There's a lot of discussion about various bait plans, involving trying to get in contact with the mill burners. These are considered to be dangerous and possibly a bad idea, but also the only way to go forward, so everyone sets themselves to trolling for bad guys. They go to markets, they go to bars, they bad-mouth prayer mills, they sit and listen. Lucia finds out that selling whale oil is complicated right now because the local law thinks that it should all be carefully monitored. Normally there was a brisk market in undercover whale oil (for tax reasons, it's valuable enough to be worth avoiding taxes) but that has mostly dried up. She does manage to find a soap maker who would be interested in buying their oil under the table. He tries to sell her various types of dubious soap (love soap, poison soap, and so on).
It is Ivar who succeeds in making contact, pretending to be a bodyguard who used to be an ice merchant before they were all put out of business. A seamstress named Mela talks to him about the gods, and respect for them. The big father sky god of the steppes (Thor) is being exploited with a small prayer mill in the city, which makes it easier for Ivar to be incensed properly. He gets invited to a meeting of like-minded people after talking with Mela a few times.
Sasha follows Mela after one of her conversations with Ivar and tails her into the burial ground outside of town (creepy!). There Mela checks a hollow tree and leaves a message in the other. Sasha checks the message and discovers it's about Ivar, talking about recruiting him. Later, various people come check these drops - there seem to be many in hollow trees in the burial ground - and they loot out a couple of stored potions. Checking with an alchemist reveals one of them to be a potion of fire breathing, and the other to be some sort of transformative potion.
Other scouting from the drops locates a handsome young man and a shack in the swamps where he goes to talk to some thugs. Lucia is nearly spotted following him on that one, and has to lie low rather than follow him after his stop. Later more vigorous scouting reveals that the shack seems to be lived in by a few thugs who don't much care about their living arrangements.
Finally the day comes for Ivar to go to the meeting, which happens in a ruin in the burial ground, an underground crypt. About twenty people pack in, including Mela and the handsome young man, who turns out to be the leader and be very charismatic with a good voice. There is no specific discussion of plans, it's actually something of a religious revival. Afterwards, everyone drinks beer together, and Ivar starts feeling very in touch with this group of people. He only barely resists blurting everything out to them, and feels bad because he's working to betray these wonderful people.
When Section Unicorn recovers him after the party, they spend a few days deprogramming him. He appears to have been dosed with an elven drug that induces extreme empathy - probably everyone else there was also dosed. He's left with some regret at having to betray these nice people, but mostly set back on track.