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Mirage looks to Vass and says, "We need to get some order in here. Gather men to move the wounded to the beds up stairs. We'll assemble the dead out back to prevent the public from seeing them. Make sure the bodies are covered, we don't want mass panic." Then to Kendrick, "There are people missing, we need to find out who took them and where the went. Did you see anything upstairs when you came upon the devils? You were the first one in here before me."
Err.. all right, it's
sort of a call for a formal head count and attempt to ID the bodies in order to find if there are missing people (and if there are,
who?). I'll interpret it that way. Let's get this elephant out of the room!
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Kern's angle, which is suspecting there was a spotter (which is likely gone), tag his locationa and then perhaps track him, is pretty good.
But a single skill check of 20 doesn't cut it; To succeed on
one check alone (and implicitly in very little time) I'd have required a 30. Yeah, very long shot, but we're talking about doing a team's worth of investigation in a fraction of the time. Sherlock Holmes territory but if it had worked, brillant!
That angle can still be pursued as a mini-skill challenge, though. If you decide to try that, it'd be DC 17, 4 success before 2 failure :
The 2 first successes go to finding a lead.
Streetwise is a good skill,
Perception can only support by spotting promising location to investigate : DC 17, grants +2 to all concurrent streetwise check, failure doesn't count against the tally.
Other skills could be used though if I deem the explanation acceptable but the DC is 21.
Once you have a lead, diplomacy DC 17 or initimidate DC 19.
Other skill if I accept your rationalization, DC 21.
Each check taken by one PC takes 10 minutes and within 30 minutes the trail is cold and you failed. Obviously, checks can be made conccurently which basically mean that a single agent can't pull it off in time but a group can.
It is NOT the only way to move on to a next working lead and actually the team could split to follow two leads if you want to.
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Leyra's check is good enough to stabilize Shalya but otherwise is nothing stellar. Three of the survivors die in the following ten minutes; the cook, one soldier, one of the campaign staffer.
I was going DC 20 for Shalyla, 25 to save a useful witness (The grievously wounded campaign staffer) and 30 for a miracle (They will all survive, Praise Melora!)
Leyra can contribute to whatever is going on at the inn but is tied there for ten minutes.
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Leyra takes charge of the triage and then gets to work. The situation is dire. She focuses on Shayla but she is in bad shape and it takes her a lot of time to stabilize her. Some agressive reporter would later point out that three persons, including two civilians, died unattended while she was devoting herself to saving Shayla who was wrose off than most. But that would be for later. Satisfied that the drow would pull through, she then directs the guards and whomever knew first aid to take care of the other wounded.
Shayla is still unconscious but Leyra has access to stimulants that should stir her up. It could be extremely hazardous to her health and even kill her, though. That will be a tough choice...
[sblock]Heal DC 20 to wake her up, failures kills her. If she wakes up, Heal DC 25 so that she doesn't die after a few minutes of lucidity and DC 30 to allow her to simply resume her function for the rest of the day.[/sblock]
Mirage organizes the head count. Soon Vass becomes perplexed and reports to Mirage.
-''Huh, sir... I mean Mirage. It's weird. For one thing we can't find the owner, a tiefling lady named Hope, I think. There is also one of my sargeant, Eleonor. She's the only woman and elf in the unit so it ain't too hard to spot she's missing. Some of the staffer from the campaign say they can't find Lars Kinnar, an event coordinator. It seems to be all we are missing as far as soldier and staff is concerned, but we are also coming with a pretty short count of patrons. We are going door to door, some of them may be shocked and are not answering but I'd still say we are short a lot of patrons considering the inn is full. And I am counting the bodies, of course.''
Kendrick clears his throat.
-''Well, I was... napping when it started. Screaming started in the rooms in my wing before it moved downstairs. They wasted no time rushing to the bar, though. If they'd crashed my door they would litterrally have caught me with my pants down. Instead I got the time to suit up and then I took them from the rear.'' He says helpfully. Then he frowns and seems to remember something. ''Hum, speaking of taking people from the rear...''
He mumbles a few words that sounds like 'hooker' and 'left my gold upstairs'. He suddenly excuses himself and runs back to the second floor.
-''Nobody steals my demon head!'' he shouts back as he leave the bar, abandoning his grisly trophy behind.
Vass is astonished at Kendrick's behavior but then confirms what he said.
-''That's true that pretty much all the lesser devils came from upstairs, though. But at least the big bearded devil and his winged buddy came from downstair. Me and everyone here were on the second floor when this started. It was weird, I mean loads of devils poured off from over there, through the same door that your friend eventually came from. Some engaged us, enough to pin us, but most ran by us down the stairs. But I could swear the fighting had already started downstairs at that point. After a very short while there was no more fighting in the bar, I heard a barking kind of voice and then those two bigass devil that you and your buddy the sword slinger killed came up. They seemed very interested to kill us or... I don't know. I think they wanted to kill that drow friend of yours. She's a bit too feisty for her own sake there; she made it easy for them because she had grabbed her rapier and was helping holding the front. The bearded guy really focused on her. Let's say we were lucky you both came when you did. We were no match.''
Meanwhile, Garrick is making an... inventory of what can be found on the bar floor. Considering it was used as a campaign HQ, there are papers everywhere that flew during the fight. Garrick eventually notices one thing that might be missing. Shayla's Crystal relay thingie seems to be missing a piece. Garrick isn't too familiar with crystal magic, but there seems to be missing a small crystal atop the huge purple rock weighting nearly a ton that is used as the power source to bounce your communication pretty much anywhere in the city.
[sblock]Arcana is the related skill for anything relating to crystal magic.
Sparing you a skill check, anyone trained in Arcana (Mirage for sure and probably Nathan) can explain the following:
That huge rock was stored in a corner of the bar floor since it is so hard to move. It is called a Source and is essentially part battery and part main server.
Shayla's communication room was on the second floor and her personal crystal was tapping on the source (You have to be within roughly thirty feet). She was then using her own crytal to connect to a complex console filled with two dozens crystals, one of which linked to the heroe's crystals.) Basically, she was running a dispatch center.
The small thing that is missing atop the battery is called a shader and is essentially an encoder / decoder...
It is usually 'pluged' to a source since it has a viral quality and will therefore shade / unshade pretty much all communication citywide for whoever control that source.
It also has a 'memory' of the resonance of any crystal that has connected to it; a skilled ritualist can reverse the signal with ease.
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