with zer's help we found our favorite paladin at the same inn she was at half a month ago (that's where i'd have started looking anyhow) but this time she was packing up to leave
we told meledri about jorlanna's fiend infestation and showed her raelvan's letter
she was happy to stay at least one more day to help out so she asked us to meet her at cannith west in three hours and to be ready to fight fiends
me? ready to fight?
on the way we stopped by the patent office which smelled of paperwork and boredom
the clerk was surprised (medya says disturbed) at my legs and also at the research paper but he admitted they added up to sufficient prior art
he said it would probably take several weeks to verify everything and that i shouldn't try to profit from the work until then
so until then all renewal and self-harmonization assistance is free
oh right it already was because it ought to be
at cannith west meledri joined us and we urged morran and véora to get to a safe distance
there was a "no entry" sign outside the lab but here's some of what we found inside:
3 fiend-occupied humans
a magical circle on the floor with nasty energy pouring out of it
mostly unbroken lab equipment
a thick air of complete wrongness
and a blast of fire that rushed out and scorched us all
ouch!
it turns out the renew spell can restore burnt flesh and fur but the smell lingers
the fireball also burned away any hesitations i had about fighting them
zer' and i locked two of them down while the others got to pounding on the third
new tip for dealing with fiends: always disrupt their magic circle first because it will fizzle any spells cast near it and also heal any fiends in the area
after the first two went down the remaining one grew metal horns and wings and a tail and then they were even more vicious
but we worked together and defeated them!
after some significant renewing all around meledri blessed some water and we cleansed everything in the room
this gave me a chance to look at the remainder of the fiends' work including a disturbing experiment – the corpse of an imp with a patchwork of metal parts
there was also a somehow-still-intact book of research notes on how to twist the self-harmonization process to "integrate" corrupted forged components
i had to stop spark from immediately destroying it
both spark and medya questioned me when i put the book in my saddlebag
i explained that i knew better than to use anything in it directly but i could probably learn a lot about how not to do things and why
and hopefully how to keep the fiends from making use of any further harmonization research because that is definitely not what it's meant for
but i did promise that i wouldn't read it until i could be sure the book wasn't some kind of mysterious trap?
with that done we confronted jorlanna
her lab was a mess and so was she but somehow meledri calmed her down enough to talk to us
jorlanna offered a rambling apology for everything she'd done to get her family back
bell said she wouldn't forgive her for what she'd done and told her to think about how many other families would suffer for her choices
i can forgive her for what fiends forced her to do
it's still unclear whether that includes the attempt to steal my work
before we left jorlanna told us that d'orien palor plans to return in 3 days to collect the fiends' results
meledri knows of an artifact called the "lantern of jaila valeau" that would help us fight him but it's in a neglected silver flame temple that the aundair government ordered shut some time back and is now occupied by a gang of bandits
meledri said we'd have to break in but i suggested we get permission from redeker instead
so here we are in a waiting room
again
today