Seven Days to the Grave

Damsels in Distress

A few days after Trinia's abortive execution and subsequent escape with the mysterious Blackjack, the Party received an unexpected invitation from Vencarlo Orsini. 

Heading down to the Orsini Academy, they were astonished to find that Vencarlo was harbouring the fugitive! Vencarlo told them that Blackjack had left Trinia in his safekeeping  and he was seeking their help to smuggle her out of the city to safety with some friends of his near the village of Harse, as the city was becoming too dangerous. Based largely on Cressida's analysis that the young woman was innocent, the Party agreed to help. With the help of some dust of disappearance, getting Trinia out of the city proved relatively straightforward and apart from brushing off an attack by goblins that night as they rested, the party arrived in Harse safely and handed Trinia over.

When they returned to Korvosa after spending a day exploring the surroundings of Harse, they found the city in a sullen mood. There was  still  a heavy Guard presence on the streets and rumours were circulating  wildly about a strange ship that had been sunk in the harbour the night before after refusing to answer challenges.

A few days later they had an unexpected visitor - Grau Soldado. Grau begged "his old friend" Garrid to come help his niece who was ill with a sickness that was sweeping poorer quarter of the city. Garrid agreed and the rest of the Party trailed along after. 

On arrival at  the Soldado home , a squat, two-story wooden building in desperate need of repair, Grau introduced them to his  sister Tayce and her children. Tayce insisted on feeding them which, as she was an excellent cook, proved no hardship! Also in the house, brewing up a fever-reducing concoction in the kitchen, was  Ishani Dhatri, a cleric of Abadar who  was helping as he could, having used all his spells earlier. 

Garrid quickly realised the girl was beyond his ability to cure but managed to help ease her discomfort a little  with a lesser restoration. After discussing with the rest of the Party they arranged to pay for  a remove disease spell from Ishani.  The cleric was obviously somewhat embarrassed that the strictures of his order forced him to charge for his services but Ishani returned promptly next morning to cast the spell. The Party received the heartfelt  thanks from Grau and  the girls mother and an invite for a home-cooked meal any time they chose.

As they left the house Ishani asked the Party  to accompany him back to the Temple of Abadar, where they found a desperate crowd of sick people clamouring for attention. They forced  their way through the crowd, many of whom clutched desperately at the clerics begging for help, and into the Temple where  Ishani ushered them into a side room. He told them that whatever this disease was it was spreading rapidly especially  through the poorer areas of the city. He told them  he was trying to co-ordinate the response to the epidemic across the temples and the civil authorities. Grau had told him that the Party were friends with Cressida Kroft and he was hoping they might arrange an introduction for him. He also warned Garrid  that remove disease, though effective , did not offer any immunity against reinfection and hence even many clerics were falling foul of the disease after using their spells.

Heading off to Citadel Volshyenek, the Party found Cressida addressing the assembled Guard in the courtyard. Behind her upon the scaffold, stood three grizzled veteran guards at attention, as well as an ominous-looking group. These newcomers wore cowled robes of oily-looking leather, supple gloves, and wide black hats. Some gripped heavy canes, others dark satchels. Each of them, though, wore a dark-goggled mask tapering to a pointed beak. Among them stood two others. The first was a middle-aged gentleman in a simple black overcoat with streaks of white gracing the sides of his short, dark hair. The second figure was an imposing one indeed—one of the queen’s new Gray Maidens, clad in her resplendent plate armour and crimson plume. Cressida introduced Doctor Davalus and his physicians, saying that they had been appointed by the queen to deal with the epidemic, which he referred to a Blood Veil,  and the Guard was ordered to give full support, and that the Grey Maidens were to have the authority of senior Guard officers. As the Guard dispersed Cressida introduced the Party to  Doctor Davalus and Ishani volunteered to help the coordination effort.

Before she disappeared off with the others Cressida asked them to join her in her office later. When she finally arrived, she told the Party she was uncomfortable with the Queen placing the Guards  under the direct command of the Grey Maidens. She very much wished to retain the Party's services, but as freelancers. She asked for the warrant she had given them back as that would remove them from the Grey Maiden's chain of command.

The Direption

Blood Veil,  continued to spread through the city, the death toll mounting daily . Gawedd and Behzad both fell foul of the infection and required castings remove disease from Ishani to return themselves to health. About a three days  later  the Party was summoned one more  to Cressida's office. She wished them to investigate the strange ship that had been sunk the week before, as rumours were swirling it was the source of the infection sweeping the city, despite the fact it never reached shore. The Party agreed and Cressida gave then a supply of potions of water breathing to aid their search for the sunken wreck. The Party immediately headed down to the docks in Old Korvosa and hired a boatman, Old Ned,  to take them out to the mouth of the river. It took most of the rest of the morning to locate the wreck some 80 feet below the murky water. Once they had located it, one by one they took their potions and dived down into the deep.

As the Party neared the wreck, they could see the obvious scars from fire and trebuchet strikes marred the ship’s hull, which lay on its side in two pieces amid the splinters of its masts. The ship’s hull had split into these two halves over a rock outcropping, its bow had fallen to one side and a larger section of the stern lay on the other. Heading for the stern section, Gawedd, with some assistance from Haleth and Garrid, managed to prise open the main hatch-cover, only for them to be attacked by a shark lurking within. The shark was swiftly dealt with which allowed them to explore the wreckage, only to find a sea-had had taken up residence there. The sea hag proved a formidable foe, hampered as the party was by fighting underwater, but Garrid, Dellosia and Halleth's spells proved the decisive factor in defeating her.

As the Party searched the wreck, somewhat oddly they found no bodies of the crew. In fact the only body they found in the entire ship was in the captain's cabin, and that appeared to be of a cleric of Urgathoa. There was a sealed footlocker in the cabin, but nothing else of interest, so they returned to the surface. 

Old Ned  was instructed to take them to a remote beach near the Jaggere Light where Halleth managed to open the footlocker but other than some coin, a magic cloak and a copy of Serving Your Hunger it contained little else of interest. Reporting back to Cressida we was perturbed at the though the Cult of Urgathoa was operating in the city and suggested that the outbreak of Blood Veil may not be a normal outbreak. Over the next few days the infection continued to spread unchecked, especially in the tightly packed streets of Old Korvosa. Things were made worse when reports emerged of a pack of ghouls, having escaped into the city after feasting on  infected corpses, presumably further hastening the spread.

The Party managed to avoid anyone catching Blood Veil over the next few days before Cressida summoned them once more. Not to deal with the ghouls as they might have expected but rather to deal with a pack of wererats whose leader, a wererat firebrand named Girrigz Ripperclaws is calling his kin to war against the weakened humans above.

Plague Rats

Descending gingerly into the unpleasant morass of Korvosa's sewer system, the Party almost immediately ran into some of the ghouls they were not searching for! Fighting their way through the undead, they followed some tracks through the sewers to the wererat den on the edge of the system. Fighting their way past an otyugh there wererats had trapped as a guardian, Gawedd led the way into the den almost immediately coming under attack by dire rats and wererat guards. As the other members of the Party rallied round, the slaughter commenced. Despite Gawedd's reminders they were not supposed to be killing the wererats other than their firebrand leader Girrigz, an increasingly bellicose Garrid led the others in cutting a swathe through the lycanthropes.

Eventually the wererat leader and his two lieutenants were drawn into the fray. Tordale, with some assistance from Dellosia, managed to kill the two lieutenants as they tried to sneak up behind them, while Behzad, Gawedd and Garrid ganged up on Girrigz. Gawedd was badly wounded in the combat, almost dying several times, fortunately Halleth was standing behind him with a wand of cure light wounds and able to save him.

Lavender's Luxurious Liniment

After several days of rest, during which several members of the party had to avail themselves of Ishani's services to cure them from Blood Veil which was running rampant in the town especially through Old Korvosa the population of which was under increased security with Grey Maidens and the Queen's Physicians posted at each of the bridges looking for sign of anyone showing symptoms trying to enter the mainland part of the city. Eventually the Party was approached once more by Cressida, this time the Marshall turned up at Halleth's house. Word of a mysterious cure was sweeping the city and Cressida wanted them to investigate. The source of the cure, Lavender's Luxurious Liniment,  was a perfume shop in The Heights, if Lavender’s owner had indeed found a cure, it should be made freely available, and if she was peddling snake oil, the false security she was fostering needed to be dispelled before more people put their confidence in trickery and unknowingly expose themselves and spread the malediction even faster.

The Party immediately set off for The Heights, where Behzad and Gawedd were disappointed to find that due to local ordnances their were no taverns, however they did eventually find one not too far away. Garrid, Dellosia and Halleth checked out the perfume boutique where they found a queue of eager Korvosans standing in a line that stretched nearly four blocks from the perfumery’s distinctive amethyst shaded windows. Many of these people looked healthy, but several bore the early but obvious symptoms of blood veil: hacking coughs and blisters. The line threaded through the street and into the store, where customers paid 2 gp for a dose of Lavender’s Luxuriant Liniment.

They joined the queue where the owner Vendra greeted them from behind the shop counter, while actual actual sales were handled by two pretty young shop girls. Two large, well dressed men with purple cravats discreetly held saps and kept their eyes on the shop’s patrons, obviously ready to put down any trouble at a nod from Vendra. Vendra offered them an endorsement from one enthusiastic customer, though Dellosia and Halleth found the testimonial less than convincing! Garrid purchased 5 bottles of liniment and they set off to meet the others in the nearest alehouse. Later, on the way back to Halleth's Garrid stopped off at an alchemist's shop and paid for an analysis of the contents.

That night Party returned to the scene to find a line of more than 50 customers camped outside Lavender’s front door, waiting until the shop opened the next morning to buy their doses of Vendra’s elixir. More guards remained on duty through the night, watchful for thieves and keeping overly zealous customers in line. Garrid led the assembled group in an impromptu prayer meeting which allowed Halleth to scramble up onto the roof to observe the surrounding area.  Just before curfew Halleth spotted two men rolling an empty barrel down the alleyway behind the shop. Dellosia and Garrid followed the men down to the river where they filled the barrel with water and rolled it back up to the alleyway, heading in though the door of a building in the rear.

Next morning Garrid received the analysis from the alchemist, the Liniment was mostly river water, sugar with perfume and some oil to thicken it. Taking the information to Cressida she issued a warrant and assigned three guards help them execute it. The raid on the shop went well. Garrid and Dellosia targeted the front shop while Gawedd, Halleth and Behzad hit the workshops and living area out the back. Two Lavender Thugs were killed and two more arrested while Vendra was apprehended by Dellosia as she attempted to flee through the crowd.

The Hungry Dead

The Party were asked by Cressida to investigate reports of bodies being dumped by some of the less scrupulous carters hired to move bodies to the Grey District for safe disposal. One such site was allegedly Racker's Alley in Old Korvosa. They made their way there past the Grey Maidens and Queens Physicians scrutinising those crossing the bridges and headed through the twisting streets of the old city. The high walls of the surrounding buildings threw the awkwardly bent alley into constant shadow. Although littered with  garbage and filth, the refuse wasn’t the most stomach turning trait of the rundown side way. Heaped against a bent wooden wall rose a pile of more than three dozen plague
victims, their faces blistered and flushed, eyes open and staring. The scent of death was overpowered by the reek of rot, suggesting that some of these corpses had been here
for days, closer examination revealed that certain bodies seem strangely pale compared to most of the victims who succumb to the sickness. Garrid suggested that this may indicate the presence of undead in the area.

They searched the area and the surrounding empty buildings but found nothing much of interest. Garrid arranged for the bodies to be collected and disposed of and they staked out the alleyway. Garrid and Halleth stuck out till sundown but the rest of the Party got bored and wandered off to find a pub nearby. This could have proved a costly mistake as when the sun went down, Garrid and Halleth found themselves sunder attack by six vampire spawn. Fortunately Dellosia had dragged the others out of the pub at sundown and they arrived in time to help despatch the undead.

Unfortunately on their way back from Old Korvosa, Garrid had a run-in with the Grey Maidens guarding the bridge they were using and found himself arrested. Refusing to pay the fine for a "crime" he did not commit, the cleric found himself on the wrong side of a prison cell shared with a motley crew of diverse pickpockets, thieves and rioters.

The Case of the Vanishing Virtuoso

The Party immediately headed to the Temple of Sarenrae to deal with the effects of their level loss from the vampire spawn, and purchased a scroll of restoration for Garrid, which Haleth and Dellosia smuggled into the prison for him

A few days later, after Garrid was kicked loose to make room for those incarcerated following a series of escalating violent confrontations and near-riots on the bridges from Old Korvosa,  the Party was visited by a young woman Deyanira Mirukova, sent by Cressida. Several days ago, her brother Ruan had been personally requested to perform at a private masquerade at Carowyn Manor, home of the well-known patrons of the arts. When Ruan didn’t return the entire next day, Deyanira went to the Carowyn estate, only to find it seemingly abandoned—its entrance locked, its windows tightly curtained. Next she approached the Korvosan Guard, but it proved unable to provide aid, as its efforts were stretched past the breaking point already, so Cressida had sent the desperate young woman to Halleth's house.

The Party agreed to help and headed down to South Shore, finding the manor house all shut up as Deyanira had said. They headed round to the back and clambered over the high hedge surrounding the property. The gazebo by the fish-pond was empty save for a few fading decorations, as was the servant's quarters. The back door to the manor appeared to have been jammed shut, but Gawedd, Behzad and Halleth eventually managed to open it onto a small hallway with two other exits. Gawedd took the right-hand door, which opened on to a dining room where he was immediately attacked by zombies.  With the help of his friends the zombies were quickly dispatched and he moved forward to the hall where was astonished to see the zombie couples dancing in an otherwise silent, but corpse-strewn hall. A voice from somewhere asked him if he was enjoying "the revels", and promptly shot him with a hand-crossbow!

The Party moved forward through the manor, destroying zombies and coming under frequent attack by a manically giggling invisible assailant. In a series of skirmishes, Tordale and Dellosia used detect magic to track their attacked down, eventually trapping her in the drawing room, where her invisibility spell suddenly went down. Without the advantage of being unseen their attacker quickly surrendered.

Halleth and Gawedd interrogated their prisoner, Jolistina, quickly discovering that not only was she high on pesh, but also appeared to be a raving lunatic, babbling incoherently about "darling Rolth". Eventually they managed to discover, from her insane ramblings, that Ruan, had been taken to "darling Rolth" by the "masky-men". The others searched the rest of the manor dispatching a few more zombies, and even found a survivor Ausio Carowyn himself hiding in the cellar.

As they Party left the manor, to deliver Jolistina into custody, they spotted ominous clouds of black smoke in the north of the city.

Hospice of the Blessed Maiden

On returning to Halleth's, Behzad quickly discovered that the Grey Maidens had taken extreme action to quarantine Old Korvosa - and burned all the bridges leading to  the island it was built on! Needless to say the whole of the city was in something of an uproar.  

Garrid, suspecting the "masky men" who had taken Ruan were in fact the Queen's Physicians, visited Ishani next morning and was told that Dr Davaulus and Queen's Physicians were based at The Hospice of the Blessed Maiden, a converted warehouse not far from Halleth's place. They went to scope out the area and were somewhat surprised to find it was guarded by Grey maidens. They tried to find out whether anyone called Ruan Mirukova had been admitted, but were told no. Tordale and Gawedd went so far as to snatch the register from the nurse of the desk but only confirmed that Ruan's name was not recorded there.

They watched the Hospice through the night discovering the bodies of those that had died during they day were taken by wagon to the Gray District. They resolved that this was their best method  as a way to get in to the Hospice. They set their ambush the following night, which went more-or less OK, until they discovered that none of them knew how to drive a horse and cart! Eventually Tordale volunteered to try riding the horse bareback and hope it pulled the wagon along behind. Duly disguised as a Queen's Physician, Tordale clambered onto the draft-horse's back. The horse, though somewhat confused at the is novel approach, complied more or less docilely and and the rest of the Party hid under an unpleasantly stained tarpaulin in the back. On arrival at the rear of the Hospice, Tordale was greeted by one of the Queen's Physician's who opened the door only  to be promptly  clubbed unconscious.

The Party dashed from the rear of the wagon and quickly cleared their way through the lower layer of the Hospice, slaughtering all the Grey maidens and Queen's Physicians there with brutal efficiency.

The Experimentation Ward

While the rest of the party dealt with the Grey maidens on the catwalk, Behzad pushed the single lever on the goods lift which lurched upwards. He came out onto the upper floor where the rough functionality of the warehouse below gave way to beige tile and a whitewashed hall on this floor. Double doors engraved with images of rampant gazelles stood  to the south, their once fine teak bearing obvious scores and chips from rough use. He was immediately attacked by two Grey maiden guards and was in a little bit of trouble until Gawedd and  Halleth arrived, via the stairs,  to help deal with them.

Once Garrid and the others arrived, the cleric used channeling to heal his comrades before Behzad led the way through the teak doors. The room beyond held rows of white-sheeted beds lining the walls. Each bed held a patient restrained by leather straps that bound the figure to the sturdy metal frame. At the room’s centre stretch stood simple wooden worktables, each covered in fluid filled beakers, intricate glass tubes, small burners, and other alchemical instruments. There was a smell of burned paper and more ominously, blood, in the air. The six six Queen's Physicians attending to the patients immediately attacked.

The Queen's Physicians were swiftly dealt with and Garrid began examining the paperwork they had been destroying on the desk, finding that several patients had been “sent below to A.” Meanwhile Dellosia checked the patients, half of whom had been just been killed -  judging the fresh blood surrounding them - and all of whom were heavily drugged. 

Gawedd meanwhile led the charge through the final set of doors followed by Halleth Tordale and Behzad. The room was guarded by two more Grey Maidens and he caught a quick glimpse of Doctor Davaulus before that worthy suddenly vanished from sight. 

Once the Grey Maidens were dealt with, Halleth and Gawedd began searching the room, finding little of interest,  Tordale cast detect magic to see if the Davaulus was lurking invisibly but was unable to detect any magic auras.

Suddenly Garrid and Dellosia heard the goods lift spring into life and begin descending. Garrid dashed down the stairs and heading for the ground floor, swiftly followed by the others. When the lift doors didn't open as he expected he forced them open to revel the lift shaft descended forty feet down below ground level. Carefully the Party mustered their ropes and grappling hooks and descended the shaft to the roof of the goods lift below them.

The Temple of Urgathoa

Gawedd levered up one of the wooden panels that made up the roof of the lift and dropped down inside, quickly followed by Haleth and Dellosia. He and Halleth prised open the door and were immediately ambushed by Queen's Physicians and Cultists of Urgathoa . They immediately charged in to attack, quickly follow by the rest of the Party. After a nasty little fight all the ambushers were slain, though Gawedd was sorely wounded and required healing from Garrid. As the caught their breath they finally had a chance to look round them. The scuffed stone walls of this chamber had been plastered over and then decorated with lurid murals of skeletons cavorting among the dead of a Korvosa that had completely succumbed to blood veil. Simple wooden doors lead to the north and south each bore a painting of a scythe wielding skeleton. A sizable double door stood on the east wall, appearing in the mural as a massive set of double doors opening into the pyramid foundation of Castle Korvosa. Two more scythe-wielding skeletons decorated these large doors.

Ignoring the doors to either side the Party headed for the double doors. Halleth failed to find the trap on them and was nearly hit as a huge blade scythed down from the ceiling. Behind thick panes of glass, in the room beyond, fragments and even whole bodies of the living dead lined the walls and floor. Their rotting faces sneered and broken fingers clawed at each other as the shattered forms twitched in vain, their splintered appendages grasping hopelessly. Yet rather than some massive, nightmarish grave, this horror show seems instead to be a stomach-churning attempt at art. Several cultists there were quickly slain, and once again ignoring the side doors, the Party headed straight for the double doors at the end.

These doors were not trapped and opened out into a huge chamber where the stinging scent of harsh chemicals choked the air. Three huge metal vats bubbled here, each more than six feet tall. A sturdy series of catwalks ten feet off the ground stretched over and around the vats, allowing those above to attend whatever slurry produced the foul green-brown mist emanating from each gigantic vessel. Circling the upper portion of the room was an elaborate mosaic of white, black, and green stone that depicted a giant half-skeletal woman in black veils dancing among fields of the dead, undead, and dying. Doctor Davaulus was here and shouted a challenge at them to which  Gawedd and Behzad  responded by charging in. The cloying miasma in the room, thick with infection, seared their lungs, as the cultists desperately defended the Blood Vats. Meanwhile in the room they had just left, Garrid, Dellosia and Halleth came under furious attack as more cultists emerged from a side room and  accompanied by Rolth Lamm and some plague zombies attacked.

The Inner Temple

Suddenly the tide of battle seemed to turn in the Party's favour. Garrid channelled energy to heal Behzad and then cast multiple spiritual weapon spells at Davaulus. Dellosia took out another cultist with her bow as  Gawedd continued hacking though the cultists. Tordale and Haleth meanwhile focused on Rolth Lamm, forcing the necromancer to flee using dimension door to the hospice above. The last survivor, Davaulus tried to flee the assault of the spiritual weapons, but succumbed before he could get away. Catching their breath, and some healing from Garrid they searched the bodies, and the areas of the complex to ensure it was clear.

Donning some plaguebringer masks they moved into the room with the Blood Vats, pondering how to deal with them before eventually putting it in the "too hard" box and moving on. There were four doors leading off from the walkways surrounding the vats. Garrid opened the first where an elegant operating table dominated the centre of what was some kind of grim laboratory. Crossed with iron restraints and encircled by a gore-encrusted gutter, the macabre device sported various cranks and levers, and was large enough to  accommodate an ogre. Strapped within was the unfortunate Ruan Mirukova.  Along the walls stood several tables strewn with all manner of alchemical accoutrements. Their contents appeared extremely old: rusted iron tools, beakers of purpled glass, and deep pools of wax from countless melted candles. Standing over the table was a Nosferatu who looked up irritably and asked Garrid what he wanted. 

The vampire, Arkmino, though obviously annoyed, seemed utterly unconcerned, at the Party's interruption and did not appear to feel at all threatened by them. Eventually after some discussion, and Garrid forestalling a preemptive attack by Tordale, Arkmino agreed to release Ruan if the Party retrieve  for him a death’s head coffer which can be found in the Inner Temple. Not wanting to take on so formidable looking an opponent after the battering they have received, Garrid agreed and they pushed on. Gawedd and Halleth checked two other doors finding one to be a storage room with some zombies in it and the other an unfinished room, partially excavated from the bedrock.

The final door off the walkways led to a room where the reek of burning wax wafts through this morbid chamber, with several tall, misshapen candles being the apparent
source. Workspaces strewn with tall beakers of foul-coloured liquids, parchments covered in insidious symbols, and cages of whimpering rodents filled large alcoves in both the northern and southern walls. A pair of huge stone doors hung ajar to the east, revealing a long hallway leading further into the dark. At the room’s centre stood four large, cylindrical glass vats, each filled with a bubbling emerald fluid that tinted the chamber’s light a noxious green. Within each suspension floated a malformed abomination—something part human, part angel, and part horse—things of half-formed muscle with dead, fleshless equine skulls. Three of the forms are motionless, but the fourth twitches now and then. 

Wisely ignoring these, the Party, somewhat untypically led by Garrid, headed don through the doors, down the the tunnel and almost immediately into more trouble, coming under attack by cultists, juju zombies and a powerful cleric of Urgathoa who took Gawedd, Behzad and Tordale out of combat almost immediately with a greater command spell before trading spiritual weapon spells back and forth with Garrid!

Daughter of Urgathoa

As happens often, when things felt at their worst for the Party, the tides of battle shifted. Garrid managed to stabilise Behzad, and Tordale and Gawedd simultaneously broke free for the Greater Command spell that had disabled them and joined the combat, greatly shifting the odds.  Ans her cultists and zombies began to fail, Lady Andasian herself joined the combat, her vicious scythe sweeping across the melee. Garrid went down, but Halleth managed to stabilise him as a combination of Tordale and Gawedd's attacks and Dellosia's remaining spells drove the cleric of Urgathoa into retreat where she finally succumbed, almost ignominiously, to an acid splash from Dellosia. Virtually everyone in the Party save Halleth and Dellosia were terribly injured and as those with healing wands doled out their cures, they reflected on how close it had been.

Suddenly the temperature in the temple seemed to drop and they felt somehow  as if some fell gaze had fallen on them from some incalculable distance. Lady Andasian's body, still hanging incongruously 20 feet above them suddenly began to jerk and spasm emitting bolts of cracking negative energy as before their it was stretched and  transformed into a Daughter of Urgathoa! Gawedd, Dellosia and Halleth fled, leaving the still wounded Garrid Behzad and Tordale to face this new risen threat

Unlike her previous incarnation, this version of Lady Andasian waded straight into battle, her great scythe like claw sweeping it's diseased path across them. At first thing looked very dicey for those of the Party who had remained, still wounded as they were, but once the others finally returned to he fray, once again the tides of battle shifted and once again it was a humble acid splash spell from Dellosia that finally slew the undead abomination.

Searching the area Halleth recovered some treasure, including the Death's Head Coffer desired by Arkmino. Returning to the nosferatu, they exchanged the magic item for a very grateful Ruan! Garrid then offered Arkmino the four Leukodaemons contained in the Hall of Pestilence. The vampire was so delighted by his new acquisitions that he offered them his notes on Blood Veil in exchange, before shooing them out of his laboratory so he could make preparations to return home.

After freeing some prisoners form a dungeon and destroying the concentrated blood veil held in the vats nearby, the Party eventually reported back to Cressida who arranged for the care of the patients remaining in the Hospice. Arkmino's notes were handed over to Ishani ,who proclaimed that this might give them the clue to develop a cure!

Over the next weeks, the Blood Veil epidemic gradually began to abate in the city, especially once Ishani's cure was developed, a mercifully simple concoction to create for anyone with the skill to brew a potion feat or even alchemical skills. Ishani informed them that the disease’s supernatural origins proved to be its undoing, for once a person suffering from blood veil took the cure, not only does the disease fade, but for 1 week thereafter, contact with the recently cured person spread the cure in a manner identical to
how blood veil itself had spread. Once word of the Party's effort got out they were feted throughout the city by the common folk and offered many thanks and small gifts. Cressida finally and officially deputized the Party as members of the Korvosan Guard and opens Citadel Volshyenek’s armoury to them.

Word of the Crown’s involvement in the outbreak spread as soon as it was made apparent that Reiner Davaulus and the Queen’s Physicians were corrupt. The queen’s official stance was that the charming doctor duped her, and that his actions and those of his masked minions "do not accurately reflect her desires". The Grey Maidens involved in the hospice claimed to have had no knowledge of the true goings-on in the chambers below. The Party had to confirm to Cressida that they had encountered no Grey Maidens in the area below the Hospice. Yet the unrest grew. As the city continued to recover, the rumours of the queen’s involvement spread. Unfortunately, so do her resources. The Grey Maidens become more prominent on the street, and progressively oppressive laws and edicts begin to appear.