Venere hooks

Picket Line Cipher
The party is tasked with a basic fetch quest - go to Editore Cacciatone, the scroll production house in Venere, and pick up a delivery of glamour scrolls for Greasepaint Theatre's next big show.

About the Theatre
Greasepaint Theatre is based in Gabi - a hilltop community north of Venere itself, and a thriving Yd shtetl. One of House Pontevecchio's beautiful linear roads runs there. Looking South-south-west the party can see the Three Spires, which the Yd community have erected on a bit of marshland (you'd swear one of them is on a very slight lean). Due south is the main harbour and the reclaimed peninsula of Venere itself.

The party stops at the threatre itself and sees showbills for "The Mammaries of Mitras" - a surreal operatic comedy - and "Son of the Desh", the flagship musical production, featuring a historically inaccurate but glorious poster of a Deshi prince (think, a reeeeeally fancy Ork).

The mission: Greasepaint's current leading man, Grimbaldo Farinelli, needs a little extra 'star power' - and enough glamours to last for a show run! (3 to 6 weeks, depending on how successful the party is at negotiating a discount out of Gli Fratri Cacciatone). A long and successful run will put the party in good standing with progressive Yd types."

Greasepaint characters
Grimbaldo Farinelli - Yd, portly and little with an astounding voice. He's a bit fabulous and high strung. Can he be a convincing Desh?

Gioia Brunoro - human elf mix, an acidic-tempered coloratura soprano. Feeds stray cats at the stage door.

Bettina 'Betty' Puetz - Yd, mezzo, great taste in hats, wine and cheese. Believes passionately n the Haskala but not so much in dietary restrictions. Very keen to take on the role of Mitras, though "Couldn't they have found a Two for this part?"

Boris, just Boris. You think he's human? Enormous bass voice, enormous gut, upstages everything unwittingly.

Il Dottore - Yd, tall and skinny. Also not an actual doctor. Producer, bankrolling this show and willing to do whatever it takes to make the show go on.

Navigating Venere
The road will only take you so far. Editore Cacciatone are based in among the reclaimed jetties, canals and floating islands in coastal Venere. The docklands are an exciting, sometimes smelly and narrow place to navigate, and a punt, coracle or gondola is the party's best friend here.

Random encounters

 * A gutter kid, Giulia, tries to rob your party before you can purchase your scrolls. Chase them down through the canals, or grab them quick and shake them down for info.
 * The party passes a workers' demonstration (barricaded canal, riot, pub brawl turned into a wildcat strike)
 * Some local hoons have started applying rune magic to the back ends of boats to make them go really fast along the waterways. Illegal boat race/accident?

Things that are common knowledge:

 * The local populace love magical glamours so much that the market for scrolls and facsimiles is intense.
 * A magical inscription can only be copied into a paper scroll 1d4 times (using a special roller and an infusion of magic) before losing its potency.
 * It takes the magical energy (spell slots and stamina) of workers to create scroll inscriptions. A small but decent proportion of the population have enough magic to train as scroll makers, it's rough work done on commission.

Special knowledge:

 * Recent hot weather, combined with magical effluent from inks and spent reagents, has caused some funky algal blooms in the canals this season.
 * The workers are downtrodden and restless - and they are getting organised. One figure stands out among the agitators, the part-elf Alain Luddlow. He's a known magic user and has been causing ructions in local warehouses.
 * Rioting is hard when the streets are made of water. The workers are communicating and mobilising faster than you'd expect.
 * The local Fratres are very interested in the publishers' business. They keep dropping work requests at seedy taverns and the writing on the scrips (and the reward offered) are just a little /too/ handsome for this to be the work of the usual local crime syndicates.
 * The Cacciatone brothers are busy testing a technique called Moveable Rune Spelling.

Moveable Rune Spelling
The spelling press imbues metal blocks with magic, then prints good quality runes onto paper scrolls for as long as a human concentrates on a patented ritual. It takes an hour to set a page of runes, magical aptitude equal to the spell being cast, and knowledge of how to work the press and say the ritual - but potentially hundreds of scrolls can be created with almost no loss of potency.

So far, nobody has capitalised on the fact that nonmagical writings could be transmitted the same way as runes but without all the incantations.