Aurelia targets the shark and tries to daze it, staring at it.
Vox, undeterred by the fish bites earlier, swims in to slice at the shark.
----------------
"Fish with teeth? Really?" Nicoleta says with a roll of her eyes. "I guess this is payback for all those sea bass dinners."
She slips through the water and attempts to punch the predator.
Aurelia hexes the shark with bad luck as Vox and Nicoleta move in to attack it, badly wounding it. Instead of fighting back, the shark withdraws, swimming to a door in the back of the hold and butting its head against it.
Roz takes aim with her crossbow and dispatches the shark with a well-placed bolt. She works to reload the weapon as the fish turns belly up and starts to float away.
"I think it was trying to alert something in the next room," the oracle says.
"I don't think 'trying to' is the appropriate phrase," the dhampir says through gritted teeth. She struggles through the water to the door and attempts to open it.
Vox and kicks forwards towards the door, allowing Nicoleta to struggle with it while she waits with readied blade.
Vox struggles...
Not only does Aurelia not struggle to navigate the waters, she also placed an expert bolt from her crossbow into the belly (hopefully) of the shark.
As Vox flounders in the water, Nicoleta swims over and opens the door. 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.
A horrid woman lurks within the chum! Hair like rotting seaweed drapes this ancient witch. Loose, algae-colored skin sags off her starved frame. Just looking at her makes you feel weak.
Aurelia fires on her, scoring a critical hit with her crossbow!
”Skinshear!” she shrieks upon spotting the dead shark. ”My baby! You’ll pay, dearies!” She gives Nicoleta the evil eye!
"I've been told that before by things uglier'n you," Nicoleta snarls, not affected in the least by the woman's horrific appearance. Nevertheless, the monk struggles to reach the hag before attempting to strike at her.
Aurelia would tease Peaches again about swimming, but now was not the time. Instead she stares at the hag and decides she needs to make her laugh. "Ah, that's funny." she remarks, not laughing herself.
Vox swims forward, trying hard not to look at the hag as she slashes at it.
Aurelia and Roz both try to attack the hag's mind with their magic, but the strong-willed witch resists both attacks. Nicoleta lands a light punch, but Vox slices deeply into the hag with her curved blade.
With another shriek, the hag attacks the drow vigilante. Vox parries the spear, but the claw leaves bloody furrows along her arm.
Vox curses as her blood spills into water and attacks again.
Nicoleta continues to punch and kick at the hag. "Ugly things like you have no excuse for existing!" she growls.
Determine to break the Hag's mind, Aurelia tries to cast the spell once more.
This time, the mental assault is too much for the hag. Overwhelmed by fear and laughter, she is unable to retaliate, allowing Nicoleta and Vox to make quick work of her.
The door to the captains cabin is swollen shut.
Roz swims over to Vox and heals her injuries. "Nice work! Anybody want to pop that door open?"
Nicoleta struggles to make her way over to the jammed door and gives it a half-hearted tug. When it doesn't budge, she pulls a little harder. She turns and glares at the others as if the door has become a personal insult and sets about opening it with increasing aggressiveness.
Nicoleta eventually gets the door open. 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.
The corpse wears simple black robes. An examination of his body reveals a nasty head wound—not something that would kill, but certainly enough to knock a person out. The body has been partially eaten by crabs and fish, particularly his face. A further search of his body reveals his silver unholy symbol of Urgathoa on a chain around his neck.
Examining the foot locker reveals a patch of skin and hair stuck to the corner of the metal box. The locker's seal remains intact.
"Nice work, Peaches. We get done with this thing, remind me to help you establish a new training regiment. I think we really need to work on your stamina." she teases with a wink.
Aurelia looks around for anything hidden or dangerous before turning to Vox. "I think you're our box opener, dear."
Nicoleta smirks at Aurelia before snapping the unholy symbol loose from the corpse and shoving it into her pouch.
"Only if you're doing the same exercises that I'm doing," she answers.
Aurelia doesn’t find anything else in this cabin.
Roz eyes the footlocker. ”Maybe we should head back to the surface before we open it? In case there are logs or something like that, we don’t want them getting wet.”
Nicoleta nods and grabs the container before attempting to swim back out to shore with it.
You swim back to the surface and emerge from the river before opening the footlocker. Within the footlocker is a leather pouch containing 50 pp and 38 gp, and a cloak of resistance +2 bearing an embroidered image of the unholy symbol of Urgathoa.
The footlocker also contains a copy of Serving Your Hunger, Urgathoa’s sacred text. This book is exquisitely illuminated and bound in black silk and velvet over darkwood covers, yet its pages are ancient and fragile. The book is worth 1,500 gp. Any nonevil church in Korvosa will pay this price as a bounty in return for the book.
The text is largely presented as a combination prayer book and cookbook for the preparation of various humanoids as meals, but also serves as a primer for taking a conciliatory approach to dealing with the undead and for the transformation of oneself into undead. Somebody has committed blasphemy in this copy—whenever the name “Urgathoa” appears in the text, it has been scratched out and penned over with the name "Andaisin."
Nicoleta holds up the unholy symbol she pulled from the corpse and compares it to the one on the cloak. "Does anyone know who's symbol this is?" she asks, ignorant of matters related to religion.
”Urgathoa is the goddess of undeath, disease, and gluttony. And this Andaisin chick is a nogoodnik out of Nidal.” Roz relates the cult leader’s tale.
"Fun..." Vox says, her nose wrinkling in distaste. Cannibalism, it appears, is not one of the drow's indulgences...
"So we have a name to blame," Nicoleta says with a nod. "Not sure if that helps us or not, but we should get this information to Kroft." She picks up the copy of Serving Your Hunger. "And this into the hands of those that will pay well for it."
You return to the citadel to report to Cressida Kroft. She is surprised to learn the ship may not have been a plague ship after all, but when presented with evidence the cult of Urgathoa was involved, she grows grim. ”It would seem that the ‘plague ship’ was intended to do little more than delay or misdirect an investigation into the sickness. The presence of a worshiper of the goddess of disease on the ship can be no coincidence, though. I believe a cult of Urgathoa is operating in Korvosa.
“I have heard of Andaisin. That notorious criminal has already destroyed towns via plagues, if Nidal’s claims are to be believed. For obvious reasons, I don’t want to further complicate Korvosa’s situation by letting word of Andaisin’s possible involvement reach Nidal. I would ask you to be on the watch for further clues as continue working to fight the spread of blood veil throughout the city. As long as cultists of Urgathoa remain active, possibly encouraging the plague’s spread, stopping the contagion is more important than ever.”
"I don't know if there's anything we can contribute as far as stopping the spread of the plague itself. That more along the lines of what the doctors are supposed to be doing. But if you hear anything regarding where the cultists are keeping themselves, that we might be able to do something about."
Nicoleta looks around at the others.
"Until then, we'll keep our ears open for any word of this Andaisin woman or her cronies."
Aurelia nods, waiting for the payment to come through. She doesn't go so far as to extend her hand or anything, but she anxiously awaits a jingle of golden coins. "Always glad to lend a helping hand, Field Marshall."
Ishani is willing to pay for the Urgathoan holy book and take it back to the Grand Bank of Abadar for archival.
Iolaire does her usual wall-flower impression, since Vox outright refused to meet the Field Marshal or the Abadarian. She seems perturbed at the idea of Urgathoans in her city.
"I'll put word out to everyone I can." She says, once well away from the office, "Hopefully someone will see something. We need a better lead than this."
There's no more leads to follow up on just yet, so you go about your business for the rest of the day. The plague is quickly becoming a full-fledged epidemic, with many citizens showing signs of sickness. A warehouse in the West Dock district has been converted into a hospice for Doctor Davaulus and his Queen's Physicians to operate out of and tend to the dead and dying, which grow in number by the day.
The day after your exploration of the Direption, a mousy older woman with jaundiced eyes enters Iolaire's shop. "My friends in the Guard say you're the ones to talk to if you need help. Name's Eries Yelloweyes. I represent the wererats of Korvosa, and, well, I need help.
"One of my kin was foolishly prowling through Midland when he got caught. With all the plague business going round, the mob executed the idiot, thinking he was somehow responsible for getting them sick. Their misguided violence lead to a bunch of drunken dockworkers braving the sewers to hunt more wererats. We're used to fear and abuse, so most of our kin scattered to hide elsewhere in the city. But there's a firebrand among us, name of Girrigz Ripperclaws. He refuses to run. Instead, he's calling us to war against the humans!"
Eries's nose twitches in agitation. "I've lived in Korvosa for over 50 years now. I've seen much suffering in my time, including devastating government-directed purges, a return of which I fear Girrigz’s warmongering ways could quickly incite. My efforts to talk sense into the violent wererat and his gang have failed, but something must be done before more lives are lost--on both our sides. Please, I beg you to speak to Girrigz and, if necessary, offer him an example of the force the city will doubtlessly employ should his rebelliousness continue. But I ask that you please not kill my kin unless absolutely necessary!
"In exchange for your help, I promises to work to convince the other wererats to help fight the plague from the shadows by disposing of infected bodies and doing what else they can to fight its spread. What do you say?"
Iolaire winces when the wererat introduces herself, but at least there seems to be no connection between her and Vox in the city guard's mind. She listens to the story sympathetically before making the only decision that feels right.
"I'll talk to my friends, they're a lot more persuasive than I am but I'm sure they'll be able to help." She agrees. "I'll let them know that you don't want anyone killed of course. Of course anything you can do to help with the plague would be great for the city. I can try and spread word into the right ears so that people know of your efforts too if you like?"
Eries shakes her head. "Nah. We've always lived in the shadows, and that's how we prefer it. You don't bother us, we don't bother you. It ain't such a bad arrangement."
Iolaire nods. "I can understand that. There's plenty of people who get out into the world and make a difference. I've never thought of myself as one of them. Better to do my job well and help where I can."
She offers one callused hand to the wererat. "Where can Girrigz be found? I'll need direction to pass on."/
Eries clasps Iolaire's hand. She gives the elf directions to Girrigz's lair in the sewers beneath Midland.
Once the wererat leaves Iolaite sends her apprentices out to find Roz and leave a message for Aurelia and Nicoleta at their inn. Once everyone is assembled at the shop she explains what happened and passes on the directions.
"This is a good thing." She says. "It helps the city and protects innocents. We should go, soon."
"The sewers?" Nicoleta questions with obvious distaste. "Why couldn't the wererats live in middle-class tenements?" She looks around at the others. "Does anyone have any clothes I can borrow that they don't mind me getting s~%$ all over 'em?"
"You can borrow one of my outfits. I think one of the faeries may have already s%%~ on it. But its gonna be small on you since you're like a foot taller than me."
"Yes, having had it pre-shat on is much better," Nicoleta replies in a deadpan voice. "I'll take what I can get."
Once she's changed and the group is on its way, she grumbles to Aurelia. "My arse isn't hanging out of the back of this thing, right? She really is short."
The thought hits her that she will need to go into the sewers. "Look. Last time didn't go so well for me when we went down below." she groans, anxiously before trudging off to find something to wear.
When Nicoleta asks if she has something she could borrow, the mesmerist laughs. Though their heights were close in size, their girth was not. Nicoleta was ripped with muscles whereas Aurelia barely could carry the sack of apples up the stairs.
Aurelia keeps a straight face and shakes her head no. "No. You're fine." she lies, waiting for the monk to turn around again so she can get a good stare in.
The journey through the sewers is as unpleasant as to be expected. You navigate the passages for about twenty minutes or so, following Eries’s directions.
Through the disgustingly visible haze of noxious sewer reek, the flow of unmentionable slop through the sewer tunnel’s filth-slick channel unexpectedly forks. Most of the muck continues on its expected path, but a small stream of ooze diverts off through a wide cleft in the moldy masonry wall. The man-sized crack cuts deep into the rock behind the wall, and wisps of thin white smoke issue forth.
Nicoleta holds up her hand and then moves forward quietly to peer through the opening.
The flow of sewer filth oozes into this rough-hewn stone cave from the west, pooling to the south before continuing through a crude channel in the eastern wall. Fat black mushrooms and other disgusting fungus grow thick around the pool of slime. Several low alcoves are cut into the walls, each filled with moldering hay, filthy furs, and tiny bones.
Two wererats in hybrid form keep watch here, along with a trio of dire rats. None of them notice Nicoleta yet.