The party had reached that peculiar hour when laughter grew thin and brittle, when the sheen of wealth could no longer quite conceal the fatigue beneath it. Candles burned lower, their golden light wavering across polished surfaces and mirrored walls, and the guests—those glittering figures of Seacomber society—began to drift toward the exits in slow, reluctant currents.
Bhakris entered late, armored and unbowed, the echo of his own righteousness still ringing in his ears. The confrontation at the door had left him flushed with victory, yet as he strode into the café and caught sight of himself in one of the many mirrors, that triumph soured. The reflection was merciless. It did not show a champion of divine war, but a man encased in dented steel, marked by defeats as much as victories. Mud lingered in creases he had missed. The great dent in his pauldron seemed deeper, more accusing. The mirror stripped away his arguments and left only truth.
Around him, the party shimmered on—oblivious, or perhaps deliberately so.
Bartholemeow, resplendent in his enchanted zigzag of color, found himself similarly ensnared by reflection. What had seemed a harmless glance became something subtler, more invasive. A misplaced crumb, a trivial imperfection—yet the mirrors made such things loom large, pressing doubt into the mind like a whisper one could not quite ignore.
By the time the group gathered, the mood had shifted. What had begun as a bold infiltration had curdled into hesitation.
In the upstairs lounge, where voices softened and movements slowed, the weight of the place bore down upon them. Thalmiir slumped into drink, his usual bravado dulled. Waer’dara lingered beside him, equally diminished. Even Bhakris, who moments before had defied authority, now questioned the very nature of their task.
“What are we doing?” the question hung between them, heavy and unanswerable.
They spoke of failure, of inadequacy, of plans unraveling before they had even begun. The heist, once daring, now seemed foolish. Impossible. Perhaps even wrong.
Only Bartholemeow resisted the downward pull. With a bard’s instinct for timing, he cut through the gloom—not with grand speeches, but with stubborn optimism. He reminded them of what they had prepared, of the tools at their disposal, of the simple fact that they had come this far.
And slowly, grudgingly, the others stirred.
Not with confidence—but with motion.
That would have to be enough.
They dispersed in ones and twos, careful not to draw attention, and reconvened near the elevator as the last guests filtered out. Barnaby stepped inside alone, murmuring polite farewells to no one in particular, and when the doors closed, the true work began.
The rope rose, vanishing into nothingness, and he climbed after it into a hidden pocket of space—a quiet, dim refuge suspended above the world. One by one, the others joined him, slipping into the extra-dimensional hollow as the elevator carried on its ordinary duties below.
From within that strange sanctuary, they watched.
They watched staff come and go, exchanging casual words about the evening. They watched guests descend, their private habits revealed in fleeting, unguarded moments. They waited, suspended between action and inaction, while time stretched thin.
And then Destiny herself entered the elevator.
Gone was the radiant host. In her place stood a woman bent slightly under invisible weight, her posture slack, her attention turned inward. She did not perform for the empty space. She did not need to.
She was alone—and in that aloneness, she seemed diminished.
She exited without ceremony, leaving only questions in her wake.
When the moment came, Bartholemeow slipped down from the hidden space, cloaked in invisibility. Silence enveloped the elevator, swallowing even the faintest sound. He moved unseen into the lounge, testing doors, probing the edges of their prison.
Locked. All of them.
No keyholes. No simple mechanisms. Only strange indentations—faceted, deliberate—waiting for something they did not possess.
He returned with the news, and the fragile plan cracked.
There was no subtle path forward. No clever bypass.
Only force remained.
They descended together at last, abandoning concealment for resolve. The silence spell faded, and with it, the illusion that they could pass through this place like ghosts.
Thalmiir took up the crowbar.
The first movement was careful, controlled. Pressure applied slowly, then eased, then applied again. The door resisted, but not indefinitely. With Bhakris lending strength, the hinges began to give—not with a splintering crash, but with a series of quiet, yielding shifts.
A final push, and the door opened.
They had crossed a threshold.
Inside, Destiny’s office awaited—lush, opulent, filled with the quiet arrogance of power. Rich wood, delicate trinkets, and living plants that seemed to watch as much as they were watched.
They searched quickly.
A ring, small and unassuming, its gem dull but precisely shaped.
A ledger, dense with secrets—names tied to favors, debts measured in unknown currencies, power traded in whispers rather than coin.
And a book—Destiny’s Herbarium—its pages filled with strange correspondences between plant and creature, hinting at a deeper, darker understanding of life’s hidden connections.
These were not merely objects.
They were answers. Or at least, pieces of them.
The ring proved its worth immediately. Pressed into the strange indentation of the next door, it clicked with quiet finality, unlocking a path that had seemed impenetrable only moments before.
Beyond lay a corridor, empty and waiting.
They stood at its threshold, the weight of what they had done settling over them.
They were no longer guests.
They were intruders.
And there would be no easy way back.
The session resumed at Destiny’s party, with the group already in the late stages of their heist preparation. Ben framed the opening around Bhakris’s delayed arrival because he had shown up wearing full armor to a formal high-society event where security was screening guests for weapons and martial gear. As Bhakris approached the entrance, he saw that guests carrying conspicuous weapons were being asked to check them. Because his armor could not simply be handed over at coat check, a staff member in a golden blazer pulled him aside. The staffer politely explained that some guests were sensitive about security and that people were not allowed to wear inappropriately martial attire at the party. He offered Bhakris privacy in a changing booth so he could remove the armor. Bhakris tried to argue for an exception. He suggested he could wear an ornate cloak over the armor while still preserving the visible symbology of his religious order. Ben clarified that the armor was clearly real battle armor, not ceremonial armor. It had been cleaned and polished as best as Bhakris could manage, but it still showed signs of real use and damage. It was specifically described as armor that had seen battle, with dents and wear that could not be disguised into something merely decorative. Ben noted that a paladin might plausibly be able to claim a religious exemption, especially if the armor were part of devotional practice. However, because the armor was so obviously battle-worn, it would have been harder to argue it was merely ceremonial. Mark leaned into the idea that the dents, scratches, and damage were precisely part of the religious meaning: Bhakris’s war god valued battle, and the marks of combat were themselves devotional evidence. Because Bhakris made the argument specifically about the battle damage being spiritually significant rather than a liability, Ben allowed him to make the check normally instead of at disadvantage. Bhakris’s tone, however, was not diplomatic. Mark played him as arrogant and overbearing, effectively lecturing the butler-like staffer and implying the man was ignorant for not understanding the importance of such armor. Ben therefore treated it as an intimidation attempt rather than persuasion. Ben warned that failing intimidation would be a worse failure state than failing persuasion. During the exchange, Bhakris noticed there was real security present: an armored guard with a full golden face mask. Bhakris specifically asked whether that guard’s armor showed battle wear. Ben said no, the guard’s armor was immaculate, prompting Bhakris to side-eye the contrast. Bhakris rolled poorly at first, then used Inspiration to reroll. The second roll succeeded. Ben narrated that the staffer visibly wilted under Bhakris’s forceful religious argument and eventually, after needing to go check with someone else, returned and quietly granted an exception for religious ornamentation and garments. Bhakris was permitted to enjoy the party while still wearing his armor. Ben established that this whole exchange had taken a while, which is why Bhakris rejoined the group later, after Destiny’s speech and the group’s earlier mingling. By the time Bhakris got back, the party was already in full swing. Destiny had given her speech and had been circulating among the guests. Thalmiir had spoken with her, and Bartholomeow had successfully captured her voice using one of the special tools the party had prepared. Ben placed the rest of the scene in the later part of the evening, while the group decided whether to continue gathering information or proceed toward the heist. Bartholomeow was in the café area. Ben reminded Joe that Bartholomeow’s fur had been magically enhanced with a striking zigzag pattern, including a blue streak that made him look particularly fashionable for the event. Ben described him in the café, near canapés and drinks, deciding what to sample next or whom to talk to. As Bartholomeow approached a bistro table with a tray of food, Ben revealed another one of the party’s unsettling mirrors behind it and called for a Wisdom saving throw at disadvantage. Joe failed the save badly. Instead of perceiving the mirror as suspicious or dangerous, Bartholomeow became fixated on a bit of spinach or food caught in his teeth. Ben described him being distracted by concern over his appearance and how nobody had noticed yet, undercutting his awareness of the mirror’s significance. Joe asked whether the mirror had been there before he looked. Ben confirmed that mirrors were all over the place in the venue, especially in the café and elsewhere in the building. He noted that this particular mirror looked somewhat haphazardly placed, less naturally integrated into the room than some of the others, but still not unique enough to make it stand out without prompting. Ben also mentioned that Bartholomeow now realized there had probably been mirrors upstairs as well, but he had been too distracted earlier to dwell on them. Bhakris, still riding the emotional high of having successfully bullied his way into the party in armor, headed inside looking for his companions. Ben had him make a Wisdom saving throw as he moved toward the café. Bhakris succeeded in getting through the social barrier of security, but when he saw himself reflected in one of the café mirrors, the mirror forced a much crueler self-appraisal. Ben described how the reflection did not show Bhakris as a noble warrior in sacred armor. Instead, it emphasized every insecurity in the armor: bog mud hidden in a crease, the dent in the pauldron from when he had been smashed into the earth by a zombie amalgam, and the implication that the armor told a story of failure and damage rather than glory. Ben reminded him that he had not personally finished off that zombie in the end, someone else had enacted that vengeance for him. The mirror therefore stripped away the triumphant religious framing Bhakris had just used and replaced it with shame and inadequacy. Bhakris reacted with immediate disgust, declaring that the party already sucked. This fed into the emerging group mood, because by this point multiple characters were being emotionally bludgeoned by the mirrors and the atmosphere of the party. The group then briefly reviewed the plan: the goal was to hide inside the magical elevator using Rope Trick, wait until the party wound down, then descend into the secure areas and search for the orchid and related evidence. There was confusion about Rope Trick’s duration and timing, but they clarified that they wanted to use it late enough in the evening that they could outlast the party traffic without the spell expiring too soon. Ben offered to skip ahead if no one had more they wanted to do, but Mark wanted Bhakris to use the remaining party time to gather more information about the upstairs space. Specifically, he wanted to observe whether anyone went in or out of Destiny’s office or the closed hallway door nearby. Ben explained that the upstairs lounge was still part of the party but was much quieter and more subdued than the active mingling downstairs. Bartholomeow had already visited it earlier and noted that it felt like a place for quiet conversation. Bhakris went upstairs to loiter there despite drawing obvious attention. Ben described the atmosphere in the upstairs lounge changing as Bhakris entered. The well-dressed guests fell quiet, watched him, then awkwardly resumed their conversations. Mark decided Bhakris was used to being stared at because he was an earth genasi and generally unfazed, whether the attention was due to his species or his armor. While Bhakris watched from the lounge, he observed staff occasionally coming up in the magical elevator carrying trays of drinks and snacks. He did not see anyone entering or leaving Destiny’s office, though from the building layout he knew the balcony where she had addressed the party was attached to that office, so she must have come through there earlier. The hallway door also remained closed and inactive. Bhakris confirmed there were no visible elevator buttons. Ben described it as a magical elevator that knew when to go up or down, jokingly dismissing the idea of a secret button to hidden areas. This reinforced that the elevator itself would not be their route to any secret lower level except by using it as concealment. At the same time, Thalmiir and Waer’dara had both been emotionally hit hard by the mirrors and were drinking together in the lounge. Their conversation turned bleak. Thalmiir quietly asked what they were doing and whether they were all just going to end up in prison. Waer’dara agreed that was probably the outcome. They referred to themselves as the “Depression Twins,” emphasizing how demoralized they were by the situation. Bhakris joined the increasingly miserable cluster and lamented that great paladins were not supposed to sneak around and steal things; they were supposed to charge openly into battle. He complained that wealth bought armor, but it was not how one earned armor, and he resented the richly equipped guards whose armor had obviously been purchased instead of won through deeds. He also said no one would even try to kill those guards, so they would never truly know how to use real armor. His comments further highlighted the conflict between his ideals and the party’s actual mission. Thalmiir, equally demoralized, floated the idea that perhaps they should just find Hat and Bartholomeow and leave. He was too drunk and spiritually deflated to feel capable of daring action. He explicitly felt that their whole infiltration plan might have been a terrible mistake and that they were out of their depth. Barnaby was also affected by the atmosphere. Ben used the broader scene to push on his insecurities, describing the situation as the group he had assembled to get a job done starting to fall apart again. Brian answered in-character and out-of-character by pointing toward Barnaby’s businessman anxieties rather than a lack of daring, but the pressure landed: Barnaby was also being reminded of unreliability and collapse. The only major success the group could point to was Bartholomeow’s earlier capture of Destiny’s voice. Joe noted that Bartholomeow had met a count and found the party plenty flavorful enough. He remained the party member most enthusiastic about proceeding. Eventually the group reunited. Thalmiir admitted plainly that he thought they had made a terrible mistake. Waer’dara said they should go home, then clarified she did not mean merely leaving the party but felt genuinely overwhelmed. Bhakris said they should have stormed the place by force. Bartholomeow tried to rally everyone by insisting everything was fine, gesturing toward the lovely mirrors and the good food, and claiming that they were well prepared. The demoralized group still resisted. Thalmiir argued they looked good but still did not belong here and were not suited for the task. Waer’dara joked that her dress added a hundred pounds. Bhakris said they only looked good enough to fool a butler. Barnaby interjected that maybe they did, though the mood remained sour. Bartholomeow kept pressing the team to move forward, pointing out that Hat’s shenanigans had also gone well and that they had prepared with special tools and tricks they were not discussing openly. He specifically proposed they all go hide in Barnaby’s “weird hole,” meaning the Rope Trick space. Barnaby objected mildly that it was “not that weird.” As they hesitated, a very drunk halfling whom Barnaby had spoken with earlier wandered over, overheard only enough to misunderstand, and slurred that he thought they could do it. He offered drunken encouragement and staggered off. Waer’dara asked who he even was, and Brian remarked that this unsolicited support somehow made things worse rather than better. Joe asked if Bartholomeow could use Bardic Inspiration not mechanically in combat but narratively to help the demoralized party commit to action. Ben allowed it, and Joe made an inspiring speech. He reminded everyone that they had special resources to help them, praised Hat’s weird hat, insisted that they were prepared, and argued that any of them could be the worthwhile person on the team. He also framed the plan attractively: they just had to hide and wait. Ben called for a Performance check to judge how rousing the speech was. The speech worked well enough in context. Thalmiir, who had been mired in self-doubt, admitted that it was in fact a pretty good plan and agreed they should just get it done. This turned the group from paralysis to commitment. The party decided to assemble upstairs in dribs and drabs so as not to draw attention to themselves as a coordinated unit. The plan was to end up in the upstairs lounge, then use several elevator trips if necessary to execute Rope Trick inside the elevator without making it obvious that a group had vanished there. As the party wound down, a staff member named Brinkson came upstairs and offered one last round of champagne. Waer’dara immediately asked for two. Barnaby also took a drink, and because of his size and earlier drinking, the staff member returned a few minutes later with an oversized wine glass specifically for him. She also tidied up some empty glasses in the lounge and then left. With only a few guests remaining upstairs and the party clearly ending, Barnaby made his move first. He stood up, declared that he had had a great time and needed to sleep off the champagne, thanked the others for drinking with him, and stepped into the elevator alone. Once the doors closed, he cast Rope Trick, causing the rope to rise into an invisible extra-dimensional opening. He climbed up, took a seat inside the extradimensional space, pulled the rope up behind him, and prepared to watch the elevator below for the rest of the party. On Barnaby’s first trip upward inside the elevator, two staffers entered the elevator below him while he was concealed. One was the woman who had just brought drinks upstairs; the other was the man from the front door. Barnaby overheard them chatting about cleaning up the upstairs, referring to lingering guests as “barnacles.” They discussed whether Destiny seemed happy with the evening. Their exchange revealed that Destiny had an obvious public-facing “on” mode and private “off” mode that even staff noticed and discussed anxiously. One by one, or in small pairs, the rest of the party managed to enter the Rope Trick space above the elevator as opportunity allowed. At one point, other guests rode the elevator while the party hid above them, and the group watched one of those guests pick his nose and wipe it on the wall, reinforcing the odd intimacy of hiding in the elevator ceiling and silently observing people below. Ben asked what the extra-dimensional space looked like. Brian described it as sparse and dimly lit rather than elaborate. It was not dark, but the lighting was low and restful. There were a few plain cushions for sitting. The space was utilitarian and could comfortably hold the group, but it was not luxurious. Once everyone was concealed, the group waited. Ben said that by their count, all the upstairs party guests had finally departed. The party debated how long to wait before going down, generally agreeing that they had originally intended to stay at least until the spell was near expiration, around an hour, though Destiny’s movements complicated that timeline. About forty minutes after they entered the Rope Trick space, Destiny herself took the elevator up alone. From their hidden vantage point, they could only see the top of her head and her posture, but Ben emphasized that she was very different from the bright social persona she had presented earlier. She looked slouched, tired, and distracted, examining her nails rather than projecting confidence. She did not appear to be interacting with anyone, and there was no entourage or visible farewell below. She simply came up alone. The group immediately considered following her. Mark suggested sending Tim the mouse familiar after her, but Brian remembered that because the Rope Trick space was on another plane, he could not communicate with his familiar from inside it. Joe offered to cast Invisibility on the mouse, but that still did not solve the communication problem if the familiar left the Rope Trick space. Since the familiar idea failed, Bartholomeow volunteered to go instead. The group discussed whether he could descend invisibly into the elevator and whether the magical elevator would respond to an invisible occupant. Ben clarified that the elevator required physical interaction with a brass panel to go up or an opal panel to go down, so someone still had to deliberately command it. The group realized the elevator was not entirely silent, which mattered because any descent risked detection. Thalmiir checked the stats for the Silent Ring among their special gadgets. The ring had three charges and could create a Silence spell at range. They decided this was a good use of one charge. Thalmiir activated the ring and centered Silence in the elevator so that Bartholomeow could descend quietly without the elevator noise giving him away. They also used the tracking hair clip they had previously planted on Destiny. Ben reported that the tracking indicated she was not in her office and not in the lounge, but roughly eighty feet to the east. This told them she had moved away from the elevator area and was not immediately waiting on the other side of the office door. Bartholomeow then cast Invisibility on himself, descended into the now-silenced elevator, and moved into the upstairs area to scout. Ben waived the need for a stealth roll under the circumstances because Invisibility and Silence together made the approach trivially quiet unless someone was already present and searching. Bartholomeow first approached Destiny’s office door. The door was closed and locked. When he inspected it, he discovered there was no keyhole. Instead, above the handle was a polished brass plaque with a faceted indentation, suggesting that some small gem-like or geometric object fit into it as a magical key or badge. Joe explicitly asked whether it resembled anything they had seen before, and Ben clarified that it looked like a gem-shaped socket rather than a mechanical lock. Bartholomeow then tried the other interior door and found the same kind of brass plaque with the same sort of faceted indentation. Both routes into the secure areas were locked by this same system. He checked the janitor’s closet as well, since he had been there before, and searched for anything that might function as the key. He rolled poorly on Perception and found nothing beyond the cleaning supplies already known to be in the closet. Having found no way forward, Bartholomeow went back beneath the Rope Trick space but realized the party above could not hear him because the Silence effect was still active below. Since he himself was invisible, he could not simply wave to them. The group reasoned that objects he held would become invisible with him, but objects he dropped would appear. Joe improvised a signal by taking a visible item—a coaster—and repeatedly dropping and lifting it beneath the Rope Trick opening in a sort of Morse-like pattern until the people above noticed the object appearing and disappearing. The party above saw the signal and dropped the rope. Bartholomeow climbed back up into the Rope Trick space and reported that both major doors were locked and needed some sort of key-like object fitting the gem-shaped indentation. He explained that by himself he could not get farther than the hall between the elevator and the lounge. The group reviewed the floor plan. The office route was the most direct way toward the suspected secret areas, but the southern route around toward the plant healing hub also looked possible if they could pass the locked doors. Bhakris began to advocate more openly for abandoning subtlety and taking the place by force. Thalmiir, who had previously been reluctant, now agreed they were likely past the point where violence could be ruled out. They clarified that they had geared back up and had all their equipment, including the Bag of Holding. That meant they were prepared for either stealth or a fight. They discussed whether anyone could magically or mechanically open the door. Barnaby considered whether magical means like Knock would help, but Knock was ruled out because it had a verbal component that could not be used in Silence and would also loudly alert people in a wide radius if cast later. Luke asked whether the door had any mechanical component Hat might exploit with thieves’ tools even without a visible keyhole. Ben checked the scenario details and concluded that although the door used a magical-seeming key system, a difficult lockpicking attempt was still possible by manipulating something in the seam or mechanism. That opened the possibility of Hat helping. Hat attempted to pick the door using thieves’ tools. Joe rolled for him, using the stated bonus. The result was not good enough. Ben narrated that Hat found something in the seam or mechanism to fiddle with and spent a few minutes working at it, but could not get it open. While Hat was still trying, the tracking hair clip suddenly indicated that Destiny was moving back in their direction. Hat warned the others that she seemed to be coming this way. Because Silence had either expired or been intentionally allowed to lapse by then, everyone could hear Hat’s ticking tools and muttered swearing again, and they could hear each other speak. The group reacted quickly. They considered retreating into the janitor’s closet or back into Rope Trick, but the urgency pushed them toward decisive action. Thalmiir pulled out a prepared stocking mask with eye holes cut in it and pulled it over his face, though his large dwarven beard still hung out beneath it. He announced that it was time to burgle. Thalmiir drew out a crowbar, and the group joked as Bartholomeow physically patted his shoulder and delivered Bardic Inspiration, telling him no one had ever crowbarred the way he was about to crowbar. Hat also updated them that Destiny seemed to be going down the stairs rather than immediately approaching the office, buying them a little time. Ben called for a Strength (Athletics) check at advantage for Thalmiir because he had the right tool and help from Bhakris. Luke rolled very poorly at first, then used Inspiration to reroll. With the reroll and his bonus, he got a strong result. Ben treated it as a tremendous success and said Thalmiir could choose one major consequence of forced entry to mitigate. Luke chose speed and reduced noise as the most important outcome. He wanted the door opened quickly and as quietly as possible rather than smashed to splinters. Ben ruled that instead of simply breaking the door apart, Thalmiir managed to pry it in a controlled way at the hinge side, popping the hinges free from the wall. The entry was therefore much quieter than a brute-force smash, and the door itself remained mostly intact. Ben further noted that the damage was subtle enough that a casual glance might not immediately reveal the forced entry, even though trying to use the door normally would show it was no longer functioning properly. Barnaby later spent time using magic or careful handling to make the damaged door look even less obviously broken, restoring its appearance as much as possible short of fixing the magic. The party entered Destiny’s office. Ben described it as richly appointed, dominated by a large executive desk of dark wood and decorated with trinkets. There was a vanity with beauty products, multiple lit candles, and a potted plant that occasionally snapped at the air. The balcony doors were currently covered by blinds, preventing people below from seeing in casually. As they entered, Bhakris moved to the next locked door deeper in the office and prepared to strike nonlethally if anyone came through. He checked whether that inner door had a normal handle and confirmed that while it did, it also had the same brass plaque and faceted indentation system as the other secured doors. That established a consistent security design: the inner sections all required the same sort of token or key. Bartholomeow immediately began rifling through the office, looking for a gem-shaped key. He rolled poorly again and got distracted by the richness of the surroundings: beautiful little flowers, shiny trinkets, and the office’s general luxury. Waer’dara and Thalmiir searched more effectively. Thalmiir opened a drawer and found, among writing implements, papers, and small trinkets, a ring set with a small gem. The gem might have been glass rather than precious stone, but it was exactly the right size and shape to fit the faceted indentation in the secure doors. Thalmiir pocketed it. Bartholomeow, despite his poor roll, still found something significant in the papers. He came across ledgers, ingredient lists, and delivery records, but one particular book stood out because it contained the name of a minor politician involved in local government, along with the name of a more influential figure rumored to be a hidden mover and shaker in city politics. The book appeared to record debts and favors: services Destiny had rendered, obligations owed to her, and secrets or leverage associated with different people. Some entries had checkmarks and quantities attached, but the meaning of the quantities was unclear and not obviously monetary. Bartholomeow recognized that this ledger was potentially incriminating or politically powerful even if its full meaning was not immediately obvious. He attempted to show it to Barnaby, though because he was invisible and Barnaby was occupied, Hat ended up grabbing it instead. Hat, drawing on his Fey-touched background and associated knack for dealing with bargains and legalistic obligations, immediately identified the structure of the ledger as resembling fae bargain logic: highly conditional, obligation-heavy agreements with concealed meanings. Ben said that if they took the ledger with them, Hat and Bartholomeow would be able to interpret it in more depth later with time. Mark asked whether there was any obvious sign that the sprites or other fae creatures involved in the orchid scheme were mentioned in the debt records. Ben said that no such obvious confession or easily readable entry jumped out at them during this quick search. Waer’dara found another important book: an elegantly bound volume labeled Destiny’s Herbarium. It had a distinctive sigil on the cover that did not mean anything to her immediately. Ben described it as a self-published memoir and observational work focused on special plants and their effects, with carefully drawn illustrations. Although Waer’dara lacked herbalism proficiency and rolled poorly on Arcana, she was still able to discern the broad pattern in the book. Each plant entry seemed associated with a particular creature type. Ben listed multiple examples, including wyverns, shadows, doppelgangers, ghosts, dryads, sprites, lycans, vampires, will-o’-the-wisps, ogres, and succubi. This suggested that Destiny’s work involved cultivating or processing plants linked to supernatural creatures. Waer’dara handed the herbarium to Hat as well. The group recognized that the book was clearly relevant to Destiny’s operation and likely valuable as evidence or a clue to how the orchid and her broader schemes worked. The group then decided they might as well loot the office while they were there. Thalmiir asked what visibly valuable items were present. Ben said there was a very nice pen set and various trinkets, though many were of uncertain value or dependent on finding the right buyer. Thalmiir opened the Bag of Holding and began having the group toss in anything meaningfully valuable and portable. Ben specifically ruled that the pen set was gold and worth 100 gp. The rest of the trinkets were not immediately assessed as major treasure. Luke noted that someone needed to record the loot, and it was confirmed that Thalmiir was the party’s designated keeper of the hoard notes. The 100 gp pen set was therefore added to the loot. Waer’dara’s continued flipping through the herbarium revealed to Ben that it also tied into mystical creatures beyond ordinary botanical study. This reinforced the sense that Destiny’s “all natural, cruelty-free, ethically sourced” public image was likely false and that there were darker magical practices behind her products. Bhakris remained focused on security. Once they had what they wanted from the office, he listened at the next locked door while others quieted. Ben had him roll a d10 as a luck check and then Perception. He rolled well enough to determine that there was nobody immediately on the other side of the inner office door. However, he did hear footsteps somewhere else on the floor, south-southwest of their position, with enough wall layers between that he could not place the person exactly. Ben clarified these did not sound like some monstrous creature, just someone walking around without much concern for stealth. Since they now had the ring with the gem, Thalmiir tested it on the inner office door. It fit perfectly into the faceted indentation, and the mechanism clicked open. The gem ring was therefore confirmed as the correct access token for the secured inner doors. The group planned to open doors carefully and keep Bartholomeow, still invisible, in the lead where possible so that if anyone noticed movement, they would not immediately see a person in the doorway. Bhakris also made sure not to stand plainly in view the moment the door opened, recognizing how conspicuous his armor was. The inner door opened onto an empty hallway leading farther into Destiny’s secure areas. Ben ended the session there, with the group having successfully survived the party, infiltrated the upstairs security perimeter, forced entry into Destiny’s office, found several significant pieces of evidence and loot, acquired the door key, and pushed deeper into the mansion. The final state of the party at session end was:Session Notes