He lands in the middle of... well, absolute chaos.

There's furniture upended, some of it on fire. A bookcase has been pulled down and shoved in front of a door, and most of its contents are now smoldering, spreading little brushfires along the carpet.

There's also several grotesque-looking little men attempting to stab an equally little but rather more distinguished man, with downy white fur all over his body and a gentle, mousey face screwed up in fear. He wears the robe of a holy man, some kind of rosary with an unfamiliar symbol around his neck.

He's defending himself competently against their attack, barehanded though he may be; he's clearly trained in some martial art. There are three of them, though, with swords. So he's not winning - though the fighting seems to have paused while the combatants figure out why there is now a Hob in their midst.

Huh. Well that's sure... several new types of guy that there are. With real swords? He hasn't seen anyone do a sincere attempted murder with an actual sword since the first Great War??

"Hwæt þe shite?"(*) he says, and then picks up a flaming book from the ground and pitches it with surprising force at the nearest sword-wielder's nose. 

(*) Translators' Note: He is in fact speaking modern English, but this is roughly what it sounds like to the locals.

The sword-wielder's nose breaks impressively, and his head snaps back as he falls to the ground, squealing in agony. (He drops the sword in favor of clutching his face.)

The distraction and the reduction in odds against the mouse-man give him an opening, which he takes to kick one of the sword-wielders in the stomach, then pivot and punch the other in the sternum. They go down, and he relaxes his stance.

"Thank you for your help," he says, in... a language that really shouldn't sound as English-like as it does, frankly. "It didn't look like you arrived here on purpose, but with all due sympathies, I can't say I'm sorry you did."

He's midway through casting about for another improvised weapon when he realizes this is no longer required. He blinks and relaxes, peering with fascination at the little mouse guy. He sounds like he's... John Tolkien's secret pet project to find out what modern English would evolve into by the year 5,000 AD, or something. One would do that sort of thing with mice, right, short generations and - not important, worry about it later. 

"Yeah, I have no idea what happened, but, uh, glad to help, you did not seem like you were doing anything that obviously justified a murder attempt. Where am I, please?"

His best guess is that he is on Mars, judging from the little green dudes, but this will sound both stupid and racist if he says it out loud and is wrong, so.

"The academy in Neverwinter, on the Sword Coast - and, um, I don't want to be rude, but can we leave the fine details for later? I have an urgent task to complete, and more of the building is on fire already than I'm entirely comfortable with."

This is clearly an understatement; he's visibly distressed, as if this building holds some moderate significance to him. Not a childhood home, necessarily, but maybe a hometown institution.

The academy in -

Right, the problem of 'where the fuck even is that' is temporarily shelved in favor of the realization that the person in front of him is a frightened student whose school is on fire. It is now Professor Gadling's job to protect him, obviously.

"Oh. Yeah, of course, absolutely, how can I help?"

A hopeful smile colonizes a small but significant region of the student's terrified expression. "Thank you. Um, if you've any skill with a blade, you could help me fight the goblins and undead along the way? Or - if that's too much, I mean, I don't want to press you into service, you've helped plenty already -"

(The hopeful smile experiences unexpected resistance from the native terror.)

In most situations he would cheerfully deny having any knowledge of how to operate a sword, seeing as his current identity has no reason to have that skill. However in this situation, doing that would disappoint this small and earnest creature who is clearly trying very hard under deeply adverse circumstances, which just seems unacceptable.

So instead he puts on the warm and encouraging smile normally reserved for anxious grad students who are freaking out that their objectively very clever thesis isn't good enough. "I know what it's like to be drafted, my friend. You are in no danger of doing it accidentally by asking very politely."

He picks up one of the goblins' dropped swords and weighs it somewhat dubiously in his hand. Short, broad, stabby sort of thing, clearly made for swarming somebody bigger than you in a group and getting inside their reach. Not ideal for the exact opposite use case.

"Like a longer blade if I can find one," he says, "but I can work with this. Goblins and undead, huh? We talking zombies or vampires?"

"Skeletons, thank the gods," the student shivers. "Vampires are more than I want to deal with. - I'm Jojo, by the way. I can lead the way to... well, my objective... there's a plague and we're under attack because someone doesn't want us to cure it. I need to protect the - the components - alright, they're not components, I need to go protect the creatures we need to extract the components from, most of whom are entirely consenting and the other is going to be released as soon as we've got the cure, it sounds very morally ambiguous and that's because it is but there is a plague and we need it cured and I'm babbling. Sorry."

"Wow, okay. How is there always somehow yet another fucking asshole who wants there to be plagues, no reasonable person likes plagues, they are the worst. Nice to meet you, though, Jojo, circumstances aside. I'm, uh - "

He's tempted to improvise an entire fake identity on the spot, honestly. But if this is superhero bullshit, and falling through a dimensional wormhole into an entire plague in a city he's never heard of complete with alchemical shenanigans and hostile animate skeleton armies probably is, the Justice League will notice if he tells obvious lies. He's equipped to tell them non-obvious lies, sometimes, you can't have that much money and not either commit to the Lexcorp strategy or be chill with Batman periodically auditing you, but his intentionally extremely boring corporate arm normally handles that by actually not behaving in a suspicious manner or touching any of their things. Too late, already emotionally invested.

There's very much a detectable and somewhat anxious pause in his sentence while he thinks all that.

" - my name's Robert Gadling. Sounds like a great objective to me, lead the way." 

Jojo giggles nervously. "I know, how are there so many people who want plagues - I wonder sometimes if it's just their only way of getting something more comprehensible that they want, if that could be satisfied somehow with the resources of a god who wants everyone happy? But I've never spoken to an open Talonite so I suppose it'll remain an academic question."

He moves out, listening at the door for a moment before opening it. Then he hurries down the hallway, expecting Hob to be able to keep up what with his significantly longer legs.

Hob indeed can follow along briskly, keeping an eye and ear out for sounds that might be supernatural bullshit.

"What's a talonite?" he wonders as he does. "Honestly, can't decide whether it'd be more worrying if the answer is you have a specific evil plague cult here or if your weird dialect has an entire generic noun for 'person who wants there to be plagues'." 

"Oh, Talona is the goddess of plague and disease in general," Jojo says. "Talonites worship her. I suppose where you're from you might be under some other area of concern."

Hob has read a frankly unhealthy number of books about obscure gods and is aware that his planet of origin does indeed have a couple of those, but his understanding had been that usually one prays to such entities in hopes of fewer, rather than more, diseases. "...You have a nonspecific evil plague cult here. Terrible, okay."

Wry smile. "Evil gods are terribly inconvenient that way." Then he freezes, his fur puffing out slightly. "- I hear scraping down that hallway," he whispers. "Maybe the skeletons. Unfortunately that's our route."

Careful pause, listening headtilt. "Sharp ears," he murmurs, impressed. "Get close as we can, then you go left I go right?" 

It's been... several centuries... since Hob has been a professional thief, and he cannot walk as quietly as a literal mouse, but he can make a respectably close attempt.  

"Good idea. Hopefully they won't be very tactical - skeletons without a master nearby don't tend to be."

Sneak sneak sneak. The skeletons, once they become visible, are yellowed and cracked with age and don't really look that intimidating, once you account for the sheer how is that thing moving factor. They get closer than one might expect, before one of the skulls creaks around to look at them -

and Jojo blurs into motion and splinters the skull with the palm of his hand. Bones clatter to the floor; if Hob wants a surprise attack on one of the remaining skeletons, he'd best act quickly.

Those sure are... actual moving skeletons made of actual dead bones, yikes. Well. Nothing for it but to make them stop moving.

Hob's instinctive first swing with the stabby little goblin sword would have disemboweled a creature possessed of any bowels to speak of; this, of course, does nearly nothing, but the great thing about the element of surprise is the opportunity to try again, this time with a bludgeoning pommel strike, before your enemy can hit back.

This skeleton, too, crunches under the blow and falls to pieces. They're apparently pretty fragile - but there's several of them, and now they're all aware of their foes.

Fortunately, as Jojo implied, they're also quite stupid. They get in a few good swipes with their surprisingly sharp phalanges, but they're crowding each other rather than properly flanking, and with a bit of tactical maneuvering it's not difficult to dispatch the remainder.

Ow.

"Oh, well done. You doing all right? I might have a couple of bruises later but nothing serious."

(He probably has a fractured rib, but not for long, so this is almost like not lying, right?)

Jojo, in addition to some bruises (or possibly "bruises") of his own, has a scratch on his forehead from dodging a skeleton going for his eyes. It's smeared a good bit of blood over his facial fur. He grimaces as it drips a bit more. "Nothing that'll keep me out of the fight. Though it would be an excellent time for my sacred oath to Ilmater to grant me the miraculous power to heal my allies and myself."

Your sacred oath to whomst the fuck, he does not say, because it seems kind of rude to distract someone with an obligation to explain their religion in the middle of a time-sensitive emergency. Maybe this is just a language thing but he thought he'd heard of most of them. 

" ... it sure would, if that's the sort of thing that your, uh, order? can usually do?" It has been known to happen but it's not, in his experience, common for faith healers to not be, well, not to put too fine a point on it, liars. "Uh, in the meantime - handkerchief?" He rustles around in his pockets for a moment and offers up a linen square, dyed a friendly sky-blue and embroidered around the edges with tiny flowers. 

He takes the handkerchief gratefully and mops up some of the worst blood. "Yes, as much as any clerical order - well, any holy order, the unholy ones are usually busy withering people instead. I wouldn't be able to heal as well as a proper priest, but it would be nice just to be able to refresh myself a bit. And you too; those bruises don't look fun by any means."

He beholds the handkerchief, now pretty well bloodstained, and winces. "I... can probably get a laundry-mage to take care of this," he hazards. "Once we're out."

What an astoundingly bizarre answer in nearly all respects. Not only confident that his religion's faith healing is real, but also that everyone else's faith healing is equally real, and also with absolutely no expectation that anyone might possibly not think it was a real thing. 

(Any clerical - okay, that's got to be dialect mismatch, he cannot possibly mean that he is expecting to get magic powers from doing administrative paperwork - )

"Sure, I wouldn't turn down free magic healing." He fondly regards the handkerchief, which is loyally doing its job. "That'd be very kind of y- wait, a laundry mage? What on Earth is a - no, no, sorry, time-sensitive emergency, tell me later, lead on."

Jojo does lead the way, folding the bloodied handkerchief and putting it in a robe pocket. "I suppose where you're from magic isn't so common; I know many people come to the city and think they've got wizards doing laundry, are they mad? But it's so easy for a wizard to clean a load of clothes, and you don't have to be very much of a wizard at all to do it, so Neverwinter has a good number of people who can do a couple of magic tricks, and they handle the laundry for their neighbors and pick up some copper for it - the city actually subsidizes it some, just because it's nice to have people with that kind of magic around."