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)

Stepping out of the teleportation circle at Treaclerun, Mikhael is met by an agent of the Grand Duchess who informs him she is in the city visiting Corwyn. Mikhael bows and proceeds to Kazuhn City where he is taken to Cassia’s Chief of Staff, Consia Censis. Lady Censis relates the details of Cassia and Corwyn going into the city in disguise. It is clear she is most distressed, as this is now day four of them being gone. Mikhael says he will go look for them and asks for a quite room and some wine. Lady Censis is most enthusiastic and gets him a room in the guest quarters. Mikhael casts discern location to locate his friends, using the last of his wine as a scrying pool. He then finishes his drink and bids a courteous good bye to the staff, heading into the ruined parts of the city.

Cassia and Corwyn awaken much later than they expected, having slept almost 12 hours. They are quite well rested, and it seems as if their sleep was protected, though there is no more moth-dust to be seen. They dress and head down for breakfast.

Mikhael finds the two at breakfast at their inn, eating a lukewarm gruel for breakfast. Three quickly head out so they can update Mikhael in a place less likely to be overheard. After bringing him up today, they headed to the pier in the river to follow up on that lead.

An old wooden pier parts the pylons of burned-out quays that jut from the water. The wharf terminates at a small flatroofed building with soot-covered windows. A small moored skiff bobs alongside the dock. The 10-foot-wide wharf extends into the sea for approximately 60 feet, ending at flat-roofed, 20-footsquare shack with a single door facing the wharf and a small, grubby window on each wall. A skiff large enough for four passengers is moored to the end of the dock nearby. The rickety wharf shifts alarmingly underfoot, and is slippery from sea spray

A man stands outside, guarding the shack. Corwyn confidently strides up the pier and he darts inside, locking the door behind him. Corwyn pulls his adamantine tipped knife to cut the hinges, but as he does this, Mikhael detects a surge of summoning energy right in front of Cassia who is following at some distance. Between the two betrothed arises a summoned water elemental. Cassia sings a few words and dispels the summoning magic and the water falls down. Mikhael keeps an eye out for more magic while Corwyn shrugs and smashed open the door.

Inside, there are four shiver addicts who flail at Corwyn, who easily doges their attacks. Cassia arrives in time to see Corwyn use his vanish ability and scare the four addicts. All four fall to the ground and wail, terrified of what they have seen, sure it is a drug induced nightmare. For two, it becomes very real as they have a flash-back and enter into a dream state. Meanwhile, Mikhael again sees magic, and this time, a control water spell is being use to raise the water. His friends might drown. He dispels this effect and pinpoints the caster, a being hiding under a nearby pier. While Cassia and Corwyn start to interrogate their hapless prisoners, Mikhael summons a Ghaele, Gylledhia, who strides to what is a hydrodameon and begins smiting it with her sword. The surprised creature, summoned to ambush two human investigators is startled and ineffective in its response. Three bolts from Dignity’s Barb knock it out. As it sinks into the water, Ghaele cuts its body into quarters.

Back in the shack, which is obviously NOT the cult headquarters, one of the addicts is having a bad waking dream. A hoard of bugs are swarming him and moving towards the others caught in the effect. These appear as phantoms or projections to the strong willed heroes nearby. Corwyn yells for Mikhael to help. He comes running in, and upon seeing the situation, has Gylledhia, with her holy aura stand near them and the light washes out the dream, like harsh light on a projection. The men bow to her and she lectures them on mending their ways. Corwyn looks at Mikhael who just shrugs.

Outside, a mob is forming. Based on their interrogation, it appears Corwyn’s and Cassia’s false identities have bounties on their heads. Gylledhia orders the mob to stop and disperse, which has some effect, however, the real impact is Cassia’s song causing mass charm. The drug addled rabble wander away, even more confused than they normally are.

The center of Greeley’s drug trade is a discreet apartment that overlooks the Night Market, nestled within a Shingles-level block of overgrown tenements. The clue “under the Red Oliphaunt” refers to a Night Market landmark—high on the wall of a towering building is a faded depiction of a large tusked and smiling oliphaunt that once advertised a tavern. The two windows that peer out from below the billboard mark Greeley’s hideout.

By following a narrow alley, the three reach a heavy, iron-reinforced door that penetrates a 15-foot-high stone wall just a few feet from where it intersects with the Old Wall. They use a magic carpet to easily float over the wall to expose a hidden courtyard hosting rusty wrought-iron chairs, a half-rotted table, and lots of trash. Two guards, members of Barvasi’s Band, guard the gate and are startled to see the three float over. Before they can raise an alarm, Corwyn quietly tells them to “go home” and in that moment, the man above them is far more intimidating than their ongoing fear of the Brotherhood of the Spider.

The courtyard has a three story spiral startcase ending at a strong wooden door. There is also an outhouse against the outer wall. Immediately, the three heroes look at one another and say “secret door” and Cassia strolls into the outhouse to find a secret hinged panel at the rear that swings open to reveal a 4-foot-wide, 10-foot-long tunnel bored into the Old Wall, an inner wall from a time when the city was smaller in size. Huge blocks of irregularly cut stone form a happenstance tunnel in the hollow within the Old Wall with the corpses of long-dead rodents hanging from dusty spiderwebs draping the passage. Though crumbling, the Old Wall is considered a part of the city’s inner defensive fortifications, its upper ledge still in use by occasional patrols of the City Guard. The Old Wall is also a key feature in the Brotherhood’s drug trade: its stout facade conceals a hollow, irregular interior that the cult utilizes as a service tunnel. Dozens of hidden holes perforate the wall at sporadic locations, providing means of egress to sewer shafts or through passages opened by prying free loose blocks from the wall. The cult owns several properties built directly against the wall—including their main lodge—creating a complicated network of secret entrances that make it impossible for authorities to effectively track their movements. The tunnel itself ranges from 5 feet to 15 feet in both width and height.

The quickly finds that the wall’s interior is the lair of a pair of dangerous ogre spiders, which cult members avoid by minding their feeding times and through liberal use of vermin repellent—the jars of which litter tunnel entrances regularly used by the cult. The repellent is normally used to deter swarms, but the dealers have found it also keeps the ogre spiders at bay for the time being. Those who enter the tunnel without applying vermin repellent face eventual attack by the spiders. Unfortunately for the spiders, Mikhael summons Lysanthir to kill and eat on spider, while three bolts from Dignity’s Barb and a stab from Corwyn eliminates the other.

Seeing this is not Greeley’s lair, they go back out and up the stairs. Corwyn picks the lock easily, and Cassia throws the door open into a 20-foot-by-20-foot square apartment. It contains three simple beds, a large bureau, and two long tables covered with bartered goods waiting to be fenced, including Frell’s squawking blue parakeet and other important items of evidence. Two windows overlook the Night Market Fountain, each covered with streaks of grime that allow discreet observation of the streets below. Four members of Basari’s Band guard the room, while Greeley is in the corner invisible, having heard the noise at the door. Corwyn demands, in the name of the Duke, they surrender and turn over Greeley. While the four comply the protest Greeley is not there. But Corwyn can see him and simply strolls over to the invisible Greeley, his protection from good and divine favor doing little good. Corwyn batters the man into unconsciousness as the man is screaming prophetic warnings about the foul spirits that inhabit his cult’s temple the whole time. As this goes on, Cassia and Mikhael take charge of the other prisoners.

The tables of this chamber hold all manner of bartered items, from lanterns and mirrors to candlesticks and jewelry. Together, these mundane items are collectively worth 300 gp. Items of more substantial individual value include a large jar of pulled gold teeth worth 30 gp in total, three silver holy symbols of Abadar worth 25 gp each, a phrenologist’s kit and 40 doses of shiver worth 1,000 gp. In addition, there are several pieces of evidence: Frell’s blue parakeet in a bronze cage worth 10 gp, a wooden case containing a set of silverware—engraved “J.W.” as reported—worth 120 gp, and a golden holy symbol of Desna worth 50 gp. Cassia notes these final items correlate to those learned of in Fever Dream Alley and are acceptable proof that Greeley. was Frell Tann’s dealer.

A quick check of the room reveals a small brass key hidden above the cabinet which is concealing a secret passageway, which opens the door into a dangerous hallway. Corwyn easily notices a thin veneer of wood flooring that would easily collapse into a hollow space between buildings, dropping those stepping into the area some 30 feet onto deadly barbs of sharpened iron. The rafters above the panel are worn smooth from years of dealers using it to swing over the trap. He just uses his flying carpet as a bridge. The strong wooden door at the end is locked with a good lock and opens into a storage room stuffed with more ill-gotten goods.

This room is stuffed with more mundane goods worth a total of 800 gp. An oval frame has been paired with a mummified imp’s corpse worth 200 gp to a collector (another piece of evidence). Magic items include a fine suit of mistmail a +1 kukri, a lesser talisman of danger sense, 2 scrolls of restoration in a bone scroll tube, and a clay animal divining pot fired in the shape of a corpulent, lounging rat.

Interrogation of Greeley and the others reveals the Brotherhood of the Spider is held up in the Hook Street House. Finally, they know their target.

The group investigates the history to find the Hook Street House is the ancestral manse of the Caligaro family. Though long fallen into disrepair and heavily damaged from an old fire. The family acquired the property nearly 200 years ago, when only a small crumbling temple to Desna stood on the grounds. In those days, the Caligaro family’s patriarch was a devout follower of the Tender of Dreams and a fanatical collector who built the home to incorporate and protect the ruins of the shrine. Later generations offered supplication to Gozreh, constructing unique underwater ballroom to pay homage to the god of the sea. Today, the home stands in ruins, its last owner Nahum Caligaro has been missing for two decades.

The House on Hook Street—is the ancestral manse of the Caligaro family. Though long fallen into disrepair and heavily damaged from an old fire, it is now clear it serves to conceal the cult’s shiver production. From the outside, the once-opulent house’s rotting front blends in perfectly with the decrepitude of the modern day area. The house is set slightly off Hook Street, and the surrounding area is overgrown with makeshift tenements. Sprawling hovels cling to the mansion’s exterior.

Within, the house reflects several generations of devout inhabitants. The family acquired the property nearly 200 years ago, when only a small crumbling temple to Desna stood on the grounds. In those days, the Caligaro family’s patriarch was a devout follower of the Tender of Dreams and a fanatical collector who built the home to incorporate and protect the ruins of the shrine. Later generations offered supplication to Gozreh, constructing the home’s unique underwater ballroom to pay homage to the god of the sea.

The house’s exterior doors and windows are heavily boarded or barricaded to prevent intrusion from outside (, with the exception of the balcony entrance to area. The back of the house is directly against the Old Wall, and its exposed stone facade stands in dark contrast to the manse’s wood-paneled walls.

Cassia proposes that the wall might be the best way to enter the home could well be through the hidden passages in the Old Wall. The group agrees and Greeley’s outhouse access into the Old Wall tunnel and is about 400 feet north of the entrance to the cult compound along Hook Street. While this corridor might have been dangerous to them at one point. The group had no issues getting to the cult’s hideout. Mikhael easily makes uses his engineering skill to find an entrance nearby the house. While there are many roughly hewn and makeshift exits from the tunnel that open into various hovels along the wall, the entrance to the cult’s lair is more elaborate, with a torchlit stone staircase that ascends some 15 feet and terminates at an iron portcullis opening. Tracks show the most heavily used route taken by dozens of cultists as they make their way to worship, the trail of which terminates here at the stairs.

Two velvet curtains tied back with filthy gold cord reveal an iron portcullis cast with a webbed motif. Cobwebs drape the forms of two carved wooden mannequins dressed as robed cultists, which flank each side of the portcullis. The compound’s entrance hall stores the necessary ceremonial paraphernalia for visiting worshipers to don before descending to the temple below. The room’s wood-paneled walls are covered in hooks, from which hang dozens of the cult’s olive green robes. A locked iron portcullis blocks the entrance into the cult’s compound. Corwyn is able to open it so easily that he seems unaware it was even locked in the first place. The portcullis’s winch takes up the room’s northeast corner. One door leads to the south and another to the east.

It is painfully obvious to the demigod like skill of Corwyn that any creatures that do not touch the hands of each of the carved wooden mannequins before crossing the threshold trigger the trap in this room and he so tells the others. They make a comic series of gestures doing so, while Corwyn notes no city guard would have ever seen that, no matter how well they looked.

The group decides to disguise themselves in the manner of the of initiates, and each uses his or her hat of disguise to do so. Pale under olive green robes, the group heads forward and are met by 4 deacons. They easily bluff them as initiates and one deacon leads them towards the ritual site. They head downstairs into a gallery.

This room hosts an impressive carved wooden stairway that descends from above. A comfortable fireplace flickers without warmth, and a moth-eaten rug hosts equally moth-eaten furniture. Rotting frames filled with tattered canvas cover the walls. The looming stone facade of the Old Wall comprises the room’s western wall, and a strange cagelike structure is built into the northwest corner. The structure turns out to be an elevators. Small chips of gold leaf cover the floor here, flaked off from the once-gilded gate of a cage-like elevator, which hangs over a dark shaft. This rickety elevator operates via a hand-driven crank and pulley system that takes a full minute to move the 40- foot distance between levels. It only has two stops: here and the tunnel entrance. It can be operated from both ends, and climbing rungs are concealed among its pulley mechanisms in the recessed shaft, accessible by a trap door. The elevator is safe and well maintained, though the crank, Corwyn notes, is affected by a phantom trap spell.

The elevator comes down to a long tunnel. Wispy spiderwebs hang like curtains along this tunnel’s width, their bottoms stained from wicking dirty water from the slippery floor below. The 10-foot-wide, 180-foot-long tunnel is constructed of thick stone blocks, and runs beneath the Old Wall and below the shoreline basin to an old underwater ballroom. The tunnel is punctuated by patches of thick spiderwebs. With his see invisibility Corwyn is able to see two phase spiders lurking in the ethereal plane. The spiders don’t seem alarmed, perhaps because they are being escorted and are in cult regalia. The tunnel ends in aging temple to Gozreh.

A wrought iron framework supporting thick glass panels creates an imposing dome, though sediment from the dirty harbor above blocks most of the light that might otherwise stream into this underwater chamber. From the apex of the dome hangs a gigantic fossilized spider, which swings from a thick rope of roughly woven, silver silk. The cult’s main temple is this underwater chamber, built decades ago at great expense by a Gozreh-worshiping member of the Caligaro family. The presbytery shows signs of age: puddles of leaking seawater form on its tessellated floor, and its glass panels are clouded between webs of rusted framework. The chamber looks like a refugee camp for cultists as much as a place of worship. The petrified idol itself dominates the chamber, hanging suspended and upside down above the water-damaged pews and makeshift cots of the assembled cultists. Similarly suspended are three sacrifices: webbed cocoons of drugged and paralyzed victims prepared in area and moved here, where the idol/would be god, Mog-Lathar consumes their dreaming minds.

The cult’s high priestess, Myra Lombroso, is joined here by 24 initiates. Half tend to the idol, hoisting the sacrificial cocoons while chanting and swaying in ecstatic supplication. The other half sleeps, reads esoteric literature, or reflects on their venerations. Myra questions the new arrivals and Corwyn is able to easily bluff her that they are new initiates. Mikhael notes the suspended idol is, in fact, a petrefied Leng Spider. However, as they move into the chamber, Corwyn is quite distressed at the hanging people. He drops his disguise and reveals himself in all his glory as Corwyn Nethair, Duke Carthinia, with the Grand Duke Avin and Grand Duchess Kazuhn! He orders her to surrender, promising her a fair trial. Mikhael summons Lysanthir for effect. The cultist rabble is startled, and Myra quails and surrenders.

“We are not the hunters! We are the hunted!” she steadfastly maintains, which is evident in the refugee camp all around her. It is clear her cult is certainly guilty of human sacrifice and illegal drug trafficking, if the group will let her cult leave she promises, “I’ll hand you the key to discovering those truly responsible for the nightmare plague.” Corwyn agrees not to kill the cult, and Myra offers the Clavis Somnus to them saying, it holds the answers to those they seek. She maintains that “a sect of our brotherhood— excommunicated heretics—sought to open a portal to the realm of dreams and awaken a powerful artifact. We pushed them through and shut the door behind them.” For her part, Myra believes she did both her cult and Kazuhn City a favor, but recognizes that this betrayal sparked the nightmare plague. She also reveals that “there was a book that told all, a large tome that held the secrets of the ceremony. But our associates stole it and went into hiding.” She gives the name of Josef Barvasi, but does not know his location.

As Myra betrays her “god” it becomes angry. It casts animate upon itself and rips free from the ceiling, tearing at the dome and causing water to rush in. Caleb creates a spiked pit and as the monster lands, the ground vanishes and it plummets 50 more feet. The extra water starts to pour in, filling the pit. Cassia uses a sonic attack on the stone creature hoping the sonic damage will hurt it more. Then Lysanthir dives down to smash the idol. Its outer skin is shattered, but the petrified creature is now adsorbed enough energy to become an artifact in its own right. It will take more to dispose of it than claws and fang. Lysanthir then rescues the three webbed bodies and flies them up.

All hell is breaking loose, as Myra manically laughs as her life’s work falls in front of her. They use the magic carpet to take the bodies out, and the group runs from the flowing water from under the river. The carpet is useful in speeding up the transit time for group of people. The cultists scatter, but Corwyn has control of Myra.

In the waning light of the day, the crowd seeing people pour from the House on Hook Street are amazed. There, three heroes of the realm stand, two of whom are the noble they live under. Mikhael sends a water elemental to retrieve the idol, which Corwyn orders taking to a local temple, the largest being to Abadar. The group decides to get things sorted out.