Six months after the Exaltation Gala, the bloom is off the rose for the Heroes of Taldor. Each is buried in the tasks set to them by the Grand Princess Eutropia I. This may be most true for Cassia Karthis and Corwyn Nethir. Having danced into each other’s arms over the proceeding year, the advance in their relationship has been forestalled by their duties. While their betrothal is formal, they do not yet have a date set for their wedding.

Cassia, Grand Duchess of Kazuhn, is busy with her work in the Senate. She spends as much time in Oppera as the head of the Reform Party as she does at Treaclerun, her country home in Kazuhn Province. Fortunately, thanks to the labors of her friend Detash, she has access to permanent teleportation circles giving her instant access between Treaclerun and her luxurious mansion in the capital city. This has left her some oversight of the renovating her new county home as well as time to visit with her beloved.

Still, the demands of politics are strong. As the most charismatic politician of the age, Cassia’s presence in the Senate is vital for her party. Her own party relies on her ability to stand and turn a debate with her force of personality. Her enemies, especially the Imperialists, fear to see her rise. Some have even started to compare the young Senator to Aspex the Even-Tongued, just not in her hearing. There are those who aspire to be her husband, but no such that they might be willing to confront her formidable fiancée in a dual, or in any other manner!

Corwyn, Duke of Carthinia, and said fiancée, has his own issues. While not in the Senate, the Grand Princess has twice called him for private consultation. Meanwhile, he is focused on the disaster that is Kazuhn City. With half the city standing empty and another quarter burned to its foundations in the great fire of 4702 ar, Kazuhn City feels more like a ghost town than a prefecture’s capital. Most of what remains—counting houses, feed lots, granaries, and warehouses—exists to support the flow of grain, produce, and meat from Kazuhn into Oppara. A shadow economy of drug smuggling operates from the extensive empty portions of the city. Kazuhn City’s guard is unusually large and well-armed, but seems incapable of staunching the steady movement of flayleaf and unusual liquors. As Chief Warden Almoril Tersian is fond of saying, “There are simply too many holes for vermin to crawl into.”.

Corywn is putting his formidable administrative acumen into the restoration of the city. His first goal has been bringing the local lessor nobles to heel, a process that has taken half a year, and is still tenuous. Kazuhn City is controlled by City Magistrates, minor nobles appointed, as, Corwyn has said to Cassia ”for a variety of reasons except being good at their job!”

It is in this setting that Chief Warden Tersian seeks an audience with Corwyn to discuss a problem. Corywn has been impressed with the one man in leadership trying to make a difference for the better. He agrees to luncheon with the Chief Warden the next day.

By a happy coincidence, Cassia is visiting Corwyn. She is on a break and mostly slipped her more public handlers, letting her loyal agents cover for her. The two enjoy the lunch as Tersian looks on. It is after, as food is cleared that he presents his report.

“Bridgefront is suffering a plague unlike anything seen since the days of the blood veil. It is as insidious as any disease, and we believe each death is feeding an unholy blasphemy: a terrible idol worshiped by a dangerous cult known as the Brotherhood of the Spider. We now know that this cult has not only seized control of the shiver trade in Old Korvosa, but may also be slowly poisoning the neighborhood’s wells, driving a flood of new addicts among our city’s most desperate and causing terrible nightmares among innocent citizens.”

Dozens of shiver users have died since the nightmare plague began. The Chief Warden presents the evidence his people have uncovered. He notes that the Magistrate Stainton Drune, would not appreciate Tersian being here and does not support any theory other than shiver addiction being pushed by the cult.

Alley Addicts: A half-dozen shiver users have hanged themselves within the infamous Fever Dream Alley in the last two weeks. Authorities ruled the deaths suicides, dismissing the thousands of tiny bites covering the corpses as “lice infestation.” Nearby vagrants report however, that “the spiders got ’em”.

The Breakwater Three: The corpses of three young women were found drifting among the rotten piers of the Narrows, where authorities claimed they drowned after taking shiver while swimming. Their hideously crushed and broken bodies were attributed to the sea smashing them against the piers.

The Hungry Dead: To date, three victims have been discovered who were partially devoured, and authorities claim that the sleepwalking addicts must have been so malnourished and intoxicated as to unknowingly gnaw themselves to death. Others question why their faces were frozen in terror, and why the bites looked more bestial than human jaws allow.

Occult Dealers: Citizens found two Night Market esoterica dealers dead in their stalls, their throats slit and bloody daggers still in their hands. Authorities say it is a typical manifestation of a shiver overdose gone horribly wrong, where users slit their own throats while hallucinating. Witnesses maintain the dealers’ associated with Barvasi’s Band—known Brotherhood allies and shiver dealers. Yet others claim one of Barvasi’s gang was looking to sell something desired by dark powers.

Corwyn and Cassia agree to look into the issue. Tersian assumes they will send agents and he offers himself as a guide. The two just smile and say they will take a look personally, though undercover. The Chief Warden is taken aback, but is not going to argue with his ultimate bosses, not to mention heroes of the realm.

That evening, while sleeping (alone), Corwyn has a divine dream from his goddess, Desna where in an open field under a night sky, he senses the her presence. As they set out, he tells Cassia that more may be afoot. The two adopt their alternate guises, not worn for months, and enter into the city proper.

As the pair go towards the parts of the city near the unoccupied areas, macabre shapes coalesce in a thick curtain of fog still hanging heavy on the midday air as muted screams echo off the shingles above. They race to the area and find A foglike ooze now drags the desiccated corpse through the streets, its form sprouting forth from the corpse’s disturbingly distended jaws. The creature begins combat undamaged, and a single surviving member of the Korvosa Guard flails away at it ineffectively, while another three disabled soldiers are tossed through the air with eyes wide in terror.

While the monster is more than a match for the city guard, it is easily dispatched in seconds by the magical blades of the couple. In their disguises, however, they are not known for who they are, but they are seen as possible heroes.

Cassia casts Blood Biography and finds the answers:

The two spend the day colleting various rumors in the city. Rumors seem to concentrate on the blackmarket at the edge of the ruined city known as the Night Market.

• “Between the bad dreams and night terrors, my neighbors and I haven’t gotten a good night’s sleep in two weeks. Used to be I’d dream of faraway lands and such, but these days it’s just the same streets we see every day, all of us getting chased around by awful horrors. Little wonder those folks keep killing themselves. Soon I might want the same escape.”
• “The drug dealers are putting shiver in the water to get us all addicted. Since my family got the terrors, we’ve been walking across town to get our water from the Reef Run Fountain—no more Night Market water for us! It hasn’t stopped the bad dreams, but maybe the shiver water we drank is still in us?”

• “Madame Carrington predicted the deaths, you know? She isn’t much for conversation, but she’s got some kind of weird power. She’s this oneeree… oneyero… well, a medium or something, and they say she’s got this spirit guide called ‘Baku’ that tells her what folks’ dreams mean, and all it’s saying these days is ‘murder, murder, murder.’”
• “I’m telling you, it’s ol’ Sally Scrabblebones behind these nightmares. I remember my grandmother used to scare me with tales that the hag was going to shuck my bones, but she’s real! My daughter saw the crooked old crone coming for her surrounded by swarms of spiders, and she woke up screaming bloody murder with some big scratch marks on her arm.”
• “My sister was in the Brotherhood, but they found her in the Narrows last week, all corpse-gray like the rest. The guards told me she was on shiver, but hard to believe she just sliced her own throat like that, ear to ear. I don’t think I could make it halfway around my neck, myself.”

In Fever Dream Alley. A tangle of plank-and-rope bridges crisscross several stories above this narrow, trash-strewn alley. Shiver addicts—including those currently slumbering in the street—have transformed the alley into a makeshift flophouse, which terminates at a hovel sheltering a rusted potbelly stove. There are three shiver addicts here, Reynaldo, Langston and Nomi. As the group approaches Langston is already in the clutches of the shiver’s sleeping effects and occasionally twitches in discomfort. The other two are intoxicated but conscious. They seem only half-awake, continuously snapping their heads around to stare at unseen phantasms or agitatedly picking invisible bugs off each other’s clothing and flicking them toward the stove’s open door.

Cassia begins to talk to the two, who she gets to trust her enough to share the nightmarish experiences of being pursued by spider swarms and being caught in the webs of the unseen “mother spider” they claim lurks in the rooftops. Langston twitches again, a small spider scurries from his lips, and reality subtly shifts as a dangerous dream haunt manifests. Cassia and Corwyn see the manifesting haunt see Langston’s body spasm as ethereal webs stretch across the alley’s expanse. Langston’s body twitches violently as he vomits forth a swarm of spiders. It is no issue for Cassia and Corwyn to avoid the effects of this haunt with there powerful wills.

As the dream haunt fades or is destroyed, Langston’s increasingly violent thrashing stops. He has been slain in the dream realm by the horrors of the haunt, and immediately the color begins to drain from his body. Shaken by the haunt’s manifestation, distraught over Langston’s death, and grateful for the anyone’s protection, the other two addicts tell their rescuers about their fallen leader, Frell Tann.

Reynaldo and Nomi say that Frell lived with them in this alley until recently when he was hired by “some gang that looted an old temple or something.”. The last they saw of him, Frell accompanied them to Night Market Fountain and used some of his ill-gotten gains to barter a week’s supply of shiver for the group. They acknowledge that they do not know who the dealer was since “buying shiver doesn’t work like that, but it was probably Greeley’s crew.” They reveal that Frell traded a set of fine silverware engraved with the initials “J.W.,” a fancy gold brooch like a butterfly, a mummified imp corpse, a weird silver key, and a blue parakeet in a bronze cage—that one he nicked from someone’s porch.

Langston also mentions cryptically,

“He didn’t trade that big book, though. He thought he could get more from the book dealers or that lady who interprets dreams.”

Among these revelations in their rapid speech are references to the Paginarum Lethargica, the Clavis Somnus, the murdered Night Market book dealers, and Madame Carrington, a seer of some sort.

That evening, they go to the Rook’s Roost. Wooden stairs crawl up an alley wall toward a second story awning that shelters a stout iron door roughly etched with blackbirds. Strange scents waft from the door’s barred porthole, and a thick haze blankets a large room within that is crammed with cots and couches. They are met by Corwyn poses as a shiver user and the two bully their way in, past the owner, Asnaan Sharoosh, an aging and frail Vudrani with a deeply creased face crowned with a bright red turban. A bushy mustache curls upward, and he speaks with a thick Vudrani accent. It is clear to Cassia this is mostly an act. After a short time, they find that the establishment’s back door opens to an alley balcony above a 20-foot-square pigsty, home to ten fat hogs rooting through a slurry of cracked bones, muck, and other detritus. With a sinking feeling, Corwyn wonders if a dying Frell Tann was disposed up there before his undead “restoration”. A messy check (followed by prestidigitation reveals a red scrap of soiled fabric matching Frell Tann’s silk shirt and a partially consumed finger wearing a mud-covered signet ring that bears the Tann family crest.

Corwyn confronts the owner who admits he is not quite the neutral party he portrays himself as. In his private rooms, he is actually giving succor to the Brotherhood’s enforcers, Barvasi’s Band. Corwyn brings the full force of his personality against the man, telling him to leave town and not return. Asnaan mutely agrees and is turning people out as Corwyn and Cassia enter into the night.

Wishing to maintain cover, they get rooms near the Night Market in a small Inn. Both quickly go to sleep, and both then experience the same trouble with dreams the citizens here have been suffering. Dreams.

Cassia is back in the streets outside the Red Rook. She is chased by something, but a baku steps in scare it off. She awakens quite sure that something more than a dream was at work. Her fiancée has a different experience. In Corwyn’s dream, the night sky is clear and stars can be seen. A moon moth alights on his hand and moves to his forehead. He too is chased by a hag like female figure. Corwyn addresses her as “Scrabblebones “, but she does not approach him. When he awakens, his forehead still has faint luminous moth scales that Corwyn gingerly saves.

The next day they stake Out Night Market Fountain. Corwyn investigates the area surreptitiously and reveals a loose stone in the well’s foundation containing an empty leather roll and some broken shiver vial. They witness a dead drop occur.

Below a sign depicting a faded crescent moon, a cracked glass door opens into a waiting room adorned in once-fine appointments, now worn and faded by age.

Madame Carrington’s abode is little more than a 5-footby-20-foot waiting room with several shabby chairs, and a single door leading into Carrington’s chamber beyond. Carrington’s assistant is Maynard Colville, a quiet-voiced yet unyielding personality with a wispy mustache and an ill-fitting suit too small even for his tiny frame. Colville asks Corwyn and Cassia to wait patiently and to deposit their conspicuous weapons in a nearby cabinet. He then ushers them into a dimly lit 20-foot-by-20-foot room beyond. Carrington’s chamber features a half-dozen wooden folding chairs, Carrington’s large quilted couch, and six potted, and thus safely stationary and well-fed xtabay plants. Nearby, a low table holds an automatic writing planchette atop large sheets of paper, a battered talking board, and an assortment of candles.

Madame Carrington suffers from a degenerative muscle disease that has left her almost entirely paralyzed and nearly incapable of speech. Her severely atrophied body is attired in a black mourning dress several decades out of fashion and her face is frozen in a grim rictus. Her eyes, however, reveal an active mind full of smoldering dignity. She can communicate through the following means: using mage hand to control a nearby planchette or talking board to produce messages.

They talk with the spiritualist to better understand the deaths in the city. The seer relates that in recent weeks, she has seen local dreamscapes turn dangerous and has encountered a strange creature offering its protection—a baku. She has worked with this creature to help protect dreamers, and it must have been this creature who helped Cassia. She can confirm that Frell Tann sought her out several days ago, by scribbling out a message saying the rogue “Tried to sell me a large journal of the faith of Desna, and a key of precious metal, but his price was much too exorbitant, so he sought another purchaser.”. About Frell she says, “His soul was stolen by the cult’s crooked witch, who seeks the key.”. Carrington did not predict some of the deaths; in fact, she witnessed several of them while dreaming. See sees the Brotherhood of the Spider as behind this, and she blames their foul trade in shiver.

Cassia and Corwyn leave and plan their next steps for tomorrow. Corwyn suggest they spend the night in the same room, in hopes he can protect her dreams. They discuss their current leads:

• Locate Moses Greeley, the Brotherhood of the Spider Cult’s mail dealer-distributor
• Find and interrogate one of the Cult’s Enforcers, Barvasi’s Band
• Locate the Cult’s Headquarters - follow up on rumors about it being at the warf
• Ultimately, they will need figure out a way to enter the Dreamscape demi-plane without their normal means (AKA Detash or Mikhal)