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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Siberys" data-source="post: 6085412" data-attributes="member: 30619">I've updated the OP again. The linked page also includes a list of "open leads," for the player's convenience.I am really, really liking TDS. That session was one of the very few all-RP sessions I've run, and where other ones tended to fall flat, this one had the players engrossed. We covered a /lot/ of ground in a relatively short amount of time (about 3 hours, where normally a session runs four or five).The PCs already have several crack theories. My favorite - Doitein's player is convinced Hennet Rinus is setting off explosions underground, and that these are what's causing the tremors. All because he told everyone to calm down about that tremor that happened as the PCs entered the tavern. They're also suspicious of LeBrix, but they kept failing insight checks, whether active, passive, or secret, to see that he'd be willing to talk under the right circumstances. Maybe the documents'll clear things up? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":P" title="Stick out tongue    :P"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":P" /><ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Just before 11 O'clock on the first day of summer, the Constables were filing ever more paperwork in their office when they were interrupted by Delft. He explained that there was a death at the Danoran consulate, but the victim had been partially on Risuri land. That meant 5B had Jurisdiction. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">After an hour-long trip to the Consulate, located in the wealthy North Shore district, they arrived at the scene. The consulate sported a broken fourth-floor window, and forty feet from the building, still red with blood, stood a black wrought-iron fence. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Alfred Bellastair, the officer in charge of the crime scene, was waiting impatiently for the PCs to arrive - he was sick of dealing with the Danorans and the crowd of rubberneckers outside the consulate. He filled the Constables in on the basics of the case;<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Witnesses heard gunfire, saw a woman jump out of the window, and watched as she landed on the fence.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">A man apparently ran off with some stuff she had been carrying.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The body was inside the consulate and was waiting for the Constables.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The Constables were directed to speak with the consulate security chief, Julian LeBrix.</li> </ul></li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Before they went inside to investigate the body, the Constables examined the fence and questioned some bystanders. The fence was likely too far for her to have hit naturally; something magical was at work to keep her afloat. Additionally, Jourdaine was able to track down a gentleman who had witnessed the death firsthand - he said that she had landed on the fence first, and then there were gunshots, spaced apart by a few seconds. Additionally, when she'd jumped, she had her arms covering her face, as if to shield it from something. He'd also seen someone or something up in the window, but it was completely black with no discernible features. It had something metallic and shiny, perhaps a gun. Having seen that much, the man had hurried away from the scene, not wanting to get involved. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Afterwards, the Constables spoke with LeBrix. He told them he'd found her stealing a valuable antique from the consulate. He'd drawn his pistol, she ran, he shot her leg to hobble her, she kept running, he shot her in the back as she jumped. He was within his rights to do that as a consulate guard, but the gunshot bit didn't match up with what the Constables had heard from the witnesses. They didn't say anything, though, and LeBrix continued describing the thief; her name was Nilasa Hume. She was dating one of the consulate's guards, a man by the name of Braden Sarkin, and had today brought the consulate staff breakfast - evidently, cover for her criminal activies. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The Constables then went in to investigate the body and the scene of the crime. Most of the wounds were consistent with what they'd heard so far - glass wounds on the arms, two fence punctures on the abdomen, and gunshot wounds in the left thigh and the shoulder. There was an additional wound on her scalp, though - the partially-healed remnants of a necrotic wound. Additionally, the gunshot wounds appeared to have been inflicted from above after she'd landed on the fence - corroborating the witness' story and contesting LeBrix's. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">In one of her pockets was a bail certificate from Parity Lake; she was picked up in a contraband raid but was released on bail paid by a man named Heward Sechim. Braden explained Heward owned an Alkahest factory where Nilasa lived and worked. She also had an empty potion vial hidden in her top with traces of an invisibility elixir; creating or possessing such a draught is a crime without the proper permits. Magical scrutiny revealed that her face had recently been affected by healing magic, that she had consumed the invisibility elixir, and that she had been affected by flight magic. There was no evidence of any flight elixir and Nilasa was herself not a spellcaster, so it wasn't clear how she could fly - though it did explain why she jumped out of the window. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The Constables noticed then that the consulate staff (Braden excepted) was acting rather upbeat considering the morning's events; after asking around for a little bit, they were able to determine that all those acting strangely had eaten some of the brigadieros (chocolate candies) that Nilasa had brought that morning. They were bought from a tavern called The Thinking Man, and Braden explained that that was one of Nilasa's favorite haunts. Jourdaine was able to immediately determine they'd been spiked with fey pepper, an illicit, euphoria-inducing narcotic. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The investigators headed upstairs (accompanied by LeBrix and a few guards). They were allowed to investigate the gallery where LeBrix said the incident occurred, but they were not allowed into the Consular's office - he said important state documents were held there, and that it was unrelated to the case anyway. Needless to say, the Constables didn't believe him. In the gallery, a rug had been moved to cover a bloodstain that wasn't consistent with a gunshot wound, as LeBrix's account would indicate - it looked more like the result of a slash, such as from a blade or a claw. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The Constables had Nilasa's body sent back to headquarters for further examination - they wanted to have Lumin question Nilasa's spirit, but did not trust the Danorans. Before leaving, they spoke with the secretary - Tia Jedeau - to see if anyone else had been in just before Nilasa's death. In fact, there had been; she swooned visibly as she described a "dashing doctor with a northerner accent" - he was in to get a travel visa to Ber and had left moments before the staff heard the windows crash outside. His name was Wolfgang von Recklinghausen, and the secretary gave the party his case file, which included his temporary residence (a hotel called the House of Blue Birds) and a few local contacts that were vouching for him. Nilasa and Wolfgang had even spoken while he was waiting for his paperwork, but Tia didn't know about what - she guessed about pleasantries, but she was too busy admiring Wolfgang and studiously ignoring Nilasa to have actually been paying attention. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Back at RHC headquarters, Lumin questioned Nilasa's spirit. Guessing she was a Seedist, Lumin was able to get her to answer more private questions she might not have otherwise acknowledged. First he asked her how she had been able to fly; she said it was because of a magic pendant Gale, a wanted fey terrorist, had given her along with several elixirs. Then he asked her what she had had been doing on the fourth floor of the consulate. She explained that Gale had asked her to steal documents from the consulate, and she'd been doing that on and off over the past several weeks. Finally, he asked what had been taken from her. She said nothing - she had given a bundle of documents to a man she had spoken with inside the consulate - Wolfgang - and then tried to give him her canary pendant as she told him to "take this to Nevard." Lumin remembered that there was a famous Skyseer named Nevard Sechim that lived in the area - who was likely related to Heward. The last thing Nilasa remembered after that was a pain in her thigh - probably the gunshot wound - after which she died. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">While Lumin was communing with Nilasa's spirit, Doitein had sent for a copy of her criminal file and Jourdaine performed an alchemical analysis of the elixir vial and of the fey pepper lacing the Brigadieros. The police record pointed them toward Goodson's Estuarial Reformatory, a boat-cum-prison floating in the bay, where the two men that were picked up with her - Ford Sorghum and Travis Starter - were being held. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Now the early evening, the Constables decided to head to the Thinking Man's tavern. As they entered, a tremor began to shake the city. An orc sailor called "Earthquake!", but it died down quickly and a squirrelly-looking man in spectacles and a scarf stood and told everyone to stay calm - it must have been the ground settling, he said, as Flint had been stable since its founding centuries ago. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The Constables, for their part, were getting suspicious looks from all around. Many of the patrons were students and poseur-revolutionaries and thus not keen on law enforcement, not to mention a Danoran technologist with a huge mechanical wolf! The proprietor of the tavern was willing enough to help, though - a hulking man that called to mind the classic image of a pirate, he was really just a former sailor named Tad Hilly, though he did nothing to dissuade any embellishment on his past. He confirmed that the brigadieros had come from his tavern, though he swore up and down that the fey pepper hadn't. When he found they were asking about Nilasa, he directed them to Barb, the head waitress. By all accounts, the two had been close, and that was confirmed when she burst into tears at the news of Nilasa's death. A few patrons looked at the investigators askance at making Barb cry, but that they were gentle in breaking the news - and intent to find her killer - comforted her enough that she directed them to the two groups Nilasa had recently associated with - a group called "The Band" badly playing music in the back, and a knot of "professional students" centered around the bespectacled man that had spoken after the tremor. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The Constables spoke first with the group of musicians, led by a long-haired halfling with an ocarina ironically named Jered Lawman. Most of the conversation consisted of Jered insulting the party in bad Rellanic, but eventually, the man with the glasses and scarf interrupted one of Jered's multitudinous quips. He introduced himself as Hennet Rinus, and posed to them a philosophical argument. The constables - especially Lumin - played along (much to Hennet's enjoyment and Jered's displeasure). In exchange for cooperating with his philosophical tangent (centered on the meaning of extent of authority), Hennet offered some information he knew of Nilasa, and prodded Jered until he fessed up, too. Hennet explained the Nilasa had only recently befriended his little clique; he had worked in Crisillyir studying fossils, and Nilasa was trying to contact smugglers working for The Family, a Crisillyiri criminal organization. Once she decided she could trust him, she'd asked Hennet to write a fancy Crisillyiri letter to the local head of the Family, a man named Monsigneur Morgan Cippiano. Jered, for his part, explained that Nilasa had some connections with some brigands in the Cloudwood. In particular, she liked to go to a small druid's enclave in that area. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Satisfied that that avenue of investigation had been exhausted, the Constables next made their way to the House of Blue Birds, to speak with Wolfgang von Recklinghausen. Upon arriving, they found a carriage driver waiting impatiently at the door. Named Jack Byron, he had brought the doctor here much earlier in the day - he had bloody hands and was carrying some kind of bundle, saying he was in the middle of a surgery and in need of his tools. Jack had waited for a half hour before realizing he'd been ditched. He had then gone inside and left his information with the hostel staff before continuing on with his driving route. After his shift, he'd come back, and was waiting here for any sign of the doctor - the staff insisted he wasn't there despite being booked for the rest of the week. The staff let the Constables in to Wolfgang's room, which they found empty - he'd evidently gathered his things and left through the back door.</li> </ul></blockquote>

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