It appears so, yes! At least the artist paid him? Admittedly by shuffling a bundle towards him while not looking at him and muttering something about the essence of the deceased, but. Still. It's better than nothing. And this strange quest is probably relevant to the OVERALL MYSTERY OF SAGUS CLIFFS. Because, clearly, there are some overall mysteries going on in this city.

But it's not immediately obvious how to disentangle them just yet, so he is left to his own devices for a while without any obvious quests to complete.

Fortunately, by this time Aleks and his castoff have ventured out from his apartment! Here they are, venturing forth or something.

"Aleks! Vetmera! You are walking in a direction! Is that direction perhaps aimed towards the psychic bar?" And... it seems the quest reward bundle he got as a quest reward included a fairly peculiar cape. It has no defined edges, like a wrapping cover, but someone seems to have fitted onto it a dozen metal hooking fasteners. It has an ethereal and mistlike quality, entirely white except almost not...?

GHOST CAPE GHOST CAPE we can almost feel the death emanating from it GHOST CAPE

"Oh, hello. We are, and it is! How'd you guess?" She spots the ghost cape and smiles. "Oh, and that's pretty!"

"It is fate! For I, too, am heading in that direction."

QUEST HOOKS LED US THERE the trail of death led us there

Why is he always so loud.

Poor Aleks. She reaches out to take his hand and give it a comforting squeeze. Sorry, dear.

"Oh? Why's that?"

"I am investigating! There is a mysterious psychic phenomenon that afflicts young women in Sagus Cliffs and turns them into someone else!"

it is like death but without the good parts IT IS MOST MYSTERIOUS

"Huh. That's... weird. Have you talked to anyone that's been turned into the someone else? Is it the same someone else each time? What's the criteria for picking young women, clearly not all women are affected."

"I have not, yes it is, I do not know!"

"And you're going to the psychic bar to consult a bunch of experts on the subject and see what they know?"

"Exactly!"

we also heard about a ghost GHOST CAPE GHOST CAPE

Maybe Aleks should actually consider that despite the... way... this man behaves... he may actually know what he's doing. Maybe.

It's actually really impressive that he's this functional while being possessed!

"Reasonable! Do you know how long this phenomenon has been going on? It's, uh. Kind of alarming."

"It seems like it has been at least many decades but I don't actually know."

so many wasted deaths WE COULD HAVE COME TO SOLVE THIS PROBLEM SO LONG AGO

"Eugh. Okay. Well. I think I want to solve that too, then, people are dying and I have some psychic nonsense going on."

"All the more reason to go, then."

"Yes, I was just verbally acknowledging that regardless of any of our intentions, we seem to have nonetheless become an adventuring party."

Hooray.

HOORAY it will be easier to eliminate the competition if we keep her near WHAT WAS THAT nothing

Vetmera snorts.

To the bar!

To the bar! At Cliff's Edge is where it is, and Tahir strides in before the other two.

...and then freezes as soon as he gets in.

WHAT... IS... THIS PLACE it is doing... something to us... WE DO NOT LIKE IT LET US GO AWAY

"Hmm," says a beautiful and timeless looking woman with unblemished dark skin and a cloud of black, wavy hair. She looks at Tahir, critically. "Think this one's mine, Dhama."

And then she vaults over the table she was sitting at to leap towards the door and grab Tahir by the scruff of his neck before he can run.

This is precisely when Vetmera makes it into the bar. "Wh—"