Session Date: 09/23/2024
The Group, Late Evening
Faylen goes to the group’s car to tell someone what is going on. Mary is awake and so he starts by trying to explain what’s going on to her, and the noblewoman Zada Nix - who is very chipper and awake - butts in after having overheard the conversation. Mary agrees that Zada should go to get Onabelle the registrar, and as she is going off to get Onabelle, they wake up Tabby to explain what is happening. Mary tries to wake Bosch, but he’s far too tired for this. They go to the lounge so that Faylen can explain what’s going on to Onabelle and Faylen explains in more detail what’s going on.
Onabelle explains that perhaps it’s a projection magic, but nobody is quite sure. Onabelle gets a conductor to help her as we find the elf’s room. We manage to get in thanks to a large lizardman that appears to be in the employ of the dwarf from the mining company. The lizardman breaks the door down with the consent of the dwarf, and we find the elf inside of the room in a puddle of his own blood.
Onabelle admits to us that this is her first outing as a registrar. She fears she is definitely in over her head with this one. She asks if we will help in the morning, and we agree, so she sends us off to bed to get some sleep.
The Next Morning
Bosch awakens and is very refreshed, with a new game idea for those who are up for it. He grabs a few things off of the breakfast table and runs off to find someone to share his next idea with. He finds Zada and they sit down for breakfast and Bosch is eating and telling Zada about what his ideas are for a game and for fun and Zada doesn’t have the heart to tell him about the murder.
Tabby is next to enter the room and he tells Bosch about the murder and the basics of what’s going on and Bosch starts playing in his jar of jam to make it look like he has blood around his mouth and asks if he looks like he bit something, then he wiped it off of his mouth and onto his hands and said he must have been caught red handed. Zada laughs at this joke and Mary and Faylen finally join the group. They finish explaining things together and Bosch says that we were going to do so anyway. He talks about getting everyone detective clothes because we need to dress the part to do this investigation, and Bosch says he’ll have to get a pipe. Zada mentions the dwarf having a pipe, and Bosch asks if this is a competition to solve the murder, and we all say no.
One thing worth noting is that this is a bad time to kill someone - we are in a specific terrain that is not good for bailing out of the train.
The elf was Colonel Orson Mirkwood. He was part of the army of the Commonwealth, but afterwards he worked in the private sector. This included the Breakwater Company - Kristov Clanghammer is one of the lords of. Krisov is, of course, not talking. The lizardfolk is the security specialist for him, and he is also not speaking.
Tabby
Tabby goes to talk to the security guard of Kristov Clanghammer. As Tabby goes to ask, Kristov kicsk the security guard out while whining that he’s not in first class. The lizardfolk smelled Tabby there, and Tabby wishes to speak to him. He introduces himself as Kilresh, the “security specialist”.
Kilresh is clearly not a big fan of Kristov. He explains that there is a lot in the way of office politics - poisonings, treachery, the like, but not many stabbings. He also points out that Kristov was going to fire Mirkwood already, there was no reason for him to kill the old elf. It’s messy and not within his interest. He also mentions that if Kristov did do this as a crime of passion, it would be an axe, not a stabbing. Kilresh also mentions that he genuinely did not smell anything on the corpse - this is not him being facetious, but when he was there he did not smell anything at all. He can smell Clanghammer from where they were talking, but there was genuinely no smell on the body last night.
Tabby reassures that while he may not trust Kilresh, he has no reason to suspect Kilresh in this crime. Kilresh is gladdened (as much as he can be) to hear that, and he says that he will not have the company implicated. He also says that Tabby can ask these questions of Clanghammer, but Clanghammer will say the same, but louder.
The Entire Group
Tabby relays what he learned from Kilresh, and he says that Kilresh doesn’t believe Clanghammer is the one that caused this. He does have a hunch, though. He brings up that Kilresh didn’t smell any blood even after they killed the body, which is incredibly interesting.
Bosch
Bosch puts together a detective costume for himself and Bean, and then goes to interview the first person he can find, which happens to be Zada. He explains that he’s here to detect about the untimely death of Colonel Orson Mirkwood. He needs to know what she was doing at the time of death, and how she knows this man.
Zada said she didn’t really speak to him very much. When the event happened, she was in her room reading. A little while later, Faylen came in and talked to Mary, which she overheard. She listened to their talking and went to grab the registrar, and that was most of what she did that night. Bosch scribbles a few things on his notes. He takes the page with his own notes for himself, then hands her the makeshift clipboard and pen and tells her that it’s her turn.
Bosch is bouncing up and down as he waits, and she asks what he was doing, and he says he was sleeping! Zada does mention that she recalls Mary attempting to wake Bosch up and that wasn’t working, and Faylen can corroborate it. He asks for proof of this, and Zada explains that these are questions he should be asking her, and so he takes the pen back and asks how he can know that she was actually reading since she could read anywhere. She essentially says the speed at which she responded to Faylen means she couldn’t’ve been far. Bosch mentions she could have come in or left, and she mentions that she could have found another way to travel, and he gets inspiration from that. He starts looking around for other ways to enter or leave the compartment.
The biggest thing he can figure is that someone may have crawled outside of the train and come in through the window, but Zada does her best to point out how unlikely that is.
She suggests shape changing such as wildshape perhaps, and Bosch talks around in circles and confuses her, ultimately asking if she has some form of wildshape so she could fly or sneak around the outside of the train. He ultimately points out she’s being nosy about all of this and asks what proof that she has that she didn’t do it, and she points out that she doesn’t currently have anything to prove it.
He leaves to try to ask Sorapion questions, but the man won’t answer. He then decides to go play with Jor’ja.
Mary & Faylen
They go to speak to Onabell.
Interesting details
- Stabbing wound
- Unsure the murder weapon - her guess is a knife or dagger
- Mary is guessing more knife than dagger, almost too thin to be a real weapon
- The whole no smell thing
- Nothing matches in her own references
- Detect Magic from Faylen
- Rank 4 spell within 30 feet → Besso’s invisibility
- We also hear something in the luggage compartment
- Faylen opens it to find a halfling man
The halfling man says that he’s nobody important and he tries to weasel out of this, and Mary and Faylen don’t let him leave. Onabelle asks him who he is, and then uses a spell to compel him to tell us who he is. He says that he is Besso Tunnelly, who is working for The Highest Bidder. Faylen’s heard of a legend that there is someone call themselves The Highest Bidder and has a network of thieves, or adventurer archeologists that get important items. Faylen looks at him and realizes he’s being completely honest and Faylen realizes that The Highest bidder is completely real, and this man was hiding.
Besso explains he was trying to steal the parasol from Zada Nix, but she just wouldn’t go to sleep, so he started wandering around the train. He heard people arguing in this compartment. He opens something that looks like a compass and he can see that someone was wielding a magical item, and he was hoping to find something interesting for The Highest Bidder. He explains that by the time he entered, Orson was already dead.
Faylen manages to convince Besso to at least find where the magical item that might be the murder weapon is, and help us find the owner of it.