Regeris awkwardkly makes his way over to the rest of the group as the hag falls and the grindylows flee into the murk. "The hell was a hag doing here. Let's grab what we can and worry about what it is on the surface. Keep up the search."
Nebbin wonders if the carved fly has any meaning -- maybe it's an unholy symbol or something that the group's more religious members might recognize -- but nods at Regeris' suggestion and continues to try to gather anything they can.
Kayleigh tries to figure out if the fly pendants have some sort of symbolic significance to any god or goddess. She also stays near Regeris since the inquisitor doesn't seem to be functioning as well as he normally does.
Returning to the aft cabins, the group finds the small spaces entirely free of clues, clutter, or really anything. Of course their are splinters and planks of wood around the great holes in the floor and ceiling, but there's nothing else. No crew's belongings or even hammocks. It's true that the river's current streams gently through the rooms, in through the cabin door like the party themselves and out the through the hole in the deck above, but it's not strong enough to account for lack of stuff. Or bodies.
The only corpse to be found that might have belonged to a crewmember is the one Nebbin saved from undeath. His jaws have elongated, along with his tongue, and his teeth are filed to daggers. His rotten jaws still sport the remains of a thin black beard. The fly amulet he wears is a solid piece of metal, cast as a fly. Kayleigh recognizes a holy symbol of Urgathoa when she sees one.
Looking down the hole in the floor, what's left of the ship's bottom is a chaotic mess of staved barrels, shattered paneling and a thick layer of rotting fish bones.
The captain's cabin above is almost as disappointing. A simple divider splits the room in half. Where the group enters there's a wreck of a table. The delicate charts that a captain might keep here are tattered scraps at best. On the other side of the partition, away from the flow of current there's the remains of a single hammock hooked to the ceiling. A footlocker lies on its side in the corner of the cabin. The eddying water in the cabin is a filthy chum, 'reeking' of the ghoul-smell.
Kayleigh again casts detect magic and scans the cabin. Then she gathers up the footlocker, suggesting that maybe it should only be opened once the group is topside, in case it holds a log, journal, or other sort of paper record that might be destroyed by exposure to water.
Tassira moves to assist with magic detection.
Nebbin takes the footlocker from Kayleigh, assuming he can carry it much more easily than she can -- though everything seems very light in the water. He shakes his head with a smile to indicate he understands that they don't want to open it yet, and waits for the spellcasters to see if there's anything else of note in here.
"Do you think you could figure out where everything went in the cabin?" he asks Regeris.
Regeris cannot overcome the shock of the hag's curse. It's driving him into a state of paranoid anxiety that undermines his every action.
Nebbin easily hoists the footlocker under his arm to haul it out. Kayleigh and Tassira's efforts don't yield any new sources of magic within the wreck. Just the equipment on the hag.
Emi mostly keeps her eyes peeled for any emerging threats, letting the others search.
She figures the footlocker is something at least, but looking back from where they are now, she's not quite sure why she thought this trip was a good idea. Come to think of it she can't think of what they might find in a sunken ship that would tell them anything about a disease.
Also the thing about them running out of time and immediately starting to drown is making Emi a little antsy.
"So anywhere left we haven't looked yet?"
Leaning heavily on her spear, Kayleigh lets out a gurgling sigh. "The fly pendants are unholy symbols of Urgathoa, goddess of disease, so I think we're on the right track. It doesn't make sense to me that Korvosa's plague emanated from an undersea foe like the sea hag, though. It's possible that she looted the amulet after this ship was sunk. The crew-member-turned-ghoul, however...that warrants further investigation. Maybe we could bring that corpse to the surface and I could try speaking with its dead spirit tomorrow."
The priestess pauses a moment before continuing her guesswork. "It looks like the ship's cabins were stripped of all belongings, valuables, and even dead sailors. I think we should try to find the grindylow tribe's lair while we're down here; I'll bet they're the ones who scavenged the wreck."
Nebbin nods, and follows suit with Kayleigh.
From what Regeris can remember of Grindylows, they are not free-swimming creatures, so it does stand to reason they'd have a lair somewhere. Double for the Sea Hag, who doesn't seem to have been living in the wreck with the ghoul she taunted at the start of the fight.
Emi probably had the best view of the grindylows as they fled the wreck. In general she'd have to say that they plunged down into the weeds at the bottom of the trench that the party just climbed out of. The good part is that it's heading down, and the armored characters are not going to have a problem with buoyancy.
The bad part is that it's against the current now, so swimmers who fail their basic swim checks are liable to get left behind fast. You're also all starting to tire. Moving around under so much water is hard work.
Tassira starts pointing towards the surface.
Miserable and withdrawn under the hag's curse, Regeris finally speaks up.
"I want to get out of here rather badly. But there's no crew and just the one corpse. Why leave this one and not the others? If the ship was shot down, maybe it was just the one person?"
He hesitates a moment. "As much as clearing out a grindylow lair sounds fun, I'm not sure there was anything on the ship for them to steal. This does not look like a normal crewed ship. The footlocker may be our best bet."
Nebbin reaches out to get Kayleigh's attention and nods to Tassira and then up to the surface of the water.
Emi shifts uneasily and waits for a decision.
She's not so sure she likes the idea of wandering off down into some weedy crevasse with people who sink like lead weights when they are getting closer to the point they will start drowning. But she doesn't want to admit it out loud.
Kayleigh frowns, wanting to finish this undersea expedition now, but when the vote seems to go against her wishes she doesn't put up a fight. Getting Regeris back to his normal functional self seems most important at the moment; if the footlocker holds nothing of interest, the party can return on the morrow.
"Very well," the priestess concedes. Knowing she can't hope to swim to the surface burdened down by her heavy armor, she starts removing that and placing it in a bundle that can be hauled topside. The basic clothing she wears beneath her armor seems old, threadbare, and, well--cheap.
As the armor comes off, each person's natural ability to swim returns. With no air held in your lungs you all still feel abnormally heavy, but swimming up to the surface seems practical again.
After a brief huddle to make a plan, Emi strips off her armor and adds it to the pile, then kicks up for the shadowy green stripe of light above that is the surface world. As the light around her grows, she looks down to make sure she can still make out the glow of Kayleigh's spell, now growing late in its duration. Before she knows it, her surging adrenaline takes her up into the higher, brighter, warmer water, until she's suddenly, blindingly back on the surface of the river.
Once Emi's eyes have a chance to adjust, she's able to pick out the Labor less than a hundred yards away. She has to vomit up briny river water to clear her lungs to call out, while swimming against the current so she stays above the party. By the time she's able to make any kind of noise, however, someone's spotted the splashing.
The process after that is long and mechanical: lines dropped over the side, including one with a net, swam back down to the waiting party. For practical purposes, the last to leave are the light sources: Kayleigh and Nebbin. As you swim up, back into the world of air and light, you take Milani's slice of daylight with you. Looking down, the riverbottom is lost in the murk. Soon the wreck of the Direption disappears entirely to the river gloom.
Once everything and everyone is safely aboard, the little ship weighs its anchor and shifts sail for the docks. Ishan walks around handing out towels as the Labor takes the wind and leans into it. Londra's boys cluster around the party pelting them with questions of the horrors of the riverbottom, when they're not taking in a sail or tying something off for their mother. Ishan takes Regeris aside to examine him.
After just a moment, Ishan makes a familiar diagnosis.
"You're cursed, brother. I can pray for your salvation in the morning, but I suspect you might rather have the same blessing from your goddess herself." He nods over at Kayleigh, who sits with Nebbin trying to answer one of the boy's questions.
Regeris nods miserably. "Just my luck to piss off a sea hag. Milani's blessings to me are a little less... flexible. Inquisitors have a different role. If you can remove the curse in the morning I'd sincerely appreciate it."
Kayleigh's mood brightens brightens considerably once she's up from the depths and back in the boat. She speaks mainly of the timely blows struck by Regeris, Emi, Tassira, and (of course) her Nebbin, but the normally humble cleric blushes with pride when her own unusually effective battle prowess against the lesser grindylows gets mentioned. She immediately berates herself internally for being prideful while at the same time giving herself a pass this one time: It felt so good actually contributing to a fight in a meaningful way for once!
Unable to not overhear the words passed between Ishan and Regeris on the smallish boat, the priestess just throws a nod at both men for the time being.
Of course I'll do whatever's in my power to remove the curse from Regeris, but it wouldn't hurt to have Ishan do the deed either. We'll be joining forces with him once we find a place to set up our own hospice...and it wouldn't hurt for Regeris to reaffirm some of his original beliefs that led him to worship Abadar in his youth. While not all Abadarans are nice, the Church might still be an important ally if the queen continues to be a polarizing force in the city....
Nebbin hastily averts her eyes as Kayleigh -- then Emi -- starts removing his armor, though he has to admit part of him wants to look at Kayleigh. Still, that wouldn't be very gentlemanly. His face turns crimson red.
Back on the surface, when he and the others are dried out -- and decent -- again, he looks to the lockbox. He wants to open it immediately, but maybe it would be best to wait until they're in a safer, more private location.
"We may need to go back down tomorrow," he tells the captain.
The youngest of Londra's sons whines, "I wish you'd brought the Sea Witch up so we could get a look at her! What did she look like again?"
Ishan grimaces hearing the description of the fight below and shakes his head, murmuring his comment where the boys do not hear. "Small wonder the servants of the Pallid Princess would be involved in the city's sickness. But what does it mean? A plague ship with no one on it?" He looks over at the footlocker, then out at the shores of Endrin Island, now grown close.
Londra expertly pilots her boat through local traffic. Her boys shoot around the little craft like apes, mostly anticipating her barked commands. Coming back to the pier, the Labor and her unusual catch draws some stares from the fisherfolk, but Londra pays no attention to it.
"If you do end up needing to go out there again, or need discreet passage somewhere," she says, accepting her fare, "You know where to find us."
Standing over by the footlocker and the group's pile of wet things as the others conduct business, Emi notices an armored man casually observing the party from among the crates piled on the dock. It takes he a minute to recognize him, but it is Grau Soldado, Captain of the Old Dock guard.
"Why do you think he's here?" Nebbin asks anxiously. "Do you think something happened? Did we do something wrong?"
Still, he keeps the footlocker under his arm as he heads out with the others to see what the captain has to say.
Emi doesn't bother putting her armor back on once back in the boat. Instead she decides to let her clothing dry as much as possible, leaving off her boots as well.
She has a couple of guesses for why Grau is at the dock waiting to share with Nebbin.
"I'd say he either needs help with something, or Cressida Kroft is anxious to hear what we found."
She hops off the boat onto the dock and walks over to greet the guardsman.
"Hiya Grau! Were you worried about us?" she asks mirthfully.
Kayleigh thanks Londra and privately tells her that if the blood veil should affect her or her crew, she should make an inquiry with the priests at the Temple of Aroden.
Like Emi, she's curious about what has drawn Captain Grau to the docks to await the party's return. Nonetheless, she takes a minute to hastily don her breastplate.
Grau smiles when he recognizes Emi, but she can tell by the look on the rest of his face that he's bringing trouble with him.
"I'd heard you were going swimming. I thought I'd come down and see that everyone who went in the river came back out again."
He looks around, steps closer to Emi, inside the radius of a whisper, and continues, "Not that I don't really want to know how the swimming expedition went... but order came down to us not an hour ago. The Queen's Physicians are coming to Old Dock in the morning."
"They're coming over the bridge into your square at dawn. They're sure to focus on the House of Aroden first. I thought you should know."
He waits for the initial weight of his words to sink in, then starts naming hushed details as his eyes roam the area for eavesdroppers.
"They're going to question each house, then turn each out into the street. Anyone found with the Veil will be taken into their custody and will get a bed in their Hospice. Anyone found concealing someone carrying the Veil is taken into custody by the Gray Maidens."[\b]
[b]"If you're wearing the red chequer of the guard, you'll be expected to help the doctors. To follow an order if one if given. Disobeying them will carry an extra stroke of institutional insubordination, more than enough justification for death in the eyes of some judges in this city."
"In fact," Grau leans in for emphasis, "the Field Marshal would prefer if your association with the guard were to remain concealed from the doctors for the time being. The best way to ensure that is to move out of the Temple of Aroden immediately and leave them nothing to find in the morning!"
Nebbin looks alarmed.
"Where should we take everyone?" he asks quietly when they have a little privacy. "I don't think there's really enough room at Helvara's."
Kayleigh seems more angry than alarmed.
"I think the best plan is to leave the priests and Lambs where they are, but to make as sure as possible that they're blood-veil-free when we do so," the Milanite says. "I've got one channel left today, so I can remove the disease from two people at the temple, if it's reared its ugly head again since we left. And if I stay in the temple overnight, I can prepare a bunch of lesser restoration spells to remove as much of the plague's outer indicators from the priests and kiddos first thing in the morning. If there's no sign of the blood veil, the Queen's physicians and Gray Maidens should let them all be...hopefully."
Tassira dries herself off with a few dozen prestidigitation spells. Ravnos comes to join her when Grau comes by to check on them.
"Right. Well, I haven't left anything of mine in the temple... so, I'll see if I can find us a place to lay low."
"...I think Madame Helvara will be happy to hide us out in her establishment while we sort things out." Tassira smiles.
Emi had been expecting something more than curiosity from Grau, but nothing aimed directly at them.
"S&!+! That's no time at all!"
Emi doesn't take the news as calmly as the others seem to. She goes into perseveration mode, pacing a tight route and thinking intensely.
At one point she stops in front of Grau and grabs him by the shoulders, pulling him toward herself until their foreheads touch.
"Thank you Grau, we owe you big."
Emi's contribution is a sense of urgency.
"Any moving of people we're going to do should be underway by midnight. If they're coming at dawn, they might do the smart thing and start sealing off exits hours before. If any news of their arrival has gotten out, they can easily scoop up some of the people they're looking for that way as they try to leave."
"I have to find Trap and his mom and bring them out too. I know his mother had the veil so they'll almost certainly be taken. But I don't know exactly where they live."
Kayleigh listens to Emi and then turns to Grau. "Do you think the queen's people will let the folks at the Temple of Aroden be if they show no sign of the blood veil? Or do you suspect that perhaps word got out that groups of sick folks were waiting outside to be healed...and that the physicians and Gray Maidens will try to take them away no matter what they see? I honestly don't think Garlan and Crayden will abandon their place of worship under any circumstance...after all, their god's been dead for like a century and they're still faithful to him."
Figuring that Grau can be trusted, Kayleigh motions the others toward the mouth of a nearby alley. "Let's see if there's anything noteworthy in the footlocker we brought up from the wreck and go from there."
To Emi she adds, "In addition to the two people I can heal of the blood veil with my last channel, I've also got one remove disease spell left...though that spell's been an iffy proposition when I've cast it in the past. If we can find Trap and his Mom, maybe I can help them."
Miserable and quite literally cursed, Regeris simply nods and remains quite as the others speak.
"They will have heard word that we've treated the ill. Frankly we've been very active and have reputations now so of course we're targets. If anyone has blood veil, we just simply remove them to a safe location and make it clear that we're clean. If their orders are to take healthy people to a hospice we have a much larger problem."
He nods at Grau, wearily. "No cloaks. We're agents and I understand the politics at play here."
"If they're really after us, won't they not care if no one is actually sick? They'll just say we are and do whatever they want to do anyway, won't they?" Nebbin says. "I think we should move everyone, so no one gets hurt..."
Grau placates the air with his hands.
"They don't have leave to arrest everyone housing someone with the plague, only those who conceal them when asked. If the members of your house are clean of the sickness, and if you're willing to give over to them anyone found with the disease in your midst, then I think they'll leave the people of the Temple free. Same as every other house."
He shrugs.
"What they said, anyway. This is their first move into Old Korvosa, so it'll be my first look at what they're doing. What folks think of them. I got room for five at the jailhouse. Any more than that they arrest, they're on the hook for delivering to the Citadel. We just got these damned streets calmed down!"
He turns to Regeris with a nod.
"They're definitely not arresting anyone for treating the ill. There's no law against that."
He starts with confidence but ends up sounding more like a question to himself. He continues after a moment of reflection.
"There's also no law against continuing to practice faith-based healing in neighborhoods beyond their reach. I mean, that's just what you do, is help people survive in an epidemic, right? I heard they even pay a stipend to families who have to surrender a family member to the Hospice. The Welfare of the masses from the hand of the Queen, directly."
He looks around for a suitably discrete place to open the footlocker.
"The constable house is a few blocks from here," he offers.
Regeris nods and gestures to Grau.
"Lead on. I'm beginning to suspect this hospice is a means to an end that isn't immediately obvious. Why do they care about housing victims in the hospice care? It's a plague. Any other city would just be too concerned with hauling bodies out of the street."
Nebbin follows along, fretting about the best thing to do.
Kayleigh falls in line next to Nebbin, waiting to see what's in the footlocker before trying to make any plans.
The Old Dock constable house is a small but formidable structure. Like the temple it stands by itself, surrounded by converging streets and lanes. The first floor walls are stone, the doors reinforced with steel. Members of the guard nod at the group as they follow Grau into the place and up the stairs to an office. He closes the door and motions for Nebbin to put the footlocker up onto a desk.
The lock on the chest is broken, but the seal on the chest seems sound. It's a disappointment then, to find several inches of water soaking the items in the bottom. There's a cloak, soaked through with seawater and sporting a prominent grey fly as its sigil. The cloak is wrapping a book with pages that have soaked badly around the edges. It can't be opened without damaging the pages, at least not immediately. The scrawl along the spine reads, Serving Your Hunger.
There's also a leather pouch in the corner of the chest heavy with coin.
Regeris groans as he realizes the book has been badly damaged by the sea. However once he notices the title his stomach churns. "Urgathoa. The Pallid Princess. This the most important text for her twisted followers. Goddess of sickening excess, the undead and... and disease."
When Regeris informs the party of the text's title, Tassira starts casting multiple prestidigitation spells to dry out the contents of the footlocker.
Emi frowns doubtfully at the book as if it might itself be contagious.
"Well Grau, I suppose the word to Kroft is to wait until the book can be dried out studied before there's any word."
"But we know a little more now, right? That Urgathoans -- Urgathites? -- were on the plague ship, so maybe they brought this here on purpose. I don't know if that really helps us, though," Nebbin realizes. "We still don't have a way it for everyone, especially if they won't follow the basic rules. If they would just stay inside, and wear plague masks when they go outside..."
He heaves a sigh. "So we need to figure out what to do at the temple."
He looks to Kayleigh, expecting she will know the best option to help the children and priests there.
"Urgathoan," corrects Regeris. "And only one, which I still find puzzling. There was only one person on board when the ship was sunk - people would have seen an entire crew fleeing. What the hell was the point of it?"
Kayleigh's eyes meet Nebbin's briefly before averting.
She then looks at the items in the chest with disappointment. Placing the two fly unholy symbols and other items recovered from the wreck near the chest and its contents, the priestess casts diagnose disease and examines the items more closely. She also casts detect magic, just in case the cloak is enchanted...or possibly the book.
Tassira's cantrip wrings the water out of the book but cannot undo the damage that it did. The pages fall away from one another except in two places, where parts of the text have become gum. The result is a pair of big holes in every page.
The book itself is ornate. It has colored illustrations. Blush-inducing, stomach-upsetting color illustrations, to be sure, but still it would have been worth a fortune undamaged. Except as Tassira flips through she realizes that on some of the pages someone has inked their own notes in the margins. The margins where most of the water damage was done and the words are least legible. The ink of these notes has bled from word to word creating a great smudge.
Spending some time going through the pages systematically could yield clues.
To Kayleigh's magically enhanced eyes there's no trace of disease on any of the contents of the chest. The cloak, however, radiates relatively strong magic. A cloak of protection stronger than anything the party wears today. With a big symbol of Urgathoa embroidered on it.
Nebbin sighs as he realizes the book is going to take some time to decipher. "I know Tassira's good at that, but maybe we should give it to Commander Kroft, so she can have someone look at it while we do other things?" Nebbin suggests.
After reporting her findings on the contents of the chest, Kayleigh ponders the magical cloak further. "Wearing something bearing Urgathoa's unholy symbol is bad enough...but what if it's cursed in some way? For all we know, it might give a non-believer who wears it some deadly disease if donned. If its magic were as beneficial as it is powerful, you'd think it would be worn at all times by its previous owner, not stashed away in a chest."
Drawing the strange black dagger recovered from the spider cult, the priestess quietly adds, "That cloak creeps me out even more than this thing!" After a thoughtful pause, she asks, "Should we look into selling this now or maybe wait to see if the field marshal sends us back into the depths to search the grindylow lair for more clues?"
She tells Tassira she'll try to help the mage identify the cloak later. She also nods in agreement at Nebbin's words but turns to Tassira for her thoughts on the matter.