The Archbanker flies back into the entrance. "The horrible weather shall be gone soon!"

He turns to face a group of clerics. "Increase security at all facilities! Send men to Castle Korvosa! We must learn the truth."

They either had no plan to prevent the blatantly obvious counter to the Control Weather or they didn't care enough to. Whatever this is, it's been planned for at least weeks, so they had time to make a plan. That means getting to the castle won't be helpful, and their first guess would have been one of Korvosa's seventh circle clerics doing the Dispel, so they have a plan for a seventh circle cleric. Do they regularly prepare Resurrection? It is one of the things you need seventh circle for, so at least Tuttle probably has buyers, and King Eodred surely bought resurrection insurance after the warning. That means... either his body has been entirely stolen or he's been animated as undead? Probably?

If they want to look Urgathoan, undead would be the obvious play. Raise Dead doesn't work on a body animated even after the zombie has been destroyed, but possibly Resurrection does? If so, they would have to run off with the undead to keep it safe. That kind of ruins the point, at that point it's easier to just take the body from the start. She would guess no body will be findable, then, but it's also possible he just has some horrible disease which isn't curable in a corpse and kills him instantly if he's raised or something like that. She probably won't know any time soon, either way. Maybe someone will put out an announcement. It might even be true.

Over the next ten minutes, the weather reverts to its prior state, calm and sunny.

Chaos reigns in the streets. Unlike her first vision, this is no riot of fury, but one of terrified panic. The Abadarans and the Guard deploy their shield-walls at the front entrance of the Bank. Nobody knows what has happened, other than the scream. Is the King really dead?

She can't actually do very much right now, not with a few Silent Images and her total lack of advance knowledge. The disease will spread perfectly well even if it no longer has cultist actively propagating it, though, and this conspiracy might do some disease-spreading on their own. Between that and the Abadarans bringing out the shield walls, Mother will be delighted by the chance to make some money efficiently. She checks that the bank is potentially interested in hiring another cleric's aid today and services tomorrow, then runs back home to tell Mother what she's seen.

The Bank is definitely interested in hiring more clerics. The next few days are going to be such a disaster.

That means the prices will definitely be high enough to interest Mother!

Running over and back is easy this time. Even if there will be looters like the vision showed, it's too early for them to be out and looting. Once Mother and her brother (and most of their valuable lootable objects, secreted away in various unobtrusive locations) have been brought safely to the Bank, though, what are the streets looking like? Is everyone still cowering inside? Some bold investigators starting to emerge? Everyone already up in arms?

It's a mix. A lot of people are hiding inside, some people are out on the streets panicking, guardsmen are moving rapidly to some unclear purpose. The looters and criminals haven't come out yet.

Some people have theft insurance from the Bank, and some of it isn't going to turn off in the current situation. That means the Bank has an interest in minimizing the looting, probably mostly around their branches. Tencednil will look for a spare banker.

"Does anyone around here have theft insurance? Setting the Bank's guards entirely around the bank will keep it safe, but the guard seems to be leaving the area, and nobody around is calm. As soon as one person starts stealing, and another sees the guard not responding, there is going to be a wave of theft. If you can prevent that first step, I expect the Bank would save itself quite a bit of money with a minor commitment of guards." And she is of course willing to be hired to aid such a patrol, especially if she can be paid proportionally to the looting she prevents, so she can take things from the idiot looters and not get in trouble doing it.

The Bank of Abadar has indeed realized this. They will absolutely pay her a good wage for her color sprays and her silent images as part of a patrol.

However, law enforcement is not an adventurer's guild. They're not thieves. In most cases they don't "steal" things from criminals. Many crimes carry a penalty involving loss of material wealth, but there's typically a trial and sentencing to determine the particulars. If she takes items from criminals as part of arrests, she will have to return them.

Of course she'll have to return them! They could just pay her a percentage of how much she saved them! That would be to her advantage, because she can almost certainly be more effective than they're expecting, and if they don't think she'll be useful they might expect to save money that way. But she will also go out on patrol for a boring normal rate, as long as it's a reasonably good rate. At least this way she can knock out the absolute incompetents without it being a risk with no upside.

The Bank sends her with their first patrol, covering the southern parts of North Point.

It takes some time for the thieves and looters to emerge... but emerge they eventually do.

Down the street from the patrol, a group of five men have broken into a closed shop and are currently filling sacks with stolen goods.

"Thieves! You are under arrest! Put down the goods—"

One of thieves shouts. "Guardsmen from the Bank! Run!"

They move out the front door and begin sprinting down the street.

With their proceeds? How about no. A Silent Image of a wall worked well before and it should work well again. If they don't see a way to run besides towards the guards, they won't try to fight.

"The nice guard said to put down the goods."

The thieves look at the wall and then back at the guardsmen. They drop the sacks.

The guardsmen surround them and walk them to a nearby guard outpost with a jail.

"Good work with that wall."

She gestures, and the wall shakes, shudders, and drops back into the ground. It leaves some minor traces— she gestures again, more sharply, and the remaining rubble jerks out of sight, leaving no trace.

(Or, in other words, the illusion goes straight down into the ground, vanishing in an entirely plausible way for an actual wall-creation spell, stopping for a moment along its path.)

"Thank you! I'm not just being paid for looking pretty." That seems like a properly Academae wizard-style well-rehearsed way to take a compliment. Applicable in many situations, perfectly suited to a wizard who can memorize perfectly and can't adjust to the faces around her even when they're blatantly telling her what to do.

The patrol puts the thieves in jail and continues on. In total, they make a couple dozen arrests. Tencednil gets to use color spray and silent image a few more times.

The streets grow more chaotic in strange ways. Less looters and thieves, more panicked people out of work. Unlike Tencednil's vision, no fires started in Midland.

Panicked people she can't help, but it's good to be doing something about this nonsense. Brute force smashing and grabbing is offensive, the guards all being pulled away for whatever internal unrest is happening in the Heights is an obvious failure, and at least this time someone is paying to make the problems less bad. The lack of fires is probably for other reasons, but the reason might be a better-funded guard, which is due to her.

She may not have succeeded at preventing the king's death, but at least so far, this seems like a much better city to be an Ulonite in than the city she saw in the first vision. A victory, then, at least until she learns more about who the new ruler is.

KORVOSAN CARRIER
SUNDAY, SARENITH 7th, 4708

HIS MAJESTY, KING EODRED ARABASTI II, SLAIN BY SERVANTS OF URGATHOA

The newspapers say the King and his seneschal were deep within Castle Korvosa when a horrible power destroyed them utterly. The dreadful scream was heard soon across the city mere moments after. None know the identity of the culprit. A commune from Abadar confirmed the King's death but returned only unclear results about the state of his soul. The Queen has announced a full sweep of the city, searching for any remaining Urgathoans. Monsters have begun to pour forth from the sewers, driven upward by more horrible things rising in the Vaults.

The newspapers on this day were different in Tencednil's first vision.

They certainly were. Ileosa was the obvious next person to sit on the throne, so she might not be a conspiracy member — if the conspiracy failed, she would be expected. Conversely, that makes her better motivated to get Eodred killed, and she did claim the throne in the vision where the conspiracy went as planned. Tencednil probably won her bet, in other words.

Sweeping for Urgathoans is obvious, correctly gains her legitimacy she deeply needs right now, and will let whatever guards Ileosa has suborned plant evidence on anyone she wants to execute. Best to watch for claimed executions, then. It's possible there are some actual Urgathoans as well — that one wizard did manage to teleport out, for instance — but it's important to track who the conspiracy is killing. That will be the best sign for when they need to run.

Monsters from the sewers are... strange. The Vaults were opened by the Urgathoans, and the plague was very conveniently timed to give Ileosa legitimacy when she crushes it. Especially if that alchemist was right, and they actually can create a cure, which would be a masterstroke for gaining the trust of Korvosa. That all holds together very nicely, but why would the conspiracy be waking up monsters they'll have to crush? Things rising up from beneath are actually dangerous! Unless Ileosa is getting substantial funding, and probably magical support, from her coconspirators, she's not going to have the forces to handle them! Are they really dumb enough to not think of that? This is a lot of wizardry bent to a task with at least some subtlety, surely they considered the consequences at least a little...

Humans.

Well, this does mean the guard will probably be calling in what help they can get sometime soon. Especially since... how is the Academae doing? The visions showed it sealed, but there's much less disaster in the streets now, so maybe it's not. She should be able to handle wild dogs this time. After slipping on her shadows, Tencednil... recolors herself to a more generic human appearance, rounds off her ears with some paste, dismisses her shadows... and makes her way up the hill towards the Academae.

The Acadamae is closed to outsiders. In the normal way, with a portcullis. There's a guard post embedded in the wall staffed by perhaps more guards than usual.

Oh good, the nice boring kind of closed. That means the guard will not be panicking and flailing for spells, which technically lowers the price she can expect them to be paying for her services, but more importantly it means the guard can expect to have arcane support when they need it. They have money they weren't planning to have, they have locally available high-circle wizards who also want them to succeed, they should be fine. The Vaults can't be that bad, right?

Down to the Bank to check if she got any mail, then. (She reverts her skin and picks the paste off her ears in an alley on the way.) It's possible the guard is already sending out requests. If not, she never actually talked to Mika yesterday. Maybe she can manage it today!