Yep! The captain stomps over to him, actually. "I hope you have a plan to get us out of here that's better than your plan to get us in here."

Aroden looks untroubled. (He is in fact untroubled by the man's anger because he's mostly thinking about various higher priorities, and also the captain being angry with him isn't really affecting his goals here.) 

"I will arrange for a distraction so that none of their clerics are near the port, and alert someone here when it is a good time for you to move. Also, Fireball is fairly limited range, and you do not need to pretend to make for their port, so this time you could peel away the opposite direction first." He's fairly sure that if the churches did have better ranged attacks they would have demonstrated it on the ships arrival, but it's remotely possible there are some spells that the clerics have and hadn't bothered to prepare, but might now. "Will you be ready to leave tomorrow? I will need to prepare spells specially for this, so cannot do it today, but I could do something then." 

Sigh. "Sure. First thing tomorrow, we're already behind schedule because we had to travel farther than planned."

"Of course." He nods to the captain and then heads back toward Onaku's office building. 

She looks precisely the same as the previous day. "Citizen," she says when Malduoni enters.

He nods politely to her and then reports everything he learned from Norgorber's camp. Since he knows his way around now, if he goes in future he'll instead fly invisibly to a central spot and camp out where he isn't visible, to save on spells. He can try getting into some of the others as well, if that's helpful. 

"I think it would be helpful," she says. "Ideally some of them - probably not Norgorber's - are persuadable to go somewhere they're wanted. Can your druid treat disease, if they do try that?"

"Yes. We should also attempt prevention - the plan I overheard with any specifics included sending in diseased animals, so perhaps you could instruct your people to kill any animals seen entering the city, from a distance, and burn their bodies." Sigh. "I also need to attempt some sort of diversion first thing tomorrow morning, to pull as many of their clerics as possible away from the shoreline so that our boat captain can depart unmolested. I will try to do something that is as non-obviously a wizard's work as possible, of course, and it might also present an opportunity for me to learn more." 

"Do you have an idea at this point of your aims here?"

"In the specifics or more generally? I am mostly still gathering information. I would like to find out if they are in fact being supplied by Asmodeus. If so, I can perhaps arrange them to discover this, it would disturb at least Sarenrae's church and might convince them to leave. In the longer term, I want to coordinate with your existing strategy. I am interested in staying - several months, to start, and see how much can be accomplished in that time." 

She nods briskly. "We'll be glad to have you."

He nods. "Should I run my plan for a diversion by you when I think of one?" 

"I would certainly appreciate it," she says dryly. "We have other wizards, and it'll be useful to be able to coordinate more than we have so far."

"I would like to speak with them and figure out what spells they have and such. If there was any of the appropriate ink found in the city, I can perhaps share some of my spells with them, I was a teacher of magic before and so I have a very wide range even of the first-level ones." 

" - huh! I will let them know of that; I expect many of them would be eager for the opportunity. And we're trying to teach more people magic - we think you can make up for some of the things done by the church with the magic of Men - so if you want to look at our lessons that would be appreciated too."

"I can definitely do that!" He likes it much better than the idea of sneaking into enemy camps, which he can only do a small amount of the day anyway before running out of spells. "I think you are correct that arcane magic can replace many functions of divine magic, if used cleverly. You may also want to recruit more druids since they have more cleric-like spells at lower levels." 

"I'd love to but I wouldn't know where to start. I don't think Rahadoum has a druidic order natively."

"If this one likes it here, then perhaps I can have him write letters of recommendation for acquaintances of his, and when I go back to Absalom - I am going to wish to do so at some point, certainly inside of six months - I can pass word on." If the resistance lasts six months. But it doesn't seem doomed, yet. 

"I think we do have a lot to offer them. More if we can get the damned churches off our backs."

"I think so too." 

If she has nothing else to add, he'll ask to be directed to whichever of their wizards he should be coordinating with, and head off to think about how he can use his limited spells to make a diversion that doesn't give away his capabilities. 

He can coordinate with their head of magical defenses, who is a wizard of his same level but specialized in magical traps and busy laying them on the city walls. "There are four of us," he explains. "I do this, Omar does Fireballs, Karim and Saad do invisibility and on one occasion we all teamed up to assassinate someone with magic missiles but since then they've kept their forces farther back than that."

This seems like a useful partnership given that he's specialized in a very different direction! At this point he thinks his magic is best used getting into the camps and spying. Also he suspects he's very close to fourth-level spells and has a couple lined up; if he gets there he'll be able to cast Lesser Geas and maybe get the church leadership to - make preferred decisions - that way. In the meantime he's limited to Suggestion, which could work but only if it's pushing in a direction their thoughts were already headed. 

Do they have ideas for planning a defence of the captain's departure?

Well, with invisibility and Fly they could totally pull off the magic-missile assassinations thing again. And maybe set some fires? Fires are very distracting, especially to clerics all of whom can usefully put them out.

Fires are a good idea, especially if they can make it look possible that the rebels set them without having a flying person. He doesn't yet have a specific person he wants to assassinate and thinks he might at some point in the future and would prefer to save the invisible-flying-missile combo for that.

Maybe they can also have Omar ready to throw some fireballs if the churches do get clerics near enough to shore to go after the boat? Malduoni has the advantage of permanent Detect Thoughts, which lets him sense where people are, so he can check the clerics' movements. He also knows how to use Charm Person to pass a message to whoever he has Charmed - it doesn't normally work that way but he was a teacher and scholar so he did a lot of experiments with it - and his plan was to make sure the clerics were, in fact, distracted and then alert someone who can signal to the captain to depart. 

Can any of them do actual invisibility or an illusion over the ship? ...He thinks maybe throwing a fireball at the water would serve a similar purpose by making a lot of steam, really all they need is to wreck visibility just in case any clerics are close enough to fire on the ship. 

One of them knows Obscuring Mist!