>>5155643It will help your cause, you reason, that all the other Degenerates at the Gala were born of (or sired by?) foreign, Southern humans. Their skin-tones are darker than your own, already darker than typical for a Northern human as a result (you suspect) of your paternal grandmother and (you hypothesize) enhanced or amplified by your mother’s own golden-brown scales. It is an easy, sensible lie with a grain of truth that the attack was one by Southern demon-worshippers. The Archmage may suspect otherwise thanks to Yosef’s own dogged crusading against a Reptilian menace but, well… One theory has ample evidence, and the other only rampant speculation, which you will now further discredit.
You take a moment to stop your pacing and to dip into an alley. There, you take a moment to extract a jar of topical oil and to rub it across your body. The ritual calms you, and eliminates any possibility of scaly patterns emerging across your skin and thus giving away the game.
You also take the opportunity to make a decision about Henzler’s request: you send her a missive across your demonic channels, instructing her to study Alhazred (but only to the extent possible without endangering him, or requiring anaesthesia), but to hold off on any further action until Felman first scouts her laboratory. To Felman, you send a related command.
Then, finished attending to matters cosmetic and chimerical, you emerge and approach the gate of the Yosef estate. Your game-face is on in more ways than one.
“I am sorry,” the thickly-sideburned old servant tells you at the gate, “but Lord Yosef is otherwise occupied, and is not accepting visitors.”
The servant in question is a human man named Callaghan—you remember him from prior visitations. You frown at this impasse, but press on.
“He will want to ssee me,” you insist. “He an I have much to dissscusss!”
Callaghan raises his bushy eyebrows in a high arch against his high forehead, accentuating his baldness.
“I would imagine so,” he says, dourly. “But the Lord hardly needs… ‘Help’ in drawing conclusions there.”
What do you do?
>Make conversation with Callaghan, attempting to learn what Yoef is up to and to gain entry>Use magic to ensorcell Callaghan, and pass by him to your objective>Screw this—leave, and come back in the back, using stealth to break into the estate>Knock the man out and shove him in the bushes with a packet of shirin on him as a convenient and discredited excuse for his disappearance>Write-in 