"Oh, I see. And Kaelyn's not a member of your faith, so she could go inside freely. All right, I'll look for her if I get the chance. But it'll have to wait for nightfall before I can, if she's in the Plane of Shadow, and depending on how close Okku's army is by then, it might end up being wiser for me to start the battle early before he can gather more spirits. You might be wise to also try to find someone else that can help find her, but I understand if I'm..." she glances at the nearby people that have been giving her dirty and suspicious looks, "probably your best hope. I'll do what I can, all right?"

Susah nods, awkwardly sidestepping the "Kaelyn having abandoned her faith" issue. "Thank you. That is all we can truly ask."

"We will be very grateful to once more lay eyes upon our beloved sister," Efrem adds, "and convince her to return to the fold."

Susah elbows him.

"Ow!" he says.

"Don't burden the lady with family business," Susah hisses.

Ciaveth suspects that Kaelyn might have had reasons to go to a specific place her siblings couldn't follow, but doesn't observe this out loud.

"Good fortune to you in your search," she says, because she doesn't actually know the thing to say to followers of Kelemvor, and nobody really dislikes extra help from Tymora.

The siblings are not offended, and thank her again before heading off to investigate the sights of Mulsantir.

"Interesting... did you notice the symbols on their armor?" Safiya asks. "Those weren't mere Kelemvor-worshippers, they were bona fide Doomguides. And half-celestials, too, if I'm not mistaken. They could be powerful allies."

"They could be, and I'll welcome their help if we can manage it, but... I'm not so sure their sister would want to return willingly, if we did find her. What with how she went to a place they specifically can't follow her because of their faith."

"Admittedly, that is potentially a confounding factor, but we should at least ask her. She may have had a good reason... besides the desire to avoid her family and their religious pestering."

"Yeah, I'm just saying I'm not willing to drag a woman kicking and screaming back through all of Shadow Mulsantir and then ordinary Mulsantir just to get their help. Not that I'm not going to investigate. Of course I'm going to investigate, I'm an adventurer, investigating is basically my job, and there's going to be an army out to kill me soon!"

"I think we're on the same page about all of that," Safiya says. "Besides, I'll admit to a certain amount of curiosity regarding this Death God's Vault. If we must be in Mulsantir, we may as well see the sights, no?"

"And systematically raid the less beloved sights for shiny things to sell so we can buy more appropriate shiny things for ourselves," agrees Ciaveth, sagely. "... And also making it safe for people and stuff. Ahem."

"Definitely on the same page," Safiya nods.

Ciaveth grins. "Now! Off to prison, that'll likely be the easiest place to recruit, considering."

The prison's pretty easy to locate; it's one of the only buildings in the city with its doors open, and there's a gibbet out front.

"What a charming piece of local flavor."

"Eh, it's more honest than Neverwinter, at least," shrugs Ciaveth. "There, you can go through a whole trial with evidence and arguments and everything, and then at the end someone can go 'Oh by the way, I declare Trial By Combat,' and the whole evidence thing is rendered null and void and you get to prove your innocence by showing how good you are at killing people. Honestly, this is much more palatable."

Is she bitter about this aspect of Neverwinter's justice system? Yes. Yes, she is bitter, and offended, and it personally burned her the once and she managed to personally prove her innocence in both the Trial and the Trial By Combat, but it was still incredibly wrong that she had to do the latter after having done the former at all.

"How... completely arbitrary," Safiya says. "Trial by combat? Is this because of their unnatural preoccupation with Tyr?"

"I have," she says seriously, "no idea. But it was very offensive. Along with how if you were not sworn to serve Neverwinter and therefore of Neverwinter's high class, they would not actually lift a finger to defend you from false enemy charges and would instead just ship you off to a foreign city to have a mock trial and summary execution. Until you swear an oath of fealty to Lord Nasher, the king-who-doesn't-call-himself-a-king of Neverwinter. Then you get to actually have a trial where they decide if you're innocent or not."

Is she bitter about this part of Neverwinter's justice system? Yes, very. Is it because it personally burned her? Yes, absolutely. She is very bitter and she has excellent reason to be.

"Or at least a trial where they decide provisionally if you're innocent," Safiya says. "That sounds utterly deranged. At least in Thay, we're sensibly corrupt. Bribes and spurious charges, not invalidating a trial because the defendant can't stab someone effectively or extraditing someone to our enemies because they're not nobility."

"See, that's still offensive, but that's less infuriating and at least more navigable. I navigated through Neverwinter's politics, but I really couldn't get through it without wondering if the fallen paladin Aribeth de Tylmarande didn't have the right idea all along. With how she tried to burn the city down." She coughs. "Anyway. Onwards to prison?"

"Onwards. To the prison."

Inside the prison, at the front desk, is another masked witch, this one even older than Sheva Whitefeather. "As you have disturbed the spirits," she mutters, "you now disturb me. For what reason are you here, foreigner?"

"Sheva Whitefeather said I could find help here against the Spirit Army. Was I mistaken?"

"You certainly are if you seek aid from these villains. But if you wish to persist in this foolishness, you may speak with the prisoners. Be warned: of the three in this cage, two you need not fear, but around the third... guard your thoughts."

"... From what, precisely? Telepathy, psionics? Do you have a mindflayer in here?"

"He's no mindflayer, our third prisoner," the witch says sourly. "But he has ways of seeing things he shouldn't."

Safiya's already halfway across the room, examining the runes of warding around the enclosed room where the third prisoner is kept. "Abjuration... obviously. But not of the obvious sort. This is closer to a Dimensional Anchor than Mind Blank. And... hmm." She doesn't elaborate in front of the witch.

Well now Ciaveth's curious, so she trails after Safiya to peer at the runes. .... Oh. Oh. These are. These are not good. Not in the sense that they speak of a particularly dangerous prisoner, but in the sense that they're actually kind of just bad at doing... whatever they're trying to do. They tried to change the properties of Mind Blank to extend to travelling through... the astral plane...? some place of dreams, maybe? but honestly this is just a mess and wouldn't do much at all...

... except, hm, this isn't the whole thing, some of it's inside the room, so if they open this door and peer inside...

There is a surprisingly lovely man with odd coloration, napping on a bed of furs in the middle of the circle, looking to all the world like he's quite happy to be there. At the sound of the door opening, he gives a somewhat grumpy huff and opens an eye to look at his visitors.

"Huh," says Ciaveth, who is too busy looking at the runes to pay attention to the person inside. "That is very interesting."