The hotel door opens.

"All right, I think we're ready!"

"Thanks, reaper guy! You weren't scary at all!"

The Reaper nods solemnly. "Verses have been written to this effect."

Elan likes this guy!

Haley does too! For a value of not wanting to see it again for a long time.

"All right, here goes nothing."

She opens the mystery door.

They emerge...

into the office of a woman, probably a few years younger than Haley, who looks like the last time she slept properly was when she was much younger than Haley. The reddish hair pinned behind her pointed ears has the dull and ragged look of crabgrass, and she's clearly lost weight she couldn't afford, leaving her absolutely bewildering armor loose. An impressive bastard sword rests by her feet; she looks up from a stack of parchment and squeaks in alarm, standing and grabbing the hilt but keeping it pointed, for now, towards the floor.

"How did you get into my office?" she demands.

Elan's last job consisted of answering questions like this! Well, the questions were usually more like who are you and what are you doing than how did you get here, but Elan thinks it's close enough.

"We went through a magic door in the reaper temple! He told us that it would go to a place where we could make a difference."

Pause.

"A good difference!"

Meanwhile, Haley is scanning the office and forming impressions, mostly of the elven woman.

(A different kind of elf? Which would make sense, since it's a different plane. Or maybe it's just the thing where Outsider ethnicities are a little to the left of the ones she's used to, the way Celia is.)

The aesthetic of her armor seems to suggest dark-and-edgy, but mostly in the way that the black sorceress dress Nale got her did. She's probably not actually Evil, especially given the way she's holding that sword.

She's also obviously extremely busy with something stressful. Which… makes sense, given the stipulations of how the door works. If they'd been dropped in an ice cream shop, that'd be outrageously suspicious.

(Should she add anything to what Elan just said? She could show the arrowhead as proof. Except Haley didn't recognize the arrowhead. And it'd be just her luck if the woman recognized the arrowhead because there was some local superstition about it being cursed and evil.)

She can at least back him up.

"Yeah, basically. We're here to help, we just don't actually know what needs helping yet."

She lets the sword fall to her side. "Here to help. Grand. What are your names, and will you come with me to the main temple area to state your intentions under Tyr's Truth?"

"Haley Starshine. Is that one of those truth spells that makes you say a bunch of sensitive personal information, one that makes it impossible to lie, other…?"

"And I'm Elan! I've never been under a truth spell before, but it sounds fun!"

"You won't be made to say anything; the spell only tells us if you lie. ...I do feel it's disingenuous to say 'you don't have to,' when in fact I will very much clap you in irons if you refuse to confirm you weren't sent to assassinate or spy on me. But the magic won't make you."

It's probably completely unreasonable to be annoyed about being told that she'll be arrested for conspicuously refusing to confirm something that's completely true. Especially since it seems like Elf Lady is trying to do them a favor. Regardless, Haley feels like she should really get some appreciation for not being a bitch about it.

"Yeah, that's fair enough. I think we can go now, then."

(Elan nods.)

The elf(ish) lady can lead them from a generic administrative wing into a proper white-marble temple, with altars to several gods but most centrally a large bronze statue of a one-handed warrior whom Bardic Knowledge or the ability to pick up on context clues will reveal to be Tyr, Thor's less notable brother.

"Oleff?" their escort calls. "I have... a situation."

     There is the distinctive sound of an elderly man doing his best to break the sound barrier; the sacristy door opens to emit just such an elderly man, hobbling towards them at speed. "Milady Aribeth, where is the body? I may be able to –"

"Not that kind of situation, Father."

     Father Oleff's eyebrows ascend, and he hobbles more normally the rest of the way. "Oh. What do you need?"

"Tyr's Truth, on the gentleman and lady here. Then you can go back to your research."

     "Any acolyte can do that!" he grumbles, passing his holy symbol over Haley and Elan.

"Yes, but it's your job."

     Further grumbling follows him back to the sacristy.

Aribeth turns back to her ?⁠⁠guests⁠⁠?. "Did either of you come here intending harm to me, Lord Nasher, or any other citizen of the city of Neverwinter? If the latter, specify."

Haley keeps an eye on her surroundings as Aribeth leads them through the temple. She faintly recognizes the iconography, but it's context clues that tell her that the one-handed god is Tyr. She grew up mainly exposed to Thor's more notable brother.

The old cleric is charming, and so is the interaction with Aribeth. It is, admittedly, pretty funny that she went to the high-ranking old guy (probably not Tyr's high priest, although who knows) for something a first-level cleric could do.

"No, to all of those."

Elan recognizes Tyr! He was in the secret god meeting that Elan doesn't know about because it hasn't happened yet!

"No… oh, unless it turns out that one of the citizens is a bad guy who wants to assassinate Lord Nasher or something like that. Then we'll probably have to kick their butts or at least help you guys capture them. But we don't want to hurt any of your nice citizens, or your citizens who aren't nice but also aren't doing super evil stuff."

"Yes, we have many non-nice citizens whom you still shouldn't... kick." Though she'd pay to watch. "Second question – are you gathering information for, or do you intend to give or sell confidential information about Neverwinter to, any foreign power?"

"We don't want to give or sell information about Neverwinter to a foreign power! I guess technically we’re—"

Haley puts a hand on Elan's shoulder.

"What my boyfriend means to say is that we've been on a job for the better part of a year as a favor to a foreign power," that might not technically exist anymore on account of being conquered by goblins, "but its scope doesn't involve Neverwinter and we've been asked to keep it secret."

"Oh yeah! Yeah, all of that stuff is true."

"...will it compel you to act against Neverwinter or her allies? For example, if we choose to interfere with it, you might need to oppose us; how likely is that to come up, in your estimation?"

Haley thinks for a moment.

"… It shouldn't. I've been told that we're currently on a completely different plane than the one we came from and that time there will be paused until we find a way to return. I don't have any way to, like, fact check that, but I mostly trust the person who told me."

Largely because she doesn't have any choice in the matter, but still.

"If you've got a wizard or whatever who can scry on our home plane to confirm, I'd like that. And if you still want more details, we can probably elaborate a little… I just think it'd be a bad idea if it spread really far."

"Hm. I'll accept that, and I can arrange for scrying. Final question: are you, actually, here to help us with our troubles?"

Another pause to think, this one shorter.

"The same person who told me about the time stop effect said that we were going to arrive someplace that we, personally, would make a difference. I don't have any information about Neverwinter beyond that and what I've been able to observe in the past ten or so minutes since we got here. Like Elan said, if it turns out that there's some super-Evil stuff going on behind the scenes, we would oppose that."

"We'd oppose the heck out of that!"