After the fight with the ettercaps and drow, we had some time to kill before the ceremony for bequeathing the Reverent Dreamer with the moonblade that Lathaeril had retrieved with Tittlin. I decided to get another tattoo - been collecting them for a while now, and this one seemed practical. The Spirit of the Owl, they call it. It’s supposed to sharpen your senses and awareness. Cost me eleven hundred platinum, but honestly, I don’t know what else I’d spend the money on.
The tattoo itself is a fierce-looking owl with its wings spread and claws out, done in golden glamour ink that glitters in the light. Goes across my whole back. At this point I’m pretty well covered in tattoos - protection across my chest, the mark of the Armsman on my right arm showing Shifty in amorphous form, the mark of the Elemental on my upper left thigh with an ornate geometric snowflake design, and now this owl on my back.
The application took sixteen hours. Very clean establishment, professional work. While I was getting inked, Tittlin immediately started drinking and ranting about some fake affair. Momen was scribing spells. By the time Momen and I headed to the inn to sleep that first night, Tittlin had passed out at the bar.
The next morning, Tittlin was gone. I finished up my tattoo work while Momen continued scribing. Once I was done, we found Tittlin sitting in a corner somewhere, ranting and raving about looking for an invisible cat. He didn’t seem to be doing any harm, and we were more worried about the refugees we’d heard about, so we decided to head to the refugee camp first.
At the camp, things got concerning fast. Some of the refugees had bite marks, silvery skin, and were twitchy and out of it. Momen noted this seemed similar to some sort of zombie disease he’d read about before. The folks from further south in Torveldas - closer to Torveld itself - seemed to be further along in their symptoms. That suggested the source of the infection was down south.
I kept gathering details from the refugees while Momen went to find Durlan. Momen relayed what we’d found, and Durlan begrudgingly advised bringing Lathaeril along. Once everyone arrived at the camp, Durlan and I began doing more structured data collection.
Lathaeril got a status update, then started healing all of the infected. One person seemed quite far gone - Durlan had tied him up using thick tree vines. The infected man was gnashing at the vines with his teeth.
Lathaeril attempted to cure him. The infected suddenly seemed to calm, but then melted into mercury and reformed into a body with slits for eyes a short distance away.
A voice came out of the mouth - one Momen and I both recognized. Hydrargyrum.
She spoke crazily and strangely, but we managed to ask her several questions. She recounted that Duke Reinhardt told her the Marquis had gone insane and they had to do something about it. He asked her to bite the captain of the guard, so she did.
She recognized Momen and me. Asked if we’d seen any fragments of the black crown - said they were important and she’d been tasked with looking for them. She also seemed to be able to sense through all the infected people around Torveldas that were sufficiently far gone.
I stammered and said we hadn’t seen the crown. Hydrargyrum saw right through it. She screamed “LIAR!” at me, lunged forward, and bit into my arm.
Thankfully, Lathaeril had been preparing something. He immediately turned Hydrargyrum’s puppet into goop and healed me to prevent me from being taken over. I looked down at where the wound had started turning silver, but his magic reversed it.
We gave Durlan and Lathaeril a rundown on our previous interaction with Hydrargyrum in Torveld - the quicksilver dragon who was… eccentric. Turns out she’s not just crazy. She’s the infection spreading across Torveldas, and she can see through anyone who’s far enough gone.
I immediately used the sending stone to contact Plok back at Cedar Combe, who handed me off to Merric. Told him to contact Caspar and Prince Nicholas right away and relay everything: Hydrargyrum is the infection, Duke Reinhardt apparently told her to start biting people, she’s looking for fragments of the black crown, and she can sense through all the infected across Torveldas.
Merric was understandably alarmed. “Goodness, what the hell are you doing out there? What do you mean we’ve got a dragon plague?”
I made it clear this wasn’t our doing - we just found out about it. Don’t shoot the messenger. We’re helping here.
He said he’d contact the Dorthanas and get the ball rolling. This information is critical for reconnaissance operations - they’ll need to be extremely careful about who they send where, particularly with Caspar and other agents. If Hydrargyrum can see through infected people, standard intelligence gathering just became exponentially more dangerous.
We knew Hydrargyrum was crazy before. But now she’s a plague spreading across Torveldas, she can see through the infected, and she’s actively looking for fragments of some crown on Duke Reinhardt’s orders. This just became a much bigger problem than we anticipated.