There are four of them, all mounted on horses — two human women in front, with an unarmored human man and a halfling woman behind them. One of the human women is wearing a painted wooden pendant, a circle with three dagger-like points coming out of it. They're dressed like adventurers — they all have billowing cloaks, and two of them have headbands — though official adventurers would generally be using the main roads, unless they'd specifically been sent to clear out a threat in the forest.

Fernando may also notice that their horses don't seem to be leaving any sort of trail on the ground, or that the halfling is armed with a bow and doesn't seem to carry herself like a slave. (The human women are also armed, but that's much less surprising.)

(They generally don't aim very hard for subtlety when they're in the woods. If they run into an army patrol in the middle of the forest it was always going to turn into a fight anyway, in which case it's better to have their weapons drawn and Justice's holy symbol ready, and occasionally there are bandits with grudges against Asmodeans who don't particularly have anything against them and don't care to take their chances in a fight.)

The man is clearly some sort of caster, but he's by himself and not in army gear, so it's really not very likely he'll pick a fight with them. "We're not lost, no. And yourself?"

She's got a Chelish accent, though if he's particularly good with accents he might notice it's more like the kind people have if they grew up in the Heartlands.

A 3 pointed symbol... maybe some variant of Pazuzu's symbol?  He knows they sometimes collaborate with other cults on tearing down Asmodeus, and they keep themselves compartmentalized that he wouldn't know if another branch had a priestess of Pazuzu join up.

And he was concentrating so hard on studying them that he almost missed what the woman with the pendant said... he's not sure if she actually said the correct counter-phrase to identify herself?  He thinks she was at least a few words off.  Maybe she's deliberately testing him?  Either way, they certainly can't be a group of licit adventurers, the halfling carries herself with too much freedom to be a slave, so they are almost certainly his contacts.

And she asked him a question.  He doesn't recall another stage of challenge and response identification procedures, so he'll just get to the point.

"I'm not lost.  Uh, um... I don't know what you have planned, but I have a small stack of heretically Good romance novels and I think it would be hilarious if some particularly devout Asmodeans got caught with them.  Not uh, saying it should have priority over your plans but if we could work it into the schedule I think it would be worth it.  And for more serious plans... I've recently gotten Magic Aura down well enough to fake the traits of other casters, although I need a few examples of their spells to study with Greater Detect Magic beforehand.  A well placed Magic Aura is a reliable classic."

Wow, whoever this is seems kind of incompetent. Which is — kind of upsetting, actually, she doesn't want him to get caught and Maledicted for no reason — she should focus, that's not the most important thing.

He has... romance novels and the ability to frame people with magic auras... and he thinks they're part of his group, whatever that group actually is. Hearing about the romance novels, there's a part of her that kind of wishes Haven was here, even though this wasn't actually the sort of mission that needs double channeling capacity. ...It's sort of tempting to tell him to take his apparently-decent spellcasting and go break out another plantation but she's really not sure he could pull it off.

"—There's a couple towns within a few day's ride big enough to have multiple priests." She glances at the man behind her. "Can Magic Aura fake auras from divine casters?"

"As far as I know, it's not possible to determine for certain from a spell's aura whether it was cast by a divine caster in the first place, if you don't see it cast. I don't see why it wouldn't work."

Nod. "In which case it'd be nice to try and frame one of their priests for plotting against another one, get them to waste some time tearing each other apart. But it's more dangerous to try to sneak into the bigger towns — you'd definitely need to deal with the books first—"

Justice can't see it but Independence is kind of giving her a look.

"The books are harder, it's not the sort of crime that'd stick against anyone actually important."

"I think it might depend on who you go after, actually — lots of people are important enough to just make it disappear, but disloyalty's one of the things that can really get you, I bet there's slavers who—"

"If they're rich enough to own slaves they're rich enough to bribe the Fists!"

"There's probably a way to use them to make it look like some of the recent disturbances in the area were caused by Desnans, the hard part is doing that without putting the Asmodeans closer to the right track."

Something about this group feels... off from what Fernando was expecting.  Trying to articulate his observations to himself... they seem more at ease and casual with each other than Fernando was expecting?  That's probably a good sign?  Hopefully one of them hasn't enchanted or drugged all the others or something like that?

"Like I said, I'm not committed to the novels idea, I got them by happenstance and thought it might be funny.  In general, I've just recently got third circle casting, so I've only got Nondetection and Phantom Steed for third circle spells, uh, for the rest of my spells, my I'm mostly focused on conjuration, with basically no enchantment.  I admit I may not seem like the subtlest agent, but I've performed decently posing as a passing first circle or laundry wizard to village too small and poor to have a full time laundry wizard.  And of course I'm ready and able to serve as a supporting spellcaster for whatever buffs you need that I have.  Oh, and I can cast infernal healing without devil's blood so that should hopefully free up some slots if you expect to be tight on healing?  You know, properly cast, it is actually overall better than a cure light wounds, just a bit slower acting."

His talking speeds up as he gets going.  (He partially rehearsed a summary of his qualifications).

Justice has them covered on healing, but there's no real reason to say that when for all she knows Cheliax will torture it out of him tomorrow. 

She'd been planning to point out that she was not actually with whoever his group is once she got through talking through his ideas, but then she got distracted and now it'd be kind of awkward. Maybe she can wait until she has a little more information about what he's up to. (He's clearly not an Eagle Knight, but lots of people hate Asmodeus who aren't Eagle Knights.)

"It'll be harder to pass for first-circle now that you've hit third, that's strong enough to have an aura." Wizards don't get Undetectable Alignment, even if no one bothers to point a Detect Magic his way, and Nondetection's pricy.

"Some versions of Magic Aura can cover for that. I'm not sure how many of the third-circle variants can, though."

"There's probably something it's possible to do with the novels, but trying to pull off complicated plots because they're funny is a good way to get yourself caught." Presumably he's resigned himself to being caught and Maledicted at some point, but there's no reason to make it happen sooner.

"The fourth circle version of Magic Aura can do living creatures yes.  I have a scroll of the 4th circle version, but we should only use it for a really good plan.  And yes, I do need to conserve my Nondetection diamond dust for more critical activity... but I can make do with a Misdirection for a lot of similar uses.. I didn't prepare it today, but I still have my bonded object spell if we have a pressing need for it?"

He addresses the other women.  "Being funny in and of itself isn't a good enough reason I agree, but there is some value if you can push things in a surreal direction, make your targets doubt their own sanity, make them question the standard set of spells and techniques for espionage and wonder to themselves if you've figured out an entirely new spell that can beat all their old methods of spycraft.  Once you've got them thinking like that, they may waste resources or distrust the standard methods for years afterwards.  Uh... not that I particularly had a plan like that in mind... I've been kind of uh... idly thinking of something with a layered Nondetection, Misdirection, and Magic Aura cast at different strengths so a dispel gets one of them in particular..."

He thought the proper orthodoxy (not that Chaos needs to be exactly proper), was to try to outwit your opponents as much as possible... but he had already figured this group might not all be committed to his Lord?  And he can understand favoring simple effectiveness.

The risk there is that you 'trick' them into rightfully distrusting a method that was never very reliable to begin with, but Elettra's not really a magic expert.

"I trust your judgment on how to use your own magic." (But not on very much else.)

"You should also be aware that there have been some disruptions about three day's travel west of here, near Gelida. The enforcers of the law are likely to be on unusually high alert, particularly in the immediate vicinity of the area."

He takes a moment to double check the geography in his head.  He needs to say something, getting made fun of or beaten or even just embarrassed by the new group would be bad, but someone being caught would be far worse.

“Okay, uh… something has gone wrong with information compartmentalization, or someone’s confused or has messed up or something…” he nervously stammers.

“I’m pretty sure that’s in the direction which we were supposed to be creating diversions away from?”

...Well, she's not going to complain if someone accidentally gave them a free distraction, but she hopes they didn't completely ruin whatever the other group was planning. Or at least that if they did, that the other group was able to get away. ...Presumably he doesn't have a good way to warn them, or he'd've had a better way to get instructions from them, too.

"We're not actually with your group." Someone's got to say it.

She'd have told him eventually!

"—We're not Asmodeans, we're not about to turn you in or anything like that. But, uh, it might be good to be a bit more cautious about who you start telling about your plans."

All the little notes of confusion come together clearly now.

“Oh..”

And his mind is still working past his rising panic because he comes to a conclusion he should communicate urgently.

“If you haven’t come across another group in this stretch of forest nor seen any signs of them… they were supposed to be here for at least a few days so it’s possible they’ve been caught on the way here, and if they’ve been caught alive and interrogated one of them might have given away they were supposed to meet me at this location (or at least near it) and I think a third circle wizard is enough to warrant at least a decent effort to catch…”

He catches his breath.

“So we should leave… or maybe if you’re really daring and stronger than I’d have guessed setup a counter ambush or at least be ready to encounter opposition.”

It's tempting. It'd be awfully satisfying if some Asmodean enforcers tried to hunt down what they thought would be easy prey and ended up getting a taste of their own medicine and leaving Cheliax with one fewer group of people to sic on anyone who tries to resist them. But it's the sort of tempting where she knows it's obviously a bad idea, not the sort of tempting where she seriously wants to try it under the circumstances — they can definitely take a regular army patrol, but trying to fight a group of handpicked enforcers specifically chosen to hunt people down is a lot riskier.

"How much did they know about you? I assume you'd've mentioned if you'd felt someone trying to Scry you..."

...This man seems to have decided he's coming with them. It doesn't really seem like a good idea to try to bring him along under the circumstances, but the other three are definitely going to outvote her on that.

(Wanderer, guide them to safety; let fortune favor their flight, and may they rise free with the new day.)