You trundle the bound cult leader and the book of names back to Magistrate Drune. He has his men take the cult leader into custody and listens to your story. "Good job! You've succeeded where my works have failed. But I fear that as long as Barvasi walks free, this tale is not yet done. Can I prevail upon you to keep up your crusade?"
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Now that the cultists have run for the hills, Mikail quickly moves through the house, picking up anything that seems important or expensive and tossing it into his handy haversack.
Back at the Magistrate's office, he plops the book down on a desk and tells the man. "Of course you can count on us to finish the case! Here is a list of names that we may all find interesting. You in the name of civil peace, and us in the name of possible associates. This note here also insinuates that Barvasi may return looking for his gold, but now that we have it, there is no telling. I say we start with the key and Madame Carrington. A key that opens a spirit door to another dimension seems right up her alley!"
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After the cult HQ is looted, and the leader taken to the Magistrate, you're understandably tired and head back to the Inn to sleep. Your sleep is troubled, however, by similar dreams as before - it would seem stopping the cult has not stopped the nightmares.
Indeed, everywhere people look gaunt and haggard, the poor sleep infecting everyone. At Madame Carrington's, Maynard her assistant greets you with a knowing look. He ushers you back into her parlor and returns with coffee and pastries.
Madame Carrington's pale form hardly moves, but you sense an intensity in her attentions as you enter. Her spectre, Giurescu, appears and kisses his love on her forehead. He turns back to you and bows slightly. "Welcome travelers. My love feels you have been successful in your wanderings, yet senses you carry something powerful and ominous."
Giurescu smiles. "May my love see the key? More importantly, touch it? She can feel many things, things of its past and things that may yet come to pass, when she touches an object."
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Kharnia shrugs. "If that is what she wants, then so be it. We are not her keepers though" she adds as a warning. Looking directly at the madame, she states "This could be dangerous, and I cannot help you with forces I cannot oppose." She sighs before concluding: "I suppose what I am saying is "be safe doamnă Carrington"."
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Zora sits silently in Carrington's appointed room, pale hands clasped in her lap. When the phantom asks to inspect the key, she nods. "We have come for some form of insight. We are at your disposal. As my colleague says, there may be risks, but you are old and wise enough to know your own mind on such things.
"If this cult is not stopped, I fear the city's sleep will only get worse."
Giurescu nods and takes the key gingerly. He carefully places it in Madame Carrington's hand. Her eyes seem to defocus and Giurescu speaks for her.
"The Clavis Somnus. I can show you what I see, through Giurescu. Behold!" Giurescu seems to shimmer and his body becomes misty, as images begin to appear where he stood.
The first: You see a vision of Myra Lombroso, the cult leader, within the domed presbytery) being handed the key by Moses Greeley, who seems to be offering a sneering apology to both her and Mog-Lathar.
The second: This reveals Frell Tann pillaging the destroyed ritual chamber in the cult house and snatching up both the smoking mithral key and a battered tome from among the wreckage as several other rogues stand nearby.
The last: You see several men dressed in ceremonial robes and desperately clawing away from a dark portal that drags them ever closer while warping and distorting their forms. The key drops from a man's grasp and bounces on the sigil-riddled floor as the glow of a strange burning stone illuminates the room. As this vision fades, the psychic impressions show the same man and several cultists uncapping a seal in the catacombs of the cult house as fiery phantasmal forces wash over them. Finally, the visions reveal the same man in deep contemplation in the cult library , poring over a large tome with a gleeful look of discovery.
Giurescu returns, and Madame Carrington looks weary as the key almost falls from her hands. Giurescu takes it and hands it back to you. "My love is wearied, but she feels the key holds information regarding a ritual that may unlock the dream world. But the book is important and must be recovered. Seek the spider's den, where the head of the spider waits. If you shake its web, it will hear and know and may make mistakes. Seek the rumormongers in the Night Market and they will aid you." Giurescu fades away, and Madame Carrington lets out a long weary sigh.
Off to the night market, you go, where you can see several booths offering secrets and knowledge for a price.
A young human woman who is juggling fire, literally, spots you as you wander through. "Masters and mistresses! You seek knowledge, truth, enlightenment? I can help you! Information bought and sold, gossip given and rumors retrieved! You name your need, I name the price, you get what you want! Weatherby's the name and what you need, I sell!"
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Zora pauses to admire the girl's fire juggling with a small nod and smile, and arches a brow at the sales pitch. "Ah yes? Tell me of the mysteries of life and death, then, what lies beyond the veil that shrouds between us and the Boneyard...?"
Zora clears her throat. "I am joking." Sometimes people never can tell.
"In truth, we could use information, yes, Weatherby. We seek a man named Josef Barvasi. Not for our own good, but so that the people of this city may sleep again, peacefully. Have your own dreams been troubled, Weatherby...?" Zora asks, gazing at the juggler with her pale eyes.
Weatherby's sales pitch voice seems to slip. "Everyone's dreams have been... horrible." She shudders and shrugs. "Barvasi, hm? You don't aim small, do you? Well, if I take THAT commission, it's gonna cost. 1000 gold. Enough to get me outta Korvosa for a while."
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Ferabras is surprised that the normallly persuasive Zora has such trouble making this request of the fire-juggler, and decides to go his own way. ”That seems rather a lot, no? Surely it is worth a great deal to you, Weatherby, simply to do the right thing by yourself and your community? And we will be bringing Barvasi to justice, I swear it, so you will have nothing to fear from that quarter.“
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Mikail holds his peace through the conversation with the mystic and her ghost, silently nibbling on a pastry and drinking his tea. With a bow of gratitude, he follows the rest of the team out the door and into the night market. As the fire juggler approaches, he turns on his smile and follows Ferabras.
"Yes, 1000 gold is way too much for such as us, poor travelers that we are. We are helping to clean up your city, but we finance ourselves! Shouldn't the returns on a nights safe sleep, an end to this problem, and all of Barvosi's gang locked up be worth your help?? If if that is not enough, we can take you to the magistrate and vouch for you. I am sure that we could convince him to not only be generous in rewarding such selfless service as yours, but he could perhaps use his contacts in not only moving you someplace else, but could facilitate employment and funds that should be needed!"
Weatherby seems to waver with your words. "It's not that I don't want to see that scum off the street, mate. It's that I know that scum's got a lot of friends in high places and low. You may take him down, you seem competent, but you can't get 'em all. And they hold grudges. 500 gold."
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Ferabras is quietly surprised how regularly a world-spanning organization like the Pathfinder Society comes to rely on the personal cash reserves of its agents, but he doesn't hesitate to agree with Zora. "I will happily pay a share of that to see this evil addressed," he says, adding to Weatherby, "though you should simply give us the information for the same reason."
"It's not the money, mate. It's that I need that much to bribe someone to get me the hell out of here until the fire dies down. You get to go home, but I live here. I can't have these thugs or their patrons going after my family, thinking they can lure me back. I gotta get out and get a few choice loved ones out, too and I need to pay off shady men to make sure they don't squeal me out first chance they get. Alright, Barvasi keeps a place called the Rook's Roost, which he uses as a base of operations. He has something over the owner, some dirt or hold on him. Anyway, rumor has it he's been getting shifty recently, something's making him nervous. He's been holing up there. Nice folks avoid that area, see?"
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"I understand," Zora says simply. "If you or your family ever come as far as Absalom, the Pathfinder Society may have a place for your skills. Failing that, a lodge in most major cities may be able to assist you, if you mention us. Now, as we are new to the city, the Rook's Roost might be.... where, precisely?'
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"Curse it, we could have found him already, we had him right under our noses and we missed him!" Fera exclaims. "Right, back to Rook's Roost, and we'll hear no more of that Adnaan villain's stories of having to make a living. If Barvasi is hiding behind him, Adnaan'll be fortunate if he doesn't pay for it with his life."
Off you head to the Rook's Roost, Garret buffing as you go. The building looks the exact same as the last time you visited, but seems stiller, quieter. Wooden stairs crawl up an alley wall toward a secondstory awning that shelters a stout iron door roughly etched with blackbirds. Strange scents waft from the door’s barred porthole, and a thick haze blankets a large room within that is crammed with cots and couches.
A gruff looking doorman stands by the door. "Business or pleasure?" he grunts, with a surprisingly sharp look of intelligence in his eye.
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It'll be a pleasure to put an end to this Barvasi villain, but best not to let his guards know that's our intention.
"Business with Barvasi," Fera replies, taking the direct route rather than any clever subterfuge. "Be a good fellow and open that door would you, we've a question or two to put to him."
He grunts again, takes a long hard look at all of you and nods. He turns, raps three times, then once, then three again and the door opens. He steps aside to let you pass.
The inner sanctum of the Rook’s Roost is eerily empty. Its many beds and sofas have been pushed aside to create a clear path to the rear of the establishment, where a single door hangs torn from its hinges. A thick pool of coagulating blood spreads from the doorway, giving off a
heavy metallic odor.
Asnaan stands near the door, with four hefty bodyguards. He looks pale and sickened. He looks up as the door opens and nods his head. "I knew you lot would be back. Go on, look for yourselves." He gestures toward the torn off door and the room beyond.
Beyond the portal into the private 20-foot-by-20-foot den is a scene of incredible carnage: the mutilated corpses of eight of Barvasi’s Band are sprawled out on reclining chairs, their blood pooling deep on the room’s floor.
Above the corpses hang several tangled hoses that lead to small spigots above each couch, where they hang over the heads of lounging users. The hoses snake upward toward a strange apparatus on a tall brass stand behind the couches, itself crowned with the gaping mouthed, decapitated head of a dead-eyed frog-like creature: the preserved head of a slain hydrodaemon. The device harvests the hydrodaemon’s sleep spittle, and the spigots slowly drip the toxic substance on the foreheads of reclining clients, inducing a deep, lucid sleep.
Adnaan's voice calls from the other room. "You haven't done your jobs, heroes: the dreams still walk."
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Garret turns back, fists clenched at Adnaan's taunt "And what have you done to prevent this from happening? Now you just tell us everything that you know or I'll pummel you like your mother used to do when you were a baby!"
It does not seem to help that Garret is speaking to the lower belly of the man...
Mikail and Garret notice something odd: the blood pooled on the floor is beginning to flow... back toward a central spot in the room!
Round 1:
Blood Thing
Heroes!
Surprise! The blood thing forms up and takes humanoid shape, wavering back and forth as if in an unseen wind. Anyone within 10' of the thing feels a strange headache-like pressure in their skulls, taking -2 to attacks, saves and skill checks and needing to make a DC 12 Will Save!
It sets itself, as if ready to attack!
Mikail moves up to flank with Garret!
ROUND 1:
The humanoid blood clot seems to gather itself, then launches two slams at Mikail and Garret!
for plus 1d6 bleed and a !
for plus 1d6 bleed and a !
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Mikail glares dourly at the doorman, and follows Garret as he accosts Adnaan. "This blood is on your hands, not ours for failing to help us, or even stand up for yourself!" With a flick of his thumb, he points towards Karnhia. "She warned you that death was coming.. and you chose the wrong side." Suddenly, somehting catches his eye.. he turns his head just in time to see a large, red, slimy, rope of blood clot fly through the air and slam into him with a wet SPLAT!
With an "OOF!!!" he exhales as the thing wraps around him and begins to squeeze!
As the creature tries to invade his head, he manages to fight off the headache and pressure, but isn't so lucky in fighting of the physical tendrils wrapping around him!
Ferabras hits the thing hard, spraying clotted and viscuous blood everywhere! His attack seems to do slightly less damage than usual. Garret is able to trip it, but his stomp misses, while his follow-up kick hits. Mikail tries to escape, but the bloody thing holds on tight, while Zora blesses everyone! Karnhia tries to affect its mind but cannot find purchase!
ROUND 2:
It tries to keep a hold on Mikail!
It does so, dealing damage to the young fox and draining him of Constitution as blood seeps from his pores and into the clotted thing!
Ferabra's one attack is the only one that hits, but it's enough to send the blood clot-man into a lifeless puddle of red goo!
Asnaan pokes his head back into the room with a look of horror on his face. "I...I will help you however I can."