Wenduag does her best to match him with her own arrows. She's never been able to keep up with his sheer speed of fire, but her shots are more powerful and accurate for it.

Rather than try and stand up on the slippery ground, the unarmed cultist becomes the center of a lightshow as loud crackling flames swirl around them before shooting off at Seelah.

And she takes the blow with a grimace before continuing after the armed cultists still trying to get their feet under them. Her armor didn't do much good against that, so she'll leave taking him out to Camellia or the archers.

Likewise Luzai and Villibor focus their own spells on the armored goons. Comparative advantage!

The man with the unfamiliar blasts of magic has a surprisingly high endurance for hisfirepower, but once he slip on the grease and Camellia is free to stab him, he goes down unusually quickly even by the standards of squishy wizards. She doesn't get quite as injured as Seelah in the process, but even after the latter heals herself with a lay on hands mid fight they're both in need of Daeran's channels. 

Other than the lack of spellbooks, the operation seems to have succeeded; they now have enough scythes and Deskarite holy symbols to equip their group, and less suspicious clothing in most of their sizes.

Aw. Probably a sorcerer. 

Luzai pats Villibor on the head while putting a dumb unholy symbol around her neck. 

Okay! Thus equipped, are there any barriers to approaching the Tower of Estrod. 

Nope! They can just walk right in.

Cool cool cool. Are there...any places where people are obviously talking about important things. 

Past a hallway filled with defaced statues of angels, the building opens up into a large circular room lined with stone pillars. From the empty plinths it seems as though things were once on display there, but whatever they were is long gone; at the moment, the ground floor of the building is host to roughly two groups of cultists and demons, one of whom has a minotaur with them. A pair of relatively professional looking fighters with glaives and heavy armor stand guard by the doorway between it and the hallway.

Is there some place without guards, say perhaps on the second floor, where they can observe this from. 

It'll be harder to listen in, but yeah, the spiral staircase up is accessible from outside of the room in question and the first floor is visible from some of the upper galleries.

Luzai presses herself to the floor to A) get a slightly better angle to hear from, and B) minimize her profile. ...Seelah should probably just stand back from the edge, on account of, uh, armor. 

As expected, she can't really make out most of the conversations going on below, but some of the body language is illuminating and occasionally people raise their voices enough to be audible. From the sounds of things there's some ongoing tension between the two factions of cultists, though it's not entirely clear what over; perhaps something about the planned attack? It's also more than sufficient to get a headcount; assuming there aren't more cultists or demons elsewhere in the tower, there seem to be about sixty of them visible in addition to everyone congregated outside.

Mrrrrgh. Luzai writes down everything she can tell, including headcounts and whatever scraps of dialogue she can make out. ...Also what that one guy in the group they mugged said about a guy named Faxon. 

Can anyone else get a better gist of what's being said?

Camellia's hearing is a little sharper, though her interpretation is still hampered by the distance and lack of context.

"I think it's a leadership dispute of some kind. Deskari cultists not happy about taking orders from a Baphomet cultist, maybe, or perhaps just someone who thinks they personally deserve a more important role."

"So those are Baphomet cultists? I should go interview them now that I have the chance."

On the one hand that would be hilarious. On the other hand, no. "I think the Deskari cultists might object." 

"You think they would try and interfere with my data collection?"

She seems aggrieved by the very idea.

"Yes, that seems likely." She considers justifying this by reference to that one cultist who was annoyed about this Faxon guy getting above himself, but discards the argument half-formed; if she needs to justify the claim, she will, but it would be dishonest to implicitly support the idea that other people are as science-focused as Nenio, and she doesn't prefer dishonesty if she doesn't need to use it. 

Nenio will spend a few more moments considering the logistics of sneaking past the Deskarites invisibly, but then discards the idea and agrees not to go out.

Hooray. 

Considering how much effort, and expenditure of limited spell slots, it took to get in here in the first place, Luzai is more or less inclined to stay put spying on cultists until they finish arguing and leave, but she is aware that Nenio, or possibly Daeran, getting bored and wandering off would be catastrophic, so she is prepared to leave sooner than absolutely necessary if it seems necessary to head off Problems. 

The first one to get bored actually seems to be Camellia, for all that she's the one actually able to hear what's going on. Nenio is easily distracted by recording what they're learning about the church of Baphomet and Daeran easily distracted by Luzai, but lying on a stone floor listening in on a half audible conversation is not exactly how Camellia wanted to spend her day. She's got enough patience to stick around and learn that an attack on the Defender's heart is supposed to be scheduled for next evening and that Faxxon has a personal grudge against Irabeth, but she's not exactly hiding the fact that she finds most of what they're talking about mind numbingly uninteresting.

Luzai is not, herself, so distracted by Daeran that she fails to notice this. 

Also the attack on the Defender's Heart is a very juicy piece of intel, probably worth the trip all by itself. 

Camellia getting bored isn't a potential catastrophe the way Nenio getting bored is, but it does significantly decrease the value of continuing to stay. They can probably try to sneak out now.