"The clerics have been gathering them in the – actually, Jojo, can you show him the way to the atrium?"

"Yes, Your Grace."

"Thanks!"

Haley weighs the pros and cons of asking Aribeth about the sacrifice thing right here.

Pros: if Aribeth is fine and the vision is not what it looks like, Gulnan can hear it right out of her mouth. If she isn't fine, there are witnesses… although Elan and Jojo just ran off, darn.

Cons: She really does not expect Gulnan to believe Aribeth unless the thing that Aribeth says is something like "that's right, you fools!"

"What's a good place to talk?"

A wand is pointed at Gulnan's stable door. It glows, and a bubble pops up around her.

"Come with me, I'll find a classroom that isn't too brutalized."

Wands: really convenient. Haley should really buy some sometime soon; it's been a pain in the ass not having access to spellcasters.

"Sure thing!"

She doesn't wave at the guest-hostages like Elan might, but she does glance back at them before they're out of sight.

Desyyra's unruffling some feathers on the cockatrice. The brain is rolling around in some dead goblin. Gulnan is glaring daggers at everything in range.

Aribeth, true to her word, brings them to a classroom with only mild scorching, then sits on a desk. "Questions," she prompts.

"Right. So Desyyra mentioned that you need some, like, body part type stuff from her and the others for the plague. Most relevantly, a vial of blood from Gulnan. When I asked Gulnan if there was anything to do to convince her to stay—I was thinking outright bribery but that's not my money to offer—and she started ranting at me about how she's not going to submit herself willingly to these visions she had of being sacrificed on an altar and someone cutting her heart out. Elan's pretty sure that the visions are deceptive in some way but obviously we have no way to tell how."

She hopes she's successfully making it clear she's suspending judgment and not instantly taking anyone's side without making it seem like she's personally sniping at Aribeth for not choosing "by the way, we're gonna need to do a scary-looking ritual to some guys we're keeping here" or whatever as one of the first things she mentioned.

"...I know she's had visions, but the only ones I heard of were of 'the scaled ones ruling the world'. As you might expect, we haven't put much stock in them. We do need the hair of a dryad, the feathers of a cockatrice, some cerebrospinal fluid from an intellect devourer, and, as you say, a vial of blood from a yuan-ti. No one will be cutting out anyone's heart, and I'll swear to that if you like. And I'd love to bribe her, if she were willing to be bribed I wouldn't have had to add kidnapping to the very long list of things Tyr is going to frown at me about when my time comes."

Oh no she's legitimately funny. Haley snorts against her will.

"She did mention that. Honestly, I believe that you just plan to take a vial; it's what she believes that's the issue. And I don't really know if swearing or a truth spell will cut it, 'cause she kinda started in on one of those 'good and evil are fake' rants when we said that we were gonna look into it. The best I was able to do was offer to get her raised if it did turn out that you were gonna take her heart, and I'm not sure she'll keep trusting that I'm 'the kind of fool she may be happy of' for the next week."