Infiltrate the city stealthily and learn what you can before you’re killed.

Once you can no longer hear Brighid’s hoofbeats, you relax a little and allow yourself to acknowledge that you are almost certainly going to die, and you’re only mostly sure you’ll get better afterwards. Everything you’ve been told so far indicates that killing you will just cause you to respawn in the box canyon near the Starchaser village, but you have no way to be sure how it works. Do your body and equipment stay behind when you die or are you essentially teleported back to your spawn point and restored to life? If your body remains, and a necromancer reanimates it as some kind of undead, does that stop you from respawning? Will the wards around the city prevent your soul or whatever from leaving?

You don’t know the answers to any of those questions, and you really don’t want to find out, but all you can do is follow your heart and trust in the words of your Patron. Refusing to enter Bannagh Macht would **** Brighid to kill you, and you suspect that would hurt her deeply. You also don’t know if one killing would be enough for the quest's failure condition or whether she would be **** to continue to hunt you down. Not an option.

On the other hand, you also couldn’t take Brighid with you. Undoubtedly the pair of you would be much more effective in fighting whatever is in the city than you will be by yourself; your plan doesn’t involve fighting your way through, though. She will do far more good by leaving you behind and warning her people. It was hard giving up the assistance of someone as capable as the fire-haired centaur, but you are confident you made the right decision.

You plan to sneak into the city under the cover of the mists and do as much exploring as you can before you are inevitably caught and killed. If you’re lucky, you will uncover useful information to tell the Starchasers when you return to them. If you get really lucky, you might even find something which will persuade them not to kill you for showing back up with your quest unfinished. Either way, though, there isn’t much point in lingering around up here. You square your shoulders, check the straps of your armor and backpack, and set off into the roiling mists.

It is still early in the morning, just after dawn, and once you are at the base of the hill the mists rise over the top of your head. The closer you get to Bannagh Macht, the harder it becomes to see where you’re going. You say a little prayer to your mysterious Patron in your mind that whatever is inside the dome doesn’t have any sentries set which can see through the mist, because that will completely ruin your plan. Your only hope without any Skill in hiding, moving silently, or anything else stealthy is to move slowly and trust that the mist will give everything else a huge penalty to finding you. You think back to the old man berating you for choosing mage over the other options and mentally tip your cap to him. There were a couple other skill sets you could have picked which would be much more useful here. Again, though, there’s no sense beating yourself up for choices which can’t be undone. You can only move on and make what you have work for you.

It takes you a little while to get to the ward, and the feeling of the mist swirling around you against the wind unsettles you more than a little, but at last you stand at the threshold of Bannagh Macht. You are greeted with another prompt, which you read and quickly dismiss after checking to make sure you are still level 2.

Congratulations! You have gained 1,100 experience [1,000 base + 10% Lostlorn Title] for discovering the Important Location, Lost City of Bannagh Macht.

With one last look behind you, making sure Brighid hadn’t circled around and followed you in, you step through the barrier. Surprisingly, the barrier itself might as well have been empty air for all the resistance or sensation you felt from it while passing through it. The other side, though… A sensation of dread and despair instantly grips you. This place is intrinsically wrong somehow. Even the mist feels different, thicker and almost alive in the way it swirls around you. That is something you hadn’t considered -- could the mist itself act as a sentry and provide warning to the inhabitants?

You quickly decide that you can’t change your plan. If the mist does act as a sort of warning system, then you’ve already triggered it so you’re fucked anyway. If it doesn’t, then your plan is still your best shot. You do have one thing that you have to do immediately, however. Having already accepted that you won’t survive this visit, you remove the silver talisman from around your neck and place it on the ground. You have to destroy your only way out of this place. Well, only way out without being killed and respawning.

You point the palm of your right hand towards the talisman and chant the … words? … of your Flame Jet spell. A stream of fire pours out of your hand and engulfs the talisman. After the 5 second duration is up, you cast it again, then a third and a fourth time as rapidly as you can. After the fourth cast, you wave the mist away and kneel down to inspect your handiwork. The talisman is a bubbling pool of molten silver, but it is rapidly hardening in the cool, moist air. Quickly, you swipe the tip of your spear through the molten metal, deforming it further and separating it into multiple clumps. Hopefully that’s good enough; you don’t know how to destroy it much more thoroughly than that.

Obligations complete, you orient yourself with the ward at your back and proceed into the city.