S4E5: Cleaning up the Casa

The Crew continues the fight with Alyssa and the thralls, which remains difficult. Despite Skark's efforts in distractions, in the midst of the fight Jack is bitten by Alyssa and fears he may have come down with a spot of the vampirism. Nevertheless, they manage to overcome her, with Adlai once more getting the killing blow.   Tiki and Cieth remembered rituals to sanctify the graves. Tiki leads them in performing the ritual, and they seem content that it is finally done.   When they ascend back up into the camp itself, they find it on fire and in disarray. They also meet Amelia, who had decided to follow them as backup. She hands the keys to the safe, found on some of the officers, to Jack. After opening the safe they find that there is a priest of Orcus on the payroll, so Jack asks Amelia to find him. After a brief battle with the priest, she brings him back as a prisoner. Jack interrogates him about curing vampirism, but he doesn't want to remove his wereraven form. The priest mentions there's an old legend about eating the vampire who turned you, but Jack is unwilling to consume his mother's remains.   After dealing with that, Jack pressed the remaining bandits into service, giving them advance pay for 150 days. He gets them to load up supplies that they can as they evacuate the burning camp. They then make way back to the Aleated Ceraclops' lab in the badlands. T'lula'taku is still there, and Jack asks both of them if they know about a cure for vampirism. It is then that Tiki says she has a spell that can cure it - when asked why she didn't mention it sooner, she said that there was already a cure in front of him that he refused to take. T'lula'taku gives Jack and introduction to the concept of Slow-Time, which she suspects may be affecting Tiki.   They also discuss what to do with the priest of Orcus. Although T'lula'taku suggests simply killing him - as a priest of Orcus this would be tantamount to sending him home - the rest of the group, in particular Cieth, doesn't want to take that step. Cieth hopes for some kind of redemption, and it is true that the priest hasn't tried to do anything since he was captured. Amelia continued to guard him, as well as help keep the rest of the bandits in line. However, after being put to work on Sam's ship, they seem to be taking to their slightly more honest living quite well.   They discuss what to do next. The Wailers Jack and Skark hired had brought them back news, and while both of them would require a trip to the Afterrealm, T'lula'taku is capable of taking them there. They also wanted to check on the City of Stat to see how they were faring after the attack of the time-demons (or whatever they were), and Cieth needs to go back to his homelands to inform the family of his comrade that his quest was completed.   However, they also had an outstanding request from Jared Nash to deliver a message to his great-niece, Jacqueline Blade at the Androcas University of Higher Mysteries in the Capital of Androcas, and they decided that they really ought to get around to that, so their current plans are to head there.