that "wake him up every few hours" plan won't work ... the 8 hours do not need to be consecutive.
prd on bards and sorcerers wrote:
Daily Readying of Spells: Each day, sorcerers and bards must focus their minds on the task of casting their spells. A sorcerer or bard needs 8 hours of rest (just like a wizard), after which she spends 15 minutes concentrating. (A bard must sing, recite, or play an instrument of some kind while concentrating.) During this period, the sorcerer or bard readies her mind to cast her daily allotment of spells. Without such a period to refresh herself, the character does not regain the spell slots she used up the day before.
prd on wizards wrote:
Rest: To prepare his daily spells, a wizard must first sleep for 8 hours. The wizard does not have to slumber for every minute of the time, but he must refrain from movement, combat, spellcasting, skill use, conversation, or any other fairly demanding physical or mental task during the rest period. If his rest is interrupted, each interruption adds 1 hour to the total amount of time he has to rest in order to clear his mind, and he must have at least 1 hour of uninterrupted rest immediately prior to preparing his spells. If the character does not need to sleep for some reason, he still must have 8 hours of restful calm before preparing any spells.
Recent Casting Limit/Rest Interruptions: If a wizard has cast spells recently, the drain on his resources reduces his capacity to prepare new spells. When he prepares spells for the coming day, all the spells he has cast within the last 8 hours count against his daily limit.
So they can keep waking him up every few hours, but after 10-12 hours of interrupted sleep, he should be able to regain his spells and when the "wake him up" again, he can charm the guards to release him. And then he can go to the people with true tales of repression and torture ... a fallen paladin AND a large increase to the kingdom's unrest would be a hell of a double whammy.
It would also make for a great foot in the door for a religious group to make a more permanent presence in the kingdom (Erastil at the old temple, the Green God at the mite's tree, whichever diety the kobolds now follow if they are still around, etc.). Give the paladin atonement in exchange for the establishment of a temple within the capital (or a cathedral if you want to make it really hurt on the BP front).
