He's a thrush. His name is Nex. She can interview him if she doesn't mind that he has bird-like interests.

...Any operationally relevant questions?

On what time scale are they doing this, can they employ Dyra for a detour and maybe even see her back home first?

The plan is to depart immediately after breakfast. If it would be easiest for him to bring Dyra along, and she agrees after being informed of the risks, they can bring her to the Tower of Estrod and leave her in the entrance hallway.

(Woljif will discreetly message him to let him know that, given where their errand is, it would not save time to bring her to the Tower.)

...how much time is allocated for breakfast, if Blai just brings a slice of bread to eat while he walks can they make their side trip -

Twenty minutes.

Theyyyyy can make that if everything goes perfectly, including all the roads being where they're supposed to. All the paladins have big armor that'll slow them down, they could split off and catch up with them? Or they could wait, he doesn't mind waiting an extra couple hours.

In that case Blai will eat his breakfast sitting down and apologize to Dyra about the delay. He would be more tempted to push it if the thieflings knew a secret passage into the tower, but it's the garrison they're most helpful with.

Sorry chief, the people who sleep in the Garrison (normally, not the demons) are soldiers, the guy who sleeps in the Tower is an old bookish-scholar type, one of those cares way more about getting alcohol smuggled in than the other. (The Tower's curator way more books that are technically illegal in Mendev, but he can leave the tower to do it.)

Once they have eaten breakfast, they can all set out for the Tower of Estrod! The demons are smart enough to steer clear of this many armed people.

The ghosts are still there.

"Fate shows" (flicker) "mercy."

 "Stand shoulder to shoulder."

One of the paladins looks at the 'stand shoulder-to-shoulder' ghost. "Kinda looks like the big painting of Yaniel in the temple."

are they giving him wings again. please no

No wings, at least not yet. Nenio turns the crusader's familiar invisible; a minute later it reports back that the Tower is roughly as expected, albeit with slightly more demons and slightly fewer cultists. (From the report, it seems likely that the assassin found his target; it also seems that instead of having both Deskarans and Baphomites, there are now only Baphomites.) The rumored minotaur is not present.

Great. No wings, pretty-much-as-expected field of battle. Blai will cast buffs and go to locations.

Now everyone is buffed and in a location!

The archers bring down the caster in half a moment before the demons even have the chance to notice their presence. They sure seem to have noticed their presence now, though.

Grease.

Web.

Burst of Radiance.

And charge!

...There's a web here. She knew there was going to be a web here, which really makes it more embarrassing that she's stuck in it.

The demons and cultists that are not prone, webbed, or too blind to know where to aim will attempt to fight back! (This is about a quarter of them.) Apart from one dretch (who is, perhaps unsurprisingly, dropping a Stinking Cloud on the area), they are mainly going for the scary archers who just killed their boss. Killing the guy who killed your boss is a good way to be the next boss.

He drops a Prayer on the thick of it and then starts swinging. Hopefully the Prayer will help Seelah get out.

Gradually, more of the demons and cultists manage to pick themselves up and start attacking. They're still mostly going for the archers, but a couple of them go after Blai or Seelah or other easier-to-reach melee people, and one of the abrikandilu is targeting Count Arendae. A different abrikandilu drops an archer while she's lining up a shot; a schir, despite the lack of attention it had been paying when they entered, manages to land a particularly good hit on Blai; another archer is too busy trying to get out of the Stinking Cloud to dodge a vermlek's sword; a cultist manages to get ahold of his holy symbol and channel. Even so, they've dropped the demons within a few moments.

He casts some Stabilizes and then helps get the demons definitely all the way dead and not just dying and then is someone on the channel? Probably not him since he has only two and is going to excurse to a necromancer later?

The Count cannot conceive of circumstances under which he would spend eight channels in a single fight against a necromancer; he can handle the channel.

The archer-paladin who dropped to the abrikandilu is pretty sure it injured her in some way that a channel won't fix, but at least she's less injured now. It's great how the Count is actually making himself useful for once.

The non-Blai's-party members of the strike team think they can handle the Tower from here, if Blai's party has other things to get to. (They're not going to be pushy about it. They've worked with plenty of adventurers, they know how adventurers can be.)