"All right, cool. Thanks for being flexible."

Roy thinks for a moment.

"How do you think we should split up the dungeon teams? And do you know if the elemental theming is more like 'the fire dungeon is done up in red and orange with a couple of fire traps' or 'the fire dungeon is literally on fire and you'd need Resist Fire to survive it'?"

"Generally the former, though Air does require the ability to fly. Zz'dtri has a 10-minute-per-level Fly variant prepared in four of his slots, which should cover it, especially if your wizard has the standard version for emergencies. As far as accompaniment for them, I imagine miss Starshine wouldn't go amiss as ranged fire support, and of our party Yikyik is best suited to aerial melee and target defense. Hilgya has the Fire domain, and should thus be on the Fire team; I have little other input on that front. And, ah, I would like to be in whichever team contains Elan."

Roy nods along. He doesn't actually know for certain that Vaarsuvius has Fly prepared today¹, but he'd be really surprised if it turned out that wasn't the case. Like, come on. It's Fly.

"Yeah, okay… maybe Durkon should do the earth dungeon so we don't have all our clerics in one…"

¹During this particular waking block of the dungeon sleep-wake cycle, which after a certain point has little to do with whatever the sun is doing on the surface.

That last sentence Nale said finishes processing in his brain.

Roy looks over at Elan and Thog.

Thog is currently giving Elan a piggy-back ride. The latter is seeing if he can juggle during. (It's ambiguous at best whether he can juggle under normal circumstances.)

O…kay. At least they aren't breaking anything?

Back to Nale.

"Uh, basket."

He should probably be more professional.

"Okay, so we've got Zz'dtri, Yikyik, Haley, and probably V in the air dungeon, Hilgya and three others in the fire dungeon, probably Durkon in the earth dungeon, you and Elan together…that leaves Sabine, Belkar, Thog, and me unassigned. I guess we could round everyone up again and ask if they have any bright ideas?"

Not that he's expecting much from Belkar or Thog.

"...regarding Belkar..."

He sighs.

"I don't mean to be impolite. But. Why."

"I ask myself that very same question constantly."

Okay, he should probably give Nale a real answer so he doesn't look completely unprofessional.

"When I was putting the team together I really needed a tracker. My father, from whom I inherited a Blood Oath of Vengeance against Xykon, spent decades unsuccessfully looking for him; I didn't want to still be hunting when I hit my fortieth birthday. I'll probably cut him loose once we're done with this campaign."

"I suppose I can respect an alliance of convenience with someone you would not otherwise tolerate, in the interest of a more important goal." That describes his entire life between ages 3 and 19 (tolerating his father in the interest of not being stabbed to death by his father), so it'd be pretty hypocritical to whine about Roy doing it. "That said, I would like him to be on your team, because of your party you seem likeliest to have any actual ability to control him – if only by picking him up and throwing him when necessary."

Roy shrugs.

"Fair enough. I still don't have a preference between earth and fire; do you wanna get our teams back on task so we can sort out the rest of the logistics as a group?"

"Let's."

Roy claps his hands.

"Okay, gang, there's just a couple things we need to work out and then we can get this ball rolling again. I've got a pretty good feeling about Nale's plan."

"Aww, I was just about to win!"

This is technically even true, since she's been spending the last few turns intentionally drawing the game out.

Durkon had in fact noticed that he was consistently a turn or two away from losing but figured he was just getting really lucky.

"Ah, I s'pose we'll just hafta call it a draw fer now!"

Elan drops the balls he was trying to juggle and points Royward.

"Let's go!"

"thog mighty steed!"

"Wow, you morons are so in sync. It's like you're twins or something."

"thog do have several long-lost siblings..."

"He's not one of them. Blonde hair is recessive and part-orcs can't have it."

Beat.

"And that's the only reason."

Yikyik strolls over, sheathing the short sword he'd been polishing, and stands by Nale's kneecaps in something approximating parade rest.

Eventually, watching Belkar and Yikyik got boring and Haley went over to where the elves were doing, apparently, nothing.

"Hey, V, in case your superior elven—"

"Yes, I heard Sir Greenhilt."

Vaarsuvius packs up the folding chair and follows Haley to the rest of the group.

Zz'dtri follows.

"You mock elven skill bonuses because you had to spend your human bonus feat to use that longbow," he notes in a whisper, just barely smirking.