Following the consecration ceremony, Priest Orward thanks you for your service, and informs you that your obligation with the church is fulfilled. With your faith renewed, you ask the Priest if there is any further service you could perform for the church. Though he does not have anything else for you at this particular temple, he does recognize that these are troubling times for the church, and your services could be of further use. He sends you on a pilgrimage to the Prefecture in Wolfberg with letters of recommendation. Coincidentally, on the way out of town, High Inquisitor Gurich asks that you come see him the next time you’re in Wolfberg.

Your first order of business once in Wolfberg is to spend your respective shares of the haul from your last adventure. Satisfied with your purchases, you pay a visit to Gurich. With him is a young Inquisitor named Tone, who has approached Gurich wishing to assist with the investigation of the Cardinal’s assassination. Gurich, frustrated with the Sheriff of County Laerth dragging his feet on the investigation and the church’s non-involvement, charges you to look into things for him. Since your investigation goes against the church’s official stance, he reminds you to do your best not to draw attention to yourselves. After your meeting, you remain in Wolfberg for a tenday to prepare and gather clues to determine your next step.

On Gurich’s suggestion you travel to Dunmon, seat of County Laerth, to begin your investigation. You reach town and promptly report to the local Aegisian temple. Priest Philip ushers you in to the once-grand temple from the streets of a seedy-looking district. He proceeds to inform you of local politics: the sheriff enacts the rule of law with an iron fist, utilizing skeletal guards to enforce strict curfews, and that the faithful of Otego are persecuted most. He lauds you for your chosen quest, but warns you to keep a low profile. Since worship day service is the next morning, you stay the night and decide to poll the congregation for more information after mass. The congregants are quite informative, telling you what they know about the two wererat warrens in town (the Gnarled Bones and the Pit Pests), and a pub called “The Dive” which seems to be the hub of the criminal underworld within the city.

You soon learn that “The Dive” only really becomes active after dark. You wonder how that could be, with the strictly-enforced curfew and all. You find that the criminal underground is literally that, underground. Thanks to the advanced sewer system, thieves and cutpurses could operate with near-impunity – only if they could survive the labyrinthine sewers. On your way to “The Dive,” you discover this to be more difficult than it sounds, as you lose Dimitri to one of its perils. After regrouping, and sending Isuv to take Dimitri’s remains to his family in County Orod, you brave the tunnels again and reach the pub at the preferred hour. Hoping to get an “in” with one of the wererat warrens, you do your best to talk up an individual who may be a wererat, surrounded by a group of lowlifes. Hours pass, and notice someone at a nearby table keeping tabs on you. The ‘wererat’ leaves, without his friends, and you follow him into the sewers. You lose him, but his friends jump you. During the scuffle, the individual watching you earlier jumps in to assist you. After he introduces himself as Cullen, and tells you that you mission is known.

The following day you rendezvous with Cullen, who hints at being an operative for the Crown. You also find that the Sheriff has also officially outlawed Otego worship. Cullen assures you that this is illegal, but the politics behind reversing such edicts are tenuous. You want to warn Priest Philip, but you can’t seem to find him in the temple. Without his guidance, you use magical means to contact Gurich to see how you should proceed. He advises that you let the Priest worry about the edict – you should concentrate on your investigation. With this, you feel that staying in an Aegisian temple to be a poor idea, so you procure lodging where Cullen is staying, a place called the “Cock and Spaniel.” Along your way, it becomes evident that the edict has had an effect on the populous, as rioting breaks out around you.

During the commotion, Tal gleans a bit more information – the ‘wererat’ you met at “The Dive” was the Cardinal’s suspected assassin. Doing your best to lay low and not get involved with the riots, you hatch a plan to flush out the killer. Nearly a tenday passes. Your plan obviously did not have the desired result. You return to “The Dive” to gather more leads. You find that your current exploits have gained you a bit or notoriety, and quickly discover the name and location of your enemy – Teodor of the Gnarled Bones. This time you elect for a more direct approach, only to discover that Teodor has been causing too many problems and has been sent to a safe house in Tanrot. Wanting to waste no more time, you begin to head out of town, only to discover that Philip is scheduled to be executed. Evidently, Priest Philip had a hand in the riots. You are able to spring him from the gallows, but your daring rescue attempt drew too much attention. Philip covers your escape from the city; you lose most of your possessions, and nearly your lives.

You cut across the country heading north toward Tanrot, doing your best to avoid towns and main roads. You do cross one highway, which carries refugees heading away from Dunmon. This draws attention of some highwaymen, but fortunately not any authorities. You have no problems crossing into County Vermidit, though you do note the building of troops on its borders. You note that leaving may be more difficult. You keep trudging forward through hills and valleys, meeting up with a traveling knight, Sir Eandor, and his squire Lyr. Their assistance helps you survive a wyvern attack just south of Tanrot, though Sir Eandor pays the ultimate price for his valor. Lyr accompanies you the rest of the way, wishing to carry out his master’s quest.

Tanrot is a quaint village, and its people act strange around you. Nonplussed, you continue your mission. Again to try to draw out Teodor, to no avail. Instead of attempting another ‘covert’ operation, you approach the local lord and ask for his cooperation. Count Vermidit agrees to deliver the assassin, if you are willing to help him in a matter disturbing one of his villages. He asks that you help a small contingent of troops contain the outbreak of a disease, one thought to have been wiped out long ago, tearing through the village of Faridge. He wants you to neutralize the outbreak and bring back one infected to best understand the forgotten disease. Lyr is eager to help, as Eandor’s order sent him on much the same mission.

You find the contingent’s camp empty, and the town much the same. You discover a few bodies, and only 3 survivors holed up in the mayor’s house: a Vermiditian soldier and two children. In the house, you discover what you believe to be the source of the disease – a black ceramic-like shard that seems to absorb the light around it, which Lyr quickly takes command of. After dusk, you find some of those who have succumbed to the disease, or more accurately, they found you. The disease manifests itself by transforming its victims into mindless killing machines, only identifiable by the victims’ completely back eyes – sclera, iris and all. During the attack, Cullen gets bitten. His eyes turn black as the infected, though he maintains his faculties. He soon discovers that he can “speak” with the infected, if not command them. Over the course of the next couple days, you find more of the villagers and the rest of the soldiers, all of whom are infected. One, however, ended up much like Cullen and has taken command of those he has rounded up. He wants to round up the “deserter” and the two children and return them to the Count. The disease seems a horrible fate, so you do the honorable thing and stand in his way. In order to fulfill your bargain with the Count, you keep one infected and allow the three survivors to flee.

After witnessing the how virulent the disease is, you don’t feel entirely comfortable with your deal with the Count. He holds his end of the bargain by chaining Teodor in an abandoned mine. When you discover him, it is apparent that he is under a compulsion of some sort. He begs for his life, for your assistance in apprehending the true criminal, but shows no remorse for what he’s done. He claims that someone from House Laerth is the mastermind, however you’re not totally convinced. In spite of being chained to a wall, he becomes more resolute and defiant, so you decide to dispatch him in the interests of justice.

With your mission fulfilled, you journey back to Wolfberg. You pass a couple companies of Vermiditian troops, well within the borders of County Noble, along the way. Wolfberg seems to be in a state of emergency, as you pass through multiple checkpoints as you navigate the many districts on the way to the Prefecture. You relate your tales to Gurich, and on Cullen’s request, to the Chancellor. Both wish to speak with Lyr and study the artifact, but by this time he had already skipped town to find a keep of his order, the Order of the Silver Dragon. Inundated with new information, agents of the Church and the Crown confer to decide your next mission.

You find that civil was has broken out – it seems that the edict handed down by the Sheriff of County Laerth, the subsequent riots, coupled with the lack of investigation into the Cardinal’s murder, precipitated events that caused the Queen to enforce her rule – much to the displeasure of Count Ferdinand of County Laerth. Ferdinand belongs to House Vermidit, and has an immediate ally in County Vermidit. Their forces quickly marched on County Noble, slowed by troops from House Laerth, a dispossessed house looking to regain their lands. Laerth had concentrated forces around the Dollmage’s lab, claiming to protect the facility for the Crown. The Dollmage, not only an integral resource for the Crown’s defensive research, is important in Cullen’s case. He purportedly has a method to cure the mysterious disease, after a fashion. The details are fuzzy, but the procedure has supposedly been performed successfully at least once. Therefore, the discovery of House Laerth’s possible treachery is troubling on many levels.

Troops from County Orod were already en-route to reinforce Laerth’s position. Your part is to travel with the troops, assist Cullen to the Dollmage’s lab to be cured, and to see just what exactly House Laerth’s plans are and what they plan to get out of such a situation – especially how it pertains to the Church of Aegis.