Making Enquiries
For the rest of the day, and much of the next, you try to find out more details about the undead and the paper lantern gang. Nobody in the Old Barracks claims to have seen them, saying that the gates to the old cistern have been shut for years. Indeed the gates are rusted, locked with an equally rusty chain and don't seem to be usable. Most acticity by the gang was around the Shading Willow Court area, at least in terms of where they menaced the locals. The people you speak to who know members of the gang have little good to say about them - apparently most of them were local youths with a bad reputation long before they started dealing with bad spirits. This is one point that produces puzzled reactions - none of them have ever shown any magical ability, so they must have fallen in with a tabusami sorcerer somewhere along the line. Where he or she might be, no-one knows but there is loads of wild speculation.
The two injured men are taken to the narvinda, to join the growing list of refugees, wounded and monsters who are taking up residence (at least two previous gang members and the two wild girls). It is lucky that the narvinda is a sprawling complex of a former magisterial residence, with buildings up to three storeys high surrounding several gardened courtyards. Sister Herbalist gives Mystal Mar a medicinal compound to drink to cure the effects of the daark spirit. He's sure the sour-faced woman makes it foul-tasting on purpose, but it works.
Growling Ape finds tracks in many of the cistern inlet pipes, and further exploration shows that there are lots of other hidden entrances from these pipes into the cellars of abandoned buildings across Cormondal - at least eight including the other buildings that the thugs fled to after being routed at Shading Willow. The cistern gives them hidden access to anywhere in Cormondal, beneath the ground. Although some of these buildings show signs that they have been used as sqauts, none are occupied.
There is only one exit from the cistern complex that leads somewhere other than a run-down, empty building. It leads up into an ornate building at the edge of a formal garden - an eyecatcher, folly or summer house in a hidden corner of the ornamental gardens of a wealthy citizen.
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Mystal is healed of his Con damage. It is now they after the cistern fight, so all spells etc. are restored.
It is now the day of the Laburnum Festival, where the characters are invited to join the Vashti at an evening reception at Magister Ten's residence.
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