Emmera takes the coffer off Goffred's hands gladly, hefting the heavy metal case more easily due to her much more dense musculature.
Goffred recognizes the holy symbol as one of Urgathoa. Urgathoa is an evil diety of undeath, disease, and gluttony. Her worshipers believe that they need not deny themselves any luxury - even past their own deaths.
Goffred finds nothing on the body itself but a mundane dagger, but floating about in the refuse of the room, wrapped up in a sheet from the captain's bed, is a mask in the shape of a bird's beak with goggles over the eyeholes.
Freed of his burden, Fredo swims to the roof of the cabin and plucks the beaked mask from the floating bedsheet. "This looks familiar," he says, coming down and holding the mask out for everyone to see. "The Queen's Physicians wear these. I've not heard of them wearing holy symbols of Urgathoa, but I wouldn't be surprised."
"They look like they have to hide something behind those masks if you ask me." Burahl remarks as Fredo mentions the masks and the unholy symbol.
"Guess their allegiance to an evil deity suffices as fitting that description. But now the question remains as to what has happened here. Aren't such masks usually worn only when there is an illness abound?"
"That's a heavy allegation. We need more than circumstantial evidence to accuse agents of the Crown." Thaven looks disturbed by the idea. Publishing traitorous material is one thing; accusing the Crown of employing evil clerics is another.
"This was a plague ship, by her lights." Fredo scans the mask for magic, then pockets it to examine more closely on land. "Maybe our Urgathoan needed a mask to survive long enough to pilot her into the harbor.
"As for more evidence, we still haven't looked in the box," he says. "And Loaggri may discover something."
The mask and the coffer both radiate magic. The mask, of abjuration and conjuration. The coffer, of necromancy.
"For what it's worth," adds Fredo, "the mask radiates and aura of protection and healing, the box of pestilence. Zellara can tell us more on land. Whoever opens the box would probably do well to wear the mask at the time."
"I will do just that Fredo. I'd reckon that I am the most safe of us to do so, rats and pestilence and such."
Burahl remarks as he chuckles a little bit.
"Time to get going gents and lass? Or do we need to rummage more in this ship? We might have found the source of this plague upon the city yes?"
Raijinn nods, with a smile. "I'm still a bit wary from my last bout with disease."
"We have time left yet, but I think we've exhausted our need to stay. Besides, I suspect that the woman we encountered may yet return." Raijinn looks at the coffer with a degree of curiosity and even unease. "Besides, I suspect we have what we came for."
Still awkwardly floating in the water, Thaven nods at the idea of getting out. He immediately heads toward the shore, moving with all haste.
Having found what they came to look for, the ground ascends quickly, strong (or not, sometimes) legs kicking the water until their heads surface. They find their rowboat again and row to the shore of Korvosa.
From there, they drag their rowboat up on shore and find a nearby secluded spot behind some cliff edges to inspect what they've found...
Burahl will find a more sucleded spot away from the rest before opening the coffer.
"Now, let's see what we've got here." the little ratfolk murmurs to himself as he opens up the box after putting a cloth before his nose and mouth.
A rush of foul-smelling air emerges from the skull coffer as Burahl opens it, though he manages to shield himself from most of it. There isn't much space on the inside of the coffer, but it's filled with a few leather pouches that jangle metallic-ally and a deceased but very deformed and sick-looking rat.
Cat is there to greet the party on their return to shore, alternately headbutting their ankles or rearing up to claw at their thighs. Fredo manages to get a few affectionate pats in as she runs around.
When they find a secluded spot to open the coffer, Fredo pulls Zellara's harrow deck from his pack. Somehow it had remained completely dry. He taps it against the side of the mask. "So," he prompts, "what does this do?"
After Zellara manifests and Burahl gets the coffer open, Fredo lays the deck on top and raises an eyebrow. Same question.
Zellara whirls out of the deck in front of Fredo. She kneels down to the mask when he touches the deck to it, and strokes it a bit. "I seem to remember recognizing this. Queen's Physicians' masks, right?" She curls her lips into a frown. "It conceals morality from magical onlookers and protects from smoke. And...hm." She crosses her arms. "It protects against disease. Dangerous implications to be made here."
When he touches the deck to the coffer, she raises an eyebrow. "I don't know what you mean. It isn't magical."
"That doesn't make sense." Fredo gives the open coffer a hard look. "It looked magical underwater, strongly and dangerously so. Unless I was really sensing the contents. …
"Stand back," he says. He straps on the mask and, confident in Zellara and thus the mask's enchantment, touches the deck to the clearly pestilential rat. While Zellara works on that, Fredo opens one of the pouches and spills the contents into the coffer for her to examine.
"It really isn't magical." says Zellara, as Goffred spills open a pouch bulging with silver coins. "Not the rat, nor the coins, nor the box. None of it has an enchantment on it."
The fortuneteller crosses her arms. "Strange."
"That simply can't be," protests Fredo. "I know what I saw. That box was as necromantic as this cloak." He rips the garment from his shoulders, tosses it next to the box, and tunes his sight to the aura he'd spotted before . "Raijinn, can you make sure I'm not crazy?"
Cat hisses at the dead rat with the same mixture of fear and bewilderment Fredo feels, while he tries to sort out what it all means. Zellara's never been wrong before, which means that even if there still is an aura, it's not coming from an identifiable spell. The implications of that are truly frightening. If the rat is, as it seems, a disease vector, then what does that make Blood Veil? Pure negative energy? From what font?
Burahl looks at Fredo and then back at the rat.
"Well couldn't it have been a cloud of magical disease hidden inside the box? Meaning, that whoever opens the box may get sick? I'm assuming these items, the dead rat and the coins might have been affected with a normal disease, the one the city is dealing with at this very moment."
"The question remains why someone would bring these into the city locked inside such a box."
Raijinn nods at Fredo, and turns his attention to the box, unsure of which of them he wants to be right. The implications of what they were suggesting were quite worrying. Either there was something that they couldn't sense, or Fredo was losing his mind. 'No good will come of this.' Raijinn thinks as he stares at the box and it's contents.
Goffred's cloak of bones radiates necromantic magic, as normal, but the coffer and all of its contents no longer radiate magic. The same goes for Raijinn's detection.
"That's no question, Burahl," says Fredo, shaking his head in frustration. He is probably right about the aura, but that means no opportunity to study it. "It's a weapon, meant to wipe out a good chunk of the city. But what's this you say about infected coins?" Fredo snaps his fingers in sudden understanding. "Do you think they could have gotten into the Bank?"
Burahl nods to Fredo as he closes the box again.
"Quick thinking Fredo, but yes, I think currency might have been the used vector or transmitter for this disease. A quite effective way to be sure. As to whether it got into the Bank I can't say, but in essence it only had to get to a market to be efficient enough."
Burahl looks at the box with sad eyes.
"Whoever had the idea to wipe out part of the city has no qualms about killing innocents, what it was that person wanted to achieve I can't say for sure. Though with what we know, quelling unrest might be a reason."
"Of course it is. The timing is too close." Fredo sighs. If that was the purpose, it has been remarkably effective. "We should take this coin to Dhatri. He can get into the vaults of the Bank and compare those coins to this one."