Back at it in the new year! Pure RP tonight.
First, the PCs decided to call on Nathan Jierre, hoping he might know something about Distant Madness. Unfortunately, he didn't, but he reminded them of a few things they'd forgotten -- the "blue sun" events on Axis Island, and he and Bela talked shop for a little bit. They talked a bit about the Ancients as well.
Then they went to talk to Pazumu, who offered a herbal concoction to help calm Vesta's dreams and stave off the Distant Madness. They also showed her the artifacts, but they were "too old" for her, and made her uncomfortable. Talking to one of the skyseers at the henge, they confirmed the artifacts' provenance but little more.
From there, it was off to Pardwight. Professor Kindleton was happy to see the PCs again, and after hearing their tale, offered her assistance in the study of the dead monsters. She also referred them to Hans Weber at the Museum of Natural History for questions about the Ancients -- with an admonishment that they should butter him up but not mention that she sent them.
At the Museum, they found Weber obsessively polishing an artifact. My girlfriend actually asked me to stop the polishing (I was polishing a glass with a piece of cloth) because she thought it was creepy, which was high praise!
They had an extensive discussion with Weber about the Ancients, and then when they brought out their artifacts, Weber identified them as being from Xambria's expedition. That led to a conversation about the ziggurat, Xambria, and what Weber knew about her/her expedition. Ultimately, he said he would arrange for them to meet Xambria the next day.
After returning the artifacts to the RHC, the PCs turned in for the night, and woke up to letters from Lorcan Kell demanding the release of Kaja Stewart. Reginald immediately used his Spirit Medium ability to sense the history of the letter he received, but due to crappy Perception roll wasn't able to identify the location where the letter was written as the Theatre of Scoundrels. Still, he got some inklings that the letter was from a criminal source. He decided to find a sketch artist and have the location drawn so the other constables could try to ID it.
Meanwhile, the rest of the squad went to check in at RHC HQ and found out about Kaja. Murdok received the letter from the Colonel asking for the monsters' bodies to be turned over to the Risuri military, and seemed to think that would be a good idea. When they went downstairs to see Kaja's body, Murdok was very unimpressed with the guards' excuse that they were "distracted" by another prisoner -- long enough for Kaja to hang herself? Something doesn't add up... they started to do some looking around, but that was where we stopped.
*
These last few updates have been a bit scattered for me, life has been busy. We're playing again next Wednesday and hopefully I'll have a bit more in the way of DM commentary -- this isn't really a "story hour," it's partly for me to remind myself what happened and partly for other DMs to see how one party handled these situations. I'll try to get back to providing a bit more in the way of concrete thoughts for other DMs.
On that note, since there are no explicitly defined routes for the PCs to get from Xambria to Caius in Act 1 -- not that getting to Caius is necessary -- I'm planning to have the easiest option be one of Reginald's contacts:
Maitland is Reginald’s youngest uncle on his father’s side. He is a purveyor for the palace, and though he traveled widely in this role during his youth, he has spent virtually all of his time at court in the past decade, working in a managerial role. He is very much a player in court politics, and is well disposed toward Reginald (it was he who pulled the strings to get Reginald his position in the colonial outpost).
This contact seems like he'd be a good fit for someone who might be up on where Caius could be found, if Reginald's player thinks of it. 
(His player spends a lot of his stipend on consumables.)
