Was that Queen Ileosa?

Our story begins with the death of the Bishop of Pharasma in the city of Korvosa. On the day of his funeral procession, our group, having operated in the city of Korvosa for some time now, was sent a request by Queen Cressida Kroft to come see her. When we arrived she spoke about rumors of people seeing the ghost of the former Queen, Ileosa. She requested that we investigate as these rumors were stirring up the populace. She told us there had been 4 known instances of the ghost appearing that she had heard of. She outlined that the 1st she had heard of was during the Crimson Festival in Kendall Plaza. A student claimed responsibility, but given the other sightings since she is not sure if that was true. The 2nd was at the Jeggare bridge 7 days ago. The 3rd took place 5 days prior in the Longacre Building, the courthouse & jail of Korvosa. The most recent was in the throne room of Castle Korvosa. The ghost appeared on the throne while writing appeared on the walls in blood. Queen Ileosa appeared on the throne 2 hours after sunset, leaning forward as if commanding her Grey Maidens to attack. Only a single guard saw it and the writing has faded away. Noone has returned to this long unused room since then. We asked to speak with the guard who was on duty. Queen Kroft was not aware of what the blood writing had said. She offered 1000gp each immediately to cover any preparations. She offered a place to stay in the barracks. If we discovered the source she offered us 1500gp each, plus another 3000gp each if we destroyed it, for a total of 4500gp if we managed to do both. She gave us a royal writ that should open doors for our investigation. She then had some guards lead us to the throne room & said she would have the guard that saw the event meet us outside of the throne room, as he had been traumatized by this event. When we arrived we were able to see traces of the writing on the wall. Between them Brinna and Aronel were able to make out enough of the writing, in Infernal (which noone spoke), to start trying to copy down what had been there. While they took a few hours to work on this Hunzo stepped outside the room and spoke with the guard who had witnessed the event. Hunzo felt it was odd to have an unused room guarded. The guard explained he did not know why, but that it was normally considered easy duty. He then investigated what other rooms were nearby. One room was a sitting room where the Queen could retire to prepare when she felt the need. Another was a room where high ranking nobility could wait in comfort until called to the throne room.
Once we finished copying the writing we asked around to see if we could find someone who was good with legal lore. We were told to try at the Longacre Building. Since we need to investigate there as well, we started to head that way. Just outside the palace we noticed that the funeral procession for the Bishop of Pharasma would be passing soon. We took time to watch and pay our respects. During this we heard various citizens passing rumors and gossip about the recent sightings of Ileosa. The general sentiment seemed to be disbelief that Queen Ileosa was actually back. After the funeral procession we headed to the Longacre Building to investigate & see if we could find someone who might be able to assist with translating the writing we had found. One guard led us to a bookish looking woman who was able to translate what we had copied. She was able to tell that the writing was incomplete, but it appeared to be some sort of diabolic contract. She was not able to tell specifically what it was about from the fragments we had found. When we asked to be directed to where the sighting of Queen Ileosa's ghost had been she said she would have Bika Hoffinbritter come speak with us. She was quite surprised to hear that we were not there about the recent robbery. We explained we had not heard about this. She explained that there was a reward of 2500gp for return of some materials stolen during the robbery a few weeks back. The stolen goods included the infernal contract between Queen Ileosa and the devil Sermignatto. Some other texts stolen dealt with infernal law and contracts. Aronel had heard of this contract & actually had studied it, with someone translating. The contract was supposed to eventually lead to the entire city of Korvosa being dragged to hell. There was a clause near the end that made it seem that there was a 3rd party involved. The only ones who would know though were Queen Ileosa and Sermignatto. Just then a Gnomish woman arrived. She was introduced as Bika. She led us to a meeting room where we could talk. She explained that she appeared near a room where they kept documents about Queen Ileosa's reign. She led us to that area. Bika said Ileosa had appeared there in a slow process, where she started as mist, then solidified and began looking through the books. However, it was not a physical book. It was also a misty book. She read for perhaps 10 seconds, then faded away. Aronel did let slip that another ghostly apparition of Ileosa had recently appeared in the throne room. Bika was obviously anxious to spread this gossip far and wide! She agreed if anything else happened, to send word to where we were staying.
We then decided to head to the Jegarre bridge. Asking around we found out the sighting took place shortly before sunrise. Some people refused to cross the bridge into Old Korvosa since this happened. Several of us noticed a tattooed Shoanti watching us from off to one side of the bridge. Brinna approached him and introduced us. He introduced himself as Shaka Waterfinder. He noticed us investigating. He said he wondered if the ghosts were brought in by the hidden agents of the Grey Maidens. He was very reluctant to reveal more until we proved we spoke for Queen Kroft by showing our writ. He asked us to follow him further into Old Korvosa. He brought us to an, obviously Shoanti, area in eastern Old Korvosa. There, we met an old Shoanti named Thousand Bones. He explained that the Grey Maidens had been active in the city since a week after the 1st sighting. They knew the maidens are operating out of North Point, where the maidens had been when they were last active in Korvosa. He felt we should speak with the Grey Maidens directly and let them know they are not welcome in Korvsa, since we speak on behalf of Queen Kroft. We took our leave & went to get pretzels!
While waiting for our pretzels a halfling sidles up to us and asked if we were investigating the appearances of Queen Ileosa. We said yes and she introduced herself as Saliah Nightfoot. She then spewed out a bunch of information, speaking very quickly. She spoke about rumors she had heard about other deposed rulers coming back. Brinna calmed her down & asked for clarification. She said she had been investigating reports of other deposed rulers coming back, much like Queen Ileosa, for years now. She spoke about rulers of Cheliax, Kintargo & Korvosa appearing in this way. She felt that this was associated with either the Grey Maidens or New Thassilon. She felt if she could use a ritual she knew she *might* be able to learn more about these people who died, but was taken directly to hell without judgement. She told us she was staying at the Bard's End in East Gate, before scampering off. We then got our pretzels! We enjoyed them very much.
We headed to our last destination, the Kendall Plaza. Asking around, we found that Ileosa appeared a little bit after Sundown. We found that the student who took blame for the apparition was named Caelios Inivorum. He vanished shortly after claiming he was the culprit. We found out where he had lived with little trouble. We looked for further clues, but did not find anything worth noting. Since it was close to the end of the day we decided to head back to the throne room to see if the apparition appeared again several hours after sunset. We waited until 3 hours past sunset without any sighting of the apparition. We grabbed a late supper and headed off to rest for the night. The following morning we headed to investigate the students room at the academy. We headed to the admin area & spoke with a man we found there. He introduced himself as Debus. He seemed somewhat elusive in answering questions, but we felt this was probably more from how busy he was than anything. We showed him our writ, asked him to find what records he could about Caelios, then let us know so we could come back to discuss. We got the key for his room and headed to check it out. Inside we found no indication of Caelios packing to leave, but no signs of a struggle either. We did find a false bottom in a closet that contained a spellbook. In the book there were details of attracting a house drake as a familiar. On the last page there was a detailed sketch of a man with some infernal letters and in common "Who is he? Why did he ask me to take the blame"? Aronel recognized the man in the sketch as a depiction of Volshyenek Ornelos, the founder of the Academy. This was odd as he was Human and had founded the academy some 400 years prior. We took the spellbook as "evidence". We then decided to go speak with Queen Kroft about what she would like us to do about the possibility of Grey Maidens in Korvosa again. On the way we were approached by a woman on the street that told us to "Mind our own business". Aronel recognized the way she carried herself as someone who has had Grey Maiden training. Brinna asked why she felt she knew our business, but the woman simply stared at us. Aronel said "Ah, so the Grey Maidens have returned then". The woman again stared for a few seconds, then turned away stating "You have been warned". Aronel shared his knowledge with the rest of the group before they continued on to the castle. Queen Kroft met with us right away. We reported what we had found out with each of the leads. She said we could ask the Grey Maidens to disperse, if we felt they were involved in this. However, Queen Kroft did say she had never known a Grey Maiden to have any magical ability. We left and headed for North Point.
Asking around, Brinna was able to find out that the place to start looking would be an inn, named the Whitecaps. It had been abandoned for about a decade. We headed there! As we approached the abandoned building 4 women in Grey Maiden plate stepped out. Brinna told them that Queen Kroft had asked them to leave. One of them stepped forward to introduce herself as Xarva Almaxus. She said they were not able to leave. It was clear that none of these 4 were a leader. They did say that none of them had ever been to Korvosa before. They had come here with their leader, Yniesse, to investigate the sightings of Queen Ileosa. However, their leader had gone to the Grey district 3 days before to pay respects to family or friends she had left behind. She did not return. They went to the cathedral the day after she disappeared but could not find any sign of her. We were able to find out that if their leader returned or even if they had word of her they could leave the city. They had been told by the acting Bishop of Pharasma that Yniesse had headed north after visiting several graves. They repeated that they would leave once they knew where their leader was, or she was returned to them. Grett asked what they liked on their pretzels. 3 of them had no response to this. The 4th, however, paused, then responded with fish! We then headed to the Grey district to see what we could find.
When we arrived we noticed that there seemed to be far fewer people around than we expected. As we began looking around we heard a familiar voice calling out in pain and terror. We ran in that direction only to find Bika Hoffinbritter being attacked by several vaguely Elven looking creatures. Aronel was able to identify them as Profane Ghouls. They quickly dropped Bika, then advanced on the group! They were dangerous foes, with their paralysis and diseased bites, but the group dispatched them without too much effort. We then picked up the paralyzed Bika & headed towards the cathedral of Pharasma. She soon started moving again & explained she got excited about our stories and had followed us here. We took her with us to the cathedral to be looked over for disease. We found a long line of people waiting to visit the body of the former bishop lying in state. We tried to get in to get help with any disease we may have contracted. We were told no healing services were taking place while the Bishop was lying in state. They priests at the door told us that the new acting Bishop was inside as well. We chose to get in line and wait for our turn, hoping to speak with the acting Bishop to receive some help. We eventually got in, paying our respects, then going to speak with the acting Bishop. As we approached, he spoek to us, calling Brinna by name. He asked us into an elaborate side chamber where we could speak privately. He introduced himself as Abridan Ashau & said he had heard many rumors about Grey Maidens and New Thassilon being involved. We told him what we had learned from the other Grey Maidens about their leader coming here. He said he had spoken with her, but then she left and he did not see her again. He said he would not be surprised if Runelord Sorshen was contriving to frighten the citizens of Korvosa with these apparitions. We tried to get him to help us with the diseases we knew some had and others might. He told us that the church was in mourning and no healing services were being performed. He became quite rude, but so did we. Eventually we left in disgust, but not before probably alienating the church of Pharasma... We had Bika stay with us, luckily, as she fell unconscious the following morning. Grett had memorized some Remove Disease spells. He quickly cast them on Bika & Hunzo, curing their diseases!
Shortly after this Grett received a mental message from someone calling themselves Headmaster Ornelos. However, he was confused at this latest voice. As he started to explain it to us, the same voice sent a similar message to Brinna. It turned out to be the actual Headmaster of the academy. He asked us to meet him at the room of the missing student. We also received a letter from Debus asking us to return the room key. We had forgotten to do so the day before! We headed to the room & found an old man there. He was the great nephew of the original headmaster & the current headmaster of the school. He explained his great uncle was still in charge of the school, but was cryptic what he meant by this. He was hopeful that we could find some way in which his great uncle could be involved in this. He wanted his great uncle's involvement to be exposed so he could wrest control of the school from him. We then spilled all we had learned to this relatively unknown new acquaintance... He, in turn, explained that he had heard reports of strange activity in the Grey district. He felt that 1000 Bones assumptions were likely not accurate. He could not help us directly, but hoped we would be able to help him make his move. He said he was mostly a figurehead, that all the decisions were actually made by his great uncle. He was clearly not willing to cross him. He collected the key from us & we were on our way. We spent the rest of the day uneventfully, waking refreshed & ready to decide what we should investigate next. We could try to learn more of what happened to the Grey Maiden leader. We could investigate the cathedral, since we felt something was seriously off with the church and particularly the acting Bishop. We could speak with Saliah Nightfoot again, to see if she found out anything and tell her what we had learned as well.