"You can have a room, miss, but your drow I don't want in here," says the woman behind the bar.

Tanya was braced for something like that. She swallows down her first response, and the one after that.

Being visibly angry won't help. Implicitly threatening someone in, a tiny village a thousand miles away from the capital, is beneath their dignity and also won't help.

Shaming her in front of the other people in the room... might help, especially if this woman doesn't happen to own the place and isn't supposed to be making decisions like that, and from a social perspective Tanya has nothing to lose here since the alternative is to leave the village entirely. But even if that somehow works, she doesn't really want to pressure the woman into accepting them because then she'd have to sleep here. A comfy bed isn't worth much if they still have to stand watch in the night.

"If my friend and I are not welcome here we will leave. When we pass other travelers on the road, I suppose we shall have to warn them of the poor reception we were met with. The baker and general-store clerk were perfectly polite" (in comparison) "so it's only the pub that justly deserves censure, and perhaps only the barwoman. Is it your policy to turn paying customers away from what should be a place of hospitality?" This presumably won't get her to change her mind, but maybe it will make her feel bad enough that she'll hesitate next time.

"Miss, I don't make my paying customers share a roof with a drow and there's no two ways about that."

If the other customers really are like that, there's nothing Tanya can do here that will make a difference. (What is she supposed to say here? 'You are bad, and should feel bad?' To a woman who claims she is respecting the will of the market?)

"A pity." She glances at Belmarniss. "Let's go, then."

However, Tanya is going to casually start flying on her way out of the pub. Just in case that makes someone regret turning away rich travelers, or offending powerful ones.

Well, the regret is at any rate not profound enough to get a "wait, come back".

"Must not get a lot of assholes throwing their weight around, hereabouts, that has to've taken nerve."

That is a good point. "I respect their courage, but I wish" - what? That it were in service of a better goal? The stated goal was respecting and fulfilling customer requirements!

"I wish people here were not biased against drow," she amends. "I expect the ones paying them for a night's stay aren't the ones raiding them, and if they are then denying them lodging is not the appropriate response. This serves nobody."

"I mean, it'd be sort of neat if I could go around with an alignment certificate, assuming perhaps incorrectly that I'm not officially Evil, and have that count for something, but most are."

A certificate that Belmarniss is not officially evil???

"Are the certificates issued by Taldor's government? They... legislated that drow as a group are 'evil' and award individual certificates to those allowed to stay in their country?" Tanya hazards. That is basically immigration control, just with a much worse name. The names given to laws and government programs often matter much more than they should to the electorate and are chosen accordingly, and this one isn't really a surprise considering what Tanya knew about Taldor's relationship with the drow.

"As far as I know there is no such certificate and if there were it'd probably come from a church, not the government. It'd just be convenient if the certificate existed and I could get one."

Ah. That is indeed worse. "Do you know anything about Taldor's immigration control or border enforcement? We didn't exactly come in through a border checkpoint..."

"Not really, no."

"Well, we can't help it. I suppose we shall find out in Cassomir, since it is on the border with Andoran."

"We can fly far enough today to reach another small village, if you're optimistic that some will be more welcoming and don't mind occasionally being turned down." Tanya minds but it's not her place to decide their plans based on that.

"We can also just camp out under a Tiny Hut but I'm up for trying another village if you are."

"I don't particularly look forward to trying other villages. And it's pleasant to be outdoors again. The accommodations will be better in bigger cities anyway, and we'll have enough time to enjoy them then."

When it's time to make camp, Tanya can look for a place that inquisitive night-time animals won't be able to reach easily. Something on the mountainside they're traveling along, maybe? Flying makes it easy to choose good camping spots. And the Tiny Hut provides shelter from the elements, so they don't have to look for somewhere out of the wind or rain.

They might still want a place that has not recently experienced rain so the ground won't be wet but otherwise yeah. They can find a good spot in the hills; might be traversed by sheep, but probably only during the day.

While Tanya's on watch she will endeavor to spot any aberrant night-time sheep long enough in advance to frighten them off before they can wake Belmarniss and cost her her spells.

No sheep, but a really quite remarkably giant wolf wanders near!

Shoo. Go look for sheep or something. Will it go away if she -

- actually, Tanya remembers to greet it and ask it to nod if it can understand her, first. And if it doesn't react, then she will try to frighten it away with very bright lights.

This wolf does not appear to respond intelligently to Taldane.

Well, will it go away if she (temporarily) blinds it? Tanya can kill it but there's no reason to.

That makes it mad! It snarls and lunges at her!

Sigh. Even the beasts are irrational here. She blows its head off with an optical spell.

Now it is headless and falls down dead.

And that's the problem Tanya was trying to avoid: the smell will attract more scavengers. She could set the body on fire, but that risks the fire spreading and will probably stinks horribly while burning unless she sets if on a lot of fire which will definitely spread.

Burying the body might work? It would be a lot of hassle, but she doesn't see a better way. So Tanya turns to her old and trusty friend: the military shovel. Cutting through the earth with a mage blade at its edge and throwing or carrying loads of earth using the flight spell is a marvel of efficiency compared to ordinary spadework in exercises where the use of magic is forbidden.

She dumps earth on the stump of the wolf's neck and the remains of its head until it's as covered as she can get it. Hopefully this will help. (Also hopefully, the gore explosion earlier didn't spatter Belmarniss? Tanya didn't have time to calibrate her shot very precisely.)