The mention of the decency fine seemed to set the paladin back a minute and her blue jaw snapped shut, teeth clicking with an audible clack.  Her eyes whirled and for once at least, Velma got the sense that it wasn’t with anger, but with the sudden realization that she’d been quite rightly bested in a verbal spar.<br/><br/>The guard captain took Velma’s hand and shook it, a wry smile almost, not quite but almost, showing on his face.  Apparently the sign of a slight, bespectacled woman, putting the armored dragonborn in her place amused him.<br/><br/>The captain nodded,<strong> “Captain Naran, and I may have been there once or twice, it’s a bit out of my district though.  But I’ll take you up on the free drink at some point in the future.” </strong>He hesitated a moment, putting his hands on his hips defensively and looking towards the warehouse.<strong>“As to the crime scene, I haven’t agreed to hire you on yet.  Our budget for…”</strong><br/><br/>The commander growled,<strong>“I’ll pay her fee if you work with her.  Since it’s clear you’re going to make this into a pissing match, I’ll bow out for now Naran.  But I expect to be kept abreast of the situation.”</strong><br/><br/>She turned and stormed off, the gathered crowd was small, but they made a wide path for her as her steel sabatons rang out against the ancient stone streets.  Naran watched her go with a glower before turning back to Velma.<strong>“We have a mage that works for us you know, he’s no master of his craft, but he’s no slouch either.  He said there’s no trace of summoning or of teleportation… which … well, let me show you I suppose.”</strong><br/><br/>He led Velma into the warehouse, much of it was dusty and the air was hot and stale.  This must have been an old building.  It must have been built during the early days of Laelith’s reconstruction.  The air vents that had been installed in any buildings during the last twenty five years or so were not present.  The air vents that allowed cool night air to replace stuffy hot air during the night.  It wasn’t overly hot, but it was uncomfortable, and the building looked largley unused.  Only a few boxes along one wall, covered with a rotting tarp of canvas, filled the small warehouse space.  Along the back wall was a door however, with two more guardsman standing in front of it chatting quietly, whispering about something.  The door was broken inwards and hung, half off it’s hinges.<br/><br/>Naran led Velma to that door.<strong>“This door was locked from the inside.  There’s no other way into the room that we can see, no secret passages, no loose stone, and certainly no sewer grats.  Steel yourself, the sight inside is gristly.”</strong><br/><br/>Leading her into the room was a crime scene unlike one she’d seen before.  A black scaled dragonborn man lay on the ground in a massive pool of blood and viscera.  His features mostly destroyed by trauma and his armor still in place though covered in crimson.  At first glance it was hard to see what had happened, but Naran explained,<strong>“Our best guess is that the body was partially devoured by rats.  Something small enough to squeeze under the door, which was locked from the inside.  But as I said there’s no sign of magic here so the rats must have come in on their own.   But the nearest sewer grate is more than a hundred feet away, outside on the street.  In addition we haven’t been having much of a rat problem lately, and there certainly would be no reason to expect this much… uh…”</strong><br/><br/>He struggled to find the right word,<strong> “... well… this much of his body gone in such a short time.  He was seen yesterday on his shift, but it would have taken a small pack of rats days to devour this much, or a whole swarm of rats an hour or more.  But why would a swarm of rats come out of the sewer, squeeze under the door, and devour this paladin?  You can see why there’s a mystery.”</strong><br/>