Finally a question he can answer favorably!

“As you may have guessed, my uh…”

And it occurs to him he’s been lucky enough not to mention very many specific details about his ‘group’ and he should keep it that way for multiple reasons.

“…group, practices pretty tight information security, so the only thing the people I was supposed to meet here know about me is that I’m a newly 3rd circle wizard, specialized in conjuration.  So if they’ve been caught they can’t leak too many specifics…”

Or maybe she meant his allies scrying him?

“And the parts of my” don’t say cult “organization that do know my name and face don’t have a lot of higher circle spells to spare, so a scry from them isn’t likely to come… uh I’m supposed to know it’s them if it comes at a particular time and make a quick report in that case.”

And how to ask this next part without begging…

“Er, I likewise have a bare minimum of information to go off for meeting my new contacts so I won’t be able to find them, and it sounds like heading back west anywhere near Gelida isn’t a great idea, so if you’ve got a use for a conjurer I would certainly appreciate the company and contributing to any cause that undermines Asmodeus.”

"It shouldn't be possible for Hell's agents to land a Scry solely from that description."

"And if he's not with us they might be able to follow his trail." They're not masked right now, he's seen their faces. She makes a tiny gesture at Shakti.

He's wearing the tiny copper wire like it's a ring. Message. 

He's obviously hiding something. Just because he won't bring the law down on our heads doesn't mean he won't slit our throats while we sleep.

If you're really worried about that we could make him sleep in a separate Rope Trick? Shakti hasn't used the spell he gets from his ring yet.

I don't want to risk him riding off on his own and getting caught. It's nice when the pragmatic thing to do is the one she'd want to do anyway.

Shakti?

Oh, apologies, I thought I was obviously in favor.

Tiny nod.

"Right now we're mostly lying low and heading east, but if you don't mind not doing anything flashy for a bit you can ride with us. Or, uh, walk with us, once the horses run out — anyways. Stay where she can see you." She points at the halfling. "If we've got to talk to someone, and they're not with your group, let us handle it. Uh, and there's a few hand signals we should go over if we do get into a fight, what spells do you have that're useful in combat?"

“I’m fine not being flashy.  I’m not well prepared for a fight today, I just have a summon monster II and a summon swarm.  I generally get a few extra rounds out of summonings compared to typical for my circle.  I have two infernal healings for after any fight.  Oh and I still have my bonded object spell, so that could be a Web, or Grease, or Glitterdust, to name my best spells for a fight.  If tomorrow I’m preparing more heavily for a fight, I can do more of any spell I just named, and as well Protection from Law, Mage Armor, Bull’s Strength, and Resist Energy depending on what you all want.  I have a Communal Mount I haven’t cast yet, which I can split up to five ways for two hours each, and my current Phantom Steed has two hours left.”

He recites this calmly and firmly.

"Oh, we're not looking for a fight, but sometimes we run into one anyway, and it's good to be ready." And if they're bringing him along, then making sure he can work with them is less important than making sure he can't tell the Asmodeans much about what they can do if he gets captured.

"I'm a priestess, he's a wizard, she's an archer, she stabs people." She gestures to herself, the man, the halfling, and the human woman respectively. "I channel positive, so I can cover healing for the group as long as I'm conscious. At first I've got two of Bless, one Command, one Shield of Faith, one Expeditious Retreat—"

She goes through the rest of her spells. Apart from the Expeditious Retreat, it's mostly standard fare for a third-circle adventuring cleric, except that she's got a Fly for some reason, and doesn't have any Cure spells prepared. "And the spear, obviously."

She looks at the man she indicated as the wizard.

"At first circle I've prepared a Mage Armor, a Sleep, a Silent Image, Break — that one rarely ends up relevant, but I'm a Transmutation specialist—" He goes through his full list; he's third-circle as well, with necromancy and evocation as opposed schools. Something in his accent is noticeably different from how he was speaking earlier.

"I have a slot remaining at each circle in case we need to adjust to something unexpected, and of course my bonded object." 

She gestures to the halfling again. "And it's not going to come up in a fight, but she's really good at sneaking through the woods and forests and so on, as long as she can see you you won't leave a trail unless you're trying to." Justice really doesn't understand how that works, Independence always says it isn't magic but it really seems like it, but she's not about to complain.

She pauses, in case he has any questions he wants to ask before they can get into hand signals.

He nods along.  Sounds like a well rounded team of adventurers.  No cure spells prepared and the ability to channel positive means she is Good and serves a Good God.  The Fly spell means Travel domain, which Desna is an obvious guess for... although... does Cayden have Travel?  Probably Desna, but he should avoid saying anything bad about alcohol and drunkenness' just in case.  Hopefully he hasn't already offended the cleric with his plans for repurposing romance novels?

He should probably find a favorable way to explain himself before it comes up because of alignment detection or something like that.  He starts mentally running through what he has heard about Desna and Andoran to try to figure out the best spin.

"That all makes sense and sounds reasonable.  I've heard of some pretty weird adventurer abilities that actually aren't magic and don't detect as such."

"Great!" She moves her left finger in a circle. "So that's the one for illusions, mostly he" (gesture at the wizard) "uses it to signal that he just cast a Silent Image and you should try to see through it, but you can also use it to point out illusions if it's a situation where you'd rather the people we're fighting not know that you've seen through them. This one" (she makes a little rectangle with her hands, then pulls it apart) "is for positioning Webs or other area spells like that, then for general positioning you want—"

She can go through all of them. There aren't that many. "—and then it won't matter for a fight, but you can use this one to ask him to loop everyone into a Message. Uh, and for everything else, or for anything where it's really really important that the other person know what you're telling them and not that important to keep it secret, you can just use, uh, regular words. Oh, and if it looks like someone's trying to read our hand signals sometimes we'll make up fake ones that don't mean anything, if you see one of us make a hand sign that looks totally different from any of those that's probably what we're doing."

He practices the hand signs to himself as she goes through them.

“That makes sense.  Uh…”

He’s mentally rehearsed this while she was talking but he’s still stammering.

“There is something I should possibly explain about my group that you might want to know… not that I can think it’s likely to be relevant particularly soon… it could easily wait until after we’ve relocated?”

"Well, see, now I'm curious—"

(She totally called it.)

“Well, the thing is, uh, my organization, its primary divine casting, is uh, clerics of Baphomet.  We work with anyone that wants to take down Asmodeus and his servants!  I really don’t think we’ll have any problems working together, as you’ve already noticed we favor complicated tricky plans but I can compromise on that, and uh (I assume from your general Goodness) there will be no torturing Asmodean priests, even the really nasty cruel ones?”

He keeps talking, better to just get it all said now.

“And if there is a check in scry from my organization, (not the I expect one), it should be within 10 minutes of three hours after dawn, so if you want to avoid being seen I would need a few minutes of privacy.  Or you could listen in if that’s necessary to trust to me.”

He tries to put on a disarming smile but it just looks awkward.

Okay, but is it the kind of Baphomet cult that mostly wants to fight Asmodeus, or the kind that traps little kids in magic labyrinths until they starve?

...Presumably it's not full of completely fine people none of whom have done anything particularly bad, she's pretty sure Baphomet doesn't choose that sort of person to be his priests? But there's a lot of — options, ways they could be better or worse, and for that matter for this man to be joining up with them because he wants to fight Asmodeus and they're who he met or because he likes how they let him indulge all his worst hobbies without trying to lecture him.

Someone told her once that Calistria has slept with Baphomet but she's pretty sure they were just trying to make her mad, gods don't have bodies really — that's not actually important.

There's got to be some reason they're working for Baphomet and not any of the other better gods who'd be happy to help them fight Asmodeus. Even if they were Evil to begin with Calistria can pick Evil priests — though Justice had never heard of Milani, maybe they hadn't heard of Milani or Calistria or... Gorum, somehow... no, it doesn't actually sound like Gorum'd like them very much. And presumably the Lawful ones aren't going to help them.

It is absolutely possible that it'll turn out he's spending most of his time doing horrifying things to ordinary farmers who don't really deserve it and staying in the group's good graces because the farmers pray to Asmodeus sometimes. If it turns out he's doing things awful enough he deserves to die for them they can almost certainly take him, it'd be four-on-one — unless he's lying about his circle, if he can Dimension Door away then it'd be a stalemate, at least for now—

"Are you empowered by Baphomet?"

An easy and safe question!

“No, I am not.”

"What sorts of things do you guys get up to? —Uh, don't tell us any super specific secret details, obviously, just, in general."