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a Lucy is born in Geb
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Luzai claps at Seelah's dancing! It is good dancing even if it is less of a spectacle than Luzai made of herself. 

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By the time Luzai finishes preparing her spells for the next day, the breakfast crowd at the tavern is filled with an overwhelming sense of anticipation. Outrider scouts have confirmed the approach of an army from Nerosyan with the queen at the head, and news has spread through the city at the speed of rumor; several people are confidently betting that by this time tomorrow all the remaining demonic holdouts will be on the run, and are speculating about what will happen next.

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--Oh wow that makes sense but also is kind of nerve-wracking! Objectively the queen of Mendev is much less scary than Arazni but that is kind of the reference class she has for queens!

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And unlike with Arazni, she is probably not irrelevant enough to slide below this queen's notice!

Well, Luzai does at least seem to not be her first priority, for whatever that's worth. The queen met with the city's defenders and then immediately set to work using the army to clear the city of cultists and demons. It's a bit of a blunt force approach, but there's a significant advantage to having enough force you can both storm a building and block the exits without risking either, to say nothing of putting together a cordon across the city tight enough that you can actually keep areas clear once you check them.

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Cool! Cool cool. Is there anything Luzai can and/or should do to help with this. 

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She's not officially employed by the Eagle's Watch yet, so she isn't being ordered to do anything, but probably there are plenty of teams that wouldn't turn down magical support. She's not exactly a wizard out of legend just yet, but Mendev is famously poor in arcane magic and she's certainly better equipped to handle demons than her median replacement.

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She is super happy to volunteer to be magical support! 

And so is Villibor. Right? 

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...Hhhheee was going to spend some time winding down from the crisis by sticking his nose into magic theory for a while but this is actually really reasonable, sure. 

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They'll have to go through a pretty thorough vetting process to prove they're not demons or cultists, since apparently the army caught almost a dozen such looking to slip through the net by joining the search in the first hour alone, but after they come up clean enough that they'd have to be extremely powerful or lucky to be faking it they can get seconded to two of the squads in the eastern half of the city. The goal is, of course, for each team to have sufficiently overwhelming power to ensure that any fights end without either wizard needing more than cantrips, but there are simply so many hostiles in the city that at least one of their groups will probably manage to stumble on something.

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They are definitely, one hundred percent, not demons or cultists! And the vetting process is not designed to catch "secretly Areelu Vorlesh's daughter." Not needing more than cantrips would be good obviously, but so is Grease. 

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The vetting process is indeed not designed to catch Areelu Vorlesh's secret daughter, especially if she's not some horrifying demon hybrid or detectably evil. It's just not really in their hypothesis space.

Contrary to what one might expect from spy novels, sweeping a city for enemies is a long and monotonous task. Perhaps that's caused by the method they're using, though; armed soldiers surround the exits to houses and flush out anyone in any of the rooms, followed by their more magical inspectors going over the place with various detects to ensure nothing slips past. This results in each group's time being split, half filled with boredom while the other group works and half filled with tedious detail work. A number of her compatriots start slacking at the job, especially after the first few houses, but even accounting for them half assing it it seems reasonably secure as methods go.

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...Luzai is prepared to be kind of a bitch about it, if people slacking off look liable to cause problems, but...if anyone is, visibly-to-her, stealing things from the houses, being a bitch about that is much higher priority.

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...They're mostly pretty good about that, especially since they're trying to make sure everyone has at least one other person's eyes on them at all times, but there are absolutely a few people who have things go missing into their pockets when nobody can see. She's not specifically the person they're trying to hide it from, but they would rather not be seen and the efforts somewhat generalize.

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Well if she catches someone anyway she'll call them on it but she understands that she is not going to catch all of it that happens. 

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 That'll get them reprimanded by their leader, then, and get her some dirty looks from them and a few of their friends, but either they stop or get more careful about hiding it and the dislike doesn't escalate from there.

The supply of demons and cultists in Kenabres has dropped considerably in the last few days, and the cordon is really quite wide, so there are only a few she ends up running into. One place has a hidden room containing a sizable amount of Baphomite paraphernalia that either she can detect with the cantrip or will eventually be found by one of the soldiers knocking, while another has someone with undetectable alignment but unfortunately no mask dweomer that tries to channel negative when caught; the rest take off running when they approach, and either drop to arrows or become someone else's problem. (Some of the ones running might not be cultists per se, but it doesn't seem to be army policy to check very thoroughly if someone takes off when the patrol approaches).

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Personally Luzai prefers "become someone else's problem" to "drop to arrows" but she's not going to intervene about it, just be sad when people die, which is standard operating procedure (for her specifically) anyway. 

...Also if it happens to be convenient to get a glimpse of Queen Galfrey she's going to try to do that, she's actually quite curious. 

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If she's just looking for a glimpse, she can definitely manage that; the queen is making sure to both meet and be seen meeting the local notables and enough of the other survivors to leave an impression. But there's also quite a few guards hanging around nearby, so if she wants to get closer she'll probably want some approach to navigating the situation in mind even if it's just walking up.

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Nope! Queens scary. Also pretty, in this case. And she looks a lot more okay than Arazni! That's good!

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She doesn't look completely unruffled, but the impression she gives is of someone hard at work fixing things, and certainly not anywhere near as depressing as Arazni on a good day; people seem rather cheered by talking with her.

 

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Villibor's team finishes up their section about fifteen minutes after hers did, though they ended up in relatively different parts of the city than hers did; there's still an active cordon up at the north end of the city near the kite, but the plan there seems to be concentrating veteran forces and not dragging in as many auxiliaries as possible.

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And Luzai does not count as a veteran yet. She'll have to work on that, but there are no shortcuts to putting in the time. 

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Well, that and a question of trust; they might have brought in a 5th circle cleric they weren't familiar with to help, but an equivalent strength wizard would be a harder sell.

Outside of that, the city is... probably mostly safe? Give the state of the sewers and caves in Kenabres there's no telling how many people ended up there, and between that possibility and more hideouts there are still a lot of soldiers in the streets, but even compared to yesterday the civilian population seems a lot less worried about being out and about. It's not just that the battle is won, it's that people know it's won.

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Which is perhaps why when the word starts getting around that there's going to be a celebration and important announcement, it hits a populace that is at least somewhat enthusiastic about it. The fact that the crown will be supplying free alcohol cinches things for many of the rest, proving once again the usefulness of Caydenites when it comes to managing the public relations; as afternoon turns into evening and a stage starts to be set up in the middle of the city, people start filtering in to get a good spot well before anyone is actually ready to get started.

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Luzai will definitely be there but Villibor is going to take the opportunity to hide in their room with books. Her poor introvert of a brother.

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