"- well, he's not a demon." 

        "Or he's a well-disguised demon. That headband's not magic."

"...and that proves he's a demon?" 

       "No! But it looks like a magic headband. So either he's got a headband that looks like a magic one, but isn't, which would be odd, or he's blocking my Detect Magic, and it follows he could also be blocking your Detect Evil."

"Oh..." Dimir shifts on his horse. You can't kill a man just for being suspiciously out alone next to the Worldwound, especially not if the words he said were about having had a Teleport accident (this is hotly disagreed on among the party). 

       "We could drive him back towards the barrier. That won't kill him if he's a man, and odds are he'll see what we're driving at and cooperate."

"And if he doesn't?"

       "Then it's probably because he's a demon."

That is certainly how Hulrun would see it but Dimir is not sure Hulrun is right about that. Hulrun is not a paladin.  

He casts Tongues as soon as the wizard stops Detecting Magic to argue with his party members. The illusion of him is still standing stock-still, of course, making a peaceful gesture. Iomedae has expressed a few times the opinion that possibly the spell he uses for that isn't Lawful, and Marit agrees in the sense that inventing it should it not previously have existed would be a philosophically complicated thing to do. He has no such qualms about using it, given that it exists.

Also, he would have invented it, if it didn't exist, and the means to do it struck him. He does not believe Law to be a luxury for peacetime but he thinks some of Iomedae's extensions of it are.

...he can't pretend to now suddenly speak their language, but now he can understand them, and now he can mindread them, which he immediately does.

"If he's from another fort and went off course we're obligated to render him aid."

       "If he's a demon, he would think of saying he's from another fort and went off course."

              "In whatever language that was?"

      "Like I said, it could be Irrisseni -"

"We shall bring him back to the gates of Kenabres," Dimir ventures. "Someone there will speak his tongue, if any of the forts speak it, and if he's a demon he doesn't get anything from getting to the outer gates where there's more people to shoot at him - Kenabres," he says loudly and clearly to Marit, with the condescension that comes naturally to almost everyone trying to communicate across a language barrier.

"Kenabres," he agrees, and starts walking in the direction the man gestured in. A city will have a temple and a library and an opportunity to shed this face, put on a new one, and determine where he is. 

He could probably have saved them. He does alert them of the ambush - cries out in nonspecific alarm, when he spots it - but he does not spellcast, and a swordsman has few avenues to save his party from an ambush by archers. By the time he reaches the attackers his escort are already all dead. 

He would not have let them die only to achieve this aim but it means there is no one bringing any news of him to Kenabres, and no need for him to enter through the gates. He goes invisible, and flies in, though as it happens it wouldn't have mattered because by the time he arrives in Kenabres the city has fallen.

He could probably personally kill most of the demons in this city. He tests this assumption occasionally when he catches one that is assuredly alone, in a building he has already swept for observers including invisible ones. He stabs them with his holy rapier, which is ordinarily silver but which he has the power to make cold iron instead, and they go down easily enough. But he does not run through the city killing all the demons that show themselves and rescuing all the innocents, nor is he particularly tempted to. This particular city's population being murdered by demons is his third priority here, behind 1) not being identified as a person of interest in any way and 2) figuring out what is going on. There was not a planar rift to the Abyss up on the Crown of the World last he checked, and he would in fact have expected to hear about it.

The obvious place to make for is the library. By the time he gets there there are Baphomet cultists trying to burn all the books. He kills all but the leader and leaves the leader on the brink of death to interrogate later once he's shuffled out the shellshocked wizard students and confused old man and consulted the books in case any of them are illuminating. 

They are. Slightly. 

"What year is it."

         The cultist leader is Dominated not to move except to answer the questions completely and accurately with the most important information first, but his eye twitches communicate that this is not the question he was expecting. "4711."

"Since Aroden ascended?"

       "I don't know. I think I heard someone say something about that once but I wasn't paying a lot of attention. It's definitely something to do with Aroden."

"When did the planar rift to the Abyss open."

       "About a hundred years ago."

He slits the man's throat and then, on consideration, decapitates him and tosses both head and body into the chasm that runs through the library, that no one may easily interrogate his corpse. He puts twenty books including the Acts of Iomedae into his Bag of Holding and he leaves.

Anevia would know to go to the Defender's Heart. Anevia does not arrive at the Defender's Heart. Therefore, Anevia is dead. She does not like this conclusion, but she does not intend to spend the rest of her life - which is probably not very long - having it sit in her heart like the sun sits in the sky, too bright to look at. She would rather stare into it until she goes blind than see its shadows everywhere. Anevia is dead, and soon the rest of them will follow her, but not today, if instead she can make it tomorrow. 

The man who stomps into the Defender's Heart in the middle of the night catches her attention because he is a stranger. There are not many people in Kenabres she doesn't recognize. She waves her guards over and goes to meet him. 

"Greetings, stranger,", she says evenly.

An orc paladin. It would make Iomedae happy, that there could be orc paladins. "Blood is complicated, when it comes to men," she would say, with satisfaction. Marit does not feel any satisfaction. 

"Sir," he says. "I heard that the city's defenders should come here, for shelter and rest." He is of course not intending to rest. He already cast Keep Watch from a scroll like a paladin and spent two hours in a rope trick reading the Acts of Iomedae. He is here to get an account of the situation. He is here, rather than at the headquarters of the Inquisition, because the Inquisitor might be hard to lie to and he might want to lie. "I am a stranger in Kenabres, but an ally of Iomedae's Church. A Teleport accident dropped me outside the Wound, not far from here; when I rode to Kenabres I discovered it had been overtaken."

"Will you remove your magic items, that we may confirm none of our enemies have taken such a disguise?"

"No." But he respects her for asking. "I'll step in a Forbiddance, if you have one up."

"Wouldn't that be nice. Where are you from?"

"Recently, Caliphas."

"And you follow Iomedae?"

"I consider myself to be allied with Iomedae's church."

"Well, we need all the help we can get." She studies him carefully. "Get some rest."

....seriously??

All right, what share of the civilians huddled in this tavern seeking shelter are demons and cultists because the paladins are too nice to turn anybody away who doesn't detect Evil?

He takes Irabeth aside at dawn. "That man's a Baphomet cultist. That one's a wanted serial killer."

"I am aware of the serial killer. I have more urgent priorities right now. On what grounds did you conclude that the other is a Baphomet cultist?"

"I'm not going to answer that. You have an inquisitor, yes?"

Several things flash through Irabeth's eyes in short succession. "...I do, and he'll hang whoever I hand him, so if you don't care to answer that then I suppose we'll wait and see what the fellow does." 

The paladin of Iomedae... does not trust the Inquisitor of Iomedae... to have access to truth spells?

"He will scout the place out and then return to the Tower of Estrod to report to his buddies on the extent of its defenses. ...the Abadaran's got to have truth spells."

"Oh, I'm sure he does, for the right price," she responds, more bitingly than she intended. If he's not lying he's being helpful and she should remain courteous and also Anevia is dead.

" - I have money. Arrest the man and I'll cover the truth spell. ...two, if you want to ask me anything."

"I don't know why you offered to pay for a truth spell if you're going to decline to answer every question I have."

"I have never served Baphomet, or Deskari, or any other power of the lower planes. I do not understand my priorities to diverge from Iomedae's in any important way."

"..thank you. All right. ...they're doing something to the wardstone. I don't know how to get word out of the city to anyone who might be able to do anything about it."