Then at that implicit approval, she will introduce herself and her cat - "Nella Cailean, no relation, and Lady Marcatella." - and have a go at following the exercises herself out of curiosity.

There is a magical link between her and her familiar, one that seems to passively enable certain abilities for each partner and has the latent potential to send magic or emotion across it. 

"The verbal component is technically just a focus aid but it's a bad habit to get lazy about it-"

"We've had an initial discussion and we're heading straight to the docks, no delays for spell prep, we can plan on the way," Oriana says to Weiss once she meets the rest of the party, and they immediately set out from the castle. "Bishop d'Bear got lucky with her scry, our quarry was passing by a window and a sign outside places him at Westpier 17 of Midland. He's human, above-average height, with sallow scarred skin, long dark greasy hair that he was wearing up for the scry, and a short beard. Currently wearing gray clothes and a dark apron full of mortician's tools. Don't ask me what those are supposed to look like, but to a Pharasmin they're apparently obvious.

"From the interior, he's holed up in an old fishery. We sent runners to Longacre building and City Hall to check the records, it looks like the last owner died without a designated heir so it's been left disused during the two-year waiting period before the city can repossess it. There should be a large works area on the river side, the dock side of the building mostly offices, and with the proximity to the water he may have an escape route via the river planned so get ready for a swim."

"While we were waiting I have filled some of of my open slots with Summon Monster spells for that eventuality, if he does flee for the river he'll soon have a water elemental and an electric eel for company."

She creates a slightly-vague illusion based on this description; Going for various generic surgeon-like devices, forceps, scalpels, scissors, etc, for 'mortician tools'.

"Greaaat. I hate swimming, but needs must. Any idea what kind of hostile spells we can expect? Backup? Someone can ride my quadrupedal form if it makes us faster; I also don't like that but again, needs must."

(Ileosa made it sound not urgent on a scale of minutes!! Young queen has improper sense of timing priorities, she guesses??)

Oriana grimaces. "For spells, all we can guess is that he's a more powerful necromancer than the derro, the same counters apply. We've sent runners to the nearby guard stations to alert them, at a signal from us they'll converge on our location."

"Getting there quickly matters less than getting there before he knows he's compromised, could you make us invisible or disguise us as an ordinary group of dockworkers?"

"Some of my remaining friends in the Sable Company have agreed to shift their patrol route to cover the area as well, in case he tries an escape by the Shingles. You've been clearing out some of the nests up there, haven't you? That's good work to be doing, I'd be glad to back you up on those ventures now I don't have to account for every cold iron arrow loosed."

She flashes a smile at Caron. "-Well, misery loves company, I guess. But talk about that later. Mass invisibility, even for just minutes, is a bit pricey, a dockworker type disguise would be cheaper."

"Dockworkers, then, maybe invisibility for the final approach and breach. Would you have enough left to manage your map illusion when we get there? Not much point us planning further on the way with all the extra information that could glean us."

"So..."

She's pretty close to topped up, all she did today was put finishing touches on the game. Call it 900/1000. Transforming, mapping, disguises, will start to add up quick...

"It trades off against about a Fireball's worth of fire but I think yes."

"Worth it." She'd gladly trade a whole necklace of fireballs for a scroll of that spell. 

They make their way over at a brisk pace, not quite a jog but clearly moving with purpose, with the disguises to pass as just another part of the bustle of Korvosa. 

As they get to within sight of the building, a couple of problems become apparent. First, the neighboring buildings of of Westpier 16 and 18 remain operational, so there are other laborers at work nearby. Second, this also appears to be the territory of a gang of street urchins, judging by the half-dozen scattered around the street. And third, the inland-facing windows of Westpier 17 are all boarded up, but with enough cracks that someone within could peer out from the darkness unnoticed. 

The air is thick with the stink of fish in varying stages of processing and decay. 

They can be invisible for the last bit; She makes sure to announce the change and watch for people who happen to be looking at the 'laborers' at the moment. And she sets up Party Chat again. She looks for a spot with a bunch of debris or other blockage, or at least that's not crowded but still near the building. Or maybe up to the roof...?

Her previous expeditions to the Shingles will have given her some experience judging the quality of a roof, and this one looks rather too fragile to be climbed without loud creaks at a minimum. The best spots by her criteria look instead to be either Westpier 18, where the dock hands are just finishing up and will leave several piles of crates and netted shellfish pots as cover, or the derelict rotting sailing ship that's mostly held together by the layers of old rope lashing it to the pilings of the fishery's pier. A plaque half-obscured by seaweed and barnacles names it the Kraken's Folly.

Super Serious Business Time.

She gestures everyone behind a crate stack (they're translucent, not invisible, to each other), but this is far enough out of the way, she just wants to not get literally bumped into, and then spools up her mist-scry, going for a diorama view of the multi floor structure of Westpier 17 & surrounds.

As her map takes form, it becomes immediately apparent that this arrest is going to be more complicated than anticipated. 

The interior of the fishery is little less decrepit than the exterior, and the floorboards creak with every step of the people inside. Those people include several more urchins, employed as some kind of child labor gang by a trio of overseers: A well-dressed bleached-blond human in a red doublet who toys with a wavy wand that leaks green acid from its tip, a bullying gnome wearing spiked leather armor and with a kukri at his belt, and a half-orc of piratical appearance with a missing eye and a flail. 

They occupy the upper level, and someone entering through the front door on the dockside would encounter first a grizzled old dog in the front room. Through the north door is the office full of slates tracking transactions where the human sits around and to the east a workroom with a trough where four children are busy shoving half-rancid fish and seaweed into chutes that empty below with pitchforks, overseen by the gnome. That workroom has doors out onto a loading dock. All of these areas have doors into the main room of the fishery, where the chutes feed the fish into an immense wooden vat waterproofed with tar that is stirred by a pair of urchins with oars into a swirling slurry of chum and collected by three more with buckets into barrels, while the half-orc snickers at their slips on the slick floor.

The Kraken's Folly is empty, except for five fist-sized spiders with long spindly legs and oversized fangs. It is accessible from a rickety boardwalk, the pilings worn away below the waterline, that curls around the back of the building. Visible in the grime and mud of the floor of the hold are footprints leading to a hidden door in the side of the ship that leads in turn to a narrow space beneath the fishery with its own boardwalk snaking between the pilings. This concealed route goes to an understructure beneath the fishery, and it is in here that the party's target can be found.

The room inside is full of hoarded paltry treasures, tarnished silverware and chipped porcelain. Two tables have been cleared of the clutter and pushed together to bear the weight of a large dead shark with a mottled hide, and it is this shark that the human described from the bishop's scry is dissecting. He works in companionable silence with a jaundiced and limping old man, to whom he bears a family resemblance, sorting through the smaller and more intact valuables. An alligator lurks in the waters beneath, and the rusted manacles hanging from ropes above the water suggest that this animal is fed more than just the fish chum that the operation produces. There is also a bedroom and study crammed into a walled-off section of the hidden den, where a wooden hatbox buzzes with flies on the dresser and a new bedroll has been laid next to the bed up against a large strongbox. 

Unlike the last time, nobody here has Detect Magic or any similar senses active, and so they remain ignorant of Weiss' magical surveillance. 

Ughhhhh. She wishes she could just burn the whole thing down with fire. It must smell incredibly rank in there, even more than it does in most of the city.

"Ughhhhhh it's going to smell awful. ...I don't want to fight around a bunch of kids, seems liable to get them killed in the chaos. The target is in the basement there, and it looks like we can get straight there through the derelict ship, if we're careful, hit him directly. I think that might be the way to go? Watch out for the beasties in the water though. And would need to block off the way back up somehow... What does everyone else think?"

Vavana takes out a cloth, prestidigitates it to smell strongly of peppermint, and offers it to Weiss to wear over her nose. She has a sour expression at all the children on the map too. 

"We may not need to fight, none of the adults look particularly strong-willed. A few charms could let us walk straight through without violence."

"The only other idea I have is that we could pay a few sails to a fisher and borrow a narrow boat to squeeze between the pilings straight to the lair, the lower walkway doesn't look solid enough to support anyone in heavy armor reliably if we have to fight out on it."

Oriana makes a face at the thought of falling into these waters in her full plate. "You have a point. Alright, how about me and Caron go grab a boat, the rest of you sneak into position outside their lair to make sure they don't leave before we get back? Tisharue, your armor's light enough not to be a problem, right?" 

She nods.

"I could maybe reinforce it just long enough to matter... But that sounds like a good plan."

It is well within Weiss' abilities to highlight the least-sound planks in her companions' vision to be avoided, and Tisharue's sword is more than deterrent enough for the spiders in the rotting hulk once set aflame while out of sight from the fishery. After only a few minutes, they have taken up positions by the doorway, crouched on boards only inches from the surface of the river. The sounds of creaking boards and the chortling of the half-orc overseer are loud above them, but the occasional snatch of conversation can be heard from within the hidden den.

"- find more of these places -"

"- your friends?"

...

"- ought to reanimate them, set them to work more diligently, give an example to the live ones."

"- waste of onyx."

(Say, what's the status of Weiss' mapping illusion while they're waiting? Is she keeping that going with full coverage of the fishery, or has she scaled it back?)

She's been experimenting with weird refraction and lens tricks to make it significantly less obvious than a magic mist that fills entire rooms, actually. There is still a tiny bit poking into most rooms though.