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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cerebral Paladin" data-source="post: 3093482" data-attributes="member: 3448">Dame Brionna looked up from the other book.  “This is a journal recording all of her missions.”  She read a little more and frowned.  “And most of them are marked as successes.  It begins two years ago, when they seduced the Lord of Caldra to their cause.  But there were some failures.  They’ve tried repeatedly to corrupt Lady Constance, but she won’t have any of it.  And it mentions that their overtures to Region 6 were rejected.”  Dame Brionna swallowed.  “Also that they made two unsuccessful attempts on the late Archduchess’s life.  And then that their allies, under a succubus-- that must be her name-- stole the artifact and passed it and its matched brother in preparation for the final ritual.  Aha!  The ritual is scheduled for the 1st night of the full red moon in the month of Ras, 7 months from now.”“The full red moon would be propitious for demon magic,” commented Ilsbet absently without looking up from the books of magic.“Hmm… This does suggest that the Duke of Brightspan is less corrupt than we thought.  There are many disparaging remarks about him, although no mention of the Duchess at all.  And then there’s what I can only call fawning discussion of Lady Deborah’s mother.  She also refers to her as ‘Elfhammer.’  And then a list of briefings of Her Grace… They’ve had access to all the most private information of the Archducal household.”“Any references to their current operations?” asked Jacques.“Yes.  Here at the end.  They’re using the Dark Guild to hire many of the poor people of the City to,” Dame Brionna paused in horror, “to throw plague vials at the procession.”Ilsbet looked up.  “I thought plague was forbidden by the Gods.”“It is, in the long-term. But it’s possible to have short outbreaks before they intervene.  There would be plenty of time to devastate the City.”“Do we know what these plague vials would look like?” asked Jacques.  “We need to take immediate steps to recover them.”“Yes,” said Dame Brionna.  “We received a few reports, although not of what they were.  They are small glass vials, filled with a white, glowing liquid.”“If you can fund it, I think I’ll start passing the word around on the street through fences and such that I’m looking to buy those vials, as many as they can bring.”“Will 1500 gold be enough?  We can supply more if you start running out.”Jacques swallowed.  Yes, he had definitely underestimated their ability to pay if they were willing to throw around fortunes like that.  “1500 should be plenty.”“And we can have the priests preach that people should turn them in, and offer a public amnesty for anyone who does.”Ilsbet looked up from the book.  “That seems like a good plan, but I think you might want to separate the two.  The people who will be looking to make a fast coin through a fence are likely to be distrustful if they connect it to the temple.  If you just have the priests preach an amnesty and ask people to bring the plague vials to the temples, and then separately try to buy them on the black market, you’ll get more total.”Jacques nodded in agreement.  “We don’t want anyone thinking this is a trap.”“Do you have any available condemned prisoners?” asked Ilsbet.“What?”“Some of the vials will have broken by accident.  We need to know what the symptoms are so that we can quarantine people who show signs.”Jacques looked a little ill.  “She’s right.  And we’ll need to post a paladin to watch, so we can observe without anyone getting sick.”Dame Brionna nodded.  “I’ll take care of it.  And once we have recovered most of the vials, we can use locate object sweeps to get many of the remainder.”</blockquote>

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