"......ah. As...... a very limited improvement on 'somehow fixes it'...... I suppose we could see if the angel sword has another miracle banked?"

Nod. "Hard for it to be worse than nothing. If you're planning on going out into the city today I can brief you on our current leads, such as they are, otherwise one of us can brief you once everyone's done praying."

"I have no specific plans in the city but I can run errands if that is a valuable place for me to be. Especially since apparently I do not have an appointment in three weeks. - while I am here, have you already conveyed to the relevant parties the circumstances under which we met Miss Camellia -"

(At this point Irabeth nods and departs to finish her pre-dawn preparations.)

"Alright. First of all, I passed along what we know about Camellia to Beth. The issue there is... so, the Defender's Heart's an inn, normally, it's not designed for holding prisoners. There's a cell in the basement, but only the one — we already sprang a thief so we'd have somewhere to stash that cultist who surrendered, told him if he helped out in the city we'd pardon the theft. We could stick them both in the cell, but it'd make it more likely they find some way to break out, and I doubt it'd be good for his soul. He says he'll tell us everything he knows and swear never to serve the demons again, under a Truthtelling if we want it, as long as we let him live, and — there's things he could tell us where it'd be worth it. We could free up the cell by executing him, but then if we realize we did want to take that trade we can't go back and do it. We could maybe execute Camellia, if we just give up on giving her time in a cell to repent, but ever since we got back she's been hinting that she's some kinda local noble, which sounds like it can't be true, but if it turns out to be then depending on the details there we might have to go through the Count." She does not sound like she wants to go through the Count. "Right now I'm having people take turns keeping an eye on her. New recruits, mostly, who've been rotated back into the Defender's Heart anyways, not anyone whose time I'd be tying up."

"Understandable. You don't know who all the local nobles are?"

"Well, I thought I did, and I thought she wasn't one of them, and it'd be especially surprising if I didn't know about a half-elf! So it's possible she's just trying some sort of very stupid plan. But if she's telling the truth, and we try to go after her, it'd make things really complicated until we were able to track down the Count."

If she's noble but not local it doesn't actually change the laws but it changes what they can get away with in an emergency, but she's not going to say that out loud.

"All right. I don't think she's anywhere near top priority, I just wanted to make sure it was - propagated. She's been very helpful since then, but she might as well have been saying 'and by the way I enjoy murder' the whole time... What should I be preparing?"

Anevia has a recommended list! It is mostly similar to the spells he has already been preparing, but the Eagle Watch recommends he bring at least one Protection from Evil, Communal, in case he runs into any of the succubi that have been spotted in the area, and they don't think he needs the Spear of Purity or the Abundant Ammunition. (They're shorter on cold iron ammunition than they like, but the blacksmith, Joran Vhane, has been making as much as he can; Anevia can give him directions and a little note certifying that his party is basically competent and not going to waste it.) He should decide whether or not to prepare the Lay of the Land based on his personal guesses about how useful it will be for navigating. 

Some of the current high-priority tasks are likely to involve scouting, but if Anevia's remembering his domains correctly his spells aren't going to be great for that.

"—And let me know if you want me to send the thief with your party, apparently he's a first-circle wizard on top of a burglar. No sweat if you'd rather not keep track of him, I'm sure we can find something for him to do either way."

"My domains are a Good variant and a Law variant. Lay of the Land had enough range that I think it will get me a fair ways through town despite having been cast underground... my party. Have... Lann and Ser Seelah asked to be assigned to me, or otherwise wound up that way? Do we have any plans to bring up the mongrels or at least establish non-maze-based travel? I don't mind adding a wizard if he's best deployed there."

"Haven't woken them up yet, and if it turns out they had other plans I guess we'll have to figure something else out. But you've got some experience working with them, which beats anyone else I could send with you, and I think they'll go for it, they both like you." Pause. "We had one of the squads take a rope and go fish out Lord Gwerm while you were out. From the sound of it none of the other mongrels wanted to come, but... well, people are bad enough about tieflings around here, I did my best with who I put on that task but if they said something to scare them off I might not know about it."

They like him? How did that happen? Weird. "They make good backup. If the best available selection would rather they stay below then their reception above would certainly be a headache if not a disaster," nods Blai. "Though I do still need to at some point... check if Fiducia Boian exists... and is willing to accept my introduction to Fiducia Dyra. Considering the thing where there are two of me. Anything else I should know about the wizard-burglar?"

"Tiefling, male, early twenties. Caught in a break-in the night the attack happened. He swears it's a frame job, offered to take a Truthtelling to prove it but got real quiet when we asked if he'd also say he didn't do any of the other thefts he's also wanted for. Better with his daggers than most wizards I've ever met. Claims to be decent with locks and with traps, but I haven't seen him do it myself. If you don't tell me otherwise I was planning on having him fill up his slots with Grease."

"Bearing in mind I don't know what else is in his book, that sounds reasonable. I'd like him to also have a Light if we're going anywhere dark, I'm planning to drop mine for Read Magic in case more scrolls come my way, I won't always have a dozen rounds to squint at them."

"I'll pass that along. Now a good time for the overall briefing, in case there's a spell you want that I didn't think of?"

"Yes."

Then Anevia can brief him! Their main goals right now are (a) finding more people to help with the attack on the Gray Garrison, either the 'charge in and probably die' half or the 'actually fix the Wardstone' half, and (b) finding a better plan for fixing the Wardstone than 'maybe we can glow the sword at it.' She has a list of known relatively-powerful people in the city who are missing but not confirmed dead; the strongest is fourth circle. (The Count is on the list, as well as both of the two people named as potentially being able to cast a Sending.) Their best lead on fixing the Wardstone is some blind elf who came into town the other day claiming to be a wizard and claiming to know there was some kind of problem with the Wardstone. This seemed very suspicious at the time, and still seems pretty suspicious, but he was at least correct. Staunton Vhane thinks he might have taken refuge in the library.

They have unreliable intelligence suggesting that the cultists are planning an attack on the Defender's Heart in three days, and that those cultists are gathering at the Tower of Estrod; it would be helpful if he could have the thief scout it out and figure out what they're going to be facing, but if not she can find someone else to do it.

Lord Gwerm wanted to talk to him once he was awake; it's almost certainly not anything important, but he'll probably be paying well, which is useful because Fiducia Rathimus is apparently not interested in giving them a discount just because it might get him killed not to.

They will probably have to kill miscellaneous demons and cultists, but it's less of a priority. (They do have a couple leads on potential cultist dens, in case they think it would be helpful to interrogate some higher-ranking people.) Saving random civilians is also nice if it's convenient, but not a top priority. They can direct both civilians and miscellaneous people who want to help to the Defender's Heart. There have been some reports of bandits in the streets; they can defend themselves if attacked, obviously, and can at their discretion stop bandits that they encounter, but this is not a very high priority.

Chelish people are all literate, right? Here's a map with labels. The map is from before the attack and may not accurately reflect completely impassible areas. 

Current salvage policy for groups with at least one person who can write is that they should not rob people other than cultists or bandits, and that if they take supplies from an abandoned house or something they should write down where they took them from so that they can compensate the owners or their next of kin in a couple weeks if there's anyone alive who can be identified as such. No one is happy with this policy but they don't have anything better. They're also welcome to take whatever they want from Irabeth and Anevia's house, but it's all the way across the city, so it might be inconvenient.

It's nice to have a map! He marks key destinations on it. Do they have a priority ordering for these errands? Which ones can be most cheaply delayed or reassigned if left for last?

Finding the Storyteller is probably the most important, right now they're really just guessing desperately about ways to repair the Wardstone. He should be prepared for the possibility that in fact the Storyteller is some sort of cultist who was forewarned about the issues with the Wardstone due to being a cultist. If they find any other leads on fixing the Wardstone they should prioritize those similarly.

Recruiting other people to help with the attack on the Gray Garrison is second-priority. The ideal here — well, the ideal is someone who can take a lilitu, but she's not holding her breath. Failing that the ideal is a fourth-circle wizard who can cast Dimension Door. Failing that, he should just find as many vaguely competent adventurers and warriors as he can. The Count is the only one where they have even a guess as to his location; his manor in the city has been reported as intact. On the other hand, the Count is chronically unhelpful and hates all the gods, especially Iomedae, so they might not actually get anything out of the trip.

Everything else is lower-priority than that; he can use his discretion, focus on things that are conveniently located, et cetera. If he ends up camping in the city he should try to swing back to the tavern before the suspected attack, but they recommend he camp in the Defender's Heart if possible.

Is he going to want Camellia with him, or would he prefer to avoid having a probable-murderer in his party?

"The thing I worry about there is not so much that she will detour to do murders while in the party but that it is ill-using her not to be clear that she is a murder suspect and will not stop being one for service to the cause, and I don't know the orthodox way to handle that."

"Well, I'm a Desnan as much as anything, I know enough Iomedaean theology to shut down the guys who keep suggesting we swear we'll give amnesty to that cultist we captured and then kill him anyway but I don't know how much help I can be with anything really complicated. I think... Beth'd probably try to work it in to the conversation about Woljif — that's the thief — and make it clear that just because we'll forgive some theft under the circumstances doesn't mean we'll overlook cold-blooded murder. Hard to do in a way that sounds natural, though."

"Extremely."

"Beth might be able to think of something better, but I think she's pretty busy right now." Sigh. "The other option I thought of is to tell her we know she's a murderer and offer her a chance to serve in the Condemned if we all make it through this rather than going to the gallows. Don't really think that's a good idea, though."

"The Condemned being some special penal force?"

Nod. "They're Mendev's penal battalions. This side of the Wound we need every warrior we can get, and lots of bandits and so on have gotten in enough scrapes to pick up some fighting skills and some extra toughness." Pause. "Some of them probably should've been left on the gallows, but plenty of them are alright. Staunton Vhane's one of them, and from the sound of it he saved a lot of people's lives yesterday."