Pulling forth her implements, the guardsman stepped back, giving the bespectacled woman room to work.  Her focus then went to the crime scene as she studied the body and checked it over before quaffing a concoction.  The first thing that triggered Velma’s senses was the smell.  The body was beginning to decay, as one would expect in a warm environment such as Laelith offered, but only just.  There was no way that this corpse had been in the heat of the day yet, meaning the dragonborne had been indeed killed some time last night, after the head of the day had begun to fade.  Her further inspection put it some time within the last eight hours or so, probably after midnight, but not more recently than three or four hours ago.  If she had to guess it was some time between first and fifth bell, but couldn’t narrow it down further than that.<br/><br/>But her keen sense of scent told her more as she took the time to really examine.  It was what could only be considered a ‘fresh’ kill.  There was no scent of sweetness that might indicate poison or disease, and the smell of blood was coppery and sharp, which indicated that it was in fact a death due to bleeding, not magical or fire or the like.<br/><br/>So she examined the wounds further.  The bite marks, of which there were multitude were sharp and small.  These weren’t giant rats, but the average large rats one might encounter by the docks or in the sewers where they could always be found.  But more to the point the sheer number of bite marks, and their pattern did indicate some sort of swarm.  This was an attack by a rat swarm, of that Velma was certain.  It would also explain how the dragonborne was killed in a locked room.  Even an eighteen inch long rat could squeeze under the gap in a door.<br/><br/>But it didn’t explain why a rat swarm would kill a paladin.  She knew enough about the natural world and the way rats should behave to know that such an act was improbable and highly unlikely.  Why would the rats swarm up, kill the paladin, and then leave?   Even if the rats were starving, they wouldn’t have dissipated, and they certainly wouldn’t have left without ‘cleaning’ their kill far more.  Even though they seemed to be the wounds caused by a normal rat swarm, and not a summoned one which would have been larger and left magical traces behind of summoning magic, it made no sense that a rat swarm would come up, kill this man, and then flee.<br/><br/>She examined the room and found a dust covered desk and storage crates, all of which seemed to be undisturbed.  The only foot prints she found seemed to be heavy shod metal boots, and likely were the guardsmen that had been investigating.  In fact the most disturbed area was that around the door with one exception.  She found a single smeared hand print in the dust on the room’s single window, as if someone had wiped away the grime and looked out.  But the majority of the room’s actions seemed to have taken place near the door, or in the center of the room where the body lay.<br/><br/>The dragonborne’s longsword lay on the ground, covered in blood a few hairs, which Velma guessed were from the paladin’s efforts to defend himself.  A closer examination revealed that the hair was indeed rat hair, and covered in grime, likely these rats were sewer rats.  But for all the answers she found, it only seemed to raise more questions.  There seemed to be no secret doors and no missing items that were obvious.  So the question still remained why this all had happened, as well as how.<br/>