"Unless Minagho's moved or you think you can do that pillar multiple times now, I'm not sure that would get us anywhere. We could try to buy you time to fix it, but after we got away the first time she's unlikely to do much jobbing and she could probably kill the rest of us inside a minute if she tries. Faster, with help from other demons. Properly buffed it'd still be worth a shot but Rathimus is almost certainly out of spells, Beth and Staunton are out of channels, and we can't count on Ramien assisting; my guess is he would probably be willing to buff us for saving the city even if it meant Hulrun got his hands on him with an excuse but he's not exactly advertising his location. Kenabres has plenty of soldiers and paladins but real casters are pretty short on the ground.

"My guess is that unless a rapid response force shows up for backup or we get a sending from Lastwall that it's going to fall before then, any attack should wait for when we're fresh and capable of seeing it through. Dawn tommorow, at the earliest."

"Understood. What is Ramien's situation generally?"

"He's an Aasimar and the top priest of Desna - chaotic good goddess of travellers, dreams, luck, and stars - in Kenabres. He takes being good very seriously and is probably the second strongest cleric in the city, but he and Hulrun have always clashed badly. Usually Terendelev would step in whenever it got bad, but with her currently dead and the city in crisis Hulrun has convinced himself that Ramien's an enemy. I'm pretty sure he's wrong about his dominate theory, high level clerics are hard to turn; my guess would be he knew the people Hulrun was imprisoning were innocent and decided he didn't care to wait and hope about someone talking Hulrun around when he needed more trustworthy adventurers to keep people safe, so he just broke them out instead. Unlike Rathimus he's also not averse to getting personally involved in fights, which would also be great since he's pretty good at it."

"Currently dead" is such an interesting phrase.

"Where would we find him to get him on-side?

"He would have told someone at the temple of Desna where he was if he left, he wouldn't be out of contact in an emergency, but it could go either way on if he's sticking around there himself so people know where to get healing or if he decided to prioritize not forcing people to choose between helping him and not getting in Hulrun's way; if the latter, he's probably out hunting demons or helping survivors. it probably depends on what he figures the odds are that Hulrun decides to force the issue."

"Well, if we can't mount the attack now we can spend the rest of the day recruiting. This would be that same temple we passed earlier?"

"Yeah, that's the one. It's one of the obvious places to evacuate to in a crisis and with all the paladins out in the city proper the temple of Iomedae wouldn't be safe."

Back to the temple then.

The lay priests standing watch at the gates are nervous about a large armed group getting entrance, both in the sense that they could be demons and in the sense that they're lawful and Ramien sure did just pick a fight with the ambiguous leader of the city, huh, but luckily they and Anevia know each other fairly well and it's not like Paladins could lie about why they were there. After some back and forth, one of them will run off to report to a more senior priest of ambigous identity while the others let them in past the gate. There are a lot of people in the temple, but mostly they seem to be taking shelter inside the building rather than in the courtyards, so there's space to wait.

And a few minutes later someone will start making their way through the crowds between them and the church's inner sanctum, though they're a bit delayed by frequently stopping to exchange a few words or reassure people en route.

"Anevia! It's good to see you, and Irabeth too! What brings you here today? I assume you're not here to shelter from the attack, but if you need it our doors are both literally and metaphorically open."

"We're actually here because of her," Irabeth replies, gesturing to Kybele. "It turns out the wardstone is in danger and we need to get her there to fix it, but there's a Lilitu and some followers occupying the grey garrison so we need a distraction big enough to get her attention. We were hoping to get your support."

"A nasty business, that. We tried to warn Hulrun about the corruption and the oncoming attack ahead of time, but he wouldn't hear anything of it without evidence. He doesn't really like 'it doesn't work like that' as an answer. Some of my friends are a bit more hot-headed than I and decided if he wasn't going to do anything they'd solve it without them, which was quite admirable of them but also meant I needed to cause a bit of an awkward mess to rescue them. You're confident you can solve it?"

"I have only the Storyteller's word to go by, but he seemed to know what he was talking about and I'm prepared to try."

Ramien nods, decisively.

"In that case, if you think my help will be useful you'll have it. I'm not sure if we can distract a Lilitu very well without Hulrun's assistance and he's unlikely to take my working with him well right now, but if he's willing to put it aside I won't be the one to start anything and I'll do my best do de-escalate. Either way, you'll have my spells and healing - if you have any requests for what I should prepare, try to let me know before dawn tomorrow, but otherwise Desna will help me select what we need. Is there anything else I can help you with while you're here? Healing, supplies, information? I can't promise we'll definitely have it but the temple is well stocked for emergencies if it's a question of material goods, and I have my share of connections."

"I'm not an expert on what your options for spells might be but now that you mention it I have not had breakfast."

Breakfast can absolutely be provided; they've actually been serving meals here and making extra in case of late arrivals, so there's more than enough to go around.

"Desna gives me cleric spells up to fourth circle, save for evil spells which she wouldn't grant and I wouldn't ask for. I most closely embody her aspects of freedom and as an Azata, so I have some extra abilities there; most notably compared to a normal cleric, I can give out flight and free people from all but the strongest kinds of mind control, as well as a host of other negative effects. For my more normal repertoire, I can identify magic, bless large groups of people for almost 10 minutes at a time, force people to tell the truth, enchant weapons and armor, make people stronger, tougher, wiser, more dexterous, or more splendid, ward against evil enemies, temporarily summon outsiders, counter death magic, or shield against elemental attacks - there's actually a lot of other stuff clerics can do, but most of it isn't terribly useful for this kind of adventuring. I also have a spell that can force demons back to their home plane, but a lilitu will just laugh it off, same as any damaging spells.

"With how serious this sounds, I'll be asking Desna to bump me up to 5th circle for tomorrow; if she accepts, I'll probably ask for healing good enough to revive the recent dead and another communal support spell like Burst of Glory, but I'm less familiar with the list of 5th circle spells and she might think of something I've forgotten to ask for that I really should have."

"- defense against mind control sounds important to me."

"This temple is hallowed, so anybody here can't be controlled, but I'm not aware of any way to make a person rather than a place permanently immune. Protection from Evil is a first circle spell that is almost categorically sufficient if you cast it ahead of time but only gets one person a go and only for a few minutes; there's a stronger version at third circle that I can keep up for almost an hour and a half per cast and covers anyone near whoever I cast it on. I can also free someone at a touch if they're already affected 8 times a day, but that one technically only answers one effect so it'll need a use for each individual instance if there are multiple effecting you. You can also become more resistant to mind control with magic items - I think your bracers might do this - or just by becoming a stronger adventurer, but that method can always be bypassed by someone that's enough better than you."

"Might they? I don't remember making them, they're in the lost time between being at home and appearing here."

“I’m not an expert in magical item crafting, so it’s possible I’m mistaken on the details, but it looks to me like an extremely comprehensive defensive enchantment with an unusual method - that’s a good thing, it means it should work cooperatively with most other defensive items and spells rather than only the strongest one taking effect. It’s not impossible that that doesn’t include mind control but if I had to guess it’ll help hedge out everything.”

"I wish I knew how I'd done it - maybe I had help, that seems most likely, but from who -" She shakes her head. "Seems worth loading up on anything that will help more there."

“The standard magic item is the cloak of resistance; lots of spells improve resistance, but the reason resistance is common is it's easy and covers everything. Headbands like mine make you wiser, which is mostly for good decision making and divine magic, but it’ll make you that much harder to read or control. If you’re working with an wizard or sorcerer they can cast heroism, which helps with almost everything. Spell resistance is very useful if you can get it but the spell doesn't last long and the items are very expensive. There might be rarer spells or items that also help, but not in Mendev.”

"Would I be correct in guessing that all these things would be hard to come by for someone without local accounts in a crisis zone?"

“I’m afraid that’s correct. Obtaining magic items in Mendev is tough at the best of times, and in a crisis like this people are going to be even more reluctant to part with theirs. Some of the stronger demon cultists might have some you can confiscate after beating them, but they tend to be… irregularly equipped, and outsiders typically can’t make use of magic items as easily as mortals so demons are rather unlikely to be carrying that many, discounting weapons of course.

“Arcane casters are, if anything, even rarer in Kenabres. You could count on one hand the number of them I know to be currently in the city, and there’s only one of them I’m confident is able to cast Heroism.”

Ramien pauses for a moment, wrestling with something.

”If you’re confident it’s the going concern, I can lend you my cloak for today, but it’s not especially powerful and I’ll need you to be careful with it since I can’t afford to have it replaced.”

Judging by the shocked looks on their faces, this is not exactly a normal thing to offer.