She makes some quick gestures. <Need ideas for words.> "That's impressively stupid! I guess if it works, it works. I... guess the lich ritual does involve taking your soul out and putting it in something. Ending up in the fungus isn't something I've ever heard of, but I guess it makes some sense?"

Has the shadow mentioned any plausible starts to how you would go about doing that? If she looks like she only just knows the fundamentals of alchemy, that's fine, and she does remember the book reasonably well after spending so long taking notes on it. She would rather look like she has some clue where to start, though.

It can't tell her how it would actually do that. This is not a surprise. It can give her some intelligent thoughts, though, and her own memory is mostly enough to connect the dots. It points her in a direction, she goes off for a while, she lets Martin talk, she lets the blob point her to a new next step. By the end of this, she has more of an idea of what was actually going on, and it seems like the shadow does even more.

More importantly, it looks like the blood actually was necessary. If they needed to replicate Vorel's bloodline, they really did need blood from people of that bloodline, and the expanded searches for context do make sense. It's still a convenient excuse to collect an enormous amount of blood, but maybe it's also actually necessary? Maybe the conspiracy was just being foolish in not having the cure ready. What they've shown has not given her a high impression of their competence, so she really isn't sure at this point. Oh well, at least she knows more about what was going on with the plague now.

Martin Vasi doesn't share anything else of interest. After a while, Tencednil leaves the bar and makes it back home safely.

With blood veil cured and the plague ending, Korvosa finally has something to feel relieved about. The quarantine is lifted once the disease is as close to fully eradicated as anyone can tell. The Queen's popularity improves quite a bit. Korvosa's economy, battered and bloodied but not beaten, begins to see improvement.

The Korvosan Guard sends her a letter. The man who attacked Detective Navarro's squad could not be identified. As such, she is entitled to a share of his equipment, which has already been sold. A little over two thousand gold sails have been transferred to her account.

The monsters continue to be a major problem. The Queen announces a new military force called the Gray Maidens to help Korvosa's other overstretched forces. Funded entirely by the crown, they're formed from the old royal guard, with additional hired adventurers. Togomor also contributes, slaying powerful monsters with his spells. His hunt for the supposed lich continues, but new progress is not announced yet.

The vigilante (or popular hero, depending on who you ask) Blackjack was seen again, for the first time in years. Among his most notable acts was preventing the public execution of a suspected Urgathoan, declaring them innocent, and claiming the Gray Maidens are corrupt. A manhunt is launched, but Blackjack has evaded capture for over two hundred years.

KORVOSAN CARRIER
SUNDAY, SARENITH 28th, 4708

OLD KORVOSA GANG ACTIVITY LOWER THAN EXPECTED

Were there any distinctive characteristics of the supposed Urgathoan Blackjack freed? She was expecting some political executions, and that's the first evidence she's seen. (Blackjack could be lying, but obviously the Queen is executing innocent people, the question is just who.)

Not particularly, as far as she can tell? They're a painter of some small renown. Urgathoans usually have strange backgrounds. Normal people don't worship the goddess of disease.

Well, she's not going to be the first to find Blackjack if there's an ongoing manhunt, any sign should have vanished and she has no leads. If Togomor is working on it, that's even more true. Wizards are good at that sort of thing. She should probably look into what the painter was painting at some point, if that's what the new Queen is executing people for. It's always good to know.

She's used some of the money from the Guard to buy herself some alchemy books for the shadow to look at, and some more of it to acquire what she eventually realized Acid Splash needed — after working through all the alchemical terminology (or letting the shadow do it), it turned out that a simple acid vial could be used to focus the spell and empower it slightly. Probably about as much as brimstone contributes, which isn't much on an absolute scale but it's meaningful relative to Acid Splash's general effectiveness. She also slipped up once and fed the vial to the spell, which consumed the acid entirely. The Splash did take a little longer to lose potency that time, but it definitely wasn't worth the hundred and ten shields required to refresh her alchemical acid.

On the 28th, as usual, she starts by going down to the Bank to check for any mail.

The Bank has no mail for her at this time.

The guard hasn't needed her services much, so that's not particularly surprising.

At this point, she's well past what the visions showed, and she should probably get back to the work she was planning to do, that being gaining circles to prove sorcery has use. She doesn't want to just throw herself into every risk around, but nobody gains power without taking some. She's spent some of her time over the last week trying to find where to volunteer her aid with the monsters. The guard is mostly focused on keeping the streets calm outside of Old Korvosa, so they're not asking for her, but they can still attest to her competence. The problem is that she doesn't want to work too closely with the Gray Maidens, because that's how she ends up with her thoughts read and her actions revealed. Fortunately, they have been hiring adventurers, so she's been looking for groups interested in being paid by the Maidens to accomplish useful side goals.

(Really the ideal thing to do would be to take her own risks in the sewers like adventurers have been doing for decades, but the sewers are too dangerous for that now. Handling the monsters which come out is bad enough, there's no telling how dangerous it would be to actually go in. It's not just her who feels the lack. The Maidens hiring adventurers have gotten much more assistance than a similar offer would have received three weeks ago.)

Tencednil can find a party of adventurers with an open slot for another, funded by the crown and affiliated with the Gray Maidens. They're planning an operation for tomorrow, down in the Vaults. There's a group of derro thieves that have done a little too much murder on the side. They need to be dealt with.

The Vaults are dangerous, especially right now, but people regularly come out alive. They at least might be able to run if something goes wrong, there are many possible ways to distract anything chasing them, and all in all this seems like a plan which isn't more risky than she was expecting. Anything worth knowing is worth paying for, and that is just as true of spells as anything else.

Of course, as slightly more experienced adventurers, they should spend some time practicing and working through their tactics. An operation tomorrow means one day of work, but that should be enough.

Several hours, many (improved!) Acid Splashes and Messages, and three Silent Images later (lasting as long as she can hold her concentration makes this sort of thing much easier to do cheaply), she's comfortable working with these people. It could be better, but it could be much worse. If they run into a vampire, they'll all die, but another rampaging otyugh she thinks they might survive. Overall, this was a successful day.

She makes it back home after the sun has gone down, without incident.

Nice and dark, just how she likes it. She will need to be up early tomorrow to meet with her new allies, but there's still some time before she needs to sleep. She lifts the curtain from the window so she can look out in the stars and faint moonlight, takes out her newest book purchase, and starts reading.

The shadow alternately peers over her shoulder, stretches up from her lap, gazes solemnly from the other side of the desk, and hovers over her head, always keeping up with her as she goes along. Or at least it never objects when she turns a page, and it looks content.

Deep into the night...

A thick fog has rolled over the city. The wind speeds up quickly until it begins to scream. Rain drips and flows and then pours. Lightning cracks across the sky. Tencednil can feel the floor vibrate slightly.

Oh good. This could in theory be the wake from something nearby happening which disrupted the forecasts, but she knows better than that. Whatever the conspiracy has against clear skies, it's made its stance quite evident. For now, she can't do anything, and with the fog this dense she can't see anything out there either. It is what it is.

The floor vibrating is a little more worrying. Hopefully that's just thunder. If the conspiracy managed to accidentally cause an earthquake, she will be so incredibly angry with them for the few minutes she'll get before dying.

...if they intentionally caused an earthquake, she'll still be angry, just also impressed. Magical earthquakes aren't usually very large.

The wind takes on a strange tone that she's never heard before. The clouds above the Heights bend downward from the sky until they touch the earth. Thunder rolls across the city and visibility from her room is reduced to nothing.

As long as the floor's not vibrating, it's not actually any worse than the previous state of things. She isn't entirely comfortable admitting the conspiracy might be about to kill pretty much anyone and she would be unable to do anything about it, but it's... true. This is a true and strong tornado.

She tries to focus on her reading. She's definitely not sleeping in this, and there really isn't anything she can do about it.

Minutes pass. Dozens of minutes. Perhaps an hour. Eventually, the strange tone fades away. The wind slows very slightly, but the rain and the fog are as deep as ever.

At this point it's late enough she needs to get to sleep if she wants to be awake tomorrow morning.

...does she want to be awake tomorrow morning? The rain all goes somewhere, and the sewers will be awful if they're possible to get through. Also, whatever just happened will have happened. She most likely won't have a mission to set herself upon. Conversely, why stay up now? No information will spontaneously materialize, and it's best form to not break commitments without a reason you can point to.

Sleep time it is.

MOONDAY, SARENITH 29th, 4708

No newspapers arrive this morning. The winds and rain are gone but the fog is still deep.

No newspapers? That's unusual. Of course, the tornado yesterday might have had consequences. That does make it harder to know what happened last night. Unless it made the newspaper not come, in which case it still makes it harder but possibly less so.

She goes out early, the fog a welcome relief from the sun. What does it look like outside? Presumably there's at least a bit of catastrophe from the weather, but how much? Is anything else visible?

The city is silent. She can't see much through the fog.

Hmm. It is early for her to be awake. It is not early for the city to be awake. This is unusual. This is very unusual, worryingly so.

What did the conspiracy do.

As she walks through the streets, she only gets more and more worried. Nothing is moving, and there really should be people out here. There's no actual sign of what... is happening? Has happened? Whichever. It's definitely a bad sign, though.

Eventually she reaches the bank. What does she see?

The Bank is quiet. Mummified corpses are strewn across the stairs. They don't smell and seem perfectly healthy, except for how their bodies contain no fluids of any kind.

Oh.

That seems not ideal.

And a complete lack of fluids, i.e. blood, would explain why the conspiracy wanted blood. Some sort of link? Connecting to the blood of every relevant individual and pulling it from them, for... some use? Probably something like that.

Good thing she didn't sell her own blood. Right now, though, she, Mother, and Brother need to be out of Korvosa. As soon as possible. This is not a place to be visibly alive and not part of the conspiracy.

She runs home, wakes her family, tells them what she saw, starts packing to flee the city—