Estarion, Game 7

A few days pass and Arturius and Carver find themselves called to work with the church elders, leaving Jerrit and Meadow to investigate. They spend a couple of days investigating the people on the list of names they captured in game 3:

• Finding the tomb of Vitus Pontius, they end up attacked by his corpse, revitalized as a coffer corpse, which the pair defeats after Jerrit suffers a little strangulation.
• The two decide they can't really touch Lucanus Valens, chief of the guard or Nevius Albanus, Imperial Master of Keys.
• Meadow makes friends with one of Lady Herminia Cassius' servant Prisca in the market, gets to know her and uses her face to infiltrate the Lady's home. They find that Lady Herminia stays young with a nightly bath in vinegar that Prisca leaves drawn for her each night. Prisca tells Meadow that her mistress is traveling right now and not available. Meadow, wearing the appearance of Prisca, finds that there is still a fairly recent residue of vinegar in the tub, and brings a rag soaked with what she wiped up. Jerrit analyzes the fluids and finds some sort of humours, maybe blood, in with the vinegar. After much research he begins to suspect Lady Herminia may be a Penanggalan.
• Meadow and Jerrit also find an orphanage where Lady Herminia seems to be feeding on young boys, maybe around 7 or 8, who seem to be getting ill of a wasting disease, and decide that they need to get the priests of the temple to help protect the orphanage from undead incursion.
• Meadow and Jerrit also follow up with Tatiana Scaevola's brothel. The men coming out are all Aquilan men of standing and wealth, but seem furtive about being seen coming out of a high-class brothel, which is a surprise. They also seem to have some sort of token or invitation to get in.
• They investigate Fariq the Elder's home, but his shop has already been tossed and barricaded by the Guard.
• The Guard has also begun patrolling the sewers, rousting criminals inside and outside the walls, and mobilized heavily.
• Meadow seeks news of Regga from the Beggar King, but his men are not able to network well during the current Guard activity. 
• The two decide that the list of Aquilans seem not to be victims of the rat cult, but tied to the journal fragments mentioning in one instance the Cult of Orcus and in another the enemies of the cult. The PCs may have inadvertently helped the Cult of Orcus gain the upper hand by helping wipe out the rat cult. They also are now very unsure how to procede against them since they don't know the size of the cult, which are living or undead, or how to move against them because of their political position.
• They also are sure that Marcellus Nonus is behind Meadow's current undead status and theorize that the patients seem so calm and quiet because they might, in fact be zombies or similar undead.

DM note: this is a game where only two players were able to come, and they were the party warlock (Meadow) and wizard (Jerrit). Jerrit is a necromancer and master of book research, Meadow can alter self at will, but other than that their social skills are not great; their combat abilities are okay, but diminished without the party cleric and barbarian; and without the cleric with the noble background, Arturius, their access to certain levels of society are greatly weakened. So the week was not very focused on fighting, but on investigating and doing more to tie up loose ends in the mysteries so far in the game. In a game or two, things will probably get a little hairy as they face the cult of Orcus and eventually we get back to the subplot of a coven of hags that were allied to the rat cult, but who still want to destroy the city.