Devageua frowned and then gave a slightly bemused smile as they started to 'preform.' At least until his permanent arcane sight showed a slowly spreading aura of enchantment in it. Even as his mind recognized it probably WASN'T a suggestion or command spell, his body was halfway through the casting a quickened dispel magic.<br/><br/>But Tina was even quicker, and with a single flick of her finger injected a note into the performance her and her two apprentices where putting on. The counterspell song ripped the magic out of the bards attempt, and she gave the two bards a bright, guileless smile from where she was sitting in the corner, never pausing on her keyboard. Devaguea froze as the energies were torn to shreds, before aborting the spell and reabsorbing the energies of his spell, and returning to his reclining position, noting that Nyrissa hadn't done anything beyond raise an eyebrow at the group. "Please avoid the use of spell energies during initial negotiations. I have had... poor encounters with enchanters before, and by the time I had recognized what the energies were being used for, I was halfway through a spell."<br/><br/>Done restating one of the ground rules, he returned to the initial performance that had yet to be address. "And no, I will not simply give the piece away."<br/><br/>Honestly the reason he wasn't stating his starting price was because this group was clearly not a diplomatic group. There was no clear leader, everything was decided by committee, and the actions lacked a certain level of... sanity that came from being planned. This seemed more like a group had been randomly picked out of a crowd and told 'go negotiate for the artifact shard.' It was like watching a boat crash, and he was too fascinated watching it to stop it.