Monster Party Book 4: I slither like a viper and get you by the neck.

Chapter Seven: We slip through the streets while everyone sleeps getting bigger and sleeker and wider and brighter

"Who in the name of the Lawgiver are you?" Demanded a soldier in slightly beaten armor as the group approached the Koshka Bluffs.

Alexander opened his mouth to answer when suddenly Cal held up a finger.

"Boss, if I may?" The alchemist suggested.

Alexander shot a preemptive look at James, and then one at Cal.

"If you really think it'll be so wonderful, go right ahead, but don't waste too much time." He warned the alchemist.

Cal nodded and then stepped forward, smiling broadly.

"You know, I want you to keep that expression you're wearing right now fixed very clearly in you mind. Now then... Devi, why don't you show this fine gentleman exactly who we are?" He suggested.

Devi Skye stepped forward and the guard recoiled slightly, clearly having no intentions of taking anything that an elf had to offer him.

She reached into her bag of holding an held out a scroll that was bound up and closed with a very fine seal, the seal of the Hiregaard family.

Only laying eyes upon the seal of the family to which he had sworn allegiance could bring the man to take the scroll, and open it. What he found waiting for him a letter that Sir Tristen Hiregaard had written for the group while sharing dinner with them last night.

"The six standing before you have already done a great service for Prince Othmar and Nova Vassa. For that reason I have placed my trust in them to help resolve the issue at the Koshka Bluffs. Show them the same loyalty you would me, and remember; masters in the next world can be slaves in this one, just as easily as slaves in the next world can momentarily be masters, it all depends upon how well they do their duty. -Sir Tristen Hiregaard." Was all it said.

What went unsaid was quite obvious though, Tristen Hiregaard was an arcane magic user, when he died he would be sent to the Hell of Slaves. Devi Skye was an elf, so would she. That still didn't mean their orders could be blithely disregarded in the mortal world.

The guard paled for a moment, then his face began to deepen into an interesting mix between the green of revulsion and red of anger.

Eventually he regained control and his face slowly started to show something bordering on genuine relief.

"I see... well... just last night I and the others were wishing that Sir Tristen would reinforce us, clearly the Lawgiver provides for those who obey his tenants." The guard replied.

He must have wanted them very badly because he seemed to be finding some comfort in the sight of the group now, even if his 'reinforcements' had taken a form that the guard never would have expected.

"My name is Alexander Diamondclaw, this woman with the blond hair is Florence Bastien." Alexander explained, very pointedly not mentioning the fact that Florence's skin had a rather greenish tint to it.

The guard noticed it of course, but once you had decided that you were going to take orders from an elf, no point in objecting to a dryad, if he even recognized what she was.

"The woman with black hair is Mirri Catwarrior, and her companion is James Firecat." Alexander continued.

"Blessings of Bastet be upon you fellow guardian." James declared cheerfully even though his words made the guard just about ready to jump out of his skin.

"Yep we're not just foreigners we're foreign heretics as you might expect. Do kindly remember the letter though." Mirri pointed out.

She was certain that the more "Maahesian" aspects of James' personality would quite promptly get in trouble with true believers in the Lawgiver.

Luckily, it was a lot easier to find people in Nova Vassa who believed in the law (especially the unspoken one about how obeying even the strangest orders without question was how you got ahead in life, or at least didn't fall behind) than 'truly' believed in the Lawgiver.

In short, so long as the group had the favor of the rich and powerful, the Iron Faith couldn't touch them with them a ten foot poll, let alone an axehead, noose or one of their holy spears.

"I'm Cal Wright, and you've already met Devi Skye. You are?" Cal inquired, wanting to wrap up introductions while the day was still fairly fresh.

"Gunnar Erickson. I'll take you to see Sir Jiscaard, he's the knight Sir Tristen has placed in charge of this area." Gunnar explained.

XXX XXX XXX

Sir Jiscaard was in his late twenties with black hair, a fine black mustache, and armor that was much better taken care of than his subordinate's. What wasn't different about him was the way that he reacted to Tristen's Hiregaard's letter.

If anything, his emotions were even easier to watch bounce back and forth as his eyes did the same thing between the group and the letter they had presented him with. When he eventually got himself under control and managed to resist an obvious impulse to rip the letter to shreds and pretend he'd never seen it, he gave Alexander a restrained nod.

"Well, you're here. So long as that's the case, you might as well make yourselves useful. I suppose having you lot around might have some advantages. You're proof that Sir Tristen commands the respect of more than just ordinary men. If you want to be really useful you could bring me a few plains cat pelts." The knight suggested.

James looked back and forth in slight confusion.

"Could you point us in the direction of the nearest market where we might procure such items?" He inquired.

For a moment it looked like only the fact that Sir Jiscaard was wearing heavy mail gauntlets kept him from slamming a hand against his face.

"I don't mean buy them, I mean kill the bloody beasts!" The knight blustered in irritation.

Either the force of of the black haired man's anger, or the shock of realizing that Sir Jiscaard was suggesting he be about killing his fellow felines of any kind, (or even more likely, a combination of both) was enough to make James jerk backward in surprise.

"It's not normally like this, most of the time they'll leave you alone so long as you don't get blind stinking drunk and decide to go off for a midnight walk by yourself. Now however, now I've got to assign my soldiers to stand guard in groups of three just to keep the cats at bay!

Any sign of weakness, they'll be on you in an instant!" Jiscaard warned them.

A moment later there was a horrific scream, the kind of sound you normally only heard shortly after a woman was surprised in a dark alley.

James immediately began to grip his staff tightly, looking ready to throw himself into the fray as soon as he was certain in which direction the foe lay.

Four other members of the group likewise began to reach for their own weapons, but Mirri and Jiscaard were more or less nonplussed.

"See what I mean?" Jiscaard groaned, more in irritation than actual fear or anger.

"Plains cats normally hunt at night, cause their fur is black as Mytteri's heart. Now though, I'm not even sure if they're hunting, maybe they're just watching, and they want us to know they're watching. Maybe I just need more sleep, but I'd swear I've fought bandits who were less coordinated than those cats!" Jiscaard admitted.

"A cat made that sound?" Cal gasped, still having trouble believing it.

"Yep, it's not too too hard to tell from an actual woman's scream once you know get the hang of it." Mirri confirmed, though she didn't offer any direct advice on how to accomplish that particular trick.

"Over the years the mewing of a housecat has more and more come to resemble the crying of a child, I suspect this is a rather less pleasant version of the same principle." James suggested.

"Like I was saying make yourselves at home, aside from the possibility of having part of the bluffs come loose and crush you like a bug, falling off a ladder, or being eaten by a plains cat things aren't too bad. At the very least the closest thing any of the workers have to weapons are daggers and pickaxes so you shouldn't have much to fear from them." Jiscaard informed the group.

XXX XXX XXX

Indeed the first day did pass in a relatively dull and unimpressive fashion.

There was one brief 'exciting' moment when a ladder snapped and fell over with unpleasant (if entirely mundane) results for the worker who had been using it.

Florence spent much of the rest of the day surreptitiously (knowing that her magic (having nothing to do with the Lawgiver) would not be looked fondly upon in Nova Vassa) doing what she could to make sure that there would be no more such failures.

The six new arrivals had been assigned beds in the guard's barracks, in fact they'd been assigned a not so small chunk of it, as if everyone had shifted themselves away from the new arrivals (the barracks had room for twice as many people as it currently housed, another sign of the Hiregaard family's financial troubles) as if they carried some unknown but obviously very contagious disease.

Making the area even more spacious (if no more luxuriant) was that only Cal and Devi decided to take advantage of the offer, Alexander, Florence, Mirri, and James had all opted to take care of their own sleeping arrangements.

Which of course meant that Florence (a dryad's work is never done) used her magic to set up two small sanctuaries, one for herself and Alex, one for Mirri's coffin.

XXX XXX XXX

Mirri woke up from her traditionally dreamless sleep (dreams were for the living) and instantly knew that there was something wrong.

She wasn't sure what it was at first, while she'd shed many of life's irritations upon becoming a vampire, having to deal with a few moments of thickheadedness upon first waking was not one of them.

At the moment her eyes were not being flooded by sunlight or even torchlight so it was unlikely that some vampire hunter had thrown the lid to her coffin open and was about to drive a stake through her heart.

She fumbled around in the dark (not that she couldn't see perfectly well in darkness of course) confines of her coffin trying to figure out what exactly had gone wrong.

So far as she could tell the answer was nothing, nothing that she touched felt out of place or drastically unusual.

Nothing she touched was wrong, but the things that she couldn't touch were.

As she groped and flailed around inside her coffin the only things that she could feel was either dirt (dirt that was starting to feel rather superfluous at the moment, given that there was no lack of Nova Vassan soil to be had) or its wooden structure.

There was no warm flesh to be found, she was alone in the coffin.

"If he left to have some time alone with his staff..." Mirri grumbled to herself in irritation at James' absence.

The vampiress popped open the lid to her coffin and crawled out. She reached back into the coffin for her white hat (the only part of her outfit she'd taken off while laying with James in the coffin) and checked the ground.

Quite frequently James Firecat could move with a tread light enough that even she had trouble following him but "Maahes" clearly showed no such concerns.

She followed his trail leading out of the cave (she and James hadn't entered into it till they'd been ready to settle down for the night, thus there was only ONE set to follow) determined to get to the bottom of this, the sooner the better.

Then she heard a sound like a woman's scream, that is to say to her practiced ear (even years and years of being away hadn't made her forget) she heard the sound of a plains cat.

It was swiftly followed by another sound, this time something much more along the lines of a man screaming. Male and female plains cats alike had similar roars and both of them sounded like a woman.

That meant that whoever had just cried out like that was an actual human being, most likely suffering some terrible pain.

Mirri sighed and headed in that direction because she had yet to meet the poor sod in dire straights who James didn't try to help.

Her ears soon picked up the sounds of several beating hearts around the same time that her eyes caught sight of them. There were two workers, one of them trying desperately to press his somewhat tattered clothing against an obviously fresh gash in his arm.

Even though she'd 'eaten' recently Mirri's eyes couldn't help but focus intently upon the crimson droplets working their way free from his wound. Then her eyes fell upon four plains cats and one prone figure laying flat upon the ground.

"So, who wants to tell me what's going on here?" Mirri asked in a calm tone of voice that suggested her mood might not stay that way for long.

She also started to overlay it with plenty of vampiric charm gaze as soon as the two men turned their attention away from the plains cats.

Between the blood loss, shock of his situation, and (of course) the charm gaze, the wounded man's will melted like butter.

"We found a bag of golden coins while we were working on the bluffs today. They looked ancient, not like somebody had simply lost them or left them behind! So we decided to bury them before our shift ended and the guards searched us! But when we came back out to dig them up, those beasts attacked us!" He admitted openly.

"What is he doing here?" She demanded gesturing in the direction of the prone figure.

"Olav and I had just finished digging up the bag, when a beast pounced on him from behind and started tearing at his arm. I was sure he was a goner, and I'd be next when suddenly this voice called out to them! 'Hold! What you are doing to them is wrong! Why do you do this thing?' Was what he said.

Then the lad walks over bold as brass, and tosses himself on the ground face first and they've been on him ever since." The uninjured worker explained.

Sure enough James Firecat was laying stiff and still upon the ground the Staff of Bastet in his hands. The plains cats circled him, licking him again and again with their bright pink tongues.

There was no scent of blood coming from James, well at least none beyond a few faint traces from the recently reopened scars on his neck (nightly feeding sessions for over a year had left him with marks there that even his lycanthropic flesh couldn't quite fully mend).

"Leave the coins behind, get back to wherever it is you sleep and if you say nothing of this neither will I." Mirri promised them.

She might even keep her word, Mirri tended to prefer that people had offered her at least some kind of offense (even a relatively minor one) before she could draw true pleasure from their suffering, and helping people avoid servants of the Lawgiver could be its own reward.

The two workers departed swiftly, leaving her "alone" with James and the plains cats.

"All right then, so what do you think you're doing with my kitten?" She demanded of the black furred beasts.

Two of them took their attention off of James and positioned themselves between him and Mirri. One of them snarled angrily at her.

"Do you seriously want to come between the two of us?" She snarled right back.

Now that she didn't have to worry about anyone watching she decided that it was time to start really cutting loose with her own powers.

Mist swirled around Mirri and a moment later there was no trace left of the woman in white. Instead, there was a tawny furred lioness.

Mirri responded with a proper feline "roar" making it clear that she had no intention of backing down.

Pure numbers were against her, but on the other hand, the claws and jaws of ordinary animals tended to be extremely inefficient weapons up against vampires, and she wouldn't even need to unsheathe her own claws, not when she kill simply by draining lifeforce.

Except that it wasn't even going to come to a fight.

Mirri knew that James would probably have some unpleasant things to say to her if he found out that she'd killed some of these things, at least when they weren't actively posing a threat to someone.

Such a strong objection to doing something so obvious would have bothered Mirri a great deal more if how to still getting what she wanted wasn't equally obvious.

"You are going to leave, now." She insisted to the four plains cats.

Much like the human workers had been no match for her charm gaze, these things were no match for her ability to command animals.

Granted, most vampires tended to only use this particular ability to give the command of "KILL" but in at the moment "leave" would get the job done just fine.

With the plains cats dismissed Mirri returned to her human form, and then since James showed no signs of moving she turned her attention to the simple brown looking brown bag the workers had been after.

She flipped it over and watched as a dozen golden coins fell to the ground. Sure enough, they didn't look any she'd ever seen in Nova Vassa.

They had lettering on them that were so ancient (or so foreign) that Mirri couldn't make heads or tails out of it. What she could tell was that they seemed to have some sort of reclining cat figure on one side.

"Render unto Bastet what is Bastet's..." In the blink of an eye James had gone from laying on the ground seemingly dead to the world, to leaning over her shoulder looking down at the coins.

"So you're saying that since you're her son, those things belong to you?" She asked getting a distinct sense that she was talking to Maahes rather than James at the moment.

"No, I'm saying leave those coins alone." He intoned dramatically.

Mirri looked down at the coins, then shrugged, they were only gold after all, given that they'd need to be converted to local currency her cut probably wouldn't have even been able to afford a proper portrait.

"Fine, you can explain all this to Alex tomorrow morning. Lets get back to the coffin and get back to bed." She instructed him.

"If such is your will, know that my body has yet more fluids to impart upon yours should you so desire it." James promised.

Mirri's right eyebrow twitched slightly.

"You know, only you would say something like that." Mirri admitted, and she wasn't sure which occupant of the werecat's body she was talking to.

XXX XXX XXX

The next day things went worse, much, much, much, worse.

Before the group was able to finish breakfast (well before everyone except Mirri (who had already had her "breakfast" (along with "lunch" and "dinner") several hours ago)) ten workers had died to a rock slide.

Leaving aside their meals (or in Alexander's case after hastily wolfing down enough iron rations to choke a lesser man) the group raced out to see the situation and do what they could to help.

"It's... it's a cat!" Cried out one of the surviving workers pointing to the section of the bluffs whose shape had been altered by the rock slide.

What they could see looked as if it had been carefully shaped, not roughly hacked away at by workers so it could be carted off, but lovingly carved.

It was shaped like the point of a claw.

A moment later another of the workers gasped and pointed at a spot where the surveyors were clearing bushes up on the bluff.

"An eye, a giant eye has opened!" He cried out in panic.

Sure enough, where the surveyors had cleared the bushes away the now bare hillside seemed to be shaped like a round eye, carved on a massive scale. The vertical crack that formed the pupil of the eye was nearly a mile from top to bottom.

"Well... anyone else feel like they're being watched?" Cal reflected as he gazed up into the stone eye.

XXX XXX XXX

Things quickly went down hill from there.

One of the workers who was trying to chip away at the carved claw ended up getting killed by a plains cat on his way to lunch.

After that it was quickly decided that no one could "cut the cat" and live.

Which soon enough lead to a human avalanche that put the rock based one that had taken place that day to shame. Before it was time for dinner there wasn't a single worker left in the place, all of them had picked up as many of their belongings they could carry and headed off to try and find something, ANYTHING else that might offer a source of employment and didn't seem to be obviously cursed.

"This is all your fault." Grumbled Jiscaard as he stood around the now deserted quarry.

Alexander just shrugged calmly as he surveyed the empty workers' camp.

"You saw what sort of state those people were in, the only thing we could have done to keep them from running away would be cutting off their legs. Some things nobody can do anything about." Alexander insisted.

Jiscaard kicked at the ground in irritation.

Then he suddenly discovered a much better target, one that might actually give him some satisfaction to take his aggression out on.

"All this 'cut not the cat' nonsense, I'll show them what happens if you harm one of those mangy felines, nothing!" He promised before kicking out at one of the cats that the workers had kept as a pet but left behind.

The animal flew through the air and landed hissing in pain and anger.

James looked on in shocked horror at the man's mistreatment of the otherwise completely innocent feline, but wasn't quite able to bring himself to say anything yet.

"See? Being worried about cats, thinking they have magical powers, that's the sort of nonsense the Lawgiver banished from Nova Vassa! We shouldn't allow it to come sneaking back the first moment that something goes wron..." Jiscaard began but never quite managed to finish.

He flopped to the ground, making it possible to see that something had massively ravished his backside.

Floating above his back was a pair of spectral claws.

"Those who are cruel to cats... will have true cruelty done to them..." Announced a sibilant voice.

It came from an approaching plains cat... an approaching dead plains cat.

It was possible to see bones poking out through the creature's decaying skin, while only a few raggedy clumps of fur still clung to its body.

A moment later it transformed into a woman, a dead woman.

She was dressed in a starched white kilt, the hem of which was embroidered with images of tiny gold cats pouncing on black snakes. Upon her feet she wore golden sandals, and her face was hidden behind a combination headdress and mask. It was made of carefully carved and painted wood to make it resemble a cat's head.

So long as you focused on the mask, the sandals, or the outfit, it was just barely possible to ignore the fact that the woman was dead.

A thin veneer of mortality and beauty hung upon a long deceased carcass, no more able to truly deceive than a scarecrow could pass for a living person.

She raised a hand thrusting it threateningly in the group's direction, but said nothing more.

Cal abruptly began to shuffle himself around so that he could get James between himself and the undead woman (well the undead woman who wasn't officially part of the group) who was approaching them.

"You say that you love cats? That's great, we have long had nothing but the firmest appreciation for cats, in fact, right now this guy thinks that he's the son of a cat goddess! Funny world isn't it? Maahes or whatever it is you call yourself, why don't you explain to the nice lady why she shouldn't try to use her magic to kill us?" Cal suggested with a quite distinct air of forced jocularity.

Then there came the sound of a woman's scream, and more plains cats, living plains cats began to approach.

They weren't the only ones either, it seemed like every housecat for miles around was coming closer watching them with the sort of rapt attention a housecat would never EVER show a human (maybe a fish the human was holding, but not the human themselves) normally.

"Who... who are you?" James Firecat demanded as he took a step forward toward the dead woman, his voice quivering slightly clutching the Staff of Bastet tightly against his chest.

"My name is Tiyet, Highest Priestess in service of She of the Ointment Jar. I have come to pass judgment upon the vile serpents and ignorant monkeys of this land and bring about the age of the cat!" She cried out in the sort of dramatic manner which suggested a person wasn't so much interested in having a conversation as shouting loudly at anyone who they could force to listen.

"Hey, I happen to be a very well educated monkey!" Cal insisted, not willing to let a little thing like self preservation get in the way of making it clear that he wasn't a fool.

That, and he was fairly certain he'd faced down much greater threats than undead women who evidently had decided to give their afterlife in the service of cosmetic products.

"Two of you dared to harm me in a previous life, you will be made to pay for it!" She promised them as more and more cats edged closer to the group.

Huge plains cat and smaller housecats alike snarled in anger, ears pressed flat against their heads.

Tiyet walked closer and closer with each passing moment, until she was only a short lunge away from the group.

"I want to see the looks of pain in your eyes... while you suffer..." She snarled in anger.

"Well that makes two of us..." Said Devi Skye as she raised her right hand.

Lighting crackled forth from the magical ring she wore on the middle finger of that hand, and it jumped out at Tiyet.

It crossed the distance between them in the blink of an eye, and then suddenly was deflected downwards into the ground harmlessly.

"Foolish." Mocked Tiyet.

"Now then my pets. the time has come to..." She began to command.

The words died on her lips.

When magic had proven completely ineffective against Tiyet, Devi had decided to try for a more down to earth approach.

Her flail lashed out, wrapped itself around the undead woman's throat and dragged her close.

"Magic worked just fine against you last time, so I have a theory about why it doesn't now., As for your pets..." The elf reflected.

Her hands moved rapidly.

Her right hand kept a firm grip on Tiyet's head to keep her from slipping free while her left pushed the mask free from her face.

After doing that it reached into the bag of holding she always wore at her hip.

From it she pulled a brass shield and sent it spinning through the air away from the group.

Countless green eyes turned in the direction of the shield, to the point that James only just barely kept himself from leaping in its direction also.

With the cats distracted by the magical shield Devi let loose with another bolt of lighting at point blank range.

This one followed the straightest path imaginable, right into Tiyet's body, flash frying her into a pile of dust.

The mask she'd been wearing disintegrated just as quickly as its previous owner had. A bird like figure with a human head took flight in a manner that was starting to seem very familiar to the group.

Seeing that the immediate danger had passed Cal turned his attention toward the not so small clowder of cats gathering around the shield.

"You know what, I say we let them keep it, they seem to want it a lot more than we do." The alchemist advised.

"Render unto Bastet what is Bastet's." James agreed stoically.

"Still... what was with that weird mask, and how could it keep Devi's magic from working?" Cal pondered.

"Items that have a strong enough connection, a not just magical but outright mystical connection, after having been prayed over, sanctified and otherwise empowered with some aspect of a god, they tend to protect one from any magic not associated with that god." Alexander answered instantly.

"She was clearly dead, still throwing around magic spells, claimed to be a high priestess, I'm starting to think that we've got ourselves a badly preserved ancient dead." Mirri reflected.

"We seem to have made ourselves a new enemy and if that thing we ran into three times before was Tiyet..." Florence began before Alex cut her off.

"Then she seems to be coming back smarter and more powerful every time she 'dies' so to speak. Which means we need to do exactly what James suggested and find where her Ba goes when she dies then destroy it. The bird creature was flying off in a westward direction, I'd say we've got our bearing." The silver haired man commanded.

AN: I'm very proud of the way that the fight in this chapter ended, I managed to give Devi her first proper in story real crowning moment of awesome, it plays to her nature as the group's quartermaster, and it ties that stupid shield into the story making it good for something!

Also some of you may feel the need to point out that zapping someone with lightning while you have a metal chain (or flail) wrapped around their neck is not a good idea. To counter this, pick whichever answer you like best...

A: It's magic lightning, it doesn't obey standard rules about how electricity acts.

B: Cal as a Lamordian alchemist knows a lot about lightning. He's helped Devi alter her footwear so that it "grounds" her either through conventional or magical means, so that even if the lightning did arc back into her body it wouldn't actually hurt her.

Anyone familiar with this adventure in general and possibly some obscure Ravenloft lore in particular should know that some things are getting switched up here. The original name of the mummy/ancient dead is not Tiyet. I am not going to use the original name because it's part of a "joke"/"reference" that doesn't really work for me, or work in this version of the Ravenloft universe.

Instead we're going with a different "joke"/"reference" Tiyet is actually the name of a female mummy Darklord from the Darklord books who rules over an Island of Terror (in the sense of a realm that you can only get to if the Mists want to send you there) named Sebua that has no adventures that I know of connected to it, so in short nobody cares about her, she doesn't matter. She matters so little that I can use her name as shorthand for "important Ravenloft female Mummy" and decided to do so.

I'm using it chiefly because I couldn't find what I really wanted to call her, which was an ancient Egyptian female name that started with an "M" and sounded impressive. If you know any let me know and I'll alter the story.

Also worth pointing out that Tiyet the Darklord was a "pristine" mummy, the kind who are so perfectly preserved that they look better dead than most people do while they're alive, the Tiyet that the group is running into in this story, is decidedly not.

On a broader note, something that is going to be a bit of a running theme through this story is that even though their systems are pretty much directly at odds with one another when it comes to morality ("You taught a nine year old girl to use a your helicopter's minigun and then had her mow down two dozen people?" "They were two dozen mooks of the bad guy who murdered her father, and he was our fixer for one whole mission, and he brought synth-Chinese take out to the mission briefing for us. Also she's a big fan of our favorite show, My Little Technomancer, Friendship is Emergence. We stand by our decision." "Enjoy your point of notoriety." "Ehh I had too much street cred anyway...") heroes in Ravenloft, can be lot like Shadowrunners in some ways.

Heroes in Ravenloft are they exception and not the rule, and sometimes those with power object very violently to those who don't obey them. Survival at times like that is less about fighting, and more about knowing the interplay between various different factions, how to play them off against one another, and how to slip between the cracks. On the other hand, sometimes they're going to get treated in a surprisingly nice way by people who they have noticeable moral quibbles with.

In Nova Vassa our group is certainly getting the Shadowrunner treatment, at least in the sense of "we need some people who are highly skilled, willing to work for just about anyone with money to solve this very difficult problem, if we can find those people, we will not care where they fit in the power structure, we will make room for them."

In a realm as corrupt as Nova Vassa, little things like how humans aren't supposed to hang around with elves take a back seat to "He's in power and he said do X so we'll do X" and so with that letter Tristen gave the group they're basically legally untouchable even though they're pretty much openly flouting every rule written and unwritten about how you're supposed to behave in Nova Vassa, so long as they are still sticking to the one about following orders.

Finally the mask/headdress that Tiyet wears works more or less like it says it does, in the adventure book it provides her with 10% magical resistance, in this story that percentage/got increased dramatically because our heroes are more powerful than standard Ravenloft protagonists.