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There is no good reason for Lilia to do this and several why she quite straightforwardly cannot (how'd she get entrance granted into the Mansion? how did redacted and redacted get solved?) but nonetheless when Riudare turns to leave the dinner-table to come and find her she's already standing there.
"This seems a self-imposed shortage of burglars," she says, "and not one Her Majesty'd have you solve by borrowing hers."
(Who is this woman? Of the people present:
Riudare knows. Faces are valuable in their line of business, and he wouldn't have failed to learn hers.
The Archduke Narikopolus knows. Sometimes her department has seized and tortured to death someone important enough he merits a courtesy notification; sometimes there is a complicated play he is expected not to interrupt.
Alexaera Cansellarion knows. She looks like her mother.)
As far as everyone else is concerned she is a rich powerful very very Lawful Evil wizard.
Wow, that sure is a person multiple people are reacting very strongly to. Joan-Pau will pretend he knows who she is.
Lawful Evil Wizard, under most circumstances concerning. But in this circumstance, good to see another person who will definitely be voting for ‘preserve the spellbook and notes’.
It's utterly mad for Montero to do this and slightly less mad for someone who happens to have found out that she's still around to make the reveal in a dramatic if slightly misleading fashion. True Seeing.
Shouldn't she be hiding her involvement with the regime???
"You cannot seriously be volunteering to be our burglar."
Paladin and evil wizard recognize each other and have complicated history. How surprising.
"Lord Marshal, I don't think you need a burglar. You need a ring of Evasion -" she tosses him one - "and then you can just walk into all the traps. If I am mistaken and you require more assistance than that then I will of course do as you say like every other Chelish person who obeys Iomedae in all things including a bunch She specifically asks us not to obey Her in because She's not Asmodeus."
He tosses the ring to Riudaure. "Is it cursed?"
Then back to the woman who is probably the former-Paraduchess Montero, "Why come here?"
The mind blank does increase the odds it's actually her. It also increases the odds it's Mephistopheles.
"It doesn't appear so, Lord Marshal."
"Everyone else got a 'Marquis so-and-so, grateful for your help', and I hand you a magic item worth more than most counties and get "why come here". I heard that here is where you were planning the lich operation, that's why. You know, I rather think that when the right person walks into a room you're all Valia Wain. 'maybe this would be going better if all the unrepentant Evildoers were in a Final Blade!' No. It really wouldn't."
"I may be grateful for your help when I have figured out why you are giving it, and whether it is genuinely helpful."
"The deep moral conviction that liches ought to be spared the torment of undeath and mercifully counseled on to Axis. Iomedae believed that. I read a pamphlet about it."
There are not actually any words she could have made with her mouth that he would have believed. "The badgers bypass the alarms," she says instead, "and she does not have ongoing mental control or surveillance of them; you could impersonate or possess one, to get eyes inside the lair. The Forbiddance has a password, which I learned from the urchins; you really have no excuse for not having thought of that yourselves. It's [redacted]. I wouldn't, myself, be living, for an operation like this. Does anyone have questions."
"You were the one who got us the map, weren't you."
She sounds approving and downright delighted.
"Correct. You're the one who put the Heartlands through twenty years of famine, right?" She also sounds approving and downright delighted.
"It was the best way to rebel against Hell," she says smoothly, even though it started before Hell took over and this woman probably knows that. "Can she be in charge of this mission instead?"
She did what now?
That tracks, actually. Elves always come with some kind of ancient skeletons in their closets.
“Before we answer that question, I have one. Shares, what sort of cut are you expecting for this help?”
Just because everyone else is being suspicious or impressed, that’s no reason not to talk business.
"Unfortunately I think the Lord Marshal will not consent to my participation in this operation beyond giving him extremely valuable resources for it, because he thinks I'm Evil." She's obviously Evil but technically not radiating Evil at the moment, because of the Mind Blank. "Maybe he will let me turn some people who are not him into earth elementals. Regardless, possessing as I do no agenda beyond pure and obedient service to a profoundly confused concept of Iomedae, I would not dream of benefitting from my labor."
Hey, you’re undercutting the rest of us wizards. Iomedaeans.
(Also bringing back up the loot division argument was supposed to distract from the imminent ‘hey your date caused decades of famine’ argument.)
“…Understandable.”
Voshrelka really doesn't see what being Evil has to do with anything. It just seems like being effective.
"I really don't see how not having you come along for the delving does anyone any good at all. These are your maps. The rest of us can come along and chaperone if the paladin's scared of being alone with her."