The party met with the Mayor of the Ratmen, who wore a hood to keep his identity secret. The gist of his information was that a wererat had seen something that might be a monk training camp under the city; he also mentioned that there was a wererat community in Banzeel. After the party convinced the Mayor that their myriad hunteds would make any formal association between the party and the wererats a bad idea (from the wererats' point of view), the Mayor called in the wererat who'd actually seen the base and took off.
The informant was a taciturn seventeen-year-old named Kitli who'd seen some monks in training and someone matching the description of Spinx' human guise in a cavern not far from the "Boors' Guild". She's also seen spiders in the well system that looked like little blue gems with legs. According to a friend of hers, some of the young Fighters' Guild students have been exploring a tunnel that intersects the well behind the Guild, and a few of these might have vanished. (This friend also thought the tunnel had been eaten by a critter rather than dug by humanoids.) It seemed possible that the monk base might be reached by this tunnel, but in the end it seemed safer to have Thorongil hulk out and dig a new one that wouldn't have spiders or other guardians in it.
Beeel, exercising that kensai wisdom, noted that the party might need to flee into the sewers if the rescue operation went really wrong and decided to have a rope set up at the well so non-flyers/climbers could actually get out. So the following day, Beeel joined the Fighter's Guild and headed out to the well to set up the rope. While he was there, he met some of the younger students, who were surprised that anyone higher level knew about the tunnel. After Beeel told them that he was interested in going down at night just to kill monsters, they set up their rope ladder for him. (The students prefer to go down during the day, thinking the monsters will be asleep and they can just steal some treasure, and they thought taking on dead monsters would be even better than dealing with sleeping ones.) Beeel also saw an ad for a private army that Boutros, a corrupt merchant and city council member, was raising.
That night, Kitli took the party to a storm drain near the Fighters' Guild. From there, she took a scrying device and a leaf for locate object down to the monk base and was given a 25 gp gem for her trouble. Using the device, Beeel (chosen for his combination of WIS and CON) saw some monks training with falchion swords, an old woman who seemed adept with a staff, and someone who was probably Spinx. Thorongil hulked out, the party dug most of the way down, and scrying resumed. After someone came by to collect the recruits from the workout room, the party went in. During the ensuing combat, the party took out Spinx (who turned out to be a devil similar to a spinagon), a high-level monk with a nasty staff (it fired enervations, fire blasts, and acid streams, with no activation time on the latter two, but only while Spinx was around to channel energy from the brainwashed recruits), a bunch of imps, and three sixth-level monks. The party rescued twenty-four of the twenty-six brainwashed proto-monks; the other two were killed during the fight.
Success, but a few aspects of the combat don't quite add up (at least to me). The monks spoke, which Spider Monks aren't supposed to do. (The sixth-level monk who spoke was talking to Beeel, and kensai may be an exception, but the old master was talking to Silvana. She was also the first female Spider Monk the party had ever seen.) Spinx used an item to make an ethereal summoning web, but it brought in imps rather than spiders (though it could have summoned a farastu if Ganeth hadn't plowed through its physical aspect before Spinx was done conjuring, and it was about to net an abishai when Silvana dispelled it). The sixth-level monks had spider markings on their clothing and all the monks had spider tattoos on the backs of their necks, but when Jenx examined a head, he saw that the tattoo had been laid over something else. Basically, everything looked more devilish than spidery (though not completely...one chamber in the complex held a small spider-shaped bowl, as well as a book bound in human flesh that radiated mild evil). Our possible explanations so far are that a group of spiders used exaction to gain the services of some devils, some of the devils have formed a coalition with Rakni, or the devils set this all up to draw attention toward Rakni's real operations in the sewers before her preparations are complete.
In any case, the brainwashing broke when Spinx was nailed, and the recruits were sent to the Fighters' Guild and entrusted to Thugeel (who was also entrusted with the party's suspicions about FL1). The party left town immediately afterward, before Elbleem could decide he was annoyed about having his operation disrupted.