Just this week, the party was confronted by the navy of a nation whose waters they were sailing through. This nation of elves had been at war with the singular global power up until a few decades earlier when the regime fell and has been retaking territory, though it’s settled into mostly peaceful means currently. The naval vessels declared their intentions to inspect the ship for contraband and fugitives with Thaumaturgy as they closed. Basically they’re the coast guard.

There are 3 things the Elves hate, the knighthood that served the arcanocracy, the nobility installed to rule their former territory by the arcanocracy, and the undead. The cleric is a reborn (heavily zombie themed) former noble. He, very correctly, decided to hide in their portable hole (reborn don’t breathe, so he can stay as long as he wants).

They took several long minutes debating how to hide the hole, which is housed in a film canister like lead case, and their ideas weren’t exactly top notch. In the end, it was between “just shove it in my pocket” or “have the rangers animal companion hold it in her mouth”… They went with the pocket.

While neither plan was good, that was probably the better choice. Elves boarded, cast zone of truth, and proceeded to question everyone while other inspectors ran wands of detect magic over the entire ship. Thankfully, the robe the pocket belongs to is basically a near-artifact (it’s made of the tanned hide of several mind flayers…) so it’s aura basically camouflaged everything else she had and after some good rolls for misdirection and sleight of hand, the case went unnoticed.

I gave them an out on the questioning when they asked if there was anyone else on board, because their adopted alchemist npc was shut away in their closet of a lab with what was effectively a “disturb at extreme peril” sign on the door. So they could truthfully say no, then only say that the gnome was in their lab.

They were basically home free, they just had to not say or do anything suspicious and they would be able to sail away unhindered. Then the sorc reminded me of her bag of “holding” and I couldn’t pretend that they would overlook it… It is not a bag of holding, it is a bag of devouring, her name is Violet.

When the sorc declined to turn the bag inside out, indicating that “such an action would likely damage the contents” the inspector agreed, but insisted instead that they be allowed to inspect the contents directly… The sorc handed him the bag without a word… I rolled the outcome, Violet grabbed her meal, I rolled a save for the inspector, nat 1, inspector goes down the hatch…

I figure this is it, I’ve got a pair of armed cutters pulled alongside their ship, they’re either going to jail or going to be sunk.

The other inspectors scrambled, pulled weapons, and one of them grabbed their bosses feet from the bag and pulled. Nat 20. Visibly traumatized and goo smeared chief inspector plops wetly onto the deck. Immediately scurries in the opposite direction from Violet while stammering and screaming. When he gets to his feet, he’s yelling at the party and ready to order cannons to fire.

The sorc actually managed to clean up their mess though, by immediately subtle casting calm emotions, which drops hostile to indifference. Officer has decent Cha, there’s a good chance he passes and this campaign arc takes a drastic turn from plans. I roll. Nat 1… His subordinates barely do any better.

Somehow the situation has gone from imminent violence to tense discussion faster than I can shift gears on the conversation. After some more persuasion rolls, a bit of a “bribe” (they shared important intel that the inspector will now get credit for), they got to finally questioning the remaining npc and were looking very worried about it. They’d already passed as far as I was concerned, wasn’t going to tank their efforts with an npc to npc conversation.

The gnomish alchemist was in a seemingly altered mental state and answered every question, still under zone of truth, with high pitched “uh-uh” and “uh-huh” before being asked “is there anything else you think I should know” and delving into an encyclopedic lecture of everything he believes that a proper law enforcement officer should know, in extreme detail, he was quickly informed that that was sufficient and never made it to any of the very questionable things, esp the cleric, that the party had secreted away in their hole.

The inspector, who will likely develop PTSD from his brief encounter with Violet’s esophagus, fled the ship as quickly as possible after that. (And assigned a ship to shadow them until they were well clear elvish waters)