DM Ex Machina
A councillor was murdered in his sleep. Twice. We have uncovered one plot almost to its conclusion, but the other remains elusive. We still don't know what sort of creature ripped out the councillor's throat, or how it got in to his room, or who was controlling it. In fact, we pretty much know nothing except that some creature ripped out the councillor's throat. If we hadn't been lucky in finding out about the other cause of death we'd have been sitting around in an inn somewhere scratching our heads for most of the day that we had been charged to find the killer.
As it is, we are only just now, mid-afternoon, scratching our heads about how to find the killer. We had the whole morning and a bit of the afternoon picking up clues and hunting down some acrobats. But now we are stuck. All the clues that we have followed led to our first avenue of investigation, and despite trying really hard to find any kind of link to the other method employed to kill the councillor we simply haven't found anything. It's quite poor.
'What is there left to do, apart from wandering around the city and asking random people if they killed the councillor with a clawed snake?' The general mumbling and shaking of heads unfortunately confirmed that that was indeed our best hope right now of making any progress.
There was something else we could do. 'Let's talk to the general again.' After all, he is the only other character in the city who has not been linked to the poisoning who actually has been given a name. He must be here for a reason. And so, even though we have no idea what to ask him, we head to the Boratian embassy to question the general some more.
Question the general we do, mostly with questions we've already asked and knew the answers to, but thankfully stopping short of wondering if he's enjoying the weather in Malador or not. There are awkward pauses as people wonder what to say next, and whether we stand a chance of working out what's going on.
Then an apparently innocuous question mentions something, who knows what, and the DM decides that we really do need some help. With the mention of... whatever it was we are suddenly asked to 'roll for initiative!' Crikey, that sounds exciting. Before we know it, a summoned monster has pounced on one of us, a domestic pet is gnawing on another with some mighty big teeth, and someone previously kept in the shadows starts firing bolts of energy from his eyes! It must have been something we said.
Never underestimate the power of a bored DM to move the plot along.