Why is there a rakshasa in his city. Were the Arkona secretly rakshasas this entire time. How did he never notice that.

The sixth circle wizard has see invisibility up. Manohar is petrified. The whole area is covered by a permanent teleport trap. This operation is now officially a disaster.

He cannot afford to allow Manohar to be captured. Disintegrate.

The stone statue of Manohar turns to dust.

He flies at great speed out of the second entrance hall.

That is unfortunate. The statue might not have really been Manohar. Disintegrate is high enough circle that perhaps the other wizard is secretly Manohar. He can't be sure. He didn't have enough time to put greater arcane sight up.

Greater shadow conjuration duplicating wall of iron. The hallway leading to the main entrance of the Ornelos Hall is now blocked.

What remains of the assault force is trapped. The devils swarm Glorio Arkona. They don't manage to land even a single strike.

The wizards and the cleric run deeper into the Ornelos Hall. One of them breaks a window and they leap out onto the Acadamae grounds.

All this combat has made rather a lot of noise...

Professor Javier Vargas floats down from the sky. "Hello there."

Acid fog. Misty vapors fill the area surrounding the broken window. The fog is solid and clawing. It melts flesh from bone.

A wizard powerful enough to throw around disintegrate is bad news. It could also be Manohar. Whoever this really is, they aren't under mind blank.

Feeblemind.

The mind of the sixth circle wizard is destroyed. He stumbles and looks around in confusion.

Glorio carves into the devils with his kukri. His strikes are so fast it's almost impossible to see them.

Greater shadow evocation duplicating delayed blast fireball with no delay.

The wizards and the cleric within the acid fog are burned to a crisp.

The remaining devils make their attempts to slay Glorio Arkona. It's not very effective.

Cleaning up the remaining foes is not particularly difficult.

Glorio is happy to help with the cleanup.

They move everyone, living or dead, out of the second entrance hall. House Ornelos possesses more secure holding facilities elsewhere.

Resurrecting the nobility is going to be incredibly expensive. They will need over twenty diamonds for raise dead.

Volshyenek grand polymorphs the air near the ground into molten lava. Good luck getting any dust from disintegrate now.

The rest of the night passes mostly without incident.

KORVOSAN CARRIER
STARDAY, SARENITH 27th, 4708

TEMPLE OF ASMODEUS DESTROYED, MASSACRE AT SUMMIT OF THE NOBILITY

The papers are having such a time today. There are decades where nothing happens and there are weeks where decades happen. The death toll yesterday was in the hundreds. Most of the casualties were in or around the Temple of Asmodeus. The counterattack was swift. Of Korvosa's twenty-six noble houses, the heads of twenty-two are dead. They were slain by devils and wizards from Cheliax. Toff Ornelos claims to have personally killed the eighth circle wizard Manohar in a duel. None deny that Cheliax and Korvosa are now at war, even if it's not official yet.

The Bank of Abadar hates everyone involved in recent events. There was once an illusion over the city, very carefully crafted. The illusion that the rule of law derives from something other than the spells of high circle wizards. They miss it already. Did it really need to come to this? Do any of you know how expensive this is going to be?

Tencednil actually knew about the deaths among the nobility yesterday, when the Bank sent a letter to Mother requesting she prepare whatever resurrection spells she has access to today, paid at a very good rate. She added a few letters to the reply. The Bank won't have all its diamonds together today, not with that many dead. That means the scions of the Houses are at least acting weird, and in some cases acting Heads, for the next two or three days. These days are important days, and guess who happens to know those scions.

All of them are desperately busy, of course. Nobody was expecting this (until yesterday, possibly), but that doesn't mean there were no plans. None of them have much actual power — every house has a network of people, and a child added to that web will not immediately inherit all the capabilities of their predecessor. They're still suddenly in possession of more power than ever before. Some of them find their House in a power struggle to decide whether or not to raise the deceased. All of them desperately need information, communication, and allies, and she is well positioned to provide that.

Yesterday she invited people to a few different meetings over food — three or four groups, each of only people who would talk freely near each other. The guest lists were of course included, but mostly in references which should be incomprehensible to any new political enemies suddenly watching their mail. Has she heard any responses yet?

Aline has accepted Tencednil's invitation.

As have a few others. She will be able to get a couple of groups together.

Oh good. In the meantime... she was scheduled to be off-shift today. Does the guard look so incredibly busy they obviously need whoever they can get?

They aren't much busier than the past few days. They got everyone out of the rubble yesterday and today they've had to suppress some unrest but the city seems mostly too tired to riot. There's not anything they can really do about Cheliax or a war between high circle spellcasters.

That makes sense. In that case, she will spend her time out and about, listening for rumors and trying to get a sense of how people are reacting to everything. The Houses have their own networks, but she is good at this and they will be somewhat inconsistent in the immediate future. Also those messages all go to someone in the House, but not necessarily to someone without an opinion, or someone who supports the inheritors. An extra source will be helpful to everyone.