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secret identity
for reveal once someone guesses
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She should've gotten to it sooner. She did the obvious things, checked the urchins' memories, figured out where they were now, arranged some very quiet magical surveillance. And then she did other things, because it didn't seem that high priority, and she was very busy. And now it's likely to destabilize the city and she needs to have the answer now, without tipping off Eriape.

She goes invisible, and she flies.

The undead badger that stays with the urchins in their warehouse. Does it, to a threnodic detect thoughts from a rod, see to be in constant telepathic contact with Eriape?

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Harià, Eriape's foremost wizarding badger, is in the S.R Egbad warehouse basement. She's teaching the very first elements of magic to a small crowd of admiring urchins. She wiggles with what passes for enjoyment, and her very very strange mind seems void of any signs of contact, or anything except teaching. 

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She'd sooner not interrupt the class but she's in a hurry. Command Undead.

 

 She Alter Selfs into one of the urchins who is presently out distributing pamphlets and drops the invisibility and walks into the warehouse and joins the crowd in the basement. 

 

"Harià? Teacher Harià? Tell us, do the badgers get to live with the Lady Eriape? Is it true that she lives in a floating island in the sky?"

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"-and the Cantrip is like a..." 

she pauses, for a moment, in a nearly mortal way, as the spell takes hold.

"...like a Cat. You Eat the Cat, and then you Gain the Cantrip back."

"Greetings Violant! No! It is not True! Floating Islands are Too Expensive! All the Badgers but Me live with Eriape, for Secrecy!"

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"Oooh, in the secret lair!" The threnodic Detect Thoughts will be up for a while. Is Harià contemplating, in any way, the secret lair. "People on the streets said the secret lair is full of skeletons. But badgers are better than skeletons, right?"

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Oraneta rolls her eyes. Why does Violant have to act so WIERD all the time. 

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"There are No Skeletons in the Secret Lair. I mean, we are All Skeletons on the Inside. But Other than That, only Badgers and Lady Eriape, who is Not a Skeleton."

Harià's strange throughts consider the secret lair. You can eat moles from the copse nearby, and mice from the farmer's fields above. It's a pretty nice place.  No urchins, though. 

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(Because none of you can do anything even if you catch on, obviously, idiot urchin. That's why you can notice anything is amiss.)

 

Trying to Teleport off a memory that vague is a good way to waste several Teleports but that's probably less costly than alerting the lich. 

"Thank you teacher Harià! Urchins don't eat cats so how should we learn to catch cantrips?"

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"I think you Can eat Cats if you Want. It is Legal. I was Merely Explaining the Matter. You can Imagine eating Anything you Want, like a...a Grain." mortals like grains, right? 

"At any Rate, Here is a Diagram!" She Mage Hands a piece of chalk, and draws on a large flat boulder. It's pretty clearly prestidigitation, but with like, entirely pointless curlicues. 

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She'll wander off while the secondhand memory of the tasty moles from the copse nearby is still fresh in her mind. Go invisible again. 

 

Teleport.

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There's a farm here, with a copse just where the road runs. She frightens a small ground bird, which zips up along the road. Looks like they're pretty prosperous for a Chelish farm. 

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Could still be the wrong place, but it looks right. Time for a lesser Planar Binding, then, to get an earth elemental she can set to scouting underground. 

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About 30 feet below the ground, there's lots of badger-sized tunnels going in winding, crazy patterns. These have lots of metal spikes driven into the walls. There's also some iron walls protecting one smaller and one larger complex. The smaller complex is just a room, the larger complex is more than that. They are connected using winding spiked tunnels

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Can it please dig for her, fifty or so feet below the larger complex, a space large enough for a squad of people to Teleport into?

 

And can it bring back a very small chunk of Eriape's fortress, hopefully an inconspicuous one that was crumbling already?

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It can do that! It brings back a large flake of rust, from a Wall of Iron

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It would be responsible to do more surveillance than that but parties other than Lilia will have to be the ones to do it. Hopefully some of them will be competent and if instead they all die it will be because they deserve it. She takes the flake of iron and Teleports out. She has a seventh circle wizard out of Absalom to impersonate. Or maybe Riudare to bring in...