"- I mean, adventurers are. Don't spear normal people, you will kill them."

"How does that work? You are not a different species." 

"There's a couple theories, I haven't looked into it that closely. It's probably that getting magical healing all the time is good for you. ...I guess it makes sense that Velgarth would be different."

"So you become more difficult to kill in proportion to how many times you have been seriously injured and then healed? That is - convenient, I suppose. And definitely not how our Healing works. For reference, it would be rather difficult to get a spear through my various shields, but if I ever am speared, I suspect I am no better off than a normal human in your world." 

"Yikes, good to know."

"You know, Van said something about that like a week after we met, and I didn't want to seem like I was picking a rude fight over nothing so I didn't say anything, but he was like 'if I throw a normal-strength levinbolt at you when you're not shielded it'll kill you' and I thought 'uh, no?' but I figured maybe he just meant something different by 'normal strength'..."

"I didn't think of it at all. I should have."

"I wish I had realized this in time to study it with the pharaoh's researchers. At least we are finding it out now and not in some much worse situation." 

"We should maybe Sending Fazil. Not that Van can get that badly hurt, travelling with him."

"But if they don't know Fazil might suggest they go cliffdiving or something."

"If Fazil ever suggests anyone go cliffdiving I will be concerned about more things than whether this will kill Vanyel."

"I would be inclined to tell them just because experience has taught me we will not think of all of the things that could go wrong." 

"I can prep a Sending tomorrow."

"Thank you." 

And Leareth goes back to quietly scanning the camp with mage-sight and Thoughtsensing, searching in particular for anyone under an enchantment. (The advantage of mage-sight for this is that he has it all the time, not just when he prepares and casts a spell; the disadvantage is that it sees everything, and the place is full of magic, so there's a lot of noise to filter out.) 

More than half of people here seem to be able to shield out his Thoughtsensing, in that way that locals can, especially the high-level casters. Of which there are a lot. Leareth can, now that he's used to it and knows what to look for, pick up on whether someone is a caster and their approximate power level by looking at their aura with mage-sight.

Their success at hedging out his Thoughtsensing doesn't also block his mage-sight, though. And, with careful reading, he picks out a few people under geas. Not a huge number - maybe two parties' worth in total, he guesses. 

One of them is the wizard who's currently struck up a conversation with Mahdi and Hagan. Which is interesting. Leareth doesn't tell them yet, it seems like it might be distracting and make it hard not to behave suspiciously, but he'll mention it at the end of the day. 

:Huh. 

So....pretty suggestive that the you is in fact here, right? It's not like that's a common approach to security...:

:I think it is suggestive, yes. There could be other explanations, but - I assume the base rate of adventurers being under geas for some other reason is low: 

:Especially a whole party. And not all from the same country, if I learned some faraway country had obligatory magic on high-level adventurers it wouldn't be that weird, but the guy I was talking to was from Galt and he said their fighter was from Varisia.

Do we want to get his attention? I assume it will take a long time to get read in on the secrets just by being very diligent and disinterested in murdering civilians.:

:I would certainly use a long process. I - will have to consider what we can do to draw his attention without alarming him into - doing something we would disprefer. Possibly approaching one of the geased parties is the route to go but I would wish to carefully prepare a script: 

He nods. 

He considers it as they prepare to bed down for the night.

In the morning, he's feeling readier for it, but also the parties in question seem to have already headed out for the day. 

They can head out for the day too. 

Mahdi can't throw fireballs as often as he wants, and this means it's mostly not worth throwing them at all if there's a Velgarth mage around; he mostly summons creatures and makes the terrain more difficult for their enemies and occasionally gives them Fly or heightened reflexes or a quick teleport to a better position to fight from. Hagan mostly shoots things, which he can do with a degree of skill that is definitely supernatural but is not, to Othersenses, actually magical. 

Today there is a cluster of daemons that made it quite far from their origin under cover of night, and that seem to be using captive souls to power their spellcasting, shredding them in the process. 

(Leareth is so curious about how Hagan works - he's not a caster but he still has some sort of power, clearly, in a not-dissimilar way... He can study that later.) 

Aaaaaaaaaah he hadn't known you could do that! It's like blood-magic except a hundred times more horrifying! (He spends a half-second privately considering if there are circumstances where he'd use it, and - he can't rule it out - but he would weigh the cost so much more heavily, the permanent destruction of a person that he could never get back even once he's won...) 

:Hagan, Mahdi, we need to stop it from doing that!: He's not sure what they'd do afterward, actually, if there are ways to help a disembodied and imprisoned soul, but surely they can figure something out when the souls are not in the process of being shredded–

Unfortunately he mostly just has the options he usually has though he can shoot fancier magic arrows that hit much harder, there's probably no point saving those for Cheliax when even with a Merciful bow he'd be accidentally killing people all the time if he were trying to hit hard -

Leareth has a lot more options than what he's been using. He's not going to reveal Gates even for this (not that a Gate would help especially), and he doubts compulsions would work on the daemons, even if he were willing to show how cheaply he can do enchantment-style magic.

He can go to more complex, high-skill magic than the fireballs and barriers he's been sticking to so far. Which he's hesitant to use because he doesn't know the stability of whatever medium is storing the souls. 

(Quick check: is anyone other than neutral evil outsiders in range to watch? No, his Thoughtsensing and mage-sight can't detect anyone within a mile, which means probably he can get away with not having his unusual capabilities spread around - someone could be hiding under a local invisibility spell but that'd be surprising, and he doesn't think avoiding the risk is worth permanently losing human souls.) 

He can attempt to trap them in tightly-woven nets of force, it's not the standard paralysis spell for humans since he's unsure that would work either, but it should immobilize them enough to make casting difficult, and be very hard for them to break out–