The laundry racks are new! Everywhere she's ever lived has just had wizards for laundry.

"Okay, let me think." She starts counting off spells on her fingers. "Priests can do underwater breathing — there's one at first circle that only lasts a few minutes, or a longer version at third. Protection from burns is also doable, assuming they're, uh, fire burns, that one's also got a couple different ways it can work but the more reliable one is at third. There's a couple different spells that might work to keep the venom fresh but I don't know for sure, I've never heard of them being used for that specifically. Sabotaging the machines is... probably doable? But it'd depend on how the machines work."

She pauses for a moment. "Uh, and then — reading minds and looking like other people are both things some priests of Calistria can do but not me specifically. The one for looking like other people is first circle, reading minds is second, but I don't think Disguise Self can do voices. I don't think it's possible to make blasting jelly with magic — or, actually, if it's called jelly because you can eat it it might be possible, I'm not sure either way."

She holds out her hand. "And Guidance is also touch-range."

"Blasting jelly is edible. Once." He snickers. ".... But no. We don't know how it's made. We know it involves sulfur and that's about it."

He holds out his hand.

"Guidance."

And then there's a sense of — something he could reach for, if he needed to be just a little smarter or faster or stronger. It can't give him skills he doesn't have, it won't make the difference between a catastrophic failure and a rousing success, but it could give him the little boost he needs to narrowly succeed at something when he'd otherwise have narrowly failed.

"Huh."

He ponders for a bit, then pulls a knife out from a hidden holster and does a trick with it, spinning it across and between his fingers.

"...Huh. Useful for critical moments, like taking down sentries. Not so much when you can afford to do things slow, careful, and right. Well, maybe things that need to go right. Like mixing blasting jelly if we knew how."

Nod. "It's worse for anything slow, it only lasts a minute at most. —There's some things where it works to just have a priest cast it on someone over and over and over until they're done, but not if it's the sort of thing where someone casting a spell on you would be too distracting."

Onto the planning room.

"We've got maps and sketches and records in here. I mean, we're kind of running out of parchment like everything else, but there's notes on the garrison and such. We take turns putting on a nice downtrodden disguise and doing chores and labor in town. It's really hard to overhear anything good. We're trying to save resources and keep suspicions low to do something decisive, but it was getting old fast."

"I wish one of my wizard friends were here too, they get some great spells for listening in on places. I guess I can try asking for some of them in case the gods actually can give them out but I wouldn't get my hopes up. —Wizards're another type of person who can do magic, they get their magic by studying a lot."

She takes a look at the notes.

Sketch of what the resort looks like from the outside, plus an attempt at a floorplan map. Four entrances, two on either side of the river, lots of buildings built over the water, some boats and bathing areas, lots of open spaces and freestanding 'cabins'.

Notes on guard sightings: Usually two sentries on this gate, usually only one on that one. Guard Rang Shao is known for being incredibly lazy and waving people through if they don't look suspicious. Guard Hao Ling is high-strung and paranoid, but his colleagues kind of hate him. Map of the non-resort parts of the town. They have to bring food into the resort somewhere, right? Looks like it's by boat- The boats leave from here... Etc etc.

Collated overheard gossip: The Fire Nation is gathering up for an attack on the Northern Water Tribe. Raids towards the plain of Ba Sing Se have been crushed and turned back. New type of airship with Fire Nation emblem spotted. Princess Azula is in the Earth Kingdom for something. The manager of the resort is Hana Aiko. She reportedly takes great pains to hire pretty people as servants, and has aspirations of marrying into nobility. Etc etc.

"...Would it be helpful to give one person the ability to fly for a few minutes? Or no, because the Fire Nation'd probably just spot them and shoot them down?"

"Maybe not if we do something at night. But that sounds like a one way trip. Could do something like... Get in and lower the gate for the rest of us, then go on the attack? Maybe."

"What're the walls made of?" And based on the diagrams, how are the guards spaced out on them?

"The ones around the resort are stone about three feet thick, with decorative wood and metal cladding. Around the main town they're eight feet thick, twelve high, and well-sunk foundations. Boss helped build them." He mutters something else too low to hear.

The diagrams show guards mostly on gates and a couple of watchtowers.

"I don't know if it'll work with the wood and the metal, it sounds like the metal might block it, but just in case — there's a spell I get at third, Stone Shape, it lets me change the shape of about this much stone at a time—" She attempts to indicate 15 cubic feet with gestures. "Even with the headband — uh, the headband does Wisdom — that probably didn't make any sense, sorry — the headband lets me cast more spells. Anyways. I get two third circle spells a day if I'm wearing it, plus one that I can only use to prepare one of two specific spells, which might get us through the big ones but it'd be a pretty tight squeeze. But it should definitely get people through the smaller ones if it works on them at all, which'll depend on how the wood and metal are built into it."

"I'm pretty sure it's, like, a thin outside decoration? Getting through the walls is not really a challenge though, we've got three Earth sorcerers. Working together they could punch a hole in the wall or lift people over it. Admittedly, maybe not quietly... We should go over all our old plans and pick out ones that are high impact. I think it was capturing or killing a proper noble, killing or capturing officers, destroying the fuel and machines and ships at the docks, and killing or demoralizing the rank and file soldiers in that order."

Nod. "My kind of magic can help with all of those but it doesn't make them trivial — well, it might, actually, if people here aren't protecting against them. Uh, probably it makes sense to go through those ideas one at at a time... who're the nobles around here, and what sorts of ways do they have to stop people from killing them, for their manors and then also for when they leave? If you were going to try to kill one without me, how would you do it, and where'd it probably end up failing?"

(If a noble dies, is the Fire Nation going to try to hunt down the culprit and anyone who helped them, or are they going to assume everyone in the village is involved and put half of them to the sword? How's succession decided around here, and what sort of person does the local lord's heir look like? Do they have loyal servants or servants who secretly hate them, loyal guards or guards who secretly hate them, personal slaves that they let in their manor or only field slaves? —She can ask those later, she doesn't want to overwhelm him with too many questions at once.)

He solicits answers from some of the others who have come to lurk near them in the planning room for some of this.

The lords' protections generally include a number of Firebending guards, fortified manor compounds, personal combat skill (there is a dueling tradition called Agni Kai), and usually ability to call on the military proper for protection. Their best plan without her involved identifying one going on a sea trip at night, and having Lenora drive a large canoe right up under the ship close enough to board the vessel with an armed team. Or a straight up ambush of a carriage or similar, if they travel by land. The boat plan is probably not viable; Earthbenders (the best fighters besides Lenora) are as disadvantaged by the ocean as Waterbenders are advantaged. It probably fails when the Earthbenders and mundane fighters fall to professional Firebending killers, and Lenora is overwhelmed by them once she has no support. A night assault on a noble's home might work, they don't tend to recognize specific Earth Kingdom people/commoners and you could get close to the walls before being spotted and challenged by a guard if you manage to get into the town at all. This probably fails when the alarm sends reinforcements to the manor before they overwhelm the lord. Their servants tend to be Fire Nation natives, mostly, or at least Fire Nation commoners in charge of Earth Kingdom commoners.

In charge of Rojonu Town is Count Han of the Steady Bluetorch family. They are out of favor in the Fire Lord's court. He is cruel but largely uninterested in day to day affairs, his daughter and head servants run the place mostly by stamping down hard on anything that looks like resistance, resentment, or 'not knowing one's place'. There are also a number of Barons and lesser Lords, a rank that is still above 'commoner' but doesn't imply holding any land. Wulong and Chima Valley have no noble lord and are under military authority; They have a few names of officers, and rumors that another resistance group is active near Chima Valley. The Yu Dao region, on the far side of these mountains, is under a coalition of Baronial families known as the Five Flames Alliance. They are actively running people out of their homes, enslaving them, and destroying the environment with extractive industries, trying to make as much money for themselves as possible. There is a rumor that Princess Azula, the Fire Lord's favored daughter, might pass through this region on her hunt to capture or kill the Avatar.

"If we were attacking a manor at night, and they wanted to raise the alarm, how would they do it? And how quickly would reinforcements get there once they did?"

They'd send Firebending straight up into the air, as a flare. Reinforcements would take minutes at best, at the run from the barracks or walls.

Nod. "I don't have any totally reliable ways to stop that. Do you have maps of how the insides of their manors are laid out or are they better at keeping secrets than that?"

They have pre-invasion layouts for some of them. And know where the Master Bedroom is on a few others; There's a turned cleaning lady in this wing of the house who was happy to tell the layout in hopes it would make things go badly for the man who threatened to burn her hair off.