old plan
Graduation day
King and Court are present
King gives speech; invites everyone to enjoy the festivities of the coming week, and reminds everyone of the city-wide potluck feast the next evening.
Next day:
-New Year's Day-
Music, Jesters, children skits, small carnival rides, games
*Battle narrated to insure player survival
Part way through dinner, during one of the shows, one of the jesters lights off a spell of writing in the air. The text is in the ancient text. "Truth is a Lie; Punishment to be Paid; He will Return." Then everything suddenly turns explosive as the jesters turn into drow, and 45 people are immediately killed, along with some of the king's guard.
Spells start going off in all directions, many of them from students still going off in random directions. The words linger in the air; an old man laying broken on the ground pulls out some parchment and copies down the lettering. As he struggles to roll up the parchment, and pull out a sparker, he's hit by an arrow from D'Urlintaitthrough his hand and into his chest; he dies with the bird scroll unsent, rolling out of his hands, addressed to himself, at his home--Shinsel Catchbat, Thaeyrraom.
After much mayhem the dust settles after a large single blast of air, as all magic ceases in the area; you're alive, along with 18 others you recognize as students out of the 1296 attending graduates. Also among the dead are most of the King's guard, a few random Lords and Ladies, hundreds of commoners, and the King.
The Queen and the Prince and two young Princesses survive. With the Queen in hysterics, the Prince steps up to take charge in the aftermath.
The jesters have an odd tattoo on their right shoulder: a horned, hooded skull with tripple crossbow. No one seems to recognize the symbol.
After sometime someone who is cleaning up the bodies notices one of the bodies with the same tattoo. The student, a dwarf, name of Duthrel Yurmek'Urul was quiet and no one really knew him other than by existence.
Three other bodies are found with the tattoo among the students. Another dwarf (unknown by survivors), a female gnome (Jessaly Pepperspangle, a teacher recognizes her, knows her to be a "difficult" student, often saying hurtful things to the halfling, elven and human students), and a drow. The school headmaster doesn't recall having a drow student, but this drow was dressed as a student.
Surrounding these marked students' bodies the other students appear to have been blasted or hit from someone within close proximity...possibly as if the marked students started attacking the other students around them.
Prince asks the graduates for volunteers to find out who they were, where they were from, and who else they may have been in contact with.
Most of the other surviving students are so panic stricken that they leave the area to go home.
The party is joined by the one half-orc in attendance at the school. He's a well known student of magic and martial arts, and generally pleasant to be around, polite but quick to anger.
The school headmaster takes those willing to start the investigation to the school records office and hands you the student records for the school. headmaster hit with a sort of poisonous rot to his leg. Blackness slowly spreading over his leg, will take a day to kill him, no cure.
*
pouring through them, and high knowledge checks, or additional research, reveals that each of these marked students came from underground dwellings, in areas that are allied together, but fight against their surface dwelling counterparts, or nearby neighbors if surface dwellers are among the more savage races.
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part way through research, a loud explosion is heard, along with some crashing of metal and brick. Outside the office is calm, but other parts of the school are not. *dungeon in school. going through classrooms, dealing with random small animals, or other creatures, plants, etc., that may have gotten loose, or put out small fires. Find additional clues to the marked students in various classrooms, etc.*