Triad / The Diamond Ladies
Section B, Heahea City Urgent Care Center, Heahea City
Affected RPers: @Desolate Divine @Noblejanobii @HorusMyDude @Shruikan @Chakramaster

With a break in the incoming patients, Cassandra, Jarena, and Violet decided to have a late lunch, mainly consisting of salads. For Cassandra, it was a quick and easy meal and it was easy on the stomach as when it came to dietary habits, she was still in a bit of a transition from switching from the diet of an Eevee to the diet of a human. Meals like this, along with fruits and vegetables, were a good and easy way to meet midway. Things like burgers, fries, and pizza were not something she felt ready to take on quite yet…

After finishing her lunch and after getting Abbee’s message, Cassandra tried to think about what went into Zekve and Koxein curses. They weren’t complicated and the reagents weren’t too far out there, but it did require her to look up the contents in the Xethen and Zeketh tomes, which Cassandra was very thankful the League had at least retained and not destroyed.

Had they burned these books like she originally feared they would do, it would have made things a lot more difficult for her…

As she found out, Zekve curses, intended to perform clairvoyance on the victim’s mind and see what their eyes were seeing, required the burnt ashes of a lily flower and a pinch of stardust. They were relatively easy to obtain, but they required someone to intentionally go out of their way to obtain them and likely weren’t things they had just laying around on their spice rack. As for Koxein curses, they were similar to the Pokémon transformation hexes that Triad had used during the S.S. Wishmaker incident, but the difference was they only worked for fungus-like Pokémon and they were slightly more complicated with reagents, but they came with the bonus of making the victim extremely nauseous and dizzy. As she found the exact spell, it required a ground up sample of the Pokémon’s body, talcum powder, pumice powder, and it required the caster to draw the curse sigil with a rod or pen made of yew wood. Cassandra definitely didn’t think that curse was worth all the extra trouble when she, Jarena, and Violet simply relied on single Pokémon fur strands to get their transformation hexes done, even though it left their victims as perfectly healthy Pokémon. The tradeoff was the sickness induced by Koxein curses could last months and there really wasn’t any medicine for it, so it would leave the victim unable to speak to humans, but also unable to do anything but be sick the entire time. Meanwhile, curing a victim of both a Zekve/Koxein hybrid curse was something Cassandra knew would definitely take the three of them to cure if someone had become afflicted with this.

Cassandra had decided to take pictures of the pages two hexes were covered on and sent them to Abbee with a follow-up reply message.

“Hey Murkow, it’s Naomi.

I’m attaching the detes on the Zekve and Koxein curses, but in short:

Zekve: lily flower ashes, stardust
Koxein: Pokémon sample (needs to be a fungus/mushroom Pokémon), talcum, pumice, yew rod (needed to draw the hex symbol)

They’re not too hard to obtain, but trying to get all of these on Akala might be hard. Whoever did that hybrid hex likely already has all these reagents with them.

As for my old friend, I’d love to say hi, but it’s gotta be brief and I can’t be seen with him by other people unless it’s a really dire life and death emergency. It’s nothing against you or him, but you know why.

Take care and let me know if you need anything else.

~Naomi”

Cassandra still had her doubts that Dylan and Abbee would find anything, but she wouldn’t deem it impossible. But in the meantime, the discussion at hand did get her wondering about spell reagents. In order for Agatha and her Shadowcraft Society followers to do all this, they would likely need a very large and varied stockpile of reagents stored somewhere. She figured it would likely need to be about 500 square feet of storage space, although that estimated amount was climbing with the more variance she found in their spells.

She began to think… if they could find where that “reagent warehouse” was and destroy it, it would severely cripple Agatha’s efforts here and they would quickly run out of materials needed to cast some of their nastier spells. It was to the point where standard Alola law enforcement could effectively shut down the entire operation and they would already see positive changes in the daylight and weather patterns. But as things were right now, even the police were afraid of what these witches could do to them and the things they could turn them into.

On top of that, if the reagent warehouse was destroyed and all stores on Akala were given the order to discontinue all sales on any materials that could be used in spells, Cassandra could see that becoming the knock-out punch they might need to turn the tables. But she knew that of list potential reagents would be very long and it would be difficult to communicate to all the store owners still operating on Akala.

It all came down to trying to figure out where they might have this warehouse.

“You’ve been kind of quiet,” Jarena told Cassandra, noticing she hadn’t spoken a word since lunch. “Everything okay?”

“Spell reagents…” Cassandra thought out loud, cluing Jarena on what she was thinking. “Considering everything we’ve dealt with, they’ve got to have a lot of them on hand. Like, a whole warehouse of them and very nicely organized.”

“Yeah, wow, didn’t even think about that,” Jarena replied with a nod. “I mean, right, if I don’t label like every darn thing and take what I want in advance and know exactly what I want to cast, it’s a heck of a mess and it’s tough to improvise. And you know me, I’m… not the most meticulous of witches… back when we were really going to town on hexes and stuff. I just stick with fun, easy stuff.”

“You said yourself it sounds like they’re doing training and experimental research,” Violet referred to Cassandra’s earlier discussion. “Combine that with the caliber of what they’re casting, the upkeep, and the sheer variance of it, they’re grounded at a permanent location and would not be able to relocate their base of operations.”

“Oooh,” Jarena smiled impishly. “I like where you’re going with this! So if it’s a permanent location, chances are good Agatha didn’t just buy this place for the occasion. So how do we find this joint?”

Cassandra wasn’t quite sure, but she knew it would likely be a place that used to be abandoned, but would now be seeing plenty of activity. Problem was, in order to really have surveillance on everything on the island, she would need access to high-level military satellite technology to authorize its use. But she knew the warehouse would absolutely have to be on Akala, and they would have needed to stockpile it very thoroughly before this attack.

“We’d better talk to Steven about this,” Cassandra told the other Ladies. “I think we’re dealing with a series of buildings here. These witches need places to sleep, eat, bathe, and if training and research is involved, they’ve got to have places for that, too. There can’t be too many forgotten about places on Akala that check all those boxes.”

And the more Cassandra thought about it, the more she felt going on the offensive rather than the defensive…