"That's a damn weird way to run things. Do they, what, let you pick who they take?"

"Oh no no no, but they like volunteers, it's all a touch easier if no one's kicking and screaming I think, though I can't be sure, perhaps there's some grand mystical reason. You might want to wear rags so they're not suspicious, you can get some from our rag merchant, she'll sell you some rags no trouble."

"That's very kind of her. Why do you expect this to be the best way to get to the temple, is just walking there not a good idea for some reason?"

"Well there's a door you see, and it's made of steel, and it's guarded by mohrgs, and it's locked. Again I don't know your resources but I suspect that trickery may be easier than a frontal assault."

"Mohrgs! Good to know! What else like that can you tell us?"

He starts ticking off on his fingers. "The priests are vampires, or at least they're very pale and obsessed with blood, it could be a coincidence I suppose, many things in this world are strange. The High Priest is named Sodalis, and he'll likely be the one who comes to collect you. The priests worship and force us to pretend to worship a being called Vix'thra. We don't know what Vix'thra actually is, which makes worship rather confused, but we know the apostrophe is quite important."

"Let's assume it's not a coincidence. Any guess what level they are? Or spells you've seen them cast so we can guess."

He shakes his head. "The only one I've seen in person is Sodalis, and he doesn't cast spells out here where we can see him. Presumably he can make mohrgs, on account of how there's mohrgs, but I doubt that's the extent of his powers."

"Okay. Anything else you know? You've been very helpful."

"Well, thank you, I haven't had the chance to be helpful to anyone in quite some time, I mostly just try to make people more comfortable with their circumstances. Please do succeed in killing the priests and if possible their god; I'd rather they not torture me to death for helping you."

"That is so totally reasonable of you."

Cordigan hurries away.

As they approach the temple, they can see the mohrgs guarding the heavy iron door. They can also see a gong just outside the entrance.

Deekin examines the Draconic runes carved into the gong. "Looks like prayer to Vix'thra... whoever that be. Says basically what Cordigan said, ringing gong draws eye of Vix'thra and all must gather for sacrifice."

"I'm kinda tempted to kill the mohrgs first and then ring the gong."

"What be Belmarniss's reasoning? Deekin can bluff way out of 'new folks ring gong and want be sacrificed', 'new folks kill mohrgs and ring gong and want be sacrificed' maybe harder."

"Just not having to fight them simultaneously. The door has to open when the gong rings whether we're convincing or not, we could rush it, it's not far. But we can go with that if you guys want."

"Hmmm... I think my worry is that he'll get some kind of feedback if they're destroyed, and then have time to prepare for us before he comes out. Which would be bad."

"Legit, I don't know a ton about necromancy so maybe that's likely."

"If I were a necromancer, even if I didn't have some kind of ongoing connection with my minions I'd probably cast Status on my guards so I knew in advance if someone was coming for my head. It just seems like an obvious safeguard."

"Status doesn't work on undead," Enserric points out.

"If I were a necromancer I would develop a version of Status that works on undead," Jojo corrects himself, "and then cast it on my guards."

"Well, do we suppose these are the spell developing type? I don't know how common that is on this planet, it's pretty far out on Golarion."

"My mentor developed a few spells," Enserric reminisces. "Whenever he had nothing else to do with his spell slots for that day he'd tinker with something; his favorite was an upgraded Prestidigitation with better area of effect but requiring a first-level slot. The whole process was expensive and tedious, but not particularly dangerous, as far as I could tell - if I had the kind of free time vampires have, I'd probably have gotten into it myself."

"Okay. We want to gamble on how timely they are about their sacrifice collection?"

"I doubt this Sodalis would worry about delaying the ceremony long enough to enhance his defenses if he knew his temple was under attack," Jojo says. "Will we be pretending to be sacrifices, or merely ringing the gong to draw out the High Priest?"

"We're not an especially plausible bunch of sacrifices even if we buy rags from the rag merchant."