"Okay, cool. Would it be possible to convince your Chief to try to assemble people, and come in after us, if and only if nobody came back after a couple of days?

Snort. "If there's one thing Chief Sull doesn't need convincing to do, it's wait." 

After that, it's not long until they arrive at Neatholm. It's not a very impressive settlement even by the standards of someone from Kenabres, much less Mechitar, but it does have the notable advantages of not being filled by demons or undead slaves at the moment. The village is built on a peninsula jutting out into an underground lake, which the Neathers have taken enthusiastic advantage of with a dock for boats and the corresponding savings on defenses. Most of the buildings - huts, really - seem to be made out of chitin, but there's occasional bits of bone, stone, and even wood in places - the mammal skins seem to have been saved for clothing. The smell is also quite unpleasant, though differently from the sections of Kenabres frequented by livestock and carts, and despite the nearby water many of the Neathers look like they could use a bath. 

The people living there eye them warily as they pass, but the presence of Wenduag and Lann at the front of their party seems sufficiently reassuring to them.

Camellia isn't even going to bother to hide her disgust at the appearance and smell, though she does at least have the grace to not say anything aloud.

Then Luzai will give her a mildly disapproving glance but also not say anything. 

Personally, she hasn't been out of Mechitar long enough to take the lack of undead slaves for granted! This village: definitely better than Mechitar. She hopes to be out of Mechitar for a long, long time, and never take the little things for granted. 

One of the buildings near the center of the village is a little larger than the others, but Wenduag doesn't lead them to it; instead, she picks a pair of huts off to the east of the village.

"I don't know how your magic works; do you know how long you'll need to get it back?"

"Eight hours of rest. For me. Uhhhh, two-thirds of a gong." She glances at Camellia, who she thinks maybe is not a cleric?

“I just need to wait until tomorrow, though I also need to sleep at some point for the normal reasons.”

“Do you think you could spare some food? I haven’t eaten since some snacking at the festival, and if we’re going to spend hours adventuring tomorrow too I need to keep my energy up. I don’t know if you take surface money, but I could pay with that if you do?”

"Most of the village doesn't have a lot of use for surfacer currency, but Dyra'll take it. She's a cleric of Abadar." 

Even if Lann hadn't introduced her as such, the fact that Dyra is a cleric of Abadar would be pretty easy to infer. Not only does the necklace she's wearing bear the symbol of the scales, nearby her hut is a sign labelled in both Hallit and illustrations giving prices for goods and services - the only visible example of writing in the entire village. In addition to ordinary equipment like fishhooks, weapons, and firestarters, the shop also sells her cleric spells; there are entries for channels, truthelling, and cures, among others. Dyra herself looks notably older than Lann or Wenduag, but still seems to be in good health. 

"Uplanders, welcome to Neatholm! I love trading with new people."

"Hi! We're probably going to be," wait Neatholm doesn't have a day/night cycle does it make sense to say spending the night, "resting here, and we didn't have a lot of supplies with us on account of Deskari being a surprise," even she was only warned about "demons," not the Demon Lord, "do you have food to sell. Anevia has currency and I--well, not now, but, when I prepare my spells again, I'll have Prestidigitation." She might be wrong, they do have a cleric, but with the lack of writing they probably don't have a laundry wizard down here. They might have a laundry sorcerer? Whatever, mentioning marketable skills is fine. 

"I'm not sure what prestidigitation is, so it's hard to put a price on it, but it might be valuable and I do trade in both goods and services. Gold is also better than fine, frankly, I don't do nearly enough trade in coin for my tastes. Is there anything other than food that you're in the market for, or should I start with giving prices?"

"Prestidigitation is a spell that clean things! It's a cantrip, so even a wizard who's not very powerful at all," like me, "can cast it all day, and cleaning things by hand is a lot of work, so people will pay to have their laundry done and so on. I assume you don't have any inflict prepared." 

"Interesting! This is why trading with outsiders is great, they have things to offer you didn't know could be traded like that. I could quote you a price, but it'd be subject to change once I had a better idea of what that looks like in practice. I don't prepare inflict spells; it's not useful for hunting, not that I do much of that, and Abadar disapproves of fighting."

"I'm a dhampir. We have the trait that we heal from inflict and are harmed by cure, like undead." 

"So to be clear, you want to purchase an inflict wounds to be cast on you? I suppose even if you weren't healed by that it wouldn't be against my principles, but it'll be more expensive than a cure since I would need to spend time praying and use an open slot rather than convert a spell."

"Yes, that's right. --Tomorrow is fine, I won't have Prestidigitation until then and I'd rather be able to pay upfront." 

Dyra nods. "A sensible approach to finance. I'll compile a list of things that prestidigitation might be valuable for by then, and if some of them aren't possible you can stick to the ones that are."

She hadn't really expected to be doing any shopping today, but the mistake of not carrying any money is one she stopped making a while ago. Anevia makes an executive decision to skip on rats and insects and instead asks Dyra to act as their middleman for some fish, and pays for a slot on the next channel for the three of them that would benefit while she's at it. It's a bit of an odd situation, price wise; her gold seems more valuable to Dyra than it would be on the surface when it comes to buying magic, but basic goods are more expensive by enough to cancel out that benefit.

"These living conditions are appalling. There's no reason these people should be living like this with an entire city less than a mile away," Luzai mutters to Seelah. 

"You're not wrong. There'd have to be more to it than just bringing them to the surface, though. Even if they all wanted to leave their homes, Kenabres is bad enough for the tieflings, and some of these underground crusaders would have an even harder time passing." 

"When the crisis is over, there's got to be a way to establish a safe connection to the surface, and...figure out some kind of trade situation, at least; they've got a cleric of Abadar." Sigh. "I guess trying to figure that out can wait until the crisis is over, too; if I'm going to be worrying about trying to figure things out right now I should probably be worrying about the Shield Maze, or finding my brother once we reach the surface, or something." 

"We worry about what we worry about, sister. The goddess won't fault you because you failed to care about everything exactly the right amount. Still, I do hope we manage to find those kids; what Wenduag was describing sounds really bad."

If anyone was going to fault her for not caring about things the right amount the part where she is incredibly attached to Areelu Vorlesh would be right at the top of the list, but Luzai is not going to say that. 

"Oh, I super, super also do." Honestly she thinks slightly less of Camellia for having to be talked into it, but that just puts her in Normal Person tier instead of Above Average person tier, where Seelah is. 

If there is anything useful she can do before they try to sleep, she'll do that; if there's time before then that she can't do useful things in then she's going to greedily study the new spells from Millorn's spellbook.