Not wanting to get in Aisling's way, Jessibel introduces the other Fushis to the Scarlet Roses; it's a good exercise for refreshing everyone's names in her mind as well. Afterward, she asks Jay to show her where the cave-in took place. The bard gives the area a once-over, looking to see if there are other areas nearby that look compromised.
Aisling finds that Korva and Treep both lie bedridden in the sleeping areas. Both are injured, though Treep less so, in that she is conscious. The priestess is pretty sure that she'll need some more advanced medicine than she has on hand as well as her magic to heal Korva, but she's also reasonably sure that her magic alone will get Threep back up on her feet in no time - the younger Fushi sister simply seems to have some heavily bruised and sprained limbs, and a strained back.
Jessibel looks at the area of the collapse with wide but generally vacuous eyes. She's about to walk away when she freezes, turns about, and re-examines the area more closely. "Yep--the wall collapsed. I hope the rest of the Wasp Nest is built better!"
The Raven side-eyes Jesibel as he looks over the damaged structure, not that she would be able to see the expression. "Indeed, dear Magpie, the wall has collapsed. We should have a discussion with Laria about her collapsing foundation. I am no engineer, but I hear good foundations are the foundation to a solid structure. This must be fixed before worms or... whatever lives in dirt starts to come through!" He says, taking Jessibel's arm and giving her hand a squeeze. "This will not be an inexpensive repair, nor will it be easy to affect repairs with all of our guests. Would you be a dear and make sure Laria is available to discuss an important structural integrity matter?" He leans in close to Jessibel and mutters "In private." Quickly followed by a louder "I shall gather the other ladies and bring them upstairs."
Leaving Jessibel, he turns to the sleeping area. Approaching the bedridden pair, he jovially asks "Well, doctor Aisling? How are our patients? Will they survive?" Seeing Treep is awake, he places a strong hand on Treeps shoulder, giving her a reassuring squeeze and smiling confidently down at her.
Aisling nods. "They're in no danger, although Korva needs more than I currently have." She expends a few spells to get Treep up and about again.
Once Treep is up and about, she bows her gratitude to Aisling, before looking worriedly at her eldest sister.
Rexus speaks up again. "When you have a chance, I've learned a bit about our predecessors from the documents we picked up back in the Livery."
Iratea and her sisters take the chance to hastily settle their armor and other belongings into the various storage bins in the living areas. The aasimar woman takes charge of them, commanding them to go take a rest, before looking at the Ravens. "Unless you all need us immediately, we're going to go to sleep - we need to catch up on some rest."
Jessibel looks at the Raven in confusion before nodding. Belatedly, she realizes the words she said would've sounded flippant and insensitive to the Fushis had any of them heard her utter them. A puzzled look on her face, the bard wanders upstairs to set up the meeting with Laria.
As Vantine is 'gathered up', she asks irritably if any more walls are going to be collapsing.
"I'm trying to convince Narcelia to come here instead of staying on in my flat. It's hard to tell her here is better if the walls keep falling in!
"Wonderful!" The Raven responds at once to Aisling, Rexus, and Iratea. "We are going to discuss this wall problem upstairs where we will not disturb the sick and weary." He takes Vantine's arm and begins to escort her to the stairs. "Would you care to join us, Lord Rexus?"
"I'll to stay down here, help the sisters keep things together." Rexus says with a tired smile.
With that, the Ravens ascend to the Long Roads Cofeehouse, they find that it is mostly empty - only a couple of weary-looking workers sitting at distant tables. Laria looks up with a slight frown, but inclines her head. "Oh, good to see you!" She rushes over to them. "But next time, just knock on the pantry door. I'll hear it, and you won't suddenly appear out of it."
"So, what can I do for you all?"
Vantine looks at The Raven. She figures he has something to say since he drug her upstairs along with him.
"It it simple, my dears." The Raven says, placing one hand over his heart. "I believe our foundation incident was intentional! My concern is that only our new avian friends have been down there and they presumably would have heard someone hammering upon the walls. Which is why I wanted to speak to you all in private." He looks around the group to gauge their reactions.
Vantine frowns.
"But why would they knock the walls down on top of themselves? That makes no sense."
Aisling cosniders for a moment. Given there's no incentive for their masked friend(?) to lie, but there's also no incentive for the sisters to bring a wall down on themselves, there's another conclusion. "There must bes soemone else down there, who has done this. We should go and find them."
Laria escorts the Ravens back to her office, listening to them carefully as they speak about the collapse. "I had suspected that there was sabotage involved, Raven, but I couldn't confirm anything - the only suspects I have are the Fushi sisters, half of whom were injured, and Rexus, who - even if he wanted to sabotage the Wasp's Nest, probably couldn't manage it. None of your merchants have come in yet." The halfling adds.
She nods at Vantine. "Exactly, dear."
"I'd agree, Aisling, but I don't know how anyone could be hiding down there - what with the Fushi sisters and Rexus sticking around down there at almost all hours of the day. Especially Rexus. I swear, that boy is throwing himself into the work to avoid mourning about his parents and life." Her face falls into a concerned frown. "So, assuming that both the Raven and Aisling are correct... what do you think we should do about it? If someone has access to the Wasp's Nest, we need to find them and stop their acts of sabotage - yesterday."
"Could something else, something smart, be lurking in the water? That's the only way I could see to keep hidden so well."
"It's possible." Laria says with a slight frown. "But what would that be? Some sort of aquatic devil?"
"...whatever it is, we're going to have to deal with it, I wager." Nyxra sighs.
Having had no real way of helping the Fuchi sisters with their injuries, the elf latches onto something else she can help with.
The Raven frowns and glances at Vantine. "Could be related to that creepy statue of yours..."
The Raven's idea is so absurd Vantine almost misses the opportunity it presents.
"It's not my statue at all. It was consecrated in Calistria's name and so it is hers if anyone's in particular. Still, we should probably check it thoroughly to see if something is amiss. We'd need to move it out of the water and onto dry land to do so."
"We may have the collective muscle here now to make the job easy enough to manage."
Aisling raises an eybrow. "By collective muslce, you mean it's not you who's going to end up diving into sewer water, yes?" She sighs. "I'm not eht best swimmer but I'm willing to give it a go. LEt's just hope there's not another croc down there." The wounds from the bite that almost killed her have heald, but the scarring is still clearly visible on her skin - which is another reason, aprat from the cold weather, she wears so many layers of clothing.
Laria nods. "Well, I'm a bit busy at the moment - I can't go down and help you move the statue, because, well. Still open for business. The Network didn't bother moving the statue, because it never had any trouble." She purses her lips. "But still, I suppose it can't hurt to try."
"You should go out the front door and through the sewers to go back. Don't want anyone getting suspicious of you going into the pantry again."
Once the Ravens do just that, they return to the statue of Calistria in the three-foot-deep reservoir. The elven goddess of lust and revenge stands proud, posed seductively over the dark water, though the flickering torches lend a slight menace to her expression.
Maggie looks out at the Ravens. "What'cha doing over there?"
"...well, look at this." Nyxra points at the statue's base. "Looks like it can be moved, but it also looks like it's concealing something..."
She investigates further and pulls out the stash's contents with a smirk.
Jessibel gives a quick look at the holy symbol and checks out the whip in more detail. Handing it to Vantine, the bard inquires,"What do you think? Is it magical?"
Vantine troops back down with everyone else, studying the statue and it's surroundings while Nyxra gets in the water. It's very exciting when Nyxra almost immediately finds interesting items hidden in the statue.
Vantine looks them over.
"The holy symbol is of unusual value, both material and workmanship make it so."
"The whip is enchanted to more reliably strike its target."
Vantine answers Maggie with her plan.
"We are moving the statue to solid ground so we can better look at it. I believe the best way to do it would be to build a sturdy tripod with a swinging boom atop it. With a pulley at the end of the boom, we can hoist the statue up. Then we swing the boom from out over to water to the place where we want to put the statue and lower it."
The Raven chuckles to himself. Well, she is nothing if not ambitious. The vigilante asks the lovely Magpie to bestow upon one of his feathered daggers and wades into the water as well. Dipping the lighted dagger into the water, he examines the base of the statue to see if moving it is even feasible for them.
"Uh, why are you guys moving the statue?" Maggie calls from the pier, tilting her head quizzically. "It seems like a lot of work."
After casting a light cantrip on her mentor's dagger, Jessibel stands on shore next to Maggie. She thinks the tengu's observations make a lot of sense (and she's not one for doing a lot of work unless there's a guaranteed payoff in the end). Besides, the young bard finds Calistria's mix of beauty and badassery rather intimidating and prefers that the statue be left out in the dark water.
Vantine waits by the edge of the water, but she's impatient and calls out to The Raven.
"Will we be able to lift it with a pulley or block and tackle?"
The Raven slogs back to the edge of the pool, lifting himself from the water and sitting on the edge. "Dearest Vantine. Industrious though you may be, I believe this may be beyond us. Lifting it is the first order of business as it sits in a depression. Have you much experience with moving huge chunks of stone?" He stands and looks out at the statue, hands on hips. "We would need industrial-level block and tackle and pulleys to start."
Vantine's initial surprise slips into a pout.
"Well no... I've not lifted anything like it before. But the docks are full of contraptions to do it all the time loading and unloading cargo. There must be a book about it."
"We could give the stonemasons a visit, see what they think it might take." The Raven places a consoling hand on Vantine's shoulder. He does not feel the statue can be moved reasonably, but his birdy heart aches to see the fascinating spellcaster happy. "But I warn you: if it turns out the statue is alive and can move itself I am going to be very cross that we went to such lengths to move it."
Maggie looks at Jessibel helplessly, before sighing. "Or don't tell me. I only live here, after all..."
"I'm still trying to figure it out myself," Jessi tells the puzzled tengu. "I think they think it might have something to do with the cave-in that hurt your kin, Calistria being the goddess of revenge and all. Maybe she doesn't want the non-faithful to be using her temple or something."
Aisling shakes her head. "I think we call it a day here. I'm not about to let anyone we don't know down here - this is a hideway," she reminds everyoone. "We can't hide here if everyone knows where it is."
"Also, form what I know aoubt Calistria I think if we'd upset her we'd know about it. Like, personally. I dom't see her knocking donw a bit of wall. She'd send waasps after us. Or worse."
She looks around in furstration. "We've wasted a day already and we're no closer to finding what knocked the wall down."
Maggie shrugs. "Maybe, I guess? We've never had much truck with gods or goddesses before. But then, I guess we've never lived this close to a shrine before."
"Wait, you think something knocked the wall down?" Jay emerges from the living quarters. "Do you have any ideas of what it might be?" Her voice grows low, dangerous - she's eager to get her hands on whoever nearly killed her eldest sister. "It wasn't anyone here. Rexus was busy with his papers, and we wouldn't hurt Korva... so who was it, and why?"
Unable to come up with a better theory about the reason and/or person behind the collapsed wall, Jessi wanders off to see what Rexus has learned from the documents he's translating.
"Discovered something about the previous incarnation of the Silver Ravens?" the bard asks, genuinely interested. "Did they, perchance, count a bard amongst their number?"
Rexus looks up from his notes at Jessibel. "Quite. I think I have a list of the most prominent Ravens of their time somewhere around here, but I am positive there were at least a few bards involved in their work. Why do you ask?"
"On--no reason," Jessibel says with a smile. "Well, maybe I'm a little interested in whose footsteps I'm following in...so I won't make the same mistakes, you know?"
Jessibel's not being 100% truthful. (Shocking! She's fishing for more info on Silverbelle.)
I'm not sure if anyone knows that she snagged Silverbelle's journal beneath the Fair Fortune Livery. I'm assuming that she's keeping it a secret, only reading it when there's no one else around.
"A deity personally interfering with our occupation of a cellar seems farfetched to me. Madder things have happened in the world, I suppose. Perhaps, dear Hummingbird, you should perform your divine lady's rites or... however that works." The Raven had never given much truck to the gods. Certainly they existed, but ones who let innocent children die for no reason hardly deserved worship. "In the meantime, we will have to maintain watch."
Rexus nods sagely. "If we don't learn from the past, how will we be able to find our futures?" He asks, though it sounds like he's quoting from somewhere. "When the rest of your fellows come over, I can share what I've learned. I don't mind repeating it twice, but I figure that the sisters," he nods at Treep, who's the only one in the living quarters now, "have heard it from me often enough as it is."
As support for moving the statue withers, if there ever actually was any, Vantine accepts the inevitability of the statue remaining out in the water. She does act pitiful about it though, sadness and disappointment practically dripping off her.
When informed Rexus has information to share, she hauls her poor, burdened self to see him.
The Raven's little birdy heart goes out to Vantine in her obvious distress. He moves to her side and very nearly throws his arms around her, but restrains himself at the last moment. "Do not fret, dear Hummingbird. We will see to your beautiful statue when we are a group with greater means than we have now. Until then, she will await you in the water, not so far away."
With the concensus that their avian guests are not to blame for the wall debacle, the Raven returns to the collapse and performs a more thorough search of the immediate area, turning over bits of rubble for more clues.
Vantine sighs and decides maybe now is the time to make a consolation request of Raven.
"Hummingbird. It really doesn't roll off the tongue very well. Could I have a different code name? Maybe Nightingale or Dove?"
She helps The Raven look around the Wasp Nest more thoroughly.
After meeting with Rexus, Jessibel returns to the Wasp Nest. Donning her new mask to get used to it, the Magpie tours the hideout solo, hoping to find some sort of clue about the hidden saboteur. When she passes Vantine and her mentor, she overhears Hummingbird's request.
"Why not go with the name Thrune suggested during the Aria Park Protest--Chickadee?"
Nyxra doesn't have much to add, but opts to investigate the Wasp Nest along with the others.
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Aisling tilts her head to one side as she things about Vantine's suggestion. "Dove. Harmless, generally well-intentioned and makes a cooing soudn that some people find attractive." She looks at the masekd Raven, who clearlyl seems infatuated. "There are worse names."