"I don't suppose you have a place for me in this non-sneaky band of scouts?" Seelah asks hopefully. "I could, uh, maybe tie a scarf over Iomedae's sword on my armor?" The sword is big and shiny and placed right in the middle of her chest-plate.

"I think we can do better than a scarf." 

How many ratty shitty cloaks does the Shield Maze contain, Lucette has no problem with stealing dead cultists' stuff. 

They can absolutely find a cloak large enough to wrap all around Seelah and miraculously unstained with blood! It even has a hood to drape over her helmet, for that authentic hulking-and-skulking look.

She can dramatically fling it open at the right moment, to reveal her emblazoned sword and also her actual sword. 

"Is this... really... going to work?" Seelah asks doubtfully, but with an intonation suggesting she really wants it to, rather like someone contemplating an inviting piece of candy that is totally not trapped.

She never knew she wanted to play the role of Sudden Reveal, Paladin Action Girl!! until it turned out she really, really did. She realizes it's objectively very silly, which means it can't possibly work, but if the Serious People in the room approve, then perhaps...?

(Snicker.)

"I... wouldn't count on that working," Anevia says diplomatically, "but as long as you're going, I don't see that it can hurt? Just don't rely on culists being taken in by it and stay on your guard, please."

Cultists can be very silly too (see, e.g.: Hosilla taking Lucette for a Neather), and far be it from her to discourage a paladin from maybe having a tiny little bit of fun in the middle of an unusually grim day.

Lusilla also finds a cloak that will hide a bunch of her draconic features, paired with gloves, and scoops up some mud and rubs it on the few shiny bits that remain visible. 

Anevia gives Seelah some of the notes she wrote earlier again, in case they meet someone friendly and trustworthy to pass them to.

And thus equipped, the party (sans Anevia) sets out again into the Maze. It's rather gloomy, strewn with dead bodies and smeared with blood, but not in a worrying kind of way, because they made all of those bodies themselves.

Past the room where they fought Hosilla is a tunnel that looks like a storm-sewer, with a little stream of dirty water flowing down the middle.

There's no obvious way to pick which direction to go from here, but after some careful exploration they find a tunnel where a portion of the ceiling has collapsed, making it possible to fly or climb up the rubble into... someone's basement, it looks like, with storage crates.

If any of the crates aren't nailed closed she'll peer inside and otherwise creep cautiously up the stairs. 

The crates are labelled, actually! (The owners of almost twenty identical-looking crates didn't want to pry open the wrong one by mistake.)

According to the labels, they contain: assorted rags, metal scrap, boots (sorted by size), winter greatcoats, carpentry tools (this one is open, to enable easier access to the others), and six whole crates of potatoes.

All in all, they are unremarkable except for the sheer amount of stuff.

Up the stairs and past a trapdoor (unlocked), there is a room lit by a couple of candles in sconces. It contains weapon racks; mostly empty except for a dozen identical shortswords, and a few spears and daggers scattered on the floor. The whole room is rather disorganized; a struggle may have taken place here.

The room is built from well-dressed but plain stone, and has two doors; a large double door to the right, which is barred from the inside, and a much smaller one to the left.

...Lucette peers around slowly. 

"I think this might be the Grey Garrison." 

"That's great, right? Let's just make sure we don't surprise the guards; they're probably jumpy already, if we pop up unexpectedly behind them we might get shot at."

"What, and waste your wonderful costume?" Camellia drawls.

"Let's keep the costumes on just a bit longer; we don't actually have any holy symbols on, so we work perfectly well as somewhat grimy crusaders, and it would be a minor pain to put them back on if we end up leaving the Garrison." 

"I do actually have a holy symbol on my armor! That's what I'm hiding!"

"So this is a friendly place, with guards, and we can bring the tribes here?" Lann can see them relaxing a bit but would like more explicit reassurance, please.

"Good question! I have no idea how intact the building is. We should check." 

Seelah is going to open the door on the left, then; the one on the right was probably barred for a reason.

This door leads to a large refectory. It also has a large, double door, which can be barred but isn't; it is locked instead.

There is also an open door that leads to a kitchen, which has a door leading to a stairway down to food storage cellars, which have yet another barred door.

All of these rooms are empty and show signs of being hastily abandoned, but not being ransacked or fought over.

"The Garrison has a sort of internal courtyard, right. I think the barred doors are the ones that lead to it. The guards must have left via the unbarred one which they had to lock from the other side. We can unbar one of the others but we don't have a key to lock it behind us..."

"Unbar the door, peek in, come back the way we came and re-bar the door." 

Right, that makes sense; they can at least look through. 

Seelah and Lann working together can easily unbar the door.

Through the door is indeed the square inner courtyard of the Gray Garrison! They are currently on the second of five floors; the food cellar must be on the ground floor.

There are several noteworthy things in this courtyard, but the most glaring one is the three-story-tall Wardstone, torn from its housing in the fortress called the Kite and smashed into the ceiling of the Garrison (or perhaps it was just dropped from a great height). Its bottom pierces all the way to the third floor, and the top is sticking above the ruined roof.

Whether as a result of this or because of Deskari's earth-splitting quake, the balconies that surround the courtyard on each floor have collapsed in places, in addition to the rubble strewn all over from the hole in the roof. On the ground floor, the great front doorway to the Garrison is shut and barred, but the postern door next to it is half-open.

The place is mostly silent; there are faint noises that might be fighting or shouting outside, and others that might be quiet conversations on higher floors.

"Well, that's not great."