Through the trap-door, down twenty feet of carved stone stairs, the secret passage opens up into a cavernous basement.

It's big. Big enough that they better hope none of the neighbors ever have reason to dig beneath their homes.

A huge cloth map of Sothis covers one wall from floor to ceiling, covered in pins and clippings of newsprint. The far wall is filled with workbenches and an elaborate assembly of beakers, flasks, vials, and tubes. Directly over the secret entrance, a very large wasp nest hangs, silent, waiting. Beside it: a rack and a few shelves containing various nondescript Osirian garb. In the opposite corner, three massive four-poster beds have been bolted together for form a bed big enough for a dozen people. In the remaining space, tucked into a small alcove, is what looks like a small shrine, surrounded by seating.

There are four people present, at the moment.

A girl seated by the shrine and kicking her legs idly as she reads a book.

A very large young man, rippling with muscles, studying the map with a frown.

A sultry beauty sharpening a blade over by the furthest workbench.

And a man, lean, fit, messy-haired, hunched over the alchemy apparatus.

All four of them are clad in little more than a few black leather belts and bits of gold silk; the man doing alchemy is wearing several bandoleers of potions around his hips, and nothing else.

Penny carries Sadiqa down the stairs and tosses her unceremoniously across the spacious basement to land on muscle-guy's head.

"Hey, Azizi!" she calls out to the alchemy guy. "You might want to hurry that up."

"Trouble?" He doesn't look up.

    "The good kind."

"Ah. What a day to be alive."

It only takes him a few minutes to come to a place in his work where it'll stay put while he's elsewhere.

(Perception: 28)

He cleans his hands and then takes a long look at the newcomer. It's about 85% curious study, 10% lustful leering, and 5% suspicion.

"Who do we have here? That was you channeling earlier?"

"That's right. I'm Gamila. Second-circle Cleric. First-circle Arcanist. Looking for allies. You?"

Azizi raises an eyebrow at 'Arcanist' but he's apparently heard the term at all because he doesn't ask for clarification.

"My skills in Alchemy are comparable to fourth-circle. Just call me Azizi. If you're interested, I can show you a great many uses for magical effects in the pursuit of pleasure."

He is still only 10% actually flirting with her. Well, maybe 15%. She's hot.

"Gamila, tell him your idea."

But she wants to talk about using magic in the pursuit of pleasure.

Priorities.

Gamila explains again about:

A) Inventing a new cantrip that targets and destroys men's seed.

B) Inventing, discovering, or munchkin-ing together a way to guide/force/puppet even an entirely ignorant INT 8 commoner to prepare and hang that cantrip in the Arcanist fashion, granting them the spell in perpetuity.

C) Scaling B to the point that Osirion society collapses under it's own hypocrisy.

"Though if Osirion manages not to fall up it's own ass in response to the existence of universal birth control, that's good too."

Azizi starts smiling about halfway through Gamila's explanation, and when she finishes, he starts cackling.

The other three in the room are staring at Gamila now as well. Even if it's outlandish and probably impossible, there's no one in this basement who wouldn't dearly love to see Gamila's idea play out.

"Can you do that?" The girl with the book gasps.

Penny shrugs. "That's what I said."

"You have vision, I'll give you that," Azizi says. "I've made some progress myself on the problem of undesired fertility, but nothing that improves upon a True-Struck Chill Touch. Penny's technique is still our state-of-the-art, and she never lets me forget it."

"Not the only thing I'll never let you forget," Penny says with a roll of her eyes, but also a warmth that belies the words.

Azizi grunts, then his eyes sharpen upon Gamila. "Where are you on the problem of inventing the cantrip?"

"The targeting. I have a stripped-down version of Prestidigitation that only does the cleaning effect. It was easy once I read about Fastidiousness and compared the two spells and saw they had some of the same bits. Once I knew what to look for I found that bit in a lot of spells that selectively erase some material substances."

Being friends with Dana has done wonders for her vocabulary. And also The Library.

"But it has the same effect that using Prestidigitation inside yourself does. Which, according to my research, does actually stop a baby... but then you get horribly sick a few days later with 'a very embarrassing and painful symptom' that ordinary healing doesn't fix, and uh, the accounts Dana found weren't any more specific than that. But I'm sure it's a targeting issue. So I've got a bunch of unknowns I need to test, and no ideas for testing them that aren't doomed or Evil."

"An embarrassing and painful symptom?" Penny repeats. "Doesn't that sound like what happened to Mesi?"

"You know, it does," the girl who is no longer reading a book says. "Hi. I'm Adara. And yeppers, there was this party, Mesi tried to drink ale with her cunny. And a few days later, she- it was nasty, and she wasn't able to use her genitals for much of anything for... has she recovered yet?"

"She has!" Sadiqa calls out from her perch on the big guy's shoulder. "Azizi brewed her a potion of Remove Disease. Nothing else worked, but that did."

"She still hasn't repaid me for that," Azizi mutters.

The beauty with the large sword laughs. "Mesi's an idiot for trying that in the first place. Everybody knows there's lots of stuff that will make you sick if you stick it up your down-holes."

Azizi hums. "And yet Prestidigitation can produce the same unfortunate result. And alchohol can be used for cleaning. Interesting..."

Gamila nods.

"Whatever it is that causes... that... we think it's because something in the female sex's vital essence is injured by overly zealous cleaning. Soap is also on the list of things everyone knows makes you sick if you stick it in. It really seems likely to me that it is injury rather than poisoning, that causes the... symptom."

It is really nice to be able to analyze this mystery in a conversation without half the people around gasping and staring in horror at the subject matter. None of the Calistrians seem fazed at all.

"But even if we have a working theory of what causes the injury, we still have no idea what is being injured or how to avoid it. So. Targeting issue."

"For what it's worth, I don't believe what you're trying has been tried before, and I would be quite gleeful if you succeeded."

He runs a hand through his hair.

"I don't have the solution to your problem, unfortunately, but if I do encounter a piece of your puzzle, know that I intend to bring that piece to you, if I can. Assuming, of course, that you're willing to do the same for us?"

"You all are the only people in the city with goals and... values... anything like mine. Calistria told me to find you. If the Beachhead or the Dark Nest needs me, I'm here for it."

Azizi gives her a knowing smile, then turns to the big muscle-guy with the cute little naked cleric on his head. "Rashid? Any fires in need of some kindling?"

The big guy frowns at Gamila, then beckons, pointing at one of the pinned news clippings. "Come take a look at this, new girl."

Curious, Gamila goes over to the map wall to get a closer look.

There are two clippings posted up next to each other, dated less than a week ago:

The first article is an editorial about the buyout of a nearby slave-brothel on the Crimson Island by up and coming business tycoon Gagarus Nye. It describes a brief history and origin of an idealized Sothis-born man's clever economic acumen, then goes on to praise him for bringing such a squalid enterprise up to code and into compliance with all regulations for both slave-handling and the sex trade. The article then veers off into irrelevant lamentations about the sex trade's existence and legality.

The second article is a fluff piece about a pair of sisters, unnamed in the text, who got caught defrauding a temple of Abadar, details also not in the text, and then received generous leniency and mercy in the courts. The courts which of course are so enlightened and progressive that they're prefer to reform a pair of misguided young women if possible rather than punish them as if they were men, and as such, ruled that while the sentence of enslavement would be carried out, both women would be remanded to the custody of their father, upstanding local businessman Gagarus Nye, rather than sold at auction.

The same man mentioned in both.

The fact that these stories are pinned to a giant map in a Calistrian secret lair is kind of a big clue already. Gamila's not sure how much she'd have guessed without that.

But...

"Is this what it sounds like?"

"We don't know. No one has gotten around to investigating it, yet."

He folds his arms, towering over the new girl.

"It could be an entirely innocent coincidence... but if you spend any time around Calistrians, you'll quickly learn to be suspicions any time the Lawful types start talking about 'cleaning up' the sorts of business they consider seedy. I expect that whatever laxity and 'squalor' that this Nye figure has eliminated from his newly acquired business was wholly or in part to the slaves' benefit, and that those girls lives are now significantly harsher. Which would paint the enslavement of his own daughters in a much darker shade."

He gazes at her.

"I meant to look into this myself. However, if you wish to prove yourself, perhaps you ought to put in the work to discover the details of this situation? If, of course, you feel compelled to do so."

The thing is, she does feel compelled.

It is, objectively, a distraction from her greater work.

But... her mind is already going to dark places, such dark places. Perhaps this man's daughters truly were criminals and he saved them the only way he could, but Gamila realizes that she will be genuinely surprised if that is the case. Her guts are roiling with the possibility that Gagarus Nye orchestrated the whole thing to punish his daughters for trying to defy the sexist narrative of Osirion.

According to Rashid, Nye has already shown himself to be the sort of man who values rules remaining unbroken over the prevention of suffering, overtly and proudly. If Rashid is right. But she's new at this and he isn't, so he probably is.

Gamila peers closer, at the exact street and building where the map pin is located. Part of being Chaotic is caring a lot about why people do the things they do, rather than merely about what they do. A law-abiding man is not innocent if he abides that law out of ego and malice.

"I'll take this one, yeah. I'll go."

Later...

Gagarus Nye's new property is a narrow, three-story sandstone box two streets downriver from the Triangle Gate crossing. It is bedecked in awnings of golden cloth and frequent tall, narrow, barred windows. It bears the name, represented on a small painted sign: The Ugly Wife's Lament.

A bouncer guards the front entrance. Inside, the ground floor features a lounge with a bar at one end, though this bar does not serve refreshments; indeed, there are several decorative naked girls in listlessly occupying cages behind the bar. A second bouncer guards the stairs that lead up to the second floor.

On the second floor are the rooms for customers to use the girls they rent. The rooms are clean, and contain numerous large pillows, but are otherwise bare, ugly, cramped, and the pillows are of low quality. About half of the rooms have a naked girl inside.

On the third floor is the site-manager's office. It is spartan, but the furniture it does contain appears brand new. A large desk and chair dominates the space. The site-manage is seated at the desk, various papers spread out in front of him, though he is not paying attention to any of them. Instead he is turned away from the desk and watching the street below from one of the windows.

This is probably the sort of place her parents see in their nightmares when they think about Gamila's future. The thought is fleeting. She can't really muster any feeling about it. She would take even this over... perpetuating the Osirian narrative to the next generation.

(Stealth: 22)(Perception: 29)

Gamila is hiding on the roof of a four-story apartment block that shares a back alley with the slave-brothel. She's looking in through the narrow windows, trying to get a feel for the place's inner workings.

The site-manager looks anxious, or maybe anticipatory. He's waiting for something he expects to happen soon. Given where he's looking, perhaps the arrival of someone or something important.

Through second-floor windows, three occupied rooms are visible. In one, a slave-girl has her face buried in a pillow while a rather ungroomed man takes her hard from behind. In another, a girl is huddled in the corner, not moving.

In the third, the girl inside lets herself out, revealing that the girls are not locked in their rooms. A moment later, she emerges onto a rickety balcony overlooking the alley. From that balcony, she descends a narrow wooden staircase into a large cage made of wooden planks: this appears to be a sort of makeshift bathing area for the slaves. The third girl goes and sits on a rough-hewn bench off to one side of the large washtubs, taking a moment to herself to cry.

(Climb: 24)

"Grasp." Gamila uses the orison to descend the four stories into the alley smoothly and silently.

She arrives outside the bathing cage and creeps up to the crying naked woman, peeking between the planks.

"Charm Person."

(Will Save: 13)

The crying naked woman does not notice Gamila or that she has just been Charmed.