Session 13 Report: Mind The Gap

General Summary

The Office

Monday morning, Brand, Dray, and Shoke arrived at the SIDE office. Shoke, who "hadn't taken a day off since 1592" had recovered from his bad-shrimp-food-poisoning. Unfortunately taking Shoke's previous food recommendation but on the following day, Karl wasn't so lucky. Gyrm was also out due to a religious holiday, the Feast of St. Conchilla.   Once they've settled, Mindy fills them in on the tasks and research she'd conducted since they day before.   Warrants. The search warrants the team requested had been submitted and were in review with the Office of the Council. These were for

1. The Nest,
2. Selu Vilute's apartment - Apartment 6B, 43 St. Vincent st, Northwall Apartments, and
3. the RUGL dormitories

The "C" logo. While she couldn't find any indication of what the logo or card belonged to, she was able to find a few NRC-based printing companies who would be go-to's for a card of that print quality and paper.   Demons & Devils. Having run into a number of fiends in the past, and even incorporating one into their logo design, the team wanted to get a better understanding of what exactly they were. Mindy presented the team with some neat notes outlining her finding. There were two primary categories of fiends: Demons, originating from a plane called the "Abyss", and Devils, originating from a plane called the "Nine Hells". Based on some notes and journals, the two groups had speculatively been part of some ancient war which may or may not be continuing in some way today. Both groups were evil but differed significantly in their hierarchy and social structure; Demons were the more chaotic and erratic while Devils were more orderly and had a clear societal chain of command. Several accounts and folklore she read noted both could be summoned in some way, but Devils were more common than Demons as they tended to work off of some form of contract. While benefiting both parties in some way, most materials portrayed these as a cautionary tale in which the Devil always got the better end of the bargain and most of the time this included the soul of the contractor. On the topic of the "poofing" that seemed to occur when the party had slain these fiends, most speculative reports stated that as extra-planar beings, their soul was attached to their plane of origin. When they poofed after being slain, most likely they appeared somewhere back in their own plane.   Based on the team's reports of their encounters, it seemed they'd only run into Devils so far: primarily Imps and the Spine Devils and Bearded Devil from last winter. Mindy also found in her research a similar sigil of Asmodeus, ruler of the Nine Hells in which the Devil's reside, to the one the team had found on the back of The Wooden Girl poem.   As she was responding to some additional queries during her explanation, Mindy referred to Shoke as "Officer Nakato" rather than "Shoke" as most people do. Flattered, Shoke thanked "Officer Chancer" for her diligent work, causing her to blush.   Finishing up, the team asked Mindy if she could look into any other appearances or mentions of imps since their first encounter in the winter of 1594 last year.  

RUGL

Next up, Brand, Dray, and Shoke made their way to RUGL to look into both the disappearance of Kem Kardis earlier this month and the two missing students reported by the school this past weekend, Stella and Carli. Passing through the Great Hall in the Gilinore building, Shoke grumbles about the flashiness of the decorations and architecture. Some students nearby start to giggle but quickly move away when Shoke turned to look at them, causing Shoke to grumble some more about RUGL costs and rich kids.   They arrived at the Student Resources office just to the left inside the Great Hall in the Gilinore building and met the front desk attendant, a middle-aged dwarf named Siril. The school had filed a report just recently and since they did not yet have the search warrant for the premises, the officers figured they would take the approach of assuming the schools cooperation following their own report. The gambit worked, and they were able to get a handful of helpful information on the missing students from Siril:

• Stella Bynwalyn: Gnome woman in her 2nd year. Lives in Beryl Hall, room 301, with her roommate, a 2nd year orc woman named Vorna Lowhand. Reported missing by her roommate. Member of the Pep Squad.
• Carli Padfoot: Halfling woman in her 3rd year. Lives at 45 Rudigan ave, apartment 2b, in the West Village. Reported missing by her friend, Carol Tin, a human woman also in her 3rd year. Member of the Pep Squad.
• Kem Kardis: Orucan woman in her 2nd year. Lives in Beryl Hall, room 215, with her roommate, a 2nd year woman named Alex Stimpton. Reported missing by her roommate.

Beryl Hall

The team made their way to Stella's dorm room at Beryl Hall and spoke with her roommate, Vorna, while searching Stella's side of the room. Unfortunately, it turned out Vorna did not spend much time with Stella after arriving at the concert, so didn't have much else to report about her whereabouts. Dray noticed a notebook wedged between Stella's bed and desk and wanted to cast Detect Magic to get a better view of the room. She stealthily signaled Shoke to run distraction while she does some more "in-depth" searching. Noticing a poster for the recent Roz concert, Shoke started discussing Roz (whom it turned out had recently also had a concert in Hillside) and the intricacies of music genres with Vorna, a topic on which she apparently had a lot of opinions. Meanwhile, Dray managed to swipe the notebook, which turned out to be Stella's Journal, and cast Detect Magic, discovering a strange aura emanating from a piece of paper on Stella's desk. The paper was a signed application to try out for captain of the Pep Squad, giving off an unusual silvery enchantment aura. The team eventually thanked Vorna for her help and for letting them search the room, telling her to contact Mindy from the SIDE office at NRPD HQ if she remembers anything.   Next, the team attempted to make their way to Carli's apartment in West Village, but no one answered. They decided to check with Siril again to see if they could locate Carli's friend, Carol, grabbing some quick street food on the way back: a grilled prawn on a stick for Dray and a mudcrab roll, extra mud, for Shoke. Siril let the team know the location of the classroom where they could find Carol once classes concluded. Pulling her aside after the class let out, the team asked her some preliminary questions about her and Carli's time at the concert. Dray's keen insight (natural 20) revealed something strange about Carol's story: she would begin to recount the nights events, but her head would start to hurt as she approached a certain point of the night. Thinking this was strange, the team asked her to come back to NRPD HQ for further questioning.

NRPD HQ

Brand, Dray, and Shoke brought Carol back to one of the interrogation rooms at NRPD HQ, across from the SIDE office. Wanting to help find Carli, Carol agreed to whatever the officers needed, including voluntarily being placed under a Suggestion spell in order to better probe into the truth of each detail and element of the night. Carol recounted the night's events again:

• Carli and Carol get into the Nest
• They order and do some shots
• They grab beers
• They head upstairs to the balcony to watch and dance for a while
• Wanting to head into the crowd a bit, they head back downstairs
• They grab beers
• They head into crowd
• [beat]
• Carol gets to the front but Carli is gone

Shoke insightfully picked up on the brief gap in the story. finding it to similar to a trauma reaction but too abrupt of a mood shift before and after. The odd behavior (and natural 20 Arcana check) made him think it may be a magical effect.   Shoke pressed further, asking her to rewind and start from coming down the stairs. He asked her to repeat the sequence again and flagged Dray to trigger a Detect Magic at the moment she pauses and her demeanor changes. Dray picks up on a very faint silvery but almost slithery enchantent aura that quickly passes. Shoke asked Carol to repeat this again and again, Carol becoming visibly more distressed with each repetition but continuing on. Finally, during one of the "gaps", she stood up and in a rage tossed her chair across the room, immediately snapping back scared and anxious and confused at what had just happened.   The team decide to ask her to wait here in their protection until Gyrm arrives, thinking he might have some way of telling what was going on. They call dispatch to get in touch with him and let him know the situation.