Psalm pounds his chest. "Strong as an oxe," he says while whipping out his thieves tools and moving to the chests... "And nimble as a... well... let's go with an otter."

He kneels by the southernmost chest, inspecting the lock and latch for any signs of trap...

 ROLLS

Finn stood back and let Psalm work. "Thanks, mate... I was getting ready to break out my blade on this thing!"

Psalm doesn't detect any traps as he begins his work. Picking the locks he's able to open it and sees that inside are two potion of healing potions nestled in cloth.

Psalm pockets one of the potions and announces, "There's a potion of healing in here!" as he moves to the next chest, again inspecting for traps and cracking it open...

ROLLS:

(( Lol... @DM, mind if I roll Perception to catch that? If so... Perception: 6 ))

[[ For rolling against characters, my philosophy is that if you're both in on it, sure. So if Psalm putting the one potion in a pocket and then you guys rolling perception to catch that is something you're all okay with, then I'm fine with it too. ]]

Psalm again sees no evidence of traps on the second chest. As he begins picking the lock however he feels a little click in the mechanism as his tools become a little stuck. He gets a sense that he's close to picking the lock, but the ways things are positioned could pose a risk to the integrity of his tools if he proceeds.

[[ I've seen ideas with "degrees of success" where something below the DC but close can choose to succeed at a cost. So can either take the tools out, keeps the current state with the lock unpicked. Or could press on but have a risk of damaging the tools. (Let's call it a 50% chance (1-10 on a d20) that the thieves' tools apply disadvantage on further uses?) First time I'm trying this idea out but it feels like a good moment to experiment with the option. ]]

[I'm good with it. Psalm isn't precious about his tools or... really anything so he'll give it a whirl, never letting on that anything is amiss]

ROLLS

Psalm presses on and is able to fidget with his tools to finagle the lock open without damaging them. Inside he finds basic poison, Alchemist's Fire (flask), and and acid (vial).

Psalm lifts up the Alchemist's Fire and proclaims, "Look at this. Fire in a bottle. Pretty handy eh-" and then he pretends to almost drop it, nimbly catching it with his other hand and offering a rakish wink in the process.

"I'll hold onto the acid here because it's fun, but does anyone want to claim these other bottles of trouble? Happy to keep them myself otherwise, but I do like to be generous on occasion."

"Keep all you want. I'm not one for dangerous bottled substances." He says with a humorous tone.

"Well..." Says Psalm. "Now that that jolly little romp is through, should we continue to explore or, perhaps, snuff out these poor chained up sods before we move on?"

"If no one objects, I'll take the Alchemists fire."

Zylborin exits the room and stands far enough away from the half-dragons so their breath can't reach him. He speaks to them in Draconic;

"Hello? Do you understand me? If we let you free, do you promise not to attack us?"

Psalm says, "Think fast." then pretends to toss the Alchemist's Fire to Zylborin but stops at the last moment... He follows this up with a disarming grin and politely hands over the flask to the dragon born, giving his companion a familiar pat on the back.

In response to the bard's words to the prisoners, Psalm adds, in common, (with an offensively bad Draconic accent). "Do. You. Want. Us. To. Kill. You?" and then pantomimes dying.

The half-dragons seems to take what Zylborin in somewhat, though lacking much response. Their understanding appear to be very basic, more animalistic than would be expected of a typical humanoid. But they do seem potentially disposed to further negotiation, even if they're not much of conversationalists. At the very least they appear to not be actively seeking to harm the party at the moment.

They don't seem to respond to Psalm's Common. But one does seem to huff, amused perhaps, at the tiefling's death pantomime.

Zylborin flinches and lets out a yelp at Psalm's hijinks. "You... You..." He finishes the sentence in Draconic.

Taking a deep breath, steeling himself. He slowly moves towards the half dragon he was talking to and tries to release them from the wall.

As Zylborn approaches the half-dragon, Psalm draws his rapier in his main hand and dagger in his off-hand, sighing, "Here we go again..." Although his voice expresses exasperation, his face is full of glee.

[[ Could I get a Persuasion and Animal Handling from Zylborin? Thinking I'll take the average of those two as the result for things to be nice and peaceful. Let's go with DC 13. ]]

Zylborin is able to get a look at the chains. They're heavy-duty and bolted into the ground. From that observation he can see he would likely need either the aid of tools to try breaking them or a key to unlock them.

Persuasion: 31

Animal Handling: 21

"Hmmm... These locks seem to be a bit outside of my bag of skills. Could I enlist your assistance friends?"

Psalm looks at Zylborn, then looks at the Half-Dragon, then looks back at Zylborn and laughs for a solid 10 seconds then simply says, "No."

Quote from swoop7 >>

"Hmmm... These locks seem to be a bit outside of my bag of skills. Could I enlist your assistance friends?"

Finn shrugged. "I could try blasting it, if we wanna risk that."