"You guys are the best. I'll need to take all the books out somewhere and then we can check how many people will fit in the bag. Also I might be able to gain the ability to dig really fast, so possibly I should try that and see if it's fast enough to be a good alternative escape method."

"I'll go talk to Jhoran and refresh my memory on the details of how wind walk works, in case there's something I'm forgetting, and ask him to prepare it tomorrow morning. You're welcome to store things here but if you want more security than that you probably want to ask Rathimus."

"I'm sure leaving them here will be fine, it's better than trying to stash them all in my bedroom." She'll do some experiments with one she's already read to see if she can use Dressing Room to store them 'in a backpack she isn't wearing' and actually leave them here as a fallback if that doesn't work.

"Possibly the next thing is for you to go talk to Staunton about maps and Jhoran about Wind Walk while I figure out how fast I can dig, and then meet back up to figure out a question tree for the Commune?"

"I can do that, yes. Longstrider."

Ramien's steps suddenly lengthen, and he speeds up by a third as he heads off.

"You want me to what? If this is your idea of a joke, Voyager, I'm not laughing."

"No, I'm extremely serious; a life may depend on it. One of our people got captured by the demons, and is currently held in the Drezen prison; I'm working on arranging a jailbreak before they get executed. That's why I need you to tell me how to bypass the defenses of Drezen."

"It's been years. The Demons will have had plenty of chances to figure out all the secrets we built in, and we didn't design it to be easy to infiltrate in the first place. That was the whole point of having defenses."

The dwarf sighs.

"But it's not totally hopeless. I'll see what I can do; if my former position lets me save someone via creating a weakness in its defenses, I suppose that's at least one silver lining to this whole affair. How many people are you bringing with you, what kind of capabilities do you have, and how heavily guarded are we expecting your prisoner to be?"

Fortunately, his talk with the forgemaster is not nearly as fraught a topic as was speaking with his brother. Sixth circle spells are valuable, especially when it turns out Jhoran can only get four people a casting and will thus need to prepare it twice, but the spell turns out to be even more ideal for his purposes than Ramien was expecting. Apparently the spell has an absurdly long duration and can be freely stopped and restarted partway through, though it's not the fastest at it; even if things don't go according to plan, anyone who can break contact from the demons for half a minute can make their escape. It also turns out that he's being something of an idiot about their escape plans; plane shift allows for eight passengers, so if things go wrong he can just evacuate everyone to Elysium. It'll take longer for them to return, especially if he plays it safe with the plane shift back to the material the next day, but better they be stuck somewhere safe than leave someone behind at the mercy of the demons.

There's a bit of an awkward moment when he runs into an inquisitor as he leaves the Temple of Torag, but even if Hulrun were still bullheaded enough to try something now none of his inquisitors are both brave and dumb enough to try on their own. All told, it's about two hours after he left that he makes his return to the temple of Desna, his pockets a little lighter in gold and richer in information.

Brenda, having decided it's worth being potentially rude to the earth elementals she met on day one, is now slightly more glittery. She has discovered that she can swim through earth like it's water at a speed sufficient for running away from demons, but cannot dig a tunnel anyone else can follow her through faster than a slow walk even with shovel gloves, so that's useful for scouting and for running away if she gets separated from everyone else but nowhere near as good as escaping by Plane Shift. On the other hand, she can totally store her books in a temporarily unreal backpack, so that's that entire class of problems solved forever. Dressing Room is really exceeding expectations on the 'control over much of physics' front. 

She also demonstrates her ability to blend into the shadows, which doesn't work in direct sunlight and is therefore only good for once they're already in the building or if the operation somehow takes so long it gets dark out.

"I haven't planned any kind of combat mission in more detail than 'show up and kill everyone causing problems', so I'm not sure what factors are most important. There's who we bring, what spells we prepare, do we get any additional items, do we attempt to rescue anyone other than Arueshalae and the captured crusader, do we let the other prisoners out as a distraction, do we try to incapacitate the guards or talk our way past them or sneak past them or tunnel into the building from underneath, at what degree of things going pear shaped does the objective change to getting out with just the people who went in . . ."

"I'd like to retain the option to rescue other people there; if someone else was captured and brought there between now and then, I would have a hard time leaving them behind. All else equal I would definitely like to expand that to letting everyone else free, but not if it means risking someone here dying. On the plus side, I do have a way to evacuate more people if needed; in addition to everyone who arrives by wind walk being able to leave the same way, I can also plane shift eight other people to Elysium if we don't have time to get in people into a bag of holding. In terms of items... well, there are always more items that would be useful to have, but in terms of staying within my budget probably the most useful would be scrolls of invisibility, and maybe one of plane shift for if I get incapacitated during the jailbreak but you still need to make a getaway. I wouldn't want to bring more than two other people unless they have their own method of escape, since each group member increases our chance of being caught and in an emergency I wouldn't want to leave anyone behind. Your other questions are trickier; I'll confess I'm not too familiar with what spells wizards or witches get, so I can't do much advising there. I don't think I could talk my way past the guards but fighting versus sneaking might depend on what the situation on the ground looks like. For evacuation... if the alarm gets raised, I want us leaving in the next two moments, ditto for if any greater demons show up or it looks like an ambush, so we should make sure not to get further than that from each other."

"How many other people we need to rescue besides the two known ones sounds like a good Commune question. Possibly also whether we should plan to let everyone else out of the prison. I should be able to use one scroll of Invisibility to cast it as many times as necessary if I do it early enough that a few seconds' delay between castings doesn't matter, though I can't turn one scroll into more scrolls. Also I can teleport once a day; I haven't checked the range yet but even if it's not enough to get back here from Drezen it should be enough to get us somewhere along the route that's not in whatever mess we're potentially in. 'Should we buy a scroll of Plane Shift' is maybe a good Commune question? When you say you wouldn't want to bring more than two other people, what baseline is that on top of? I mean what do you think should be our cap for people going in, possibly as a function of how many people we need to get out?"

“The baseline I had in mind was your adventuring party; since I can only evacuate eight people in a moment, with the five of you and myself that leaves two other slots. If we don’t bring anyone else, that could be the prisoners, but if we have to evacuate before then I wouldn’t want to leave someone behind. With your teleport we could go a bit beyond that, but I wouldn’t want to without good reason because the more complicated an evacuation is the more ways it can go wrong.

“As for reusing scrolls… your abilities really are something else. I’ll plan on just the one, then.”

“If you just need a scroll of invisibility, I have one! Actually I have a few scrolls, if that works in general.”

"Oh, that's awesome! And I don't even need to keep the original; any scroll I get to look at in private for a few minutes I can then cast copies of indefinitely. Can I look at all of yours? I'll give them back unaffected."

"Another thing I should mention: Arueshalae's wording on some of the Sendings implied she's a demon who's decided to defect to our side. Which explains how she was able to find out about the attack in advance and warn us. I took your advice, Ramien, and set up a password: if one of the prisoners says 'blueberry pie', she's the one I was speaking with." 

"Certainly!"

In addition to invisibility, Nenio has scrolls for Mirror image, Silent Image, color spray, Magic Missile, and after some digging through her pack Mage Armor, though the last one looks significantly older.

"I've never heard of a demon that switched sides before. According to my interviews, though, the promise of false redemption is one of the twenty most common ploys used to trick people by demons to trick people."

Brenda wonders if she can infer anything from the fact that some of those Sendings definitely didn't take ten minutes, or if Time Enough For Love helps her spend time trying to forge friendships that are totally doomed.

"The way I see it, she did us a good turn warning us about the attack on the Wardstone. Even if she's still evil in the sense of wanting to eat people or whatever, we still owe her one. If that policy gets us an epidemic of demons sabotaging everything Deskari tries to do, then that's actually awesome and I don't see a need to try to avoid it. Or maybe I'm missing something and Desna will tell us not to do the rescue at all." She's not sure she necessarily agrees with Desna on everything relevant, but she's even less confident she can sell Ramien on helping if Desna gives a response that unpacks to 'you will probably succeed but you still shouldn't do it', and she's inclined to give Desna the benefit of the doubt.

Right, okay, they're asking Desna first. She's a good goddess, she can totally tell if this is a good idea or not; there's no need to bring Seelah's bad feelings about this into it.

"So it sounds like the questions I should be asking are if we should make the attempt, if we can trust Arueshalae, if I should be borrowing money to get extra equipment to make this safer, if there are other people to rescue, and if we should free the other prisoners. That leaves four questions, any thoughts?"

"I assume you're phrasing that as 'people other than Arueshalae and the captured crusader she mentioned'? Are you able to use the 'not sure' option to split things three ways? Like, 'say yes if we should go in right after dawn, no if we should wait at least two hours, unsure if we should wait at least four hours' or whatever? Or do they have to be phrased as yes or no questions?"

"Yes, that's correct. And it's supposed to be questions that are yes or no, unsure is for if it's... an ill posed question, or involves information she doesn't know like the secret plans of evil gods or events far enough in the future."

"Okay then, hmm . . . maybe ask if we should try sneaking past the guards as opposed to sneaking up on them and taking them out? And whether we'll need any equipment we don't have yet to get the prisoners out of their cells, and whether there are more questions I should ask over Sending."

Ramien nods, fetches the required incense and holy water, and begins to pray. He speaks the words aloud, not because it is neccesary, but to let those listening keep track of where he is in the commune. It's not like anything he's ever experienced, even when he felt the dreamer's touch making him a cleric, or the distant connection he feels when he receives spells. It's like touching on something impossibly vast that cherishes him, but is so impossibly powerful that even an errant glance from their full attention might damage him and is being incredibly careful not to hurt him.

"Should we make an attempt to rescue them?"

Yes.

"Can we trust Arueshalae?"

Yes.

"Should I borrow money to get extra equipment to make this safer?"

Unclear.

"Are there other people to rescue?"

No.

Should we free the other prisoners?

Yes.

"Should we try and sneak past the guards?"

Yes.

"Do we need equipment we don't have to free them?"

No.

"Are there other people that should come with us?"

No.

"Are there more things that Brenda should ask or say via Sending?"

No.

Once the questions are completed, he takes a moment to gather himself again, then relays the answers he received.

"I think the 'unclear' might be that we should get extra equipment and I should pay for it rather than anyone borrowing; I have a bit over a thousand crowns in specie."

"That might explain it; I don't have nearly that much cash on  hand. Possibly we then want quite a few scrolls, if your ability means we just have to pay to borrow scrolls from Rathimus for a few minutes, but that's only if you want to advertise you can do it. If not, I'm thinking in addition to plane shift we probably also want one of communal nondetection, chameleon stride if he has any, and maybe a few scrolls of heroism for good measure."