"We're the descendants of soldiers from the first crusade, who fought alongside the angels against the abyss when the worldwound first opened up, and have resided in these caves ever since. We usually call ourselves Neathers, but underground crusaders is a common appellation from those who want to hearken back to the glory days or just want to hype themselves up. Lann would fall into the latter category, but he doesn't have any self respect so he's decided to embrace the term used for us by those on the surface - perhaps because he thinks if he uses it first, it'll hurt less."

Fantasy racism is probably less bad than a demon curse but still disappointing. Anyway, given the number of giant bugs down here she should roll with the amount of context she has and do whatever gets the missing kids rescued fastest instead of trying to get fully oriented.

She smiles at Wenduag. "Thank you for explaining. Where to now?" 

"Neatholm! It's the biggest village in the underground, and it's pretty centrally located so everyone else will have an easy time getting to it."

He gestures off to another tunnel on the opposite side of the room than they came in from, and then makes as though to lead them.

Off she goes, offering one arm to Anevia again and holding the sword awkwardly in the other ha--no, apparently her outfit acquired a tooled-leather belt and scabbard while she wasn't paying attention. She'll stick the sword in it.

She's gonna get to see an underground city! Just like in Lord of the Rings except instead of everyone having been killed by demons, not that!

On the way over, Wenduag will wait until Lann goes to retrieve some of his arrows after a fight with some giant flies to pull Brenda aside. She doesn't seem to mind Anevia listening in; apparently the one she wants privacy from is Lann.

"I know Lann talks a good game, but you shouldn't show off the light of heaven. Maybe say you can't make it glow on command, or that he must have been mistaken, or even just say you'll only demonstrate it in private. The shield maze is dangerous, and if Lann brings in everyone like he wants to it'll just get a lot of them killed. If you need to get to the surface, I can lead you through the maze, but even for me it would be hard to keep more than a small team safe, and nobody else can even manage that much."

"That's a solid argument but I don't want to resort to subterfuge if I can avoid it. But I assume you've already tried to talk him around and failed--is the problem that the maze is full of physical hazards, or hostile creatures? What's Lann's theory for why more people would be better?"

"Both, and also worse things. There were a bunch of us young hunters who thought we could brave the shield maze, and we figured we were good enough to deal with whatever we found. Every so often whenever someone was out exploring, they'd get lost or ambushed, and die, but we figured we were more careful, stronger, better, and we'd learn from their mistakes and be fine. But some of the people we thought were dead, weren't, and that was even worse. They'd come back changed, maddened, unable to even communicate but hostile to everything that moved, all in the form of someone who looked like your friend. There's a reason why I'm the only one left.

"Lann never went to the shield maze. He was more responsible than that, spent his free time hunting for more food to feed people better, or just practicing his skills, but he doesn't take the danger seriously. He thinks that if he just tries hard enough, everything will work out fine, and if it was just him I'd try to help him but he's going to get a lot of other people killed with him if he gets his way."

Brenda shudders a little. "I'm sorry, that sounds horrible. I'm immune to mental alteration but I don't have a way to make other people immune. I'd really like to try talking Lann around; maybe two of us will have a better shot at it than one."

"I haven't managed to get anywhere with him, but maybe you'll have better luck. He did seem pretty enthusiastic about your whole lightshow."

"It would be kind of ridiculous if the light show made him believe me when you've been in the shield maze and I haven't but I'll take what I can get." And she flags down Lann.

Lann remains just as enthusiastic about her as he was before.

"So what did you want to talk about?"

"Tactics for the shield maze, basically. I want to help look for the kids. Can we go over what you know about the situation--how many missing, when were they last seen, that sort of thing--and the current plan?"

"There are five of them that went missing. I don't know most of them, only one of them was from Neatholm, but they were friends, really adventurous kids, always clambering to go exploring and hunting and so forth. But early this morning they dared each other to go explore the shield maze, and we haven't seen them since. One of their group backed down and got teased for it, which is how we know they went missing - when their friends didn't come back a few hours later, they went to chief Sull about it. He didn't want to go make a rescue party since he didn't think it would be safe, but I figure with the angel's sword you could go rally everyone from all the tribes, not just Neatholm, and then we'd have three or four times as many people and we could handle whatever's waiting there. Most hunters aren't as good as Wendu or I but with enough people you can handle most anything easily and maybe we'd be able to move fast enough to rescue them."

"Wenduag is worried that if too many people go in some of them will get separated from the group and die, and a smaller team of just the best fighters will be better off, and I haven't seen the shield maze but she has and I think she's right. I think you, me, her, and maybe a couple other people who know the area can move faster and more quietly. And we won't have to spend time going around to all the tribes and convincing a whole big group to go."

"Do you think that would work? Nobody other than Wendu has managed to get very far into the shield maze, not consistently... I guess I also don't know how people on the surface fight either, and you do have the angel's sword and Anevia is really good with her bow. Are you all veteran crusaders or something?"

"If she's the only person who can get very far that's all the more reason to have the search party small enough that she can guide it effectively. I don't know how experienced Seelah and Anevia and Camellia are or whether they'll be willing to help." She looks at Anevia for comment, mostly because she's relevant but also to buy time to figure out something true and nonmisleading to say about her own combat ability.

"My wife and I used to be adventurers before we settled down in Kenabres, and we got pretty good at it. I'm hardly one of the legendary heroes you read about in stories, but I've got years of experience against monsters and demons and cultists by now, and I make sure to stay in practice. Seelah and Camellia are a fair bit less experienced, but if we might be facing something evil I'd rather not pass on Seelah being able to smite it and Camellia can spellcast and fight, which is a fairly uncommon - and useful - combination."

"I only have one battle worth of experience but the weird grab bag of magic powers I acquired this morning are extremely useful in a fight." 

Lann doesn’t have a lot of experience with magic, and indeed has only ever met one spellcaster in his life prior to today, but he has heard stories and ‘can do magic’ is a pretty good selling point if it’s all going to be as impressive as the bit with the angel’s sword earlier. Fighting demons is also the kind of thing that’s supposed to separate crusaders from just hunters. 

“If you’re confident it’s for the best, I’ll trust you on this.”

Presently Neatholm will come into sight around the one of the corners. It's not the most impressive sight; the architecture is largely composed of huts made of mud, rock, and chitin, and the buildings are all short and squat. It has a bit of a stench, some of which Brenda might be able to identify as coming from fish, and it's frankly not that big a town. Still, it does have the advantage of being situated on an underground lake, which is quite something to look at, and the inhabitants - who range from the slightly inhuman to as unusual as Wenduag - seem more curious than hostile.

Alright, so it's not as flashy as the dwarven cities in Tolkien, but Tolkien never had to handle the logistics of feeding and housing people underground with limited access to the surface. (Does this world have dwarves? That would be really cool. Also, wait, is there a universe that's basically Arda? Is she going to end up there at some point if she gets enough dimensional travel? (Wow, this intelligence headband has improved her tendency to go off on recursive tangents only inasmuch as she can now do it faster.)) She smiles at the city and the lake and the people. 

"How tired are you all feeling? Now that we're decided to go as a small group, there's a part of me that wants to get some healing from Dyra and then press on today since we don't need to wait on gathering all the tribes, but this is going to be dangerous enough without trying to do it exhausted."

"I wouldn't say no to one of Beth's lay on hands if she was here, but that's mostly for the healing. If Dyra is good enough to fix my leg, then I'm good to press on; I've fought while significantly more tired than this before and not been impaired."

"I'm fresh out of smites and healing and won't be able to change that until dawn, but even without the goddess' help I can at least swing a sword."

Brenda really really wants an hour to talk to Alpina and get her thoughts in order, but that's not the same as being physically tired, and any given minute could be the minute the kids die or get hit with whatever mind control Wenduag witnessed. And once she's actually into the shield maze, Just A Little Longer should keep her moving until they get out. "I can keep going. Camellia, how are you holding up?"