Scene 1: Evening at the Museum

Crow begins the ritual to summon the Phantom steeds, one for the king and one for himself. If anyone else want to come along he casts one for them as well.

I don't play with passive perception as a baseline. I would recommend taking enough rogue levels to take reliable talent if you wanted that.

I use passives when the player does not know they would be making a roll, essentially making passive perception the DC the other person who is being active has to roll against. If a monster is stealthing, your passive perception is the DC they need to match or beat to stay unknown. As soon as you want to actively do something, it's not passive anymore.

The only hint at a "baseline or floor" is this line in passive checks as a whole.I generally find it unsatisfying, as it means if I wanted a secret door to be hard to find I just arbitrarily make the DC higher than everyone's passive. I also tend to refer to the idea of when a roll is called for. If both success and failure are possible and interesting, let a die be rolled.

Xcha wants to stay close to the king unless there is a direct order otherwise. so he would like a phantom stead if it is faster than his boots of speed -- 60 for 10 minutes

Just to confirm, this is my understanding of the plan:
- Crow will cast phantom stead as a ritual 3 times, once for himself, once for the king, once for Xcha. I don't know if Travail was intending to also come along, which would be 40 minutes to get that many horses up.
- Bells and Hunt went to the roof together and from the looks of it the attackers were pretty efficient and didn't drop anything. This means either they got lucky that nothing dropped or snagged or they are experienced in doing this kind of thing and are professionals.

I don't know if the party plans to meet up at the tower of Valna the elven diviner or if they are going to meet somewhere else and go together, but eventually that is the agreed to be the next step.

If anything above is incorrect, please varify before I jump ahead to meeting Valna.

Knowing the king was in good hands, Travail wished him good health and long life. He checked to see if any of the king's guard still lived before heading up to the roof.

Bells had not been interested to ride one of those abominations that Crow liked to call horses. One visit to what had been her father's stable would been enough to correct his blasphemy! Whether by conditions of the desert or skill of the Bedouin, the breed of horses that was the jewel of the desert was fundamentally different from even other horses from the all black skin, no matter their color to the number of their bones leading to their prominently high tail that helped give a proud air. Too proud to be compared with these....these magical steeds. But even Bells' prejudice eye had to admit the mounts would accomplish the goal of safe transportation for the king.

"My dears, please before the night finds us embroidered in any more chaos, let me give you a boon." Warm notes of Aid circled the bard and her companions giving literal strength to both body and soul. For some the music seemed to extend a bit longer than others but none were left untouched by the sweet melody.

Bells found herself on the roof after bidding the king farewell and coordinating with her companions on their plans for to reunite. The wind caught her hair as it tossed the loose auburn tresses around. If the bard had thought the evening would be full of skeletons then she would have put her hair up but now it was in the way. Perhaps her search of the roof was affected but the bard wasn't the only eyes and Hunt was the best. Unfortunately the skeletons just didn't leave any clues behind.