Question regarding The Sleepy Sylph in Waterdeep. CoS puts it as C50 on the NW corner of Shesstra’s and Snail streets. VGtoW places as number 6 at the southwest corner of the intersection of Rainrun and Snail Streets. Which one is right? Thanks!! They are both right–for different time periods.
Volo's is earlier; the Sleepy Sylph moved premises by the time City of Splendors covers.
Check the 5e maps, too: in the century-plus since CoS, the streets have pretty much stayed the same, but there's been rebuilding.#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) October 7, 2020

I suppose there are guilds, but would there be anything like a labour union in Waterdeep?The guilds are the labour unions, and Waterdeep has a LOT of them: see FR1 Waterdeep And The North, and the 2e City of Splendors, for the most exhaustive coverage. There's also coverage in the 3e City of Splendors: Waterdeep book, but not as much.#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) November 13, 2020

Can you tell us anything about the idiot sons?

— Travis M. Holyfield (@travisholyfield) October 4, 2020

2)
…chrome-bladed shortswords that they brandish a lot but never use in anger (their reaction to menaces is to flee), and constantly hire lady escorts as arm candy (and sometimes, when emboldened by not enough drink to make…#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) October 4, 2020

3)
…trying to pretend they are heroes but achieving nothing and learning no skills and taking no interest in the family businesses or learning about the world or in anything that might be termed “work.” Which is why Hammrar… 4)
…dismisses them as idiots (conveniently forgetting what he was like at their ages). There’s nothing wrong with their brains or perception; they’re just bored, lazy, chasing entertainments, and wasting their days in fripperies.#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) October 4, 2020

1)
[Last family!]
The Yeldred family of North Ward is perhaps the most interesting of the three “wannabe noble” families. They became fabulously wealthy over the past century by controlling quarries where flagstones, cobbles, and roof-slates…2)
…were produced that much of Waterdeep is now (after rebuilding and renovations and the ongoing maintenance of the last six decades) built of, and by owning a shipping fleet and three caravan companies active in the Heartlands…#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) October 5, 2020

3)
…(mainly on short, fast, lucrative Amn/Baldur’s Gate/Waterdeep/Silverymoon runs), and by shrewd investments in various guilds, shops, and forges.
So the Yeldreds alive today have always known more coin than they know how to… 4)
…spend. What it won’t buy them is a noble title, and some of them very much want it. They tried “nobility on the cheap,” which meant settling their own wilderlands north of the eastern Amnian mountain barony of Hawkhill, …#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) October 5, 2020

5)
…calling it the “realm” of Vaeranth (Vaeranth Yeldred was the founder of this scheme), and styling themselves Lords and Ladies of Vaeranth, complete with elaborate blazons, but no one in Waterdeep would recognize or use the…6)
…titles, no matter how many ornate maps of Vaeranth the Yeldreds hired cartographers to produce and distribute throughout the city. Vaeranth remains a wilderness today, albeit with three small stone keeps the Yeldreds built; …#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) October 5, 2020

6)
…titles, no matter how many ornate maps of Vaeranth the Yeldreds hired cartographers to produce and distribute throughout the city. Vaeranth remains a wilderness today, albeit with three small stone keeps the Yeldreds built; …7)
…they retain one by paying a garrison to dwell there that they must supply with food and chapbooks and strong drink and paid companions, and the other two were seized by brigands who from time to time are wiped out by monsters…#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) October 5, 2020

8)
…deciding to lair therein, until the next brigands come along and slay the beasts.
So now, the Yeldreds are trying to marry into nobility.
As of the 1490s DR, the Yeldreds consist of one boy (Paerand, who’s 9 years old), and… 9)
…six women: Paerand’s mother Esmarheldra, the matriarch (there is no family patriarch, as her husband Boldrael died 8 years ago), and her five daughters, who in descending order of age are Astrauva (21 years old), Vauntra…#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) October 5, 2020

10)
…(20), Jaerezra (19), Palone (18), and Sapraenra (17). All are good-looking, graceful, and polite, and Esmarheldra, Astrauva, Vauntra, and Palone are stunningly beautiful and superb natural actors (in complete control of…11)
…their voices, facial expressions, and mannerisms, and able to weep at will). For the last four summers, they have deliberately set about getting invited to nobles’ revels, at first as arm candy for other non-noble guests, …#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) October 5, 2020

12)
…but they have slowly and deftly cultivated friendships with nobles of higher and higher rank, trying to build networks of eligible batchelor nobles they fancy, with an eye to marrying into the ranks of the nobility. 13)
They don’t want to be saddled with dullards or brutes or insane/headstrong narcissists, and so are seeking to learn all they can about their quarries without being obvious about their prying or seeming to be pursuing mates, …#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) October 5, 2020

14)
…but nobles aren’t unperceptive when it comes to suitors, and have caught on. The fact that these oh-so-charming females are all from one family hasn’t gone unnoticed, and various covert tricks and hired spellcastings have… 15)
…been employed to try to make sure the Yeldred women are indeed human, and not doppelgangers or other shapeshifters, and self-willed rather than the thralls of illithids or anyone/anything else. Various nobles privately (but…#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) October 5, 2020

16)
…erroneously) suspect the Yeldreds of being sorceresses, members of a cult, and agents of various cabals and sinister organizations.
Thus far, the dance of flirtation and slow, subtle courtship hasn’t resulted in any Yeldred… 17)
…getting hitched, or even serious interest, but the daughters are all firm friends—and, gossip insists, sometime lovers—of a dozen nobles (of both genders, and a variety of families) each.#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) October 5, 2020

18)
Paerand is a quiet, happy-with-his-own-company boy who reads voraciously, plays board games against any handy opponent, and although he's far from feminine, loves women's clothing and prefers to wear his elder sisters' castoffs. His hobby? Sponsoring adventurers.#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) October 5, 2020

in Sardolphyn’s Gambit you mentioned other families of Waterdeep: Eskult, Yeldred and Tramnur. Can you please tell about them more?
[[Ed: this time, the Tramnur family…]] 1)
The Tramnur family’s wealth comes from diverse investing-in-Waterdeep-businesses, sponsoring ship voyages and cargoes, and owning ranchland and getting income from meat and milk sales, but increasingly, in recent decades: …#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) October 4, 2020

2)
…buying decaying buildings in Dock Ward, South Ward, and recently in Castle Ward, adding both floors and balconies, and repurposing them to have spacious rear entries and ramps for easy bulk cargo movements, retaining… 3)
…shopfront uses on the ground floor, converting the floor above from offices or rental living quarters to small-storage “strongrooms,” then putting new and more luxurious rental living quarters on two floors above that, with…#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) October 4, 2020

4)
…plumbing all moved to an internal ‘stack’ where any leaks should flood out the back, into the alley or sewers, and not into the strongrooms. Many of these upper floors are fitted with luxurious marble bathing tubs and… 5)
…large beds with skylights and ‘mood lighting,’ and have proven very popular with Waterdhavian nobles looking for places to stash mistresses, black-sheep family members, and guests (not to mention undercover ‘safe houses’ …#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) October 4, 2020

6)
…used for shady-work or by spouses who have furious fights with each other and need their own simmer-down spaces, or to carry on hobbies the other spouse finds objectionable, from drunken benders to the use of escorts to… 7)
…gaming all night while smoking and drinking with “louts” of fellow gamers).
As a result, the Tramnurs, who are quite willing to pay skilled guild workers very well for ‘top-goblet’ work, and to use that skilled labor to… #Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) October 4, 2020

8)
…custom-outfit these luxury floors just as clients like them (many nobles want both floors, and to join them with internal circular staircases, as well as screens and winter shutters and windows for their balconies, not to… 9)
…mention fireplace flues opening onto the balconies, to keep them private and to give them some measure of winter warmth), have risen to the notice of, and in the regard of, Waterdhavian nobility.
Which has led the Tramnur…#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) October 4, 2020

10)
…matriarch and her six older aunts to entertain dreams of being ennobled (though the family patriarch thinks this goal very unlikely, and is unwilling to do anything “too forward” to try to push for it; he won’t attend the… 11)
…endless round of revels that his womenfolk so enthusastically dress up for—the aunts in a predatory “let’s catch me a noble husband, or at least a partner to dally with overnight,” the daughters of the family for…#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) October 4, 2020

12)
…entertainment and good food and drink and to meet interesting and powerful people of high station, and the wife to “let’s network like anything, to find someone willing to help me make the Tramnurs noble.” 13)
The patriarch of the family is the calm, tired, up-to-his-bushy-and-graying-eyebrows in work Bhaerant Tramnur, who is married to Alyse Tramnur. They have three daughters, in their late teens aged a year apart, and one much…#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) October 4, 2020

14)
…younger son: in descending order of age: Maerthaya (19); Tarltaya (18); Lhammaethe (17); and Brand (8). The six older aunts are all a decade older than the patriarch, and are overpainted, heavily-feathered, gleeful… 15)
…hard-drinking cougars (as we would call them; current Deep parlance just speaks of them as “aprowl”), and in descending order of age are Thaeya; Myramiea (“Meer-ah-MY-ah”); Cantele (“Can-TELL”); Deira (“DEER-ah”); Yalantra; …#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) October 4, 2020

16)
…and Haetha (“HAY-thah”). Cantele is the real beauty and brains, who usually scores a willing noble for the night, Thaeya is a forcible sort who boldly dragoons folk (which works better with commoners than nobles, who have so…
#Realmslore 18)
…some doppelgangers covertly placed amid certain noble-mansion staff servants, as a possible candidate to be kidnapped (and held for eventual ransom) while in the short term she’s impersonated, with an eye to seeing what…17)
…many bold-dragoon family members of their own whom they deal with daily) and Yalantra is a dark beauty apt to be led astray by all manner of crackpot ‘mystical’ beliefs and fads, which has brought her to the attention of…#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) October 4, 2020

19)
…wealth and valuable items can be wormed out of the Tramnurs (and the nobles whose revels they attend).#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) October 4, 2020

Many! Temples and guilds (for their members only, or those trying to pay their members) act as banks. So does the city (Piergeiron's Palace). And for those who want "off the books" transactions, there are many, many private moneylenders (such as the infamous Mirt).

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) November 9, 2017

It's my pleasure to dish out Realmslore, to make everyone's games richer if possible, and less headachy for overworked DMs. Remember: it's canon until contradicted by newer official Realmslore (from Wizards), who always have new products up those stylish sleeves! :}#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) January 13, 2021