I understand completely and wish you better days ahead of you.
Quick question, if you can answer, who was behind Kotelia's bad reputation? It has been bugging me... ;)
The merchants. They were reporting bad things to Kotellia about all the monsters around eating people outside the city, then telling the other folks that Kotelia was doing it. That gave them a monopoly on trade with Kotelia. They'd buy magic stuff cheap, and sell food and clothing and other stuff the city had trouble making at a 3 or 4 x markup. Same corpse would be used on both parties, just who did the roasting and eating would change depending on the audience.
It worked because the merchants made a deal with the old scout division, who just went outside the city and camped out instead of scouting. Sometimes one would fall for a non-kotelian and settle down and be 'lost' to the enemy.
Take care mdt it's been fun being one of your players from Kingmaker to this homebrew.