...He'll take it. The important part is that he's here, and the grain is here, it doesn't actually matter that some people are kind of angry with him. Not even that angry; they got their side of the deal just fine. Though he'll need to arrange cover fire again or some more Suggestions or something if the captain wants to leave port, probably.

He wanders around the city for a bit, just trying to get a general sense of what's going on. Charm Person is still in effect, so he can actually just ask the wizard he was speaking to previously where he is and what's being discussed right now, he'd also like to help with their plans from here if they're interested in that. 

The wizard is thinking that he hopes the new wizard thinks he's cool, and that he didn't get his name, and that maybe there's a way to win this thing after all. Though it's not actually any clearer than it was an hour ago what that would be, exactly.

Aww. 

I would like to sit down with your leadership and figure out how I can help, he tells the wizard. Aaaaand he needs a name - he doesn't want to use his real one, here - he'll have to tell the druid that he's worried about consequences to his family if the churches find out who he is back in Absalom, to call him by his pseudonym...

My name is Malduoni. He made it up on the spot. It sounds like a name a person would have. 

Onaku's in charge. She doesn't want to meet you yet but she said maybe later. She did say you are very welcome here. 

All right. Thank you. 

And since he's not doing anything else in particular right now, he might as well have his own look at the looted treasures, checking specifically for magic items (it's very easy, since he has Detect Magic literally always.) 

There are some feather tokens in here, and some paintings spelled to protect their durability and some books to protect them from harm, and twelve bottles of messages, and some tokens from the church of Sarenrae which assist in summoning specific agathions, presumably ones known to the church.

He'll take the feather tokens and half of the bottles of messages, because why not; he doesn't particularly want the books or paintings, unless any of the books are interesting in themselves (he really would like a look at whatever books are left from Nethys' library, but that can wait, maybe until after they've won some battles here.)

He wanders, skims surface thoughts, waits to see if he'll be summoned; if no one grabs him before sundown, he'll claim the dwelling that was offered to the druid, on the grounds that this presumably means it's available. 

It's a big fancy house whose owners evidently left in a hurry, adjacent to a temple that's been thoroughly ransacked. It has been pretty thoroughly ransacked itself, but there's still beds to sleep on and the thick stone walls mean it's nice and cool.

It's a reminder of the cost of civil wars. A house that could have belonged to a family like his. He dwells on that, but not for long, and he doesn't bother shedding tears over it. Not now. 

He sets an alarm-spell on the room and goes to sleep. 

No one disturbs his sleep.

In the morning he prepares his spells; roughly the same mix as yesterday, Fly and Invisibility will be useful again to check what the churches are up to. He treks around looking for someone vaguely in charge who he can ask about scouting. 

Most of the people on street corners are uniformed, and can direct him to their superiors. Eventually he can be told that he should talk to Onaku; she's in charge, and said this morning she'll see him. 

She seems to have taken over a government building in the center of town; there are uniformed people going in and out

He tries to figure out if there's a guard or something who he's supposed to greet and ask for an audience with her, or if he's expected to just walk right in. 

"They're expecting you," someone says to him, nodding at the door.

He heads in. When he arrives at the room where she's set up, he nods and and bids her good morning rather than try to imitate whatever salute is customary here. 

She appears to be a woman of forty or fifty. She smiles at him. "I hear that you've come to join our cause." 

She is thinking that there are more opportunists than idealists, in the world, but they need help and maybe there's a way to use it, and some people by pretending to possess ideals come eventually to possess them sincerely. 

That's a very reasonable worry for her to have and he can hardly object to it; if she's more comfortable thinking of him as that, which she might well be, he can oblige her. "I wish to help. For personal reasons, and - well, it is also an opportunity to obtain some rare books from the libraries of Nethys, and such things. Anyway. I have third-level spells now and expect I will soon be able to cast at fourth-level if I do much fighting. These are the things I can do..." 

He doesn't give her the complete list; he lets it seem like he only has Detect Thoughts and Detect Magic when he casts them, the permanent versions are incredibly rare, and he doesn't mention that Lesser Geas is already in his spellbook; he certainly doesn't go into how many weird other spell variants he has, far more spells in total than most wizards. He does say that his advantage here, given the kind of spells he's good at, is probably more for undercover work than combat.

"For today, I can fly invisibly over the churches for about six minutes, and tell you what they are up to, and in select cases what they are thinking." 

"That would be useful. We don't want a fight, here, we want to talk them into leaving. At least some of them. It's interesting that they - consider themselves allied, as soon as anyone says that men ought to be free and not in bondage to the gods."

"Yes, indeed. They are not that firmly allied, I think; there were a great many arguments I overheard, when the ship was on its way in, some of them wanted to shoot at it partly because that would damage the cause of whichever church they thought was covering up having arranged it. I suspect that if I learn more, something will come to my attention that will tell us what they need to hear in order to be convinced to leave." 

"Well. I wish you the best of luck with that. You came here apprised, I hope, of our first law."

"Yes, of course." He's looking her in the eye and for an instant the haunted, distant look that bothered Parmida so much is there, strongly, but then it fades. 

(Walking out, he's wondering, vaguely, if it counts that he is and always will be beholden to himself.) 

The druid already has some plants poking their heads tentatively above the soil; he is using Create Water to mist them, in between filling buckets for people. 

Aroden - now Malduoni - nods to him cordially. "If you would be so kind as to refer to me as Malduoni, that is the name I gave them here - I do not want my real name connected to this, if I stay long, I have a family in Absalom, some of these gods also have churches there." 

And then he casts Fly and zooms into the air, becoming invisible a few moments later. 

The churches are mostly spread out so their forces needn't interact with each other, on the three sides of the city of Azir that don't face the sea.

That bodes well for fragmenting their uneasy alliance, but he's not sure if that's what he wants to do.

It's also irritating for scouting on a time-limited spell. He divides it; he can afford about a minute of hovering above each camp, gauging their general level of magic stuff and listening in on minds, preferentially the important people.