The Cha-Ching
The Cha-Ching (also known as the Cha-Ching Club) is a prominent gambling house and casino located within the Beggar’s Nest district of Neverwinter, a dense and impoverished slum where stacked shacks and narrow alleys serve as laundry, bathroom, and social club.
Appearance and Operations
The front of the establishment features a bold mural depicting a scantily clad woman with coins falling into her hands. Despite this provocative exterior, the Cha-Ching operates strictly as a casino rather than the strip club the mural suggests. The venue operates openly, drawing a highly diverse clientele. It is not uncommon to see town guards and judges gambling at the tables in broad daylight alongside members of the local underworld.
Notable Figures
- Anthony “the Gentleman” Calloway: The proprietor of the casino. A tall half-orc characterized by a broken tusk and slicked-back, receding hair, he is typically found seated on a throne-like chair at the back of the establishment. He dresses in exotic eel-skin or other unusual fabrics and is flanked by a halfling lieutenant. While a valuable source of underworld intelligence, Neverwinter’s spymaster Lucian Nightshade warns to “trust him exactly as far as you can throw him” and strongly cautions never to call him Tony Halftooth to his face.
- Hope: A companion of the party who works as a bouncer at the casino. She took the position to pay off her personal debts. She occasionally works night shifts, though she is not always on duty.
- Polly: An associate of Anthony Calloway currently imprisoned in the high-security Peninsula Prison.
Underworld Connections and the Sewer Deal
Beyond gambling, the casino serves as an intelligence and smuggling hub. The Gentleman’s crew has historically operated deep within Neverwinter’s sewers. They secured access through a quiet arrangement with Patricius, the city’s Head of Sewers and Waterways and Comptroller, who used his official access to pay off his extensive gambling debts compiled at the casino’s tables. This arrangement allowed Patricius to run the city’s waterways for free using a magical ring rather than paying laborers.
This arrangement fractured when Patricius vanished with the powerful Ring of Control Water Elementals, leaving the sewers unstable. Needing his crew for other efforts—particularly after half of his men were conscripted into the city’s war effort against Luskan—the Gentleman offered the party a deal: locate Patricius, recover the ring, and bring him back alive in exchange for critical intelligence regarding the compromised members of the Neverwinter Small Council and a share of gold.
When the party discovered Patricius dead—having been killed by Luskan pirates in the sewers—they chose to keep the magical water ring for themselves. Returning to the Cha-Ching, they delivered Patricius’s body to Anthony Calloway, spinning a deceptive tale that Luskan agents had murdered him and stolen the ring. Calloway accepted the deception and offered half the original gold reward along with a crucial lead: the location of Talis, who was currently in the high-security cells of Peninsula Prison. In exchange for this intelligence, Calloway demanded the party swear an unbreakable oath to free both Talis and his imprisoned associate, Polly.
Standoff and the Unraveled Secret
Pressed for time and facing immense pressure from the looming conflict, the party returned to the Cha-Ching to secure the identity of the council spy directly. While Hope was off-shift, Erevyn slipped into the casino invisibly to secure a tactical vantage point. Farwald and Gilmore confronted the Gentleman directly, leveraging his severe manpower shortage and offering a solution to his ongoing water problems now that the elemental ring was lost.
Under a severe and calculated intimidation effort, Calloway’s composure cracked. He confessed that he did not actually know the identity of the spy on the Neverwinter Small Council, having only implied he did to secure the party’s cooperation. He revealed that the true keeper of the secret was indeed Talis. Because the Gentleman keeps his distance from high-money folk and had no direct influence or agents inside the prison, he could not reach Talis himself; however, he agreed to provide the party with a detailed map of Peninsula Prison to facilitate their infiltration.