell plague, the earth shattered across the land and in a fateful night the earth beneath Bedlam opened up. Thrown down into the earth beneath Waterdeep, the hospital and the priest were said to end up a place that it could never again hurt anyone. For after its time, it was said that the hospital itself created these creatures. Orchestrated by an evil religion, and a God that could never have been anything else but wicked.
And down there, beneath it all, nothing else but death reigns the halls. Or so, people thought.
Now, what of the beast you ask.
it is said that something found its way back into the hospital, deep below the city. Indestructible as its creator once was, Bedlam somehow survived the fall. And that something wicked, mad and old found its way back into its hall.
The Black Beast of Bedlam is said to be a creature of madness and chaos, and the hospital`s final curse upon he world.
And as we know, the worst curses set upon these lands… Are slimes.
It is said that if you wander the streets at night, thinking maddening thoughts along the sewer pipes, something will hear you. And something will wait for you to find it and turn you into a creature of chaos.
No one knows what happened to the priest.
Maybe he finally got the death he sought all those years ago. Its all the same, he was never seen again. And maybe, just maybe… that was all for the best.