Collecting themselves after the fight at the late Ilthane the Black’s alchemical layer, the party realizes that their boat for hire is not likely to return. They trudge down the river, and up the bank to return to Alhaster, worn out, muddy and exhausted. No one speaks much as they take another night’s unobserved refuge, leaving other unsettled matters to another day.
Feeling the pressure of the coming event, Yldar, Zeek and Talis ask around at the Deluxury about issue of dress code and expectations for Zeech’s banquet. They meet the gregarious Professor Montague Marat and unusal Shag Solomon. The former, it turns out, was once from Diamond Lake and is an associate of Zalamandra, the proprietor of the Emporium there. He left prior to Ilthane's attacks, and hired a boat to get a number of his acquaintances out during the dragonseige. He is evidently a wealthy artistocrat, is also invited to the prince's party and goes to lengths to explain the expectations of the event. He recommends that no extravagance should be spared the invitation to mingle with the region’s aristocracy and the great Prince himself, and that since there will be no gladiatorial event, that weapons are certainly not allowed. Solomon says little, and the group does not know quite the reason why -- perhaps it is some cultural difference between Quaggoth's (a noble, cat-like people) and these folks. Vasco, detecting thoughs, finds that he is simply strung out on some kind of opiate to which he is addicted. Armhin, the Deluxury proprietor, overhearing the conversation lavishes the party with the fact that decadent gold chariots will be at their residences to pick them up the night of the event. Seeing the opportunity for making an impression, Zeek books in at the Duluxury’s outrageous daily rates for the party to stay the night before and after the banquet. They can’t exactly be seen being picked up from their current sanctuary. Most of the party – other than Nadroc who is his own ancient extravagance – sets about making arrangements in the town for outfitting themselves for the event.
In the middle of the day, while shopping together as a group, the whole party is approached by a very finely dressed and kempt couple of hobgoblins. The first bows lowly to the group and introduces himself as B’kruss, with a nod to his more silent and stoic friend V’juss. He says he is the leader of the Knights of Redhand (the province of which Alhaster is located), and that they have heard the people singing in the streets about the Champions from the Free City, the dragon and demon slayers, who have managed to extract an invitation from the generous and trusting price. B’kruss wants to know if the party is worth anything more than the songs that are sung about them, or if it is all just haughty words to mislead the wonderful people of Alhaster. He challenges one from the party to a mounted race around the city, claiming that no one is as skilled a rider as a hobgoblin. Playing the jester and the fool, Zeek tries to twist the B’kruss’s earnest challenge into wordplay, and – with a small shopping-crowd forming to witness the potential match – B’kruss loudly laughs off the rebuke and walks away, mocking the party as campions of nothing but singing and dancing and playing like children. While some of the crowd offers some sympathy for the party, many laugh loudly along with B’kruss and V’juss. Responding to pleas of from the group, B’kruss nobelly offers another challenge – a leap across a chasm reminiscent of the cowardly dragon’s layer B’kruss claims to have once defeated. The party accepts, and offers Yldar as their finest jumper. The crowd assembles below a 30' gap between two buildings that is to be the site of the leap. Vasco and V’juss square off, sceptical of each other’s honesty in the jump, and Yldar and B’kruss square off, agreeing to make the leap without the aid of magic boots. At the moment of the jump, B’kruss makes it and Yldar falls, taking some damage but more severely suffering the open mocking of the crowd, only a few of whom are left with sympathies for the fallen heros.Jarred from the embarrassing confrontation, but not discouraged, the party concludes their shopping, securing garments and lining up escorts for the event.
The party spends the night quietly studying the evidence they have gathered, working to think through what they should spend their final nights doing before the ball. They follow-up on the lead from Manzorian’s library that Rhorsk, the old priest of St. Cuthbert, was a key informant for Balakarde 10 years ago. Having casually scoped out the ruined church of St. Cuthbert, they decide to try to enter unobserved by Blessed Angels by teleporting in. Vasco manages this without fail, and the group quickly finds the descent into the crypt below. There, they hear the pitiful moans of a creature who was once Rhorsk. He sits on top of a pile of human bones (which must have been the bodies he has feasted on) and amid many rough, small tunnels that lead out of the crypt and into the city. Rhorsk throws bones at the group, getting them to leave, but by remarkable diplomacy with the undead, Zeek manages to get him to talk. He shared that in his book, he left out a bit from the account of the cult of the Hextor heretics. In truth, all the heretics were captured and executed, but when he interrogated their bodies afterwards via speak with dead, he discovered that they had actually been set on their path by a mysterious contact known to them only as Mother Maggot. She had given the cultists the worm-eaten undead they used to cause so much trouble, and apparently promised more support if they were successful in their crusade against Alhaster. Rhorsk found out little about Mother Maggot herself, but did find out that she met the heretics in a subterranean room under a house in the southeast section of the city, which he then went on to describe the location of to the group. He said that a strange man asking questions about the Ebon Triad has just recently visited him, and that he had shared with him the same information. After a few minutes of lucid conversation, Rhorsk returns to his mad state and the party respectfully leave the undead to his crypt.
They scope out the house that Rhosk described and find that Furpotia, a solitary nurse, operates a sick-house there, sponsored (rather without material help) by her idol prince Zeech. She has no use for the party when approached, and does not want their help or their blessings. Acting very careful so as not to agitate Furpotia, the party leaves the modest house to strategize another approach. They devise an impressive plan to have Nadroc use earth elemental form to travel through the soil, below the house to see if he can find a meeting room. Walking below the earth, he pops his head into a well-made tunnel that extends 100' down to a chamber below. Nadroc reports back to the party and they agree that he should continue his investigation of the chamber, seeing where it leads. He ‘swims’ through the earth, stealthily popping his head into various rooms in the small chambre. The last one is a well that extends 300' down and opens up into a big, ornately decorated (with worm-like monsters) courtroom with a huge three-headed, six-armed statue in the middle. Nadroc catches the statue catches eye, who just as quickly hurls a spiritual Hextor’s flail at him. Damaged but not defeated, Nadroc retreats through the rock to regroup with the party and fight another day.
