"Godsdammit." He stands over Cabe, hands on his hips, impotently trying to think of a way around this predicament. After a few moments, he shakes his head. "Okay. Watch over him. I'll be back at dawn."
With that, he leaves to head back home, fuming at his helplessness.
The trio go their separate ways, with Lori and Ducky working to help the sick at the temple in their own ways, and Cal doing what Cal do.
Caebricalius Antonius Melandrus sleeps an unnatural slumber, and dreams unnatural dreams.
He is young again, not even in his twenty-fifth summer. He stands in the foyer of House Melandrus in Grayhaven, his military release papers in hand. He has come with a heavy heart from years of bloodshed, manning the keeps at the Numerian border, staving off countless barbarian hordes over his six-year captaincy. He has lost too many friends--even a lover--to war, and he is tired. He has come home to find a purpose in his father's business, perhaps as a manager behind a desk.
Instead, he finds more blood.
It pools around the corpses of four House Guards sprawled dead across the marble floor in the foyer. It seeps out of the walls, like pores, but leaking thick globules of vitae instead of sweat. The walls pulse and contract, as if the house is breathing. Somewhere in the back of his brain, he knows this is not how it happened; it was a far more mundane horror he'd walked into, but this is the realm of dreams and the dream has distorted the memory into something surreal and grotesque. The clash of knowledge versus perception tears at his neurons, sending agony bolting through his eyeballs like lightning.
Somehow, though, he pushes the pain back, forces himself to see. He wills his legs to move, left foot forward, then right. Left, right, left. Marching formation. To the parlor, first. That's where he went, to look for Mother and Zelda. His sister always loved to take tea with Mother in the parlor in the afternoons. He marches, step by step, to the first room in this nightmare chain of events...
The morning brings a small comfort as Golloriel comes downstairs after her morning prayers: Cabe still lives, though his breath is ragged and labored. His eyes loll and twitch behind their wrinkled lids, his knobby, leathery fingers clenched into fists at his side.
"Much tossing and turning," Mother Fatia says quietly, "but otherwise little change. He still lives; that is a good sign. Perhaps he will fight off this curse yet."
Andakos passed out the night before after managing to craft antiplagues for the temple. When he wakes up, however, he feels terrible.
Checking himself in the bathroom mirror, it's hard to see, but Andakos can just make out a smattering of darker splotches on his red skin, and he coughs hard into the washbasin, spitting up a few small flecks of blood.
Well. It was only a matter of time.
Andakos wipes his mouth with the back of his sleeve. He trudges over to his pack, brings the image of a certain potion to his mind, reaches in, and pulls it out. He sits down on the bed and stares at the potion in his hand for a long time. Should he take it? Would it be better used by one of the many (too many) sick in the town? Maybe, but does he owe it to those very people to stay healthy so he can continue to search for a cause and a cure?
And, selfishly, there is Lyse to consider. The moment the notion of her losing the father she just gained enters his mind, he pops the cork and downs the potion, grimacing at its gritty, chalky texture.
He lies back on the bed and gives the potion ten minutes to kick in. After the interminable wait, he stands (immediately noticing that he's no longer woozy on his feet) and checks the mirror again. The splotches are still there, but visibly faded.
Andakos lets out a sigh of relief.
But there is still the matter of his sapped strength and vitality. He returns to the pack and pulls out another potion. He knows this one can help him start to feel normal again, but he also knows that Caladaer's strength was much more affected than his. On the other hand, the wizard doesn't really need to be strong and Andakos feels like a stiff breeze would put him down for the count.
Smirking at himself for just how little convincing he has needed, he downs the lesser restoration potion.
He audibly moans as he feels the blood rushing to his face and his extremities, and he immediately knows that the potion worked. Luck seems to be on his side today; hopefully it will follow him under the water again later.
Now that his (entirely justified) bout of selfishness has passed, he remembers Cabe's condition. He hurriedly gets dressed and returns to the temple, hoping against hope that the old man made it through the night.
Golloriel has to help her father down the stairs in the morning ; he protests (of course), but is too weak to stop her from supporting him. She doesn't even broach the subject of taking a few extra days of rest; besides the fact that the disease seems to get worse every hour they don't do something, she knows he would never agree.
She is relieved to see that Cabe still lives. Knowing that he is far from out of the woods, but also that she can do precisely nothing for him (besides pray, which she has done almost to excess), she thanks Mother Fatia and leads Caladaer outside to wait for Andakos.
Andakos arrives, receives the news about Cabe from Golloriel, notes how terrible Caladaer looks, notes how the temple is absolutely overflowing with the sick, and says, "Shall we?"
The journey back to Dock 16 is even more somber than the day before; they are one person short and at least one of the party had a very unpleasant bout with the disease that, thankfully, was helped by an extra potion lying around, but what about next time? The plague seems to grow by the moment, and it won't be long before the dead grow far beyond just the youngest and oldest in Korvosa.
A casting of water breathing later, and with Lori helping Cal down into the depths in his weakened state, the remaining party members find themselves back at the sunken wreck of the Direption. The dead shark and hag still float where you left them, although a school of fish swim away from their corpses at your approach, and you can see they'd been gnawing on the bodies. The shark, in particular, is almost unrecognizable as a shark anymore.
With his darkvision, Andakos sees that the ship's two halves have several doors, one of which is open--the door to the aft amidships where the hag came out.
Andakos waves the others along, then peeks around the corner of the open door.
+2 traps
Caladaer helps!
Several hammocks drift in the murky waters, strung between beams in this room. The room swirls with a haze of gore, fish heads, and half-eaten eels chumming the circling waters. You appear to have found the hag's lair.
Sifting through the gross fish chunks and detritus, you find nothing of interest in here.
Andakos checks the southeastern door. If he detects nothing, he opens it and takes a look inside
+2 traps
+2 traps
Caldaer helps!
A great school of small silvery fish erupts from the door and blasts past the investigator when he opens the southeast door, causing him and Cal to throw their arms up defensively, but the school simply vanishes off into the cold darkness. Inside the room, the soaked remains of smashed crates rest at the "floor" of the ship. Bloated crumbs from the rations the crates apparently once stored drift in the eddies left behind by the fleeing school of fish.
There is nothing of value that you can see.
Having exhausted their options on this side of the ship, Andakos moves to the west and checks the northern door, opening it if he finds no hazards.
+2 traps
+2 traps
Caladaer helps!
The trio checks both doors on the western half of the wreck, but find nothing of interest in the rooms, only more floating detritus, as well as a crab who shakes itself free of the silt and lifts a severed human finger in one of its pincers, as if threatening the party, then skitters off in a sideways trot.
That leaves only a single door left in the wreck: the captain's cabin. It stands before you, silent and ominous in the cold, inky dark, the water already warping and bloating the wood.
Andakos does the ol' percepting and door opening thing.
+2 traps
+2 traps
Cal helps!
You sense nothing out of the ordinary or of immediate danger. However, when you try to open the door, it won't budge. It's not locked, so you have to assume either something is blocking the doorway, or the water has warped the wood around the frame enough that this particular door doesn't want to budge.
Andakos looks back at the others. Caladaer can barely hold his own weight up, even in the buoyant waters. He'll get no help there. He waves Golloriel forward. "On three."
Golloriel nods and gets ready to slam her shield into the door with all of her weight behind it. It's hard to build up momentum in the water, but she does her best.
"... three!" Andakos pushes as hard as he can on the door while turning the knob at the same time.
The door doesn't even budge. He steps back and assesses the situation. Maybe the door is too narrow to try to squeeze both Golloriel and himself in front of it. He waves her back and tries again on his own.
Okay, now he's pissed. He steps back, looks at the others sheepishly, takes a deep breath (which is a really really weird and scary thing to do underwater), and slams it hard.
As the door opens, Andakos remembers he has a crowbar in his pack.
The room is eerily quiet, not even so much as the distorted sound of waves rippling far above. Unlike many of the areas of the ship, this one has been untouched by sea life as yet. Along with a few other bits of ruined furnishings, the tattered sheets of a canopied bed twist like ghosts above the snapped wooden bed frame. Knotted amid the linens, a drowned man idly floats in the room's murky waters. A closed footlocker sits on its side at the far end of the room. A tense moment of apprehension shows the body has no interest in waking up and attacking you, despite what your personal history would have you believe.
Andakos, being the most sharp-eyed of the trio, notes a large wound on the man's left temple--not enough to kill him, but easily enough to knock him out. Perhaps he was on the ship when it was struck by the Guards' trebuchet; the force of the blow to the ship could have thrown him into something, knocking him unconscious. In point of fact, continued examination of the room finds a small spot of blood and hair on one corner of the footlocker.
The footlocker itself is in good shape, and its waterproof seal appears to be intact. However, that will not be the case if it is opened underwater. A quick test of its weight reveals it to weigh at most ten or twelve pounds, easily carried back to the surface.
The corpse is wearing black robes. While he bears no holy symbol, you notice a tattoo on the back of his palm, just barely visible through the heavy sleeves of his robes. It is an exquisite tattoo of a death's-head fly. You have already seen this symbol before, and recently: at the ruined tower full of Urgathoan cultists.
Andakos pulls the man's sleeve back so the others can see the tattoo, gives them a meaningful look, grabs the footlocker, and gestures that they should return to the surface.
Once back on dry land, he looks down at the box in his hands. "I have a bad feeling about what is in this box. I don't think we should open it around other people. Caladaer, do you detect anything magical inside?"
Cal reaches out and envelops the box with his arcane senses.
The metal is just thin enough that Cal can detect a faint aura of abjuration inside the box. It appears to be off to the side in the footlocker, not on the lock or the seal.
Inspecting the seal, you see it is intact and the footlocker is latched closed but does not appear to be locked.
Andakos leads the group around until they find a deserted alley. Once he is sure there is no one else nearby, he looks the box over one last time for traps, and then opens it if he finds nothing.
Two items rest in the footlocker: a magical cloak, and a book. The cloak has the death's-head fly insignia of Urgathoa embroidered prominently on the back.
The cloak is a cloak of resistance +2.
You think if you found a decent tailor, they could remove the Urgathoan symbol from the back of the cloak without damaging the enchantments laced into it.
The book is titled Serving Your Hunger. You recognize it as the primary sacred text of Urgathoan worshippers.
The book is bound in black silk that seems to catch the light prettily, with darkwood covers. However, its pages seem ancient and fragile--had you opened this footlocker underwater, you definitely would have ruined it.
The contents appear to be a combination prayer book and cookbook, the contents of the recipes being entirely heinous. There is also a primer section within that details a conciliatory approach to both dealing with the undead, and becoming undead oneself.
This book is finely crafted and appears to be, if not one-of-a-kind, a very unusual edition. Any non-evil church would likely pay a handsome bounty for turning such a volume in, which will likely be either archived or destroyed, depending on the faith.
Of curious note, every single time Urgathoa's name shows up, it has been struck out with a pen and the name "Andaisin" written above it. Whoever "Andaisin" is, the book's owner was apparently enthralled enough with them to commit blasphemy against Urgathoa in Her own sacred texts.
"Andaisin" probably refers to Lady Andaisin, a noble from the shadow-shrouded lands of Nidal. Several years ago, the small village of Beorandy on the northern shores of Nidal sucumbed to a sudden and devastating outbreak of bubonic plague. Nidalese investigators found evidence that the cult of Urgathoa, led by a woman named Andaisin, had engineered the outbreak, but the high priestess and her cult had absconded. Evidence that she'd fled aboard a ship compelled Nidal to alert authorities along the western coast of Avistan that Andaisin was a wanted criminal, and that if apprehended, was to be returned at once to Pangolais to face charges of mass murder. Word of a fleeing Nidalese noblewoman/undeath cultist spread throughout Korvosa and was the talk of the town, but after several months with no further news about the situation, interest finally died completely.
"This is a powerful cloak of resistance," Caladaer says, removing the cloak he already has. "I need it more than the rest of you." As he puts on the Urgathoan cloak, he says, "I would like to study the book further."
"I don't know who this Andaisin is."
Andakos reaches out his hand. "Can I use your old cloak?"
"Thanks. And me neither. Golloriel?"
Golloriel takes the book and thumbs through it, her eyes growing wider as she pieces the memories back together. "Yes. This is it. I knew the name sounded familiar. Dad, someone told me her story while we were in Skelt. Lady Andaisin is a Nidalese noblewoman. She killed dozens in Beorandy with bubonic plague, then fled in a ship. I think we found her ship."
She looks up at the others, face strained with worry. "Bubonic plague. We have to find this Andaisin."
"S$+~. Yeah. Let's go."
The trio returns to Citadel Volshyanek to see the guards dispersing the last of a crowd of angry citizens. "Back to your homes, you fools!" a familiar voice barks. "We're in a bloody epidemic, and you're gathering in crowds? Home with you! Get on!"
As the grumbling citizenry disperses, more than one of them scratching at spotty rashes on their necks and wrists, you see Ag standing with an unfamiliar human woman at the front gates of the citadel. She motions you over when she spots you.
"Andakos! Good ye well. This plague is causing no shortage of panic. And now people are in a tizzy because the Queen has cordoned off the entirety of Old Korvosa. She has made some unpopular decrees in her short reign thus far, but that one takes the cake. Apparently as bad as it is here in the southern districts, the Blood Veil hit Old Korvosa like wildfire. It's possible the entire district will be lost." She shakes her head soberly. "If this keeps up, we will have more riots on our hands. We are stretched too thin, and several of the Guard are out sick with the plague as well." She clears her throat. "Apologies. You are here for Commander Kroft, I am sure. Come."
The dawrf leads you into the citadel, up the stairs to the second floor, and through the dank stone halls dripping with humidity, until you reach Kroft's office. Ag has you wait a few moments while Kroft finishes muttering orders to a pair of guards. Once they're dismissed, she waves you in. Immediately she frowns and says, "Where's Melandrus?"
"He..." Andakos looks down at his feet, then back at Kroft. "He fell." Immediately realizing how that might be misinterpreted, he corrects himself. "He is not dead, but he may not survive. A sea hag cursed him. He survived through the night, but it is a vile curse and he fights it still." He clears his throat. "Do, uh-- do you have anyone here who can lift a curse? Or even a scroll of remove curse? If not, with the temples as spread thin as they are, I fear for his chances."
Kroft props her elbows on her desk and rubs her temples. There's now a solid streak of gray running through her coal-black hair. Despite her clear weariness, it gives her a distinguished look of strength and uncommon beauty.
She sighs and looks up. "We don't, sadly. We're stretched unbelievably thin, and our coffers are low. Nearly a quarter of the Guard are out with the Blood Veil. I... don't know if they'll make it. I hate to say it, but these new Gray Maidens are actually helping a bit. Nobody likes them, but they're scary enough that they're keeping people off the streets. We need that right now."
She steeples her fingers and stares at the trio for a long time, her gaze pensive. "You're a man short, and time is of the essence. I have someone who can help, but she's, ah..." She bites her lip, an unusually uncertain gesture from the normally stoic woman. "Well, she's a little intense, to be honest. I don't know if I entirely trust her motivations. Not that I think she'll betray you or anything, I just think she's got ulterior motives for offering her services to the Guard. But like I said, we're stretched thin."
She rubs her eyes for a moment, then looks up at Andakos with something approaching chagrin. "It's the best I can offer you. Should I arrange to have her meet you? I think she's visiting family at the moment, but I can probably have her meet you as soon as tomorrow."
Andakos's shoulders slump. He hadn't dared to hope that the Citadel could help Cabe, but now their options were exhausted; it is truly up to fate and Cabe's ability to fight the curse. The next two nights will be nerve-wracking.
He realizes that Kroft had asked him a question and snaps out of his reverie. "Yes, any assistance you can provide would be appreciated." He sighs heavily, then nods to Golloriel. "Explain to her what you told me."
Golloriel nods, then holds her hand out to her father. "Give me the book." She sees the hesitation in his eyes, but he eventually relents, pulls it out of his pack, and hands it over. She holds it out to Kroft, explaining what they found in the sunken ship, who Andaisin is, and what she had done in Beorandy.
Kroft blanches at the mention of Lady Andaisin and holds up a hand. "I am all too aware of who she is. I remember we were on high alert for eight months after that letter from Nidal. I hope we're not seeing that here, but unfortunately it looks like that may well be the case. Still, this isn't enough to know for certain, and at any rate, I don't have enough manpower to start a manhunt. Hells, I don't have any manpower right now."
She thumbs through the book, frowning. "Whoever this guy was, looks like he had a serious crush. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. I can't really expect a worshipper of Urgathoa to be besotted with anyone respectable." She hands the book back to Golloriel. "You might want to take this to one of the churches. The Bank of Abadar, perhaps, or maybe one of the shrines at the Pantheon. Or the Church of Dawn, of course," she adds hastily, tilting her head in Golloriel's direction. "I have no use for it now that we have the information within. I'll see you all in the morning. Hopefully we will have a path forward by then. And hopefully Captain Melandrus survives the night." She gives a nod to the trio. "Good luck."
Golloriel deliberately puts the book in her pouch rather than handing it back to Caladaer. She doesn't really understand his apparent fascination with it (or maybe she does, if she is honest with herself), but she knows that it needs to go to a temple for study. She shoots Andakos a look, nods at Kroft, then turns and leaves.
Andakos hasn't known Golloriel that long, but he reads her look pretty well; she intends to take the book to the temple of Sarenrae. It's as good a place as any, he figures; plus, he can check in on Cabe while they are there.
He thanks Kroft, promises to report back to her on Cabe's condition, and heads out toward the temple.
Once there, he and Golloriel track down Fatia and present the book to her, along with the story of how they found it.
Mother Fatia thanks them for the book. "I'll see that this tome is destroyed as soon as we have time to prepare a proper sanctification rite. In the meantime, take this." She hands Andakos a roll of parchment with a favor on it from the Bank of Abadar in the amount of 1,500gp (!). "Our usual bounty for books like this is five hundred, but this is clearly something unusual. You did well removing it from the world; such tomes only lead to corruption and death."
You check on Cabe, but the old man's condition doesn't seem to have changed much. He's sweating more; it seems the nightmares are plaguing him once again. Time will tell if he survives another night.
Caebricalius puts one foot in front of the other, despite every fiber of his being screaming for him to stop, to not go on, to not look at what comes next. The screams mean nothing; his dream-body moves of its own volition, refusing his commands.
The parlor is a disaster. Glass coffee tables and chairs stuffed with goose down have been smashed and overturned. Mother lies in a crumpled, unmoving heap against the far wall. Her dress has been torn away and her body used and mutilated. He vomits.
But the carnival of horrors is not over. There is more to see. There is so much more. His feet spin in place and move him back out into the hall, to the study. Father's head burns in the fireplace, his body stripped naked and beaten to the point where his torso is nearly one solid black mass of bruises. He was likely dead before his head was ever removed.
His siblings' rooms are just above. He doesn't want to go. He doesn't want to see. He goes anyway, because this is a dream he has no control over.
His siblings lie in their reading chairs, or at writing desks, or sprawled under their beds where they crawled to try and hide from the Bad Men. His oldest brother in his thirties, visiting the family home on business. His master room is soaked in his blood, and his wife's blood, and their two children.
His youngest sister is only six years old. Her favorite teddy bear lies next to her small, limp hand.
Every one of them dead. Some of them were used as Mother was. Neither age nor gender seems to have been a factor.
The blood in these rooms trails up the walls, draining upward around invisible barriers to make out a single letter in each room:
Z
E
L
D
A
Caebricalius screams again.
He squeezes his eyes shut, feels convulsions wrack his physical body even through the haze of the nightmare. He feels his jaw clench and spittle froth out of his mouth as he shakes and seizes.
NO!
He fights against the dream-horror, wills it to not be there. He thinks of his younger sister, not quite entered into adulthood at the time. Young, bright, precocious Zelda, always looking up to her big brother, always with a million questions, wanting to learn how to duel like him, wanting to learn how to use magic like him, wanting to go to war with him, to stand by his side and keep him safe despite the fact that even in the midst of puberty she stood a full head shorter than him. Zelda, the icon of hope in his mind. He focuses on her smiling face, on the harsh bray of her laugh, on the wild shock of frizzy brown hair she always kept in a messy ponytail. His sweet, doting sister, his hope.
When he opens his eyes, the bloodless letters on the wall are gone.
His parents are dead. All his siblings are dead. All except one.
Zelda... where are you?
In the real memory, he'd found a scrap of cloth clutched in his mother's hand, clutched so tightly she'd torn the flesh of her palm with her fingernails before she died. A single scrap of cloth, with the corner of an insignia. In the dream, he did not bother to look for that scrap of cloth. Both in the dream and in real life, he knows exactly which House that insignia belonged to.
He draws the silvery mithral blade he'd wrought with his own two hands during his military career, a blade yet to be named, but soon to be drenched in blood...
Fate seems to be in the magus' favor.... for now.
The day is unforgivably humid even in the early hours. As it approaches nine in the morning, it is already past eighty. The air feels thick enough to cut with a knife.
When the trio check on Cabe, Mother Fatia looks haggard. "He had a seizure last night. It very nearly looked like we would lose him. The gods truly seem to be watching over him. From what you have said, he must survive one more night. After that..." She sighs and rubs her eyes. "After that, we will see."
Andakos awakens before dawn, prepares his daily extracts, and heads to the temple to check on Cabe and retrieve the Eglens. Once done, they head to the Citadel to meet their new companion.
The trio make their way back to Citadel Volshyanek and Commander Kroft's office. When you enter, you see Kroft is not alone. A woman sits with her back to you, chatting quietly with the Commander of the Guard. The conversation ceases when Kroft looks up and waves you in.
"This is the woman I spoke of," Kroft says. She looks directly at Andakos and adds with a quizzical expression, "Apparently you know each other?"
The woman stands and turns to greet the party. She is in her early thirties and of Vudrani descent, with almond skin, piercing brown eyes, and shoulder-length black hair. Her battered traveling clothes belie slivers of glimmering metal underneath--a mithral shirt. The hood of her finely-woven cloak is down around her graceful neck, and she holds a certain amount of regal bearing, though her clothing--however finely tailored--would argue against such a claim. She is also covered in a dizzying array of daggers of varying quality, a few of which look, by their hilts and sheaths, to be quite expensive.
Andakos isn't entirely sure why Kroft thinks he knows her. He's never seen her in his life. Except... there is something familiar about her. Something in the nose, and the cheekbones. They remind him of someone.
They remind him of Glorio Arkona, in fact. Just as she opens her mouth to speak, it dawns on him: little Reyhan Arkona. They used to play together as children, but one day she just up and left, sent away to a private school in Vudra by her father, Glorio. That was twenty years ago, and now here she is, a full-grown woman.
The moment she sees her childhood friend, Rey's eyes light up and she launches herself at the tiefling, wrapping her arms around him in a hug with a very un-ladylike squeal of joy.
"Andakos!" she cries, squeezing tightly. "Sweet Abadar, coz! It's been--gods! Twenty freaking years??"
She finally relents and puts him at arm's length so she can look him over. "Damn, you look good!" She gives him a playful grin and a swat on the arm. "Cressida says you're an Academae guard? Brain like yours, I figured you'd have been a student. How are your folks?"
Andakos manages to recover from his shock in time to return Rey's hug. "A student? No, not for me." He makes a gesture that indicates his tieflingness. "But they let me use the libraries and laboratories after hours." He feels his cheeks redden and is suddenly very thankful for his heritage.
Change the subject, change the subject.
"My parents are great!"
Nailed it! But maybe dial back the enthusiasm?
He takes a moment to take it her appearance. "Fine looking weapons. Does your skill match their worth?" He gives her a grin, hoping she realizes that he is half-teasing.
Gods. Get a room.
Rey doesn't seem particularly perturbed by his daemonic visage; she'd already known what to expect, in fact, thanks to one of her few letters from her father several years prior. However, she also isn't nearly as capable of hiding her emotions, and at his question she blushes as she waves at the daggers as nonchalantly as possible. "Oh, these old things? I'm okay, I guess. They've saved me once or twice. I've mostly been protecting archaeological caravans out in the Vudran wilds. Not much of a historian myself, but the dig sites are fascinating, plus I get to ply my trade." She can't help herself; with a flick of her wrist, a dagger of pure mithral is in her hand and balancing point-first on the tip of her finger. She holds it for a moment before bouncing it up into the air to land the flat of the blade on her knuckles, which then undulate to move the dagger back and forth. The dark stone in the pommel seems to refract light almost like a rainbow as it moves back and forth. Finally she stows the dagger with a small flourish and grins.
"Sorry! We should definitely catch up later, but right now I'm actually here on business. Same business as you lot, in fact." She turns to Kroft. "Commander? You can probably summarize better than me."