Well, so does Brenda so that's not that suspicious. Unlike this situation as a whole.

"You're saying you can't tell a paladin from a demon cultist? In my experience it's not particularly difficult."

"Well, anyone can call themselves a paladin, and unless they're strong enough to have the magic who's to say they're not just a normal person? Not all of us are experienced adventurers; I'm not that impressive in a fight myself either, so getting it wrong could be dangerous."

Brenda nods thoughtfully to buy time to send Seelah a Message. <Does he read as Evil to you? He seems off to me but he might just be scared.>

Seelah whispers her reply, somewhat awkwardly.

<Yes. Not an especially strong aura, so probably not a demon, but definitely evil.>

As far as she knows Detect Evil doesn't have a lot of false positives. She isn't getting any less worried for whoever is back there.

Casually, idly, she says "I'm surprised there isn't a reliable method for paladins to identify themselves. Really seems like the whole point of paladins would work better if they all had some kind of convenient hard-to-fake ability."

She pretends to be looking at something off to the side and casts Message again, aiming it past the man into the house, at the beings she can see with her Aeon sight. <Who are you? Why are you here?>

The voice that comes back doesn't rasp, but it somehow carries with it that same impression.

<I hunger...>

That's so fucked up! And surprisingly uninformative on the 'evil army' vs 'tortured kidnap victims' front!

<Is the human your friend or your enemy? What kind of food do you want?> Are they gonna say braaaaains, this seems unfortunately likely to be a braaaaains situation.

<Want to eat you.>

The other part of her question goes unaddressed; her counterparty does not seem to be much of a conversationalist.

That's a bit more eloquent than 'braaaains' but comes down to the same thing. Brenda relays this exchange to Seelah and adds <Is that enough evidence to break in?>.

Also, what's the suspicious human doing?

<That sounds like bad news, yeah. Let's try not to hurt him too bad until we know for sure but I'll take responsibility if it goes wrong.>

The man has closed and locked the door and appears to have moved away from the entrance way.

Brenda gets the rest of the party caught up on what the fuck in a quiet but nonmagical voice, then squints at the gap between the door and the wall and attempts to use Mage Hand to unbolt the bolt and unchain the hotel-room-door gadget. Breaking and entering: because it worked great last time (TM).

Apparently Mage Hand is completely useless for moving small objects relative to other small objects. Fine. She rips the stupid door off. If she manages to avoid killing him she'll buy him a new door to celebrate.

That kind of casual display of strength is extremely alarming!

"Defend me, my creations!"

Several shadowy figures (though noticeably different from the demon they fought before) phase in through the walls at his command, and there's the thump of footsteps indicating more corporeal entities are on their way.

"Oh, is it just necromancy? And here I was hoping you'd decided to do something interesting."

"Shut up! People like you just don't understand the art!"

"Why did you think making people that eat people was a good idea?! What is your endgame here?!" Nearest shadowy creature gets a face full of angel sword.

The shadowy creature does not like that at all and tries to claw her for it. Her instincts give a sense that even a glancing hit from this can be bad news.

"My creations obey me; they kill who I order, when I order it, and none other. Each one I create brings me closer and closer to one day reaching the peak of necromancy itself, and I won't let you stop me! Haste!"

As he speaks, the first of the more corporeal undead start to make their way into the back of the room, a mixture of rotting corpses and pale, starving creatures that still look almost human; their vanguard, like the shadows, has had their speed artificially increased by his spell.

That's a lot of bodies he's trying to put between him and them, but how good is he at dodging?

Not great, judging by the arrows that sprout from his chest before he ducks behind a zombie.

She moves fast and slashes with her swords but doesn't use the claws this time; she doesn't know if whatever touch attack they have can get her that way. When the zombies get close enough she'll try to grab one and throw it at the shadows, both to tangle them up and to see what happens.

It takes about two hits to take down a shadow, but even with the extra speed they aren't able to land a real hit on her as long as she's paying attention. The zombies and ghouls are even less of a roadblock to either party, unable to either prevent her from throwing them on a whim or to even momentarily inconvenience the shadow they pass through.

Zombies! Finally, something she can uncomplicated stab. Radiance cuts through their putrid flesh with ease, and each one she finishes off is another soul freed. Apparently the fact that she's moving forward instead of being stopped by the shadows makes her a bigger threat, since he tries something that rattles her down to her bones, but it's nothing her lay on hands can't fix and in fact if she tries she can just ignore the zombies and head straight for him to stop him from doing it again.

Brenda takes out shadows until there aren't any left, unless an ally gets ganged up on and she needs to switch tactics to help.

That won't take her long, especially since nobody needs rescuing to distract her. Once she kills four shadows no more show themselves, and Seelah has already backed the necromancer up to the far wall. She does have some zombies and ghouls around her, but they mostly seem to be bouncing off her armor and every couple of seconds Wenduag manages to drop one, sometimes with assistance from Nenio.

Brenda joins Wenduag and Nenio in dropping ghouls. Does the necromancer seem inclined to surrender at all? How about if there are two women menacing him with swords?