After a Holiday break and before another Holiday break, we are back for some more D&D. But we had the full group of Bokken, Barrai, Thrain, and Kip back for one more time in 2020.

Last time, if you remember, our Bokken player was missing because he was feeling under the weather, so Assendial had tasked them all with figuring out who had stolen the scarab amulet/relic/thing from Tormin’s desk. He wasn’t supposed to have it there, but he’d been studying it. The group, minus Bokken, searched Tormin’s office finding the secret spot where he most likely would have stored it, but they didn’t really find any clues and were instead attacked by a mimic that was in one of the drawers to be security. They also created a list of suspects in the 2nd year students who were also around the school at the time as well as Parrag and Addruss having been seen there.

In this session they continued that investigation. They waited for all of the 2nd year students to leave as they filled Bokken in on everything that was happening and what they’d been tasked to do. Once the 2nd years left, they went to the second year barracks. Unlike there which are open communal sleeping areas, the 2nd year students have their own rooms. Barrai, who last time decided to see what second years stood out, starts them down the path of looking for a few rooms, one that looks like it has Flink the Tabaxi in it, rooms for the twin dwarves Snickle and Fritz, a room where the giant Nafitl is using, and the room of the half-orc Lisanial.

They push open a few doors and find one that has bunk beds in it, which they decide must be the room of Snickle and Fritz. Going through that room, they find that it does appear to be their room and that either Snickle or Fritz has a girlfriend and the other one doesn’t. Besides that everything in the room, for either Snickle or Fritz is a mirror image of the other, so if one has their shirts going from left to right dark to light, the other is flipped so the room is very symmetrical. Barrai finds the picture that seems out of place and then a pile of letter held together with a ribbon which he takes two of the letters at random. Thrain moves around two pairs of shoes so that the room is no longer symmetrical, but there’s nothing else of interest.

Next they find Flink’s room, they can tell where she’s been sharpening her claws. While her bed and dresser also fail to lead any interesting clues, they do check on the three suitcases that Flink has set by her dresser. The top one appears to have several brown paper packages tied up with string that have a smoky and salty smell to them. They guess that it is a smoked/preserved fish, and don’t bother opening them. The next one is full of climbing gear and the bottom one is empty. Not that interested in the suitcases, Barrai looks for loose floor boards and finds one that is slightly loose. He pulls on it, but nothing happens, Thrain gives it a go, nothing happens. Bokken steps in and has no problem breaking the board to get it up, but reveals just a solid floor beneath it, not even enough room to hide any of the fish. Bokken puts the board back and Thrain casts mending on it.

They next come across Lisanial the Half-Orcs room. This room is a mess, but it is jam packed with tossed down piles of weapons, a lot of them, multiple suits of armor, boxes, a dresser, and a bed. Barrai starts going around the room, putting in a little effort, sorting stuff as he looks through it to see if there are any clues. Bokken finds a pile of shortswords which Lisanial has labeled “throwing sword” and one longsword, “throwing longsword”, and takes one of the short swords. Thrain decides to grab one of the breastplates to get it to a black smith to get turned into his size. And then he goes through the drawers of the dresser. He finds a lot of messy clothes in there, and six bags with money in them. He grabs a couple of coins from all of them but stops at the sixth one because he can tell there is only a thin layer of coins on top, inside it is a scarab.

Bokken takes a moment and inspects the scarab and realizes that while similar, the metal looks a different color and the body of the scarab is different. Then Kip grabs it and looks it over to see if it looks magical. He thinks it might be magical so Barrai casts detect magic on it, he can tell that it’s magical and some sort beacon or something, but doesn’t fully understand the spell. Bokken grabs it back and takes off running with a siren noise and lights blinking that Kip has cast on him. Thrain takes this moment to grab five of the six money bags and another set of armor. Barrai and Kip rush over to the window and try and get the best vantage point possible to see if a dragon is coming from the tower. Barrai is pushed out of the way by Kip who sees what looks like a dragon. And Thrain using Thaumaturgy, amplifies his voice so Bokken can hear him over the siren noise that Bokken needs to ditch the scarab because a dragon is coming.

Bokken instead, being extremely obvious, rushes towards the watch tower where Sanphire is on watch, and passes him the scarab. Linken the one remaining teacher on campus comes out of the teachers quarters and is passed the scarab as well. No one knows what to do after Linken tries to dispel magic on the scarab and it doesn’t work, he does turn off the siren and lights on Bokken. Bokken grabs the scarab back again and throws it as far back towards the dragon as possible, which causes it to land and clink nicely onto the top of the barracks that Barrai, Kip and Thrain are coming out of. They book it towards the watch tower and towards the mess hall grabbing Bokken who is assuming that the dragon will deal with the scarab and then leave like last time. Turns out that Bokken is basically right, but doesn’t count in how long a stream of acid the dragon is letting out, and Kip, Thrain, and Bokken get caught in it.

They take a rest in the cellar with the other first year students before, as always, getting curious again. Linken comes and gives them all the update that the dragon has in fact left after one pass over the second years barracks but that the students should stay in the cellar until he comes back to get them. For Barrai that wasn’t soon enough, so he goes over to Dorin who looks like he’s in the midst of a panic attack, and causes him to panic even more, using an ability to seed doubt and fear into Dorin’s mind so that he turns against and is afraid of Cordin, the Dragonborn for an hour. Dorin screams about how Cordin is in league with the dragons and takes off running up the stairs. Thrain casts darkness over the rest of the students causing in more panic, and they all head out, Barrai, Thrain, and Kip through the secret tunnel and Bokken through the main entrance with him saying he was going to get Dorin back.

Once outside they go and find the scarab and go back to Lisanial’s room. Grabbing the scarab with mage hand Barrai and Kip determine it is likely not active anymore, though they do almost lose it to Kip’s squirrel Karl thinking the scarab was food when Barrai tossed it to kip. Back down in the room, they start going through everything, but it’s hard to keep track of it all because of the mess, so once they start to clear an area, Bokken dumps the stuff out of the window, and they continue to tear apart the room.

That’s where we ended the session. Normally we’d play in two weeks, but that’s on the 24th of December, so that’s not happening, and one of the players is gone leading up to Christmas, so another longer break.

So as always a little behind the DM’s screen.

I think it’s important with an investigation to try and not lock people into too much of what they have to do. This was a light planning session for me because of that. I knew that they’d find something in one of the rooms, hadn’t decided on what it was until in the moment. And I also hadn’t decided on whose room it was going to be. I actually used the dice to help decide that, not how well the players rolled, but some random roll behind the screen.

That’s it, that’s about all for the session, I hope it offers some interesting ideas.

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