“Even if you don’t have known enemies, that doesn’t mean someone here doesn’t. The traitor might not be acting out of personal hatred toward you—they could be following orders, settling a debt, or simply seeking power. We’ll need to look at residents who are restless, secretive, or—at the very least—capable of summoning reinforcements without raising suspicion.” Aralia glances at the others, then back to Qualksander.

Abishai nods in affirmation as Aralia talks, showing that he agrees with her. "Agreed. Mr. Lumen, will you be joining us this evening at dinner? Perhaps you could tell us then if anyone is acting strange or is missing. Alternatively, we could go to each residents room and search it while they are at dinner." Abishai looks around at the group and waits for a response.

"I think tonight we should be at dinner, to at least have a look at all residents at once. Especially with Residents this powerfull I don't think it's smart to immediately search all rooms without any hint of who could be the traitor." Abathax says, not because he thinks its wrong to look through the rooms, but because he thinks its smarter and less work to only search some rooms when we have any idea about who it could be at all.

Qualksander bobs in a sort of nodding motion, showing his agreement as he says 'Yes, I don't usually come to dinners, but today it would be best so that I can see if I notice any residents out of sorts. I'll have to come up with an excuse for my appearance though; we can't have the traitor realising I'm acting different for no apparent reason. Likewise, to make sure I don't cause any alarm, I won't be telling staff about the traitor either. If the prediction is true, no harm can come to anybody who is unaware of what might happen.' He bobs up and down and thinks, before saying 'I expect I'll just say I'm at dinner to welcome you all and make your first meal as comforting as I can; that should be believable enough.'

Silvosh offers, "I'll try to be somewhere where I can see most of the cafeteria when you come out, so I can watch peoples reactions to your presence."

{planing on using Insight on as many people as possible to see their reaction to Qualksander's appearance.}

Aralia nods in agreement with Abathax.

With the party agreeing on a course of action, Qualksander says 'I'll arrive at the beginning of the main course; that should give you some time to actually investigate what you've came for during the starter, along with settling in and getting your bearings on who's about.'

You all depart his office, confident on the plan at hand, and as the afternoon winds down into the evening, you gather in the dining hall. It's a very large, square room, with three long tables put together to be in a shape that would look like a square without a bottom side from above. The residents are seated around the perimeter, and the catering staff take up the top table nearest the kitchens to place the platters of food on. To best spread yourselves amongst the residents, you agree to be seated in a pattern like that on the sixth side of a dice, with four of you taking corners and then a pair sitting opposite to each other in the centre of the two tables [Metaphorce hasn't been online for quite a while, but for the sake of simplicity, we'll say Ssha takes a corner and just keeps to themselves, both them being absent and who takes what seat it shouldn't affect things at all]

The starter is just a simple bowl of mint and potato soup, along with small loaves of bread. It's brought round to you by the staff, who can access all areas of the table by walking around the centre space, giving you the opportunity to remain seated throughout the entire meal and chat with those around you. Now is the opportunity to make your Charisma (Insight)/Deduction rolls. If you made one previously, I do still have that recorded, however I'll share the results of your findings at the end of the meal.

Aralia insight: 9

Abathax talks to the residents around him, but is none the wiser regarding the balowang. Only getting all kind of other stories (Nat 1 for a 9)

Quote from AbishaiTheHatless >>

This post has potentially manipulated dice roll results.

 Charisma (Insight) check: 28 If advantage is earned: 19

Performance: 22

During the evening mealtime, Abishai walks around the cafeteria while playing his lute. He uses his charisma and insight to glean information from the elderly adventurers around him to create a ballad meant to flatter those individuals he singles out while playing. He's satisfied with his ability to create the words to his song on the spot as he plays. While he does focus more on the ladies in the room, he doesn't shy away from singing about the gentlemen as well. He sings for some time before ending the performance. He then sits down with a group of people he believes enjoyed his performance the most and strikes up a conversation about their past adventures and encounters with the Balowang, if any. During this conversation, he uses his charm and active listening skills to engage with the storyteller and make them feel they are the only person in the room in that moment as he takes in their telling.

[[ OOC: I think I messed up my dice rolls and rolled both with advantage. Reroll without advantage is here. 15 so we can drop the second roll with advantage rolled above. ]]

 Rerolling Insight since I was flagged: 12

As he sits down, Wendell gets a sense of deja vu and then realises he has seen this moment in a vision last night. Having already seen it once, he knew what questions were right to ask, and who he should be watching at a given time. (using one of his daily portents (19) for a total insight of 20 without rolling) 

Silvosh Insight 17

Silvosh enjoyed chatting with those seated near her, though she had to remain standing since she wouldn't fit in a chair. She was also looking at the people across the room, to get a feel of how they looked normally so she could spot differences when the Beholder entered in a bit...

Abathax and Aralia don't seem to gather much. Aralia has one old goblin near her reckon they saw the Balowang's tail, but couldn't recall what it looked like, only that it had one, and he can't really remember any other context or evidence either. Meanwhile, Silvosh, Wendell and especially Abishai do far, far better. Silvosh has a conversation with a water genasi where they claimed that they had seen the silhouette of the beast swimming elegantly beneath them on one stormy night whilst their party was out at sea, and that sparks another conversation where a satyr gives a particularly theatric rendition of how midway taking on a hoard of thri-kreen, after he had stole a precious load of their astral honey, the entire brigade fled without putting up any more of a fight after they all apparently saw the beast behind him. The satyr laments that he was of course the only one turned the wrong way, so all he could only hear was its roar. 

Wendell's vision from earlier comes true, as he gets a sense of familiarity in the face of a drow woman adorned in shawls beside him. After asking her about the beast, she says she's never seen it herself, but that she used to work for a thieves' guild, and sometimes after returning from missions, fellow burglars would share stories about their encounters with the beast. She says that a key thing was that if one lucky thief happened to see the beast twice, their previous memories would be altered to have the new attribute they retained of the Balowang swapped out to replace the old, and if they were reminded by others about what they had claimed in the past, they would always find that they could neither confirm nor deny if it was ever part of the beast, despite being so confident about it before. At first this caused a lot of confusion, but after a couple times of this happening over many years, it became quite funny, and for Wendell this gives him a very interesting insight into how the creature's mind-bending power works; even if you see it multiple times, you will only ever remember one first-hand attribute (attributes told to you by other people stay as they are, but as always, a second sighting can't help one confirm or deny these claims definitively)

Finally, Abishai gathers a whole 3 (believable) clues just in one sitting, mainly due to his way with words and his expert manner of getting stories out of people. He learns from an old dwarf that his hammer, and all the weapons and spells at his party's disposal, always seemed to be resisted by the beast in some manner. He then learns from a fairy that the creature was incredibly thin; this led to an awkward occurrence of her trying to offer it tea and cupcakes, before it must have swallowed the table whole and fled, as the next thing she knew, the entire thing was gone, plates and all. Finally, a doddery tabaxi cleric says that the beast set off his cat allergies when it got near to his party; his tremendous sneezes soon scared it off though. Despite the great advancements Abishai makes in such a short time, he finds he then can't really gather any more reliable evidence as many of the folk around him start spouting clearly balderdash stories to try and impress him. If Abishai wasn't so socially apt, he thinks he could have been drawn in by one or two of them, but he picks up on enough discrepancies in the tales to discredit them.

Wendell finds the memory altering fascinating, and can't wait to share it, but first he waits to see how those around him react when Qualksander appears.

Aralia studies the old goblin carefully, her crimson eyes searching his face for any hint of deeper recollection. When it’s clear that his memory is as fragmented as the others, she exhales softly, nodding. “A tail,” she murmurs, filing the detail away in her mental list of the Balowang’s scattered attributes. She offers the goblin a small nod. “Thank you. Even the smallest details matter.”

Abishai gets so caught up in his performance and conversations afterwards, he momentarily forgets he's supposed to be weary of a sinister plot in this, at least at surface level, lovely place to live. To the old dwarf Abishai says, "It must have been a harrowing experience to fight such a mighty beast who so easily resisted your blows!" To the fairy he says, "I'm so sorry to hear your tea and cupcakes were eaten so rudely, leaving none for yourself." He passes the fairy a bread roll and offers to refill it's drink. To the doddering tabaxi Abishai says, "I'm so glad you aren't allergic to me. It would be such a shame to get scared away by your mighty roar!"

Abishai gives each person time to tell their tale and gives no hint of his disbelief as they tell it. He's confident he can easily sort out the truth tellers from the embellishers. He enjoys his time during dinner so much, he forgets to look for anything out of place. He walks up to Aralia and asks, "What did I miss? I learned about the Balowang but..." He looks around before lowering his tone to a whisper. "...No luck on the other front, if you know what I mean." 

As dinner is concluding, Abishai mentally kicks himself for not inspiring anyone before dinner began. He knows that likely would have helped them glean more information from the tenants here and vows to remember to do so in the future. [[ OOC: Sorry! ]] 

As the starter winds down and the party dwells on the information they have gathered so far, Qualksander makes his appearance. The party, especially Silvosh, are quick to look around discreetly as they can to spot any odd behaviour. Of course, there are a few puzzled looks from residents as Mr Lumens joining them is very out of the ordinary, but by the time he has made his announcement about being at the meal to welcome the party, the confusion seems to have been put to rest, as everybody who had questions has been satisfied with that explanation. Wendell, you catch a glance from Klapton across the table of him raising his eyebrows and giving a lipless smile, which you can read as meaning 'Seems the traitor has got no suspicions and hasn't caught on quite yet...' 

The main meal is goose and wild-herb pie, with homegrown pixie asparagus and a spicy mushroom sauce. It's very enjoyable, though Qualksander doesn't eat anything, merely bobs about at the head of the table, splitting the view of his eyestalks across the room to track the expressions of all the residents, trying to see if he can identify anything out of sorts, but clearly doesn't. This continues for the rest of the meal, and after a desert of plum tart, the residents begin to feed out of the room back to their usual pottering about. Qualksander gives a toothy smile at you all as you, aside from the catering staff, are the last to leave, but there is a forced strain behind his stare that can only be interpreted as a want to speak freely on your next moves somewhere private, i.e. his office.

Noticing Qualksander's expression, Silvosh goes along with it as she says, "While exploring this place, I've come up with a few more questions I'd like to ask you. Maybe in your office so that we don't get in the way of the staff."

Aralia sighs to herself once the residents leave the dining hall, leaning back in her chair. Her performance in the investigation so far is frankly embarrassing considering her profession.

Abishai nods to Silvosh. "Yes, let's cover what we learned about the Balowang in Mr. Lumen's office."