"I shall strike you from the list of emergency rations."

“I would normally assume berserk rage is incompatible with monkish powers, but you have been full of surprises…”

"You have yet to see me in a serious fight."

"Let me know when you plan on getting into one, I'll send a bard!"

Daeran will fall back into his pattern of small talk and quips.  It is really quite boring down here and Darth Occlus is the most interesting person around.

Wenduag will patiently wait around.  She only tries to join in on Daeran's small talk once or twice.

Lann finds himself getting gradually angrier as he thinks about Wenduag luring their tribemates to their death (or horrific transformation).  He almost wishes some demons or something would show up.

After another hour, Terendelev is back.  She glides down carefully through the chasm.

"Anything to report?  Sorry for my delay checking in, my sense was that Darth Occlus had this situation under control.  The fighting aboveground is chaotic, but I've got the defense organized enough to sweep the city building by building, and the demons and cultists are mostly in retreat or in hiding."

"The demon attacks have dropped off," Occlus says to the dragon. Her tone is one of sharing information with a peer, rather than reporting. "There was an attempted assault by a group of cultists from a place they called the Shield Maze, in the caverns below your city. We took two prisoners who may have helpful information regarding surfacer cultists. And two of the so-called Neathers showed up," she indicates Lann and Wenduag, "not hostile, and claiming to be descended of crusaders. That one has knowledge of the Maze's layout, and some of their kin may yet be held captive within. There was reported to be a vrolikai called Savamelekh there, if the name means anything to you, though it left before the assault. My suspicion is that it fled when Minagho was killed, as did others on the surface."

"I don't know that name in particular.  But I know about Vrolikai.  They have constant true seeing, several useful spell like abilities, and a gaze that drains the life of anyone that meets it eyes.  Are you able to fight effectively with your eyes closed?  And among their spell like abilities, they often have a symbol of death, which slays everyone not above a sufficient level of resiliency.  Even as powerful as you are, I'm not certain you would survive it, it would depend on your exact fortitude.  Symbols of death can be set with various activation conditions, including reading them or passing too close to them, so the extreme speed you've shown that can beat spellcasters wouldn't help as much against a Vrolikai with a symbol set to go off.  In practice it would need a trigger condition that wouldn't be accidentally activated by nearby cultists...  Anyway, we should probably raid this Shield Maze, but we will want to do so while under the effects of the spell Death Ward, to protect ourselves."

She feels kind of vindicated for warning them all about Savamelekh!

"I do not require vision to fight. As for the symbol of death... I expect an attack so deadly as you say would have enough resonance that I could discern the activation condition and avoid it. Still, a precautionary measure is not unreasonable."

"I'll trust that you know your own abilities.  Hmm... do you think they might have any useful information we could recover at this Shield Maze?  Or that they might use it as a point to regroup or rally?  I'm trying to decide if we raid it sooner or later..."

"We captured a few cultists" she nods at the tied up cultists "and interrogated them with the help of Darth Occlus's abilities.  We've learned they had some plan to corrupt the Wardstone such that it damages the entire Wardstone line, and we got a bunch of smaller details"  Anevia rattles off (from memory) the names of cultists they learned.  And I think Darth Occlus was pretty confident she could detect lies?  She looks to Darth Occlus.

That all seems accurate to her memory. No intentional lies, but of course if one is misinformed and unaware, they would not believe themself to be lying.

"Right, so I'm not sure how much extra information the Shield Maze itself would bring in..."

She's kind of scared of implicitly identifying herself as associated with the cultists to the dragon, but she wants to prove herself loyal and useful so...

"Hosilla was often writing down things or receiving written messages, many of the Baphomet cultists could read and write.  She kept tabs on many groups of cultists within the city, even those, perhaps especially those, that were not under her chain of command.  I don't think all of them knew of the Shield Maze's location, but those under Hosilla's direct command certainly did."

She isn't sure why the mongrel-tiefling knows so much about the cultists but isn't tied up with the other two cultists, but she trusts Anevia.

"Then I think I will go and retrieve a few scrolls of death ward we have at the Cathedral.  Darth Occlus, would you be willing to aid me once I return in raiding this Shield Maze?  Actually... what is the best approach to the Shield Maze?"

"I know of one approach underground, I couldn't say if it is the best approach, I think they have something that comes up to the city but I don't know where it is.  Maybe one of your prisoners do?"

One of them is rapidly running through his memory on his deal to try to decide if he actually owes it, and trying to think if it would get him a better chance to escape.

The other is trying to figure if he gets a better confessor is he helps with this.

"That is agreeable." She would like to see what a stronger demon is capable of, if the vrolikai turns out to still be there. That Minagho was... disappointing, other than its handful of tricks, and of course there is no need to mention the dregs that have occasionally been interrupting for the time she's been down here.

She pushes on the mind of the one thinking about a confessor. Surely the authorities would be grateful. Surely they will show this by helping him reach the best afterlife. They may even shield him from further interrogation by Prelate Hulrun.

"I know about the exit that comes out right underneath the Gray Garrison!  But I think they are probably guarding that one carefully, so you might want to use the one they use the one mongrels use underground."

"Alright, I will meet you back here in a quarter hour and we can have the mongrel guide us."

She is a Neather, but she doesn't have the nerve to correct a dragon.

"I will await your return."

And in the meantime, probe Wenduag for initial details of the path they will be taking.

She can provide not only the initial details (the underground parts outside the Shield Maze have giant insects and such, but these should be trivial to Darth Occlus) but also a detailed description of the Shield Maze's layout, noting various important parts to it ("they were planning an expansion in that direction with called Earth Elementals so I don't know the exact details on that part if they finished", "the main chamber is where ceremonies with Neathers being inducted were performed", "I was never allowed into that room, and it is likely trapped, the cult has at least a bit of occasional infighting and people ready to challenge Hosilla is she showed weakness").

She'll also note the number of unique faces she saw (there are quite a bit more than gathered to attack the Wardstone, but most of them are likely operating in the city above).  None of the other cultists were more powerful than Hosilla unless someone totally new is at the Shield Maze.