Belmarniss can now sorta muddle along in the local common thanks to aggressive use of comprehend languages to hand-translate books after roping a local into teaching her the alphabet. Also she hates teleport traps with every fiber of her being. Also she has figured out at this point that she somehow leveled in sorcerer instead of wizard during the business with the pirates and has no idea why that happened or whether it will happen again. And she has sold this stupid arrowhead to two different curio shops and given up as it seems to be cursed. And she just needs to keep doing what she does, she guesses, till she can teleport herself home. The Yawning Portal is a nicely ironic name.
There's a other stalls hawking various tiers of enchanted items, or she could reconvene with her party.
What-all can she afford with what she's got left? If nothing else she can always use more pearls of power or maybe another metamagic rod, she's really into how her current metamagic rod opens up her options.
Here's somebody with half a dozen goblin skull bombs. There's a man with a little galaxy of ioun stones orbiting a mannequin head, including, notably, an orange prism. This lady's selling jewelry including a Seducer's Bane bracelet. This one's got a Tome of Clear Thought +2. If she wants pearls of power or metamagic rods, they're available.
Bracelet's 11k, but the jeweler can be haggled down to 10 if she's on her game. Tome's 60, take it or leave it.
She will leave the tome for a later time. Takes the bracelet and the prism and counts her remaining platinum.
She'll take a lesser maximize rod (can anybody sell her some cunning little thingy to clip it to her quicken rod so she can have them both on hand conveniently?), and a fourth level pearl of power because she doesn't have one of those yet, is tempted by a shawl of life-keeping but decides it doesn't synergize well with the Reaper's arrowhead, and finally buys an extradimensional bag to hold all her crap.
She shoves all her crap, cunningly clipped rods and all, into her new bag. She liquidates her old bag. She reconvenes.
The rest of the party has adjourned to the inn at the southwest of the city. When Belmarniss enters, Garrus waves at her.
"It doesn't have the Yawning Portal's ambience," he says when she approaches, "but apparently these folks have some kind of livestock called a 'deep rothe' that produces a halfway decent steak, so I'm happy."
It's pretty good! Not quite like cow, not quite like lizard.
Jojo, who now has two spindle-shaped ioun stones embedded in his headband and who is, probably relatedly, not eating, smiles.
"Deekin got no fourth level spells left, but Deekin not really need fourth level spells unless somebody get turned to stone, so Deekin okay leaving now."
"Deekin have Break Enchantment," Deekin corrects. "Slightly less reliable, much more versatile, bard can actually cast."
Once they've finished their meals or lack thereof, they head out. There's two large gates built into a narrow pass to the southwest of town; they swing open when the party informs the gate captain of their quest, and they continue into the caverns of the greater Underdark.
These are some pretty fucking massive caverns. Deekin mutters under his breath as they trek through, and there's the sound of a pen scratching on paper from within his bag: "As heroes trekked through Underdark caverns, Deekin wonder idly as to where Valsharess necromancers be getting bodies."
"Man, I don't know what bards can cast, there are like five of them on Golarion and I wouldn't have bet much on them being a whole coherent thing."
And:
"If they're skeletons I'd assume they're aftermarket from local meat consumption, if they're something else no idea."
"Huh! Belmarniss suggest skeletons be from eaten people," Deekin says for the benefit of the pen in his bag.
They continue on for the next few hours mostly in silence, Deekin occasionally muttering further notes. A couple of driders attempt to snare them in webbing and drain their blood, but they barely last long enough to regret their life choices.
Jojo calls a halt after several hours. "The map says we're almost there," he says, "only about a mile left. We don't know if there will be guards around the temple, or something like that, so I'm going to suggest we rest here. Agreed?"
"Agreed. Tomorrow morning I can prep keep watch if you guys want but I can't do it through my ring 'cause it's an enchantment even though it isn't fucky."