If I have darley in the party nobody in homlet or nulb will speak to me. I tried telling her to sneak while casting improved invisibilty and sending her far away but they somehow know and keep on refusing to speak to me. I have to get rid of her before I can do any trading again.
Just like if you get any other non-human NPC, actually. The dialogue just checks for their presence in the party, so no amount of hiding will help. Here's a rationale though: only Evil parties would recruit Evil, nonhuman NPCs to help. And Evil parties have traders that would be willing to overlook these "differences", so there are still places to offload loot. Being bad in a world designed for heroes isn't always easy.
So its evil to not care about a person's appearance? How do I know the non human NPCs are evil? (well, their character sheet says so )... So, are the homlet tradehouse traders the ONLY Traders who will work with you if you have non-humanoids in the party? nobody else?
Not just evil, they're also chaotic. And they come from the ToEEVIL. Imagine you chilling around in your good old town when someone drags in a giant troll and says he's your good buddy. Would ya want to have anything to do with them?
I always think that the traders of Nulb being so "purists" about monsters in town a little strange. It's a village of pirates, with some important people involved with the Temple busines. There are an end slide in the game that shows Nulb receiving a lot of nonhumans newcomers - I remeber to see a troll and some other nasty things. But well. There are still options.
it is a village of pirates that services the temple and in the end credits it explicitly states that "with the temple gone, nulb fell soon after"... And how do they know it? what a bunch of bigoted and unfriendly villagers. Also somehow they are able to see through every form of disguise.
I've noticed that Mother Scregg(sp?) will buy and sell things with Oohlgrist in the party. Not sure if this applies to Darley. I never really had any problem though because i could just tell him to leave the party and pick him up 2 seconds later after I bought/sold whatever I needed.
when you first meet her, darley is in human form, showing she is prefectly capable of disguise... why isn't she able to use it in town?
Agreed though, Nulb shouldn't be so picky. Although, I could see the lady in the Tavern scared of the monsters, and Otis and Screng are both Good and would likely easily distinguish the evil guys. Ah Fong should keep doing business though, in true stereotypical spirit of Chinese businessman.
unless they are paladins then they cannot cast detect evil at will. that means they will not be able to distinguish her when she is disguised. Detect evil wouldn't help either, because EVERYONE is evil in nulb... they would just think she is another pirate scum... they need true sight to see through her disguise. http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/trueSeeing.htm at minimum requires a level 9 caster and lasts minutes per level (So they need to have a reason to cast it on her)
Well, she has horns. And wings. Kinda obvious. It's a good question why she can't disguise herself again, but well, she doesn't. As for the gang in Nulb, I wouldn't be surprised if Screng had a gem of true seeing lying around considering what she is. She and her helpers know better to give a second look to everyone new in Nulb. I won't spoil it to you though, figure it out on your own ^__^ That said, I was wondering, if you DON'T uncover who she is in the node and take her into the party thinking she's a human, how much changes? Do the shops work, do her stats change etc?
Something to keep in mind with Nulb is that while it may be 'evil,' that doesn't necessarily mean that its residents would advocate associating with all manner of dangerous creatures. I believe our former resident DM guru Lord_Spike held forth on that notion exstensively back in the day. IIRC, the Darley-in-disguise issue was already reported somewhere (Basil I think).