"What, are you secretly a demon? I get along with most folks who aren't."

"How very Good of you."

"Are we doing introductions? I'm Anevia. I'm an archer, a better one when I have two working legs. My wife and I moved to Kenabres about three years back. We'd done some adventuring, figured it was time to -" snort - "retire."

I'm Bella. Where I'm from psions aren't too uncommon and we often train to be therapists; I was in school for that before I was, uh, interrupted by an interplanar transport accident. That's basically true whichever way you look at it, right? So most of my skills aren't combat-relevant but I can knock people unconscious - unless they're demons, not safe to do anything to those - and talk to people telepathically and notice them through barriers and illusions and stuff.

"That'll be astoundingly useful, if we make it out of here alive."

"The Inquisition will adore you."

Her tone is very slightly mocking and both Anevia and Seelah make a little bit of a face.

" - anyway. I'm Seelah. I'm a paladin of Iomedae, and I defend the Kenabres Worldwound barrier, when I'm not stuck underground."

Is the Worldwound where all the demons are coming from? There were a really weird number of them up there.

" - oh right, you're from really really far away. So a hundred years ago, some terrible person tore a fifty-mile-wide rift to the Abyss open, and any demons who wanted to come through can, so of course lots of them did, and did horrible things as they're demons. And the forces of Good had to find a way to stop them, so they came up with the Wardstones, which have a powerful effect like a Forbiddance against demons, stops most of them crossing through and even the strong ones are weakened when they make it through. There's more than a hundred wardstones, in forts in a ring around the rift. And we patrol the barrier, and try to catch demons sneaking through so we can kill them while they're weakened. But some do sneak through, especially ones that can make themselves invisible and so on, those are hard to catch with patrols, so there's a lot more demons around here than most places."

Yikes!

"It's not great! And Kenabres was pretty safe, because it had Terendelev, but things are probably going to be pretty tough, now."

Lann comes back. "Chief Sull says the tribe can go into the maze at dawn. I worry that's too late."

"I don't want to leave your kids in danger, but if it's going to be a tough set of fights, then - yeah, we should take it in the morning. I'll have healing, Camellia'll have healing -"

"I can also prepare some spells in the morning that might help us."

"I guess. I just worry it'll be too late."

"I know. But you get into a fight you're unprepared for, you die and fail to help anyone. - you missed our introductions. I'm Seelah, a paladin of Iomedae. This is Anevia and Bella and we hadn't gotten to Camellia yet so it was news to me she can apparently prepare spells! Are you a wizard?"

"I am a shaman. The spirits of the land assist me. I was in Kenabres for the festival."

"And I'm Lann. The uplanders call us mongrels. We're descended from the heroes of the First Crusade, who fought alongside the angels."

Do you have an endonym?

" - we call ourselves neathers. But it's not a big deal, it doesn't really matter what people call us."

I'm used to it mattering a lot so I thought I'd ask.

I just don't want to get upset about stuff that isn't going to change.

"Right, Lann, do the mongrels mind if we spend the night here? And do you have anything we can sleep on, I completely forgot to pack my camping gear."

If we're done having conversations I need to understand and participate in, we should set up Anevia somewhere I can help her sleep.

Lann can get them set up in the tent of someone who is presently out. It'll be crowded, and the bedding is fungus, but it's warm and dry and Anevia will look considerably better as soon as she's no longer upright.